School Committee - Interviews - January 4th, 2023

001father five four three and welcome to to you Dr Cushing and we're glad to have you here and look forward to have a chance to get to talk with you this morning thank you very much and thank you for this opportunity to share with you my experiences and uh also with the entire community of Milton who came out yesterday really grateful for that opportunity to have seen so many people and to have visited some great schools and uh to share with them via the wonderful world of the world wide web so we're going to we're gonna we all are and then do a little bit more yeah hello again I'm Lizzy Carroll a member of the school committee and a parent of a kindergartner happy birthday Julia and third grader and I'm Selena Miranda and

002I'm also School Committee Member and I am the mother of a nine-year-old third grader at the Cunningham Ada Rosemary and chair and our three kids graduated from Milton High School in 2008 10 and 12. congratulations doing their thing and I'm Betty White I'm also a member of the school committee and my son graduated in 2013 is doing very well I have a sixth grader at Pierce and a fifth grader at Cunningham and my name is Beverly Rossetti I'm a school at the high school and a third grader at the doctor Elementary so as you know uh Dutch Cushing before a viewing audience and then just talk a little bit about our process as you know we had a screening Committee of 11 people who reviewed 19 applications that were submitted to us for this position

003the screening committee was a group that consisted of one assistant superintendent one principal one department head one teacher three school committee members four parents representing all levels of elementary middle and high school and different parts of our community the screening committee narrowed down the applicants the 19 applicants to semi seven semi-finalists who were interviewed and the screening committee touched on 15 topics that were deemed important to the role of superintendent and those were those topics were informed by the focus groups and a survey that was conducted to inform our process we asked the same questions for every candidate and the school committee members have received a list of questions asked during the semi-finalist round and the screening committee completed their work when they arrived at a recommendation of our three finalists one of which is

004you here and yesterday as you mentioned all of our candidates visited the schools and got a chance to meet members of our community staff faculty students community members and today's school committee interviews will be a little bit different each school committee member has selected questions based on what we think is important from our perspective as school committee members for Milton public schools and some questions may be repeated from the semi-finalists round and some questions may be on other topics we've all had a chance to review your resume your personal state statement your deib statement your written references your phone references and some of our questions May probe further on some of those items as well so what we'll do is we'll just go around the table and ask our questions we have 75 minutes allocated

005for this interview and we've got a clock there on on the table and since we started a little bit late we'll we'll go a little bit late um we originally were going to start at finish up at 9 35 we're going to go uh to about 9.50 will be our our ending time so with that being said I'm going to start out with an opening question which is why Milton why now and would you please begin our time by sharing why you're seeking the superintendency here in Milton and talk a little bit about some of your key experiences in your career and our district that make you well suited to be our next superintendent thank you Aida for that question I really appreciate it and thank you all for taking the time to meet with

006me today I'm very excited about this opportunity in Milton because I believe that the work I've done throughout my career has positioned me well for some of the challenges that Milton is facing when I walk through the district yesterday and I had the opportunity to go to the Tucker the Pierce and the high school and really got an opportunity to see what some amazing educators are doing in a few challenging situations when it comes to space and really seeing how the Pierce has carved out classrooms out of hallways and parts of the library and how the Tucker is using the hands of hallways and they've been able to maintain their library for now but they're concerned about the you know the the influx of students and what that means for the future I think that

007my skill set is one of bringing people together to have difficult conversations to really look toward the future as to how we can best move forward to look at data evidence and to really understand the challenging and complex situations that we're facing especially when it comes to funding and really making sure that Milton has the staff it needs to really continue to produce excellent outcomes for students while also another skill set of mind that I've been working on and developing over the last few years is really to lean into and focus on Dei and that sense of belonging working closely with medford's Dei director at times over the past few years Francis noaje and others throughout our district and City to really make sure that we are bringing those critical topics to the Forefront I

008think that that's work that I heard yesterday at the end of my day I went back into the high school I think I was supposed to just get him into my car but I was brought back into the high school for for a moment and I actually had one of the richest conversations with a member of the community who specifically and targetedly asked you know why you as a white male essentially was the question and I think I was able to have a brief but very impactful conversation as I believe that I have the agency to bring topics to the Forefront that others may feel uncomfortable doing and that I have a responsibility a moral imperative and I'll talk about that a lot to really bring forward and as I said in the previous interview

009with the members of that committee you know today I'm going to talk a lot about we because I can't do any of these things alone it's bringing a community together not just the Milton Public Schools but a community across the entire town of Milton to make sure that we're here moving ourselves forward so thank you I'll go I always I was teasing them earlier that I'm the oldest so I should get to go first but anyway so I want to talk about leadership and as I was thinking about this topic I was thinking about my life experience and working in different political campaigns and really looking always for someone who inspires me so you know I did a couple of quotes here that says leaders don't create followers they create more leaders and Leadership is

010the unlocking of people's potential to become but better so could you describe yourself and your leadership skills and then how you go about mentoring others to develop their own leadership abilities um I think that those are some really great quotes um I will I think I'll add to the first one that a leader really needs to generate followership and people who believe passionately in the message of the leader in the intentions of the leader and in the ability of the leader to really help get the job done um and so I think followership is a part of that and there's a great YouTube video that I saw a number of years ago of a person dancing and then other people getting up and dancing I think on a hillside um haven't seen in a number

011of years but like that to me really like and then other people build and I think it really comes down to building a culture all right building a culture where people believe and it can start with something as simple and I'm not original so anyone who's viewing this in the districts I've been in it's a great day to be a wildcat like or how are we going to pump people up so that it it transcends Athletics Fine Arts academics and all all aspects of the school so then like there's a heartbeat in the community and that that really pulls forward um in Medford one of the things that we did at the height of the pandemic while we were reopening schools all right was we looked to Institute several models of support for our building

012principles and other aspiring leaders we put in a one-to-one coaching cycle where we would meet frequently with principals at established meeting times to talk about instruct primarily instructional problems of practice that would be myself our Harvard resident at the time and the principal or assistant principal and have conversations that really dove into the problems in practice that they were facing specifically around curriculum instruction and at times culture in their school we really tried to stay away from operational things because it's very easy to default to operations because is that's where a lot of people are naturally comfortable instructional leadership is a difficult thing to do because it's very nuanced second we created a structure of network professional development so bringing together principles across a strand perhaps Elementary principles Elementary assistant principles principles at the secondary

013level to bring problems of practice so that our principles could share and assistant principles that was something previous in Medford that at district-wide meetings the assistant principles were always left out um and so what we really wanted to do was bring them into the fold as we as my superintendent says we have to try to build our bench all right uh Dr Redwood Vincent really remarkable woman who talks about like really building our capacity to lead from within and so the other critical piece of this um is making sure that the principals have the opportunity to problem solve among themselves when you get these people uh these leaders in a room together they have an opportunity to sound off with one another and to build their capacity together and that's one of my I think

014that's one of my biggest things is to really look at how are we building not just leaders capacity but Educators capacity because they are the leaders in our classrooms and so how are we going to move them forward um to hopefully one day if they so choose to Aspire to school-wide leadership roles or to Aspire to District leadership roles or you know as one of the people I met yesterday today who was the ELA coordinator and is now the interim principal at the Tucker school and having seen her on your school committee meetings how she presented all right like she's someone who through that school committee meeting uh that I watched as I said yesterday at one and a half speed to get through a lot of school committee meetings was really it was really

015like came through as um someone who can help Inspire others and the third structure we did was we put in um we called it slate um and it's like um senior leadership and Technical senior leaders and team meeting I forget what the acronym actually means but we call it slate and that is specifically focused on nuts and bolts operations so if we didn't provide a space for that we uh and these were not all my ideas which is why I'm saying we but if we didn't provide a space for principals and other leaders to talk about operations those topics would come in and dominate the time that should be sacred for those instructional conversations throughout my career I've worked with a number of assistant principals working in rural north central Massachusetts we frequently faced uh

016Draconian budget cuts we once had to unfortunately go to a joint town meeting as a Regional School District in order to get our budget passed so one year I didn't have an assistant principal until the middle of October and our my assistant principals would frequently leave for other very much more higher paying positions in other districts um as one of my my principal at Arlington High School said he said you know go there for a year get the experience get the title and then leave because you know that's what you need to do and I fell in love with the district and I believe that there was an obligation to support the rural poor of Massachusetts at that point in my career and I I can't explain to you some of the poverty that that

017people in north central Massachusetts face and how does that relate to leadership well it's being present in a community it's demonstrating for my assistant principals and other leaders in my school like no you need to be president you need to support and to give them opportunities to lead and I'll close out by saying one of the great things that I think has really prepared me to be a superintendent is in a small District you were asked to take on many different leadership roles than in a larger District they have may have the benefit to hire people for and so we were a true part of central office in a way that I have not seen in other districts I've worked in and so it was given an opportunity for budget development and those were skills

018that I worked with my assistant principals to really build throughout time and to really bring people on board to really have conversations about core values and to have those um really permeate the organization and to really develop leaders by frequent meetings frequent conversations and making sure you have people around the table to participate in those conversations thank you that's good I'd love to ask you a question um continuous Improvement so in recent years Milton has implemented several major initiatives to improve student academic and social emotional outcomes but we know the work is not done would you please tell us about a time when you engage in the cycle of inquiry to learn from and build upon a major initiative um so for for my experience taking over a middle school in north central Massachusetts as

019I mentioned um we had to really look at what we were doing because students didn't want to go to school there the academics um where the teachers were excellent like the teachers were excellent but it's kind of like a race car if it's not if the mixture isn't right the race car can't run well and um we were able to really refine the mixture and one of the things that we looked at was our students were coming to us with significant deficiencies in math instruction all right for a variety of reasons um you know you can look at curriculum you could look at time on teaching you can look at the fact that many teachers when they're teaching across the strand of Elementary education don't necessarily feel strong in their math instruction so what we

020did was we really looked at designating teachers to be Math teachers we were trying to team so teachers were teaching multiple subjects and we needed to resolve that so we resolved that and teachers taught math all right we everyone switched to basically a departmentalized subject-based so they could focus on that type of instruction they could focus on their professional development and they could focus on their curriculum instruction planning and goals then we implemented a new curriculum that I would say from a central office perspective was dropped on teachers the day after February vacation which I would never support and that definitely took a lot of work to work with our staff to move through because that was not something that we wanted but the other final piece was hiring additional Math teachers so that we

021doubled our instructional block of time we went to 90 minutes of math instruction across grades five through eight so not only were kids were students receiving the instruction they were receiving their guided practice as well and so where does the inquiry come in the inquiry comes in two years three years later when we start doing an analysis one of the things that really helped the inquiry to be completely honest Beverly was when we were elevated to a level one school one of only two in all of Worcester County but just because you do something in the moment doesn't mean it's right for all time and that that hiring of an additional four Math teachers at the school required some very difficult decisions and required a significant financial investment on the part of the district and

022so by going through the inquiry and really looking at um you know we need to do we we definitely needed to do what we dropped on teachers was um Engage New York it was free that's that's great when you're a poor District um and it was a robust system that was developed for a curriculum for math we were able to look at the cycle of inquiry and really look at we need to provide teachers more specific and targeted professional development in that area which led to one of my teachers actually going to the great minds Academy and being filtered down to be one of their coaches a very challenging program to go through and to be one of the coaches that they then send across the country she was still able to be a teacher

023in our district but she was able to then bring that coaching experience back so we needed math coaching we needed more time on curriculum development and we need more time while teachers have been doing it for about two or three years to really make the most out of the 90-minute block of time not to just lecture for 90 minutes which very few did but to really focus on how are we going to do a workshop model of Education that works for students to break out into groups to do those types of things and so um that really that cycle of inquiry without formally calling it a psycho living query at the time was really able to help move our math program forward thank you so I'd like to follow up on uh sort of where

024you started in your opening remarks but going back to Dei and if you could speak uh specifically to strategies that you have implemented or LED at the either school or District level and uh specifically if you could speak to those initiatives and what some of the challenges might have been and if in that experience you've also dealt with perhaps resistance from the community in terms of moving the conversation to Dei efforts um thank you very much for the question I really appreciate it I think that this is outside of curriculum and instruction I I and I I really see this as connected and married the the work we're doing with Dei and building a sense of belonging a real sense of community is the fundamental foundational work that we as school districts have to do

025and unfortunately there is significant resistance to this work there are there are there are there but this is this is not a political end this is a moral end like we have an obligation to provide opportunities for our traditionally marginalized under represented communities um our our students who whether it be race gender status disability status or socioeconomic status we have an obligation and I'll say that word a lot we have an obligation to elevate their situation all right so that they have the best chances in their lives moving forward so specifically some initiatives I'll start in Medford um we uh we definitely had some stops and starts um and I'll be completely honest about that we have started a district-wide race Equity task force that's in about two years and that task force has delivered

026recommendations to conduct a an equity audit of the district that we've started in our human resources section we have done a book study at one school level and are looking to move that to other schools as well and we have really looked at through the race Equity task force our professional development and I would say the stops and starts are during the pandemic we didn't really have an opportunity to bring people together so we were doing large Zoom rooms and as the zoom coordinator for the district um you know it Zoom doesn't tell you that 500 doesn't really work you have to ask for the super secret Zoom um and so in order to have the breakout rooms work so you know that was an opportunity for me to in front of about 600 people

027offer a Maya culpa that whoops uh I didn't know this and like the staff actually emailed me and said we appreciate you um owning it but it's not your fault and so staff has been extraordinarily supportive around these initiatives however what they said and working with our our professional development committee that's in partnership with our teachers union is to really look at ways that we don't do those large 600 500 person pieces and to find ways to break it out well to break it out and to have professionals come in in this work which by the way there are limited professionals who can do this work there are some organizations like tntp and others but there's a significant cost I mean we looked we looked at one organization that was in the quarter of a

028million dollar range and so what we tried to do was usually when you farm things out the farm doesn't grow that well and so what we tried to do is we tried to cultivate it within and so what that meant was this year we invested heavily in our people so what we did was we brought our leaders together we have about 40 school and District leaders across Medford so then we could break out our 500 people into small groups of about 16 to 20 um or so and uh we partnered we partnered our leaders up so that if people were uncomfortable in this work they would have someone to lean on as the presentations were being done on November 8th and so what we did was we looked at um there's a workbook out there

029I have it in my mind but by Ibraham Kennedy um and it offers some really great resources so we Blended those in we looked at a book that offers case studies on Race gender and we use some of those case studies as inspiration to build our own Medford specific case studies we then developed a multimedia presentation that brought in videos and some other opportunities to really engage staff so it's not just a lecture but we built discussion and built those pieces staff really felt like in their feedback to us all right felt like it was the best professional development they had and that they want more now I will say this there were some people who said why do we keep doing this why are we why are we going back to this well I

030think that's actually one of the reasons why we're going back to it all right is until we own it all right until we internalize it until we realize like there are systemic challenges and systemic problems that we as a system have to address then we're going to have to keep going back to it the other thing too that I will say is working in north central Massachusetts we did not have a lot of racial or ethnic diversity but we did have broad socioeconomic diversity and uh one of the reasons why I bring this up is one of the programs I instituted was a Freshman Academy a four-day freshman orientation and to bring uh the it was initially thought conceived by another leader who then handed it off to me but it was going to be

031all National Honor Society students leading it when you only go with National Honor Society students you're excluding students who are also have the potential to be great leaders simply because their grades don't allow them to get into National Honor Society doesn't mean that they are not great members of our school community and have a tremendous opportunity and so by creating a leadership group within our school we're able to really address some issues around belonging and to bring freshmen on and to give them the sense of like I want to be one of those leaders and I want to be a part of this four day 8 am until noon program that while it looks like it's a lot of fun and ended the first year we did it ended up in an impromptu dance party

032in the main lobby of the high school that kids didn't want to leave and that just built this culture over the eight years that I was a part of that and was very exciting about creating a sense of belonging that I believe once you create that sense of belonging you can really continue and expand those Dei conversations which are difficult I could ask so in your statement you um you emphasize the core values of centrality of teaching and learning and high academic and social expectations for all students please elaborate on why those core values are so important and the results you were able to achieve yeah um I believe core values are your North Star they they help you set your course and when things get difficult uh when students pass away teachers pass away

033when when you're in the middle of Washington DC and you have to tell a teacher that their parent has passed away and you're on a field trip together or when um there's a bomb threat or fill in the blank of anything that can happen of the General Controlled Chaos of a school day all right and if you've never had the opportunity to go and be in a school um on a daily basis it's an interesting place to be and I'll never forget I uh want my assistant principal was asked to lead one of our one of the reasons why I had a transition he was asked to lead an elementary school in the middle of the year uh when when one of the principals stepped aside and so I had an interim system principal come

034in who was a sixth grade science teacher and he did an incredibly admirable job and was phenomenal he chose to go back to the classroom but he walked into my office one day and he said I never knew what you do on a daily basis it is very easy as a school leader to get lost in the noise the K however you want to call I don't want to use I shouldn't have used chaos I apologize but to get lost in the noise of everything that's going on in school and if you don't have those core values which are right here all right and you know I always add being present is like the the I don't list it as a core value but it always comes through but it's like these are always within

035Arm's Reach for me because number one it's easy to forget them even though they're your core values but it's easy to be like wait a second in the in the hustle bustle the the Sprint slash Marathon or Sprint marathon of every single day it's very easy to lose your focus and to have those I studied Latin and Latin has trots to help you so to create trots that make sure that you help you to to publish them to have them up to make sure that they're visible for others to see is really critical and for people to know like This Is My Line in the Sand I will go no further on this we have a responsibility all right to Shield our teachers from the noise that sometimes comes from the federal government that sometimes

036comes from the state government or that sometimes could come from our own um our own District leaders or School leaders and it's very easy to forget what it's like to be in the classroom which is one of the reasons why I still evaluate teachers even as an assistant superintendent even as a superintendent I may not evaluate as many as I did as a principal but I think it's fundamentally critical that the district and the district and school leaders don't lose sight of the classroom and by doing that by really creating the sacredness of the classroom was critical Anna to Our Success to moving forward and while I was only in Webster for one year because the super the assistant superintendent because I don't want to promote myself the assistant superintendent position in Medford uh presented

037itself we were able to start building through our turnaround plan the systems and structures to make sure that that sacred classroom time was critical now with that sacred classroom time comes expectations and accountability but with accountability and expectations you better have a high level of support for your Educators you better be providing them really good resources to be able to use to make their days easier so that they're not struggling through say poor internet or Chromebooks or however it may be but they have the tools to deliver the instruction and connect with their students I feel like there might have been a second part to your question that I I think that's good okay okay um so we um I'm going to ask you a question that sort of focuses in on three priorities a

038couple of them are connected to things that we've discussed sort of indirectly but as we've been talking about there are many things right that we need our next superintendent to effectively address I'm choosing to ask you to focus on three and to please speak to how you would approach each of these issues with some examples of how you've led the work in other settings so the first one is eliminating the racial achievement or opportunity Gap the second one is leading the change management to support our strategic plan and the third one is being a strong communicator to build trust with the community and so if you could please touch on you know your experiences in those three areas I think those are three key aspects for the our next superintendent to prioritize apologize for the

039delay I just wanted to make sure I got them down sorry I just want to get them all out there yeah um all right so the three priorities so I'm gonna start with the communicator because I really believe that that is uh foundational and if you ever want to visit my Twitter page uh one of the things is uh that building trust is a Cornerstone of good leadership um and establishing that trust and that's done really as I said just a few minutes ago by being present by making sure that you're seen in the community you're known in the community um and that's also a part of accountability that you're going to see me in schools uh people might wonder why I'm not in central office a lot because the work is partly done in

040central office but the work is really done in schools and classrooms and to make sure that you're there and so as a communicator it's having conversations with people wherever they are if it's at Costco then it's at Costco if it's if it's at uh Dunkin Donuts then it's at Dunkin Donuts if it's on the football field or if it's at Beauty and the Beast or if it's at whatever it is it's making sure that you're available to have conversations and if the conversation can't be completed in that moment making sure that people have that individual time with you as a leader it's also making sure that we're delivering a clear marketing and communication strategy for the district so people should be able to expect Friday memos from the superintendent they should be able to affect

041uh three-minute YouTube clips from the superintendent or members of the superintendent's team or principals that are really giving them like if you don't want to read the memo okay here's a three minute quick kick video you can watch on you commute into Boston or while you're sitting in an elevator going upstairs or however it is but providing people those opportunities to really see it's making sure that we're translating our materials for our families where English is not their first language and that's a very easy five-minute thing to do to translate into multiple languages using Google translate which I admit isn't the best but hopefully it is enough to convey the message it's providing that and then through that communicated with the community it's also making sure that those can constituents who are not part of

042the Milton public schools which everybody is because as residents everyone's a part of the Milton Public Schools but it's making sure people understand why it's so important that we are stewards of their tax dollars and when we need more of those tax dollars that we can clearly and effectively communicate to them why that is and to build a stronger Milton Public Schools I would also say that then moves into being able to be someone who's a change manager around the Strategic plan by having the established strategic plan I think it goes through 2027 you know by able to have that that also is as I said earlier about a North star that's the North Star for the district and having those presentations done by principals over the past I think month and a half prior

043to the Christmas holiday break was really critical to really understand like you know those school committee meetings primarily LED with those um site counsel School Improvement plan meetings but all connecting back to that strategic plan and so being able to be the change manager and having led to schools that one was quasi-turn around and one was definitely turn around all right you need to be able to establish the plan have difficult and challenging conversations with individuals to be able to move them forward and to be able to really look at the organization as an organic um piece that needs to be cultivated in certain spots and called in other spots and to really make sure that we're bringing people in to focus on those critical pieces and when you start doing change management and you

044start really looking at those those pieces and one of the things I saw was the metrics Team all right is really looking at those specific evidence areas where our gaps are and so by eliminating the ratio Gap what resources are we providing to our staff our students to really focus on and support those students and what supports are we also doing for our families what do we Prov how are we providing our information to our families so that they can support our students at home I'll say this as a as an edge even as an educator I have four and six-year-old daughters and sometimes when my six-year-old comes home I'm at a loss to help her um and move through those things and so one of the things that her teacher does is she sends

045home supports for what's going on in classrooms so making sure that we're providing parent University opportunities make sure that we're providing opportunities for parents to know what's coming to have frequent messaging home to have opportunities for parents to come in and say meet with teachers meet with leaders to get a better understanding of how they can support their student as part of a 360 degree approach to really eliminating those uh those specific gaps I also think that what you have to do is you have to go down into um you know you have to look at Alexia data you have to look at your I already data you can't just wait for your um your uh MCAS data to come out and that's one thing that I would really look to support and discuss with

046the metrics team and say like okay how can we also bring these data points in as part of our way to look at a collective entire student and so how I've done that with in the past one of the one of the critical things for eliminating gaps is student discourse bringing training teachers so that they can have students have academic discussions and academic talk with one another in their classrooms is one of the true ways to be able to eliminate gaps because then they're having conversations with peers around academic topics being able to move through those topics and really start to build on that common knowledge with one another um I've got a question for you about something that I read in your um package and I wonder if you could tell us about your

047development of a student advisory Council and how that's been important to your work in Medford so um about two years ago one of the school committee members made a public resolution asking for us to really focus on student voice and for me to lead that work um one of the things I had been doing was making sure that I was having conversations with students meeting with students and sometimes that makes the adults feel kind of uncomfortable but we need to be listening to our students and so what I did was I formalized the process and while state law requires it at the high school level it doesn't require it at the middle school level and we haven't pushed it down in our k-5s yet but that's the next step being able to connect with our

048students to hear what their concerns are to make sure that they are bringing their voices forward is fundamentally critical and we had initially started with a small group but this year we've expanded that group um we don't want to limit the students who want to have an opportunity to share their opinions and to share their voice and what it's done is it's brought forward that students don't necessarily feel like their schools are fun and this even goes back to my time as a principal because I would have these conversations and I'll never forget about 20 um fifth graders squeezed into my office that was about a quarter size of this conference room like literally bouncing up and down with energy talking about the things that they wanted in their school and this was in my

049first year as an internal principal and the superintendent had charged me with making the school fun again because yes we need academics but kids need to want to go there and to really start listening to the students about like what's going to make it fun for them and students students that I've worked at in the high schools I've been at essentially say you know I know that the TV high school isn't a real thing but we want some of that um and the movie High School like we want some of that to be part of and so what we've tried to do what I've tried to do and working with teams is really build a culture that starts with the students I've always believed that if you there are three main groups in schools that

050that I see your students your faculty and staff and your parents if you get any one of those any two of those three groups on board the other group is coming for the ride all right because they're going to see and they're going to feel the positivity they're going to feel like listen to they're going to say wait a minute my kids are being listened to incredible and that's some of the stuff that we've been able to do even through some of the challenging situations I've been in as a leader since 2008. all right it's amazing when people come up to you even through challenging situations and they say thank you for listening to the students thank you for letting the students help guide you thank you for letting the students help be part of

051the leadership solution and by creating the student advisory Council what we've been able to do is we've been able to give students a voice that they weren't really given previously and in a way there are customers and if we're not listening to our customers then we're neglecting them and um I'm not someone who believes that we need to neglect that we shouldn't neglect the most important resource outside of our teachers our students are an amazing resource for us to be able to to engage with so I have a question about um a larger topic about time in school and whether or not we should have a longer school day so I worked in the school system for 20 years Elementary and I remember you know speaking to colleagues and teachers and they just never had

052enough time to get to everything that they needed to do and like some teachers would say to me you know I spend this much time on reading and as much time on math and we get to social studies when we can and you know I remember one time they stopped we used to have two recess periods in my elementary school and they stopped the first recess period um they cut down on Jim because they were trying to spend more time on learning so I wanted to ask you a little bit about your thinking about the idea of a longer school day and not just for academics but for some of the you know the fun stuff that the kids like to do or things that they could choose to do just just curious when they

053cut down on uh gym physical education and when they cut down that recess how are student behaviors terrible oh it just you know it just really changed because they didn't have that outlet you know it was just it really you could feel it in the building it it was heartbreaking for them you know that they did that so uh I'm gonna cite another great Elementary principle that I worked with uh her name Shantae jilson she's a principal at Winchendon right now and she worked with me when I was at Narragansett and uh Shantae really inspired me to really look at the National Day of Play and uh to which was unfortunate because an unfortunate the National Day of Play but uh I think the the two years that we really tried to do it uh

054it snowed on both days um so and so but I I really believe and Shantae really helped me to see this and this is part of my work in Medford that I'll get to in a moment um the student's ability to play all right I believe at all levels is critical to their Social Development um I think that there are so many complex problems with a longer school day all right but I don't think that's something we should necessarily shy away from if we look at um you know a cost-benefit analysis I don't mean a cost benefit necessarily in dollars and cents teachers right now are are are burned out we across education leaned on them to do so much during the pandemic okay I can speak about Med for teachers they they had when

055I first got to Medford and turned on my computer the first day uh it was I found out there was an eight-year-old device that still had Windows 7 when Windows 7 was sun setting in three months and those are the mainline computers for all of our our teachers and all they had was Chromebooks and there was there was no plan to replace them no no plan because it was a significant financial investment um and so the staff of Medford were doing a great job the technology staff the the community was doing a great job supporting and helping those along but when we hit the pandemic and they were running that off of Chromebooks and so these types of things over the past three and four years have really added up and we have we have

056really got to make sure that we're focusing on what our Educators needs but our students do need more time in the school day um I'll I'll say this it's it's well known right now across American high schools that students are losing interest all right across American high schools there have been some really good books published about it there have been some really good research studies published about it and we've got to find a way to get students inspired about their schooling again and well don't get me wrong many kids are but we are potentially losing a lot of students who are just kind of like going through the motions and I think that to your question if we were to have more time in a day to add fun all right to to offer unique

057opportunities at elementary middle and high school for them to follow their passions and to give our teachers opportunities to follow their passions as well um I think that you're going to see a lot more engagement and you're going to see a lot more love of learning come back you know when you take away opportunities for kids to play and interact with one another it's a significant problem I'm also a firm believer that the deleterious effects of social media cell phones that have been given to our students are negatively impacting their social interactions within school and outside of school and how does that work to your question well specifically we need to find a way for students to have authentic interactions with one another and to make sure that they're not just on their device playing

058a game or having a conversation or over a headset we need to make sure that we're providing opportunities for them to have those authentic um points of interest there I worry about the the only thing that would be a big stumbling block for me is that Financial cost of okay what does extending a day really look like if you don't have state or federal grants to help support it and I'm extremely concerned for all districts across Massachusetts and anywhere else that has the arpa funds and the fiscal cliffs um that I think they were fiscal cliffs might be becoming fiscal chasms uh that we're facing but uh the other thing too I would say is specifically going back to your question which I feel like I've meandered so I apologize okay I'm with you um

059I feel like one of the ways that we can deliver like you know you talked about social studies being cut well is there a way and we did this in my middle school was to try to blend into a Humanities block so that we're using history and social studies texts it didn't work well in every single level because if you're doing geography how does that really work but are there ways that we can blend in texts and supports throughout um English that connect to history or connect to science so that we're not neglecting those subjects as well your comments about arpa and you can add Esser for that it's the perfect segue into my question the town of Milton has a structural deficit that limits our ability to fully fund the services and supports we

060require town wide it's not just impacting the schools in order to address this in the short term there's a high likelihood we'll need to raise residential taxes because we don't have a significant commercial tax base and our our local nonprofits not all of them are on at this time equally contributing to the town's finances what approach would you take to convince or to engage our our local residents that the public schools are worth the investment more about the approach not to say that you know Milton's specific context um I think the approach is really conducting listening sessions it's it's conducting presentations at every opportunity so it's it's going to it's going to houses of worship and asking to to maybe do quick presentations there it's going to councils on Aging going to other departments in

061in town I think that's really part of a 90-day entry plan that can't stop at day 90. we have to build an understanding that the Milton public schools are the greatest strength and asset to the town and it's why many people move here it's why many people want to Aspire to move here and I really believe that we have to communicate and this goes back to your question all right about you know a leader who communicates well we've got to really get the message out there in a way that is not passive and expecting people to land on a YouTube page or a Facebook page those are critical but we need to deliver the message to them about how critical their Public Schools is Massachusetts state state constitution calls for a duty to cherish public

062education and we need to get the citizens to really understand and cherish their responsibility to make sure that Milton is not below the state average in per-pupil funding but should be leading the way on making sure that we're providing the fiscal resources necessary so that we can uh not have people working in hallways and that we can have um our counselors have you know all the space that they need to be able to meet with students and all those different type of space things that I saw at every single school yesterday all right that we're addressing those and that the programs that are being implemented really inspire people to say you know something I don't need to go to a private school because there's a phenomenal education right here now don't get me wrong there

063are some Legacy things that we will never break through all right and those will always be a challenge for any District that has parents who attended those uh those private institutions but we need to make sure that people aren't looking for those as better the public schools do an amazing job educating all students and those interactions with all students help benefit every single student in the schools whereas selective institutions forget the all part and so I really think what you need to do what we need to do is we really need to be at the Forefront of meeting people where they are bringing people in if it's if it's adding a seniors uh Thanksgiving dinner if it's adding uh asking whatever the Council on Aging is in town I will admit I haven't researched that

064at this point but making sure that we're bringing them to the schools and or bringing our students to them so that they see and understand Who We Are do we have time from where we're yeah yeah I apologize I I've tried to be better with time you're fine you're doing fine I like to build on on some of what's been said already and what you've shared but really thinking about you know when I think ahead and I think about sort of the individual who's going to take on this role and think about that first year and you know we have sort of the the challenge around the budget right it's uh not enough resources for everything we need to do we were fortunate to get a stream of funding due to really difficult situation that

065has helped offset some of the I think the challenges that we were having to begin with so there's sort of the budget piece there is definitely I think tension in the community around whether you know Dei it comes at the expense of academic Excellence which you know we can have a whole conversation on that I don't think it's either or um there are sort of our space needs which you have witnessed you've seen them so we're in this process of trying to figure out what are we going to do how do we help release some of that pressure that we're seeing right now and then we also have um you know the I think a point that you've made already which is exhausted teachers right Educators that have been through a lot all of us

066have but definitely I think the stress that has come to Educators given sort of the family needs and student needs Etc there's just a lot that has been happening and then also thinking about unfinished learning and the challenges that we're seeing in terms of hiring and so there's so much going on and I don't need to tell you that you are in in it and you know it so I think when you step back and look at that and think about your first year I obviously the usual question is the first a hundred days but I would say it's it's not the first 100 days it's that first year how would you go about prioritizing with all that right and what how would you go about building alliances and getting to know and digging down

067and really understanding sort of the town in our needs our District's needs um what would those the first year look like and what would your priorities be so um I think that my experiences have really positioned me well to execute on your question and hopefully to answer your question um when I when I was asked so I was I was a high school assistant principal and I'm going to start there real quick I was a high school assistant principal and um our superintendent unbeknownst to me non-renewed our beloved middle school principle all right and and then she literally walked down the hall because we were we were a conjoined School walked down the hall into my office and uh I've said twice now that people found me in my office which is a rare thing

068however um she walked into my office and she sat down and she said Peter I've just non-renewed and I would like you to take over the Middle School and so um after a month of hemming and hiring she laid it on the line and because I didn't honestly know that that's what I wanted to do I loved High School like it did and my father God Rest his soul was like what are you doing you're being offered an opportunity for leadership here yeah it's going to be challenging yeah it's going to be difficult but you're being offered an opportunity at 33. to be a principal that someone is handing to you what are you doing and my father always used to say you know maybe I'm not that smart because I didn't go to college

069but he was a pretty smart man um and why do I share that because that first year as an interim all right and by no means would this be an interim or anything along those lines but that first year was an interim uh I faced five situations some of which I've shared previously that other principles I talked to are like I've been in principal for 15 or 20 years and I've never faced any of those and I faced all of them and was able to make it through and um why do I say these things in relation to your question because I think it is very important during that first year to listen to bring the right people around the table and by the right people I mean as many people as possible that we're

070going to bring people in have conversations around curriculum have conversation around metrics have conversations around the programs that we're offering have conversations around like you know is early literacy being as successful as it can while also balancing a very beloved French immersion program you know have conversations in difficult pushes around these things I think fundamentally like to get to some specifics around your question um the district really needs to make sure that it has a strong financial leader to take over for Glenn that is in my opinion don't get me wrong teachers staff members they are all important you really need a hawk on your budget someone who is able to watch understand end of your reports understand all those types of things and that is a specific skill set that from meeting yesterday and

071seeing your school committee meetings has been in flux over the last couple of years and that that flux is something that really needs to be like set in stone and find a really good quality leader to be able to take that on um it's also uh really prioritizing through that first year like okay how are we going to achieve the Strategic plan how are we going to put the resources where they need to be when as we've set around this table like uh s or an arbor thank you for reminding me investor um those monies are going away and if we don't wean ourselves off of them and identify one of one of the things for us that's or we've been able to use that money to put in some more Hall monitors that have

072been critical around student Behavior that's that's just to help support students make sure they're in class make sure they're where they need to be engagement Specialists but those are all significant expenditures in human capital that is so fundamentally critical that we all right have to find a way to like say we're going to support these or where are we going to find the cuts to move forward I think also too within that first year it's really making sure that we're listening to the community and selling the community on if you're under effort or if you're not fully supporting well we've got to find a way to go to those structural deficits and write the ship and unfortunately for me I've worked in these situations before one of the towns I worked in um they they

073had a surplus the same year that prop two and a half came in and so what it did this is ancient history for me because I was five years old but what happened was they refunded and reset the tax rate based on the Surplus from what I've been told um and then what that did was when prop two and a half came in there was an artificially lower floor all right that you could only then raise two and a half percent on oh boy right and so I I've unfortunately faced these challenges um sometimes well and sometimes um you know being being at a school at two o'clock in the morning when kids are coming the day be the next day trying to figure out how we're going to fit it because we didn't have

074the bodies we we did not like and didn't have the teachers to fill because they were not budgeted positions um so I think over the first year it's got to be a really strong uh entry plan to meet with community members to meet with members of town hall to make sure this is really good strong working relationship with the Town Administrator to make sure that there's really good open lines of communication with the members of the school board and to really help support and move forward uh the work of the district and to make sure that like that any noise that that is that we're isolating um we're isolating and really focusing on those critical pieces that you talked about and I wish I'd written them all down so because I know I didn't touch

075on them all and I'm sorry that's okay no don't worry about it you didn't you did well thank you um how would you approach the community's desire to emphasize academic Excellence what are some ways in which you have worked to improve test scores and school rankings in previous districts both overall and within specific subgroups um so I have noticed a real intense focus on MCAS and those one thing I do want to say that everyone can forever hear on tape moving forward grades and test scores are not a true estimation of a human's worth okay when when you are uh 45 years old sitting in an interview all right nobody's ever going to ask you if you were part of the National Honor Society all right nobody's going to ask you how you're high how

076your AP scores were and take any APS like nobody's going to ask you those questions um I believe that academic excellence can be done without burning our kids out so uh and I have specific experience in as a high school assistant principal when I first got the job I started doing some research and this does not correlate to Milton but I'm going to share it anyway we had two advanced placement classes in our high school all right with 13 kids enrolled between those two classes there were many similarities and looking back five years there were zero qualifying scores let that sit in for a second so why are we bothering to have AP classes all right that we're taking pretty good teachers really I mean very good teachers to a retired those two are now

077retired but like they were excellent teachers but we weren't getting the results and um as I was leaving Arlington one of our department chairs there was going to work for what was known as the Massachusetts Math and Science initiative now known Mass insight and she said you should really look into this and I had really no idea about the advance but when I got there I was like we're going for this we didn't get it the first year we got it the second year because they didn't have a cohort out along Route 2 to support us because most people forget there's Massachusetts outside of 495. right maybe most forget outside 128. so why do I share that well in just about two years we went from two advanced placement courses with no qualifying scores to

078eight advanced placement courses 13 kids enrolled previously to over 175 students in a school of 450 480 depending on year so small school and we started using AP potential data so we made sure that we paid for every single sophomore and Junior to take the PSAT which then PSAT is controlled by the college board and whatever your feelings on sat and college board and all those types of things are and there are a lot of feelings on it all right but it's one of those things that's part of our education realm all right we use that AP potential data and then I created a sheet to work with our guidance counseling staff as the assistant principal to start like literally running off rosters of kids and setting the bar a little bit lower than AP

079said it because the research said that if you set the bar just a little bit lower all right which meant you you caught more kids you brought more kids in the the kids who would never be thought of to take advanced placement we recruited them we went and we essentially knocked on their locker doors and said hey come have a conversation this data says you can do this we started having AP nights that were going to implement it Medford this year all right we're going to use the AP potential data to send out the form letter to parents that basically recruits them almost like a college recruiting letter to for them to get a packet in the mail to open up and say hey your kid could be awesome at this how about you come

080and listen to how they could be so awesome and to really recruit and bring those students in look academic so we can't get academic Excellence if we're not supporting our social emotional welfare of our students and how does that connect with what I was just saying well by knocking on their locket Doors by bringing them into the conversation by making it an inclusive process as opposed to an exclusive process we're able to build kids self-esteem we were able to provide an opportunity for kids who I I believe that there had never been a kid accepted to Harvard um according to what our guidance counselor said while I was an assistant principal like in the 50 plus year history of the school that there hadn't been um hopefully I'm not proven Wrong by that no caught

081on camera but the reality is is that's what I was told and so we had kids now being accepted at Harvard we had one student who I know specifically went to Clark University and was able to get a free master's degree because we built an AP program we as leaders had a responsibility to provide a program that wasn't provided previously and if we as a school district schools individually are not providing those opportunities for kids then we're failing our kids and we're failing their families and we're basically saying yeah you should go to those private schools because we're not doing it we need to provide those opportunities for our kids to really indulge in their passions to really explore who they are and to provide opportunities for growth another great way to get specifically back

082to your question Anna is what opportunities are we providing at the middle school level to offer High School Credit all right and having done that work previously I think that that's a really critical thing for us to be able to open up room in a high school student schedule so they can take more of those passion subjects and if I didn't answer any part feel free to follow up that's exactly what I was going to do the qualifying scores what was your increase so we I'll give you one example and this really goes to an amazing math teacher who unfortunately lost to Wachusett Community College after a couple of years um so in in AP calculus we went from zero qualifying scores to the next year uh or like I think it was two years

083down the road but we went from having qualifying scores all right that that was the majority of the class and then in the third year of the program if I remember correctly we had 15 students enrolled in that one course so think about that for a second just three years before 13 kids enrolled in all AP courses for two to having 15 students get all fives and that was the result of a really world-class professional development that mass Insight puts together um it was the result of Saturday sessions for students to really get intense focus with other schools other schools would come together um and really making sure that our teachers were invested in the other thing too that was really amazing to me about that AP program was when it first started it was

084an incentive based program so teachers had the and this was a huge bone of contention that we were able to work through successfully with our bargaining partners and um when the teachers got the qualifying scores I think it was they got 100 bucks per kid a hundred bucks per qualifying scores or I forget exactly what the money was it was like people were able to pay for vacations they were able to do these types of things and um when that program Sunset and so one of the teachers uh was very opposed because of those incentives when that program started and said it in a few years had gone by and I was the Middle School principal and I was still kind of quasi-running the AP program um we had lost the AP teacher to another

085District because they paid far better um she was stepped up to be the AP teacher and she reluctantly went they used to run the professional development at Brandeis I think they run it at Bridgewater State now she reluctantly went and I will never forget bumping into her in the main lobby of the high school and her saying I want to let you know that I'm now drinking the Kool-Aid specific quote like I am I am drinking from it because that was the best professional development it was better than my master's program it was better than my cags program like and she like she still texts me about how how her students are performing and how her students are doing based on those professional development opportunities and I think when you bring world-class professional development to

086our Educators they embrace it and they they really drink from it and they really engage with it so we're running a little bit of a verb but um but no not no no need to apologize we're so glad to hear from you on and all of these topics and appreciate your responses and um so I just want to ask you if you have anything else that you'd like to tell us about your candidacy or yourself or if you have any questions for us we don't have a lot of time left but uh um so I guess for me I heard your three priorities but um I'd like to hear like you know other what what priorities do you see as like number one in your heart and mind but number two like what is the

087thing that most excites you about the Milton Public Schools aside from challenges what excites you about Milton Public Schools I can say it's the people you know we have a wonderful very supportive and encouraging community um a very diverse Community one of the more diverse suburbs of Boston and I feel like at least for me personally there has been a space where I feel like my family supported my children are supported and encouraged um and I think the schools themselves have come a long way since I've moved to the town until now I have noticed our staff are engaged in Greater opportunities around a diverse topics in professional development the district has been in the last three to five years we've implemented many research-based strategies like common planning Time Regular curriculum reviews you know system-wide

088formative assessments these are all things that when I first got here weren't even conversations to have so seeing those gains being made in such a concentrated period of time I feel like the entire system is moving in the right direction and when we have a fully engaged community that values one another that has that North Star of what we aspire to be as an entire Community it makes me feel like I made the right choice when I moved here because I'm in an environment where my kids can thrive if anything I would love for the entire Community to be able to say that do I think many families say that absolutely do I think every family would say that I can't say that thank you no so I'll speak to what excites me I think

089it's I see it firsthand in my household and that's my third grader and the fact that she's having such a wonderful experience in the schools where she has seen she is heard and she also experiences Joy I must say not every kid loves going to school and I know that what's happening in that school building is working when she's excited to be there if it wasn't working we would you know I would not be sort of doing I think all the work that I'm doing on behalf of sort of thinking about how do we bring that to every every student so that every student has that sense I think in terms of the priorities I I think we need to continue looking closely at our strategic plan I think we have a great strategic plan

090I think we need to be able to align it and connect it to our metrics work this variety obviously we need to track data and to see how we're doing against that plan but I also think that a huge priority is how do we get residents more broadly to understand the plan and get behind it because without that sort of community support I think we're going to have a challenge in sort of getting folks excited about personalized learning personalized learning is a framework it's a way of approaching the work that says I see you as a student I know the needs that you have and doesn't mean that it's not per in the pursuit of academic Excellence because I think this is sort of what I keep hearing is sort of like that we're letting

091go of One Versus the other and it's not that I think that personalized learning will get us to academic Excellence but really sort of being able to get more folks to understand that I think is important because I think for those of us who are in in the thrust of it we get it right we speak it we we know it we look at it but I don't think everybody does and I think sort of how do we get more residents whether they have children in the schools or not to understand the work that's happening and be able to speak to our diverse perspectives and being able to find sort of that overlapping interest I think that's that's important because that's I think how we're going to address the challenges that we're facing around budgeting

092right we need to get others to get excited about investing more in our education and that will mean more money out of our pockets but we need to be able to get folks excited about that North Star so I think that's a huge priority I think continuing to move our work around Dei and belonging and sort of making sure that folks understand why that is a moral imperative it is not a nice to have is we need to do that because we care about the thriving of our young people as they transition into adulthood I mean that's what we care about and if we want to have the town that we you know sort of guy the reason why I even moved here it's because you know sort of we want young people to thrive

093we want young people to come back and invest and be part of this community and feel like they they belong and so that's important but big picture not just you know sort of in the in the classroom in that moment but it's it's bigger than that and I think that moral imperative is important for us to sort of communicate and get people excited about um so um I think there are many priorities but definitely I think working around sort of the the plan the north star that we have set for ourselves and how do we make sure folks see that the results right the results of that the work that's happening and be able to understand it in a way that communicated in a way that people can understand it thank you um I'd like

094to add that um you know I think what both Beverly and Selena made great points and I just want to add in terms of you know I want more Community involvement I think that's going to be crucial for anything that we do going forward you know um in order for all of the initiatives that we're doing we need Community Support um and I think it's important to keep that open line of communication between the community and the work that we're doing in the schools you know and taking feedback you know and sometimes we might have to tweak our approach on things but I think again it's important for us to feel like we're working together and that I think is going to be really crucial in helping us all move forward thank you what struck

095me in some of the comments that you made was about marova crowding so I think 25 years ago I got involved as a volunteer to help the previous School building project because the schools were in tough shape um and they were also overcrowded so to see to go into the schools even with the enthusiasm of the students and this faculty and it's you know great places to visit I went to Glover right before Christmas and had a tour from a fifth grader who was very excited to show me around and um but I kept noticing you know all the the space issues I was just like oh my goodness and I said that to the principal I said oh wow I mean and I know it I've seen it but to walk the hallways and

096see it up close with something else so but you know we had a battle 25 years ago to build six schools and I know we can do it again I mean we have to um we're we're bursting at the seams and we really need to do both a capital campaign for a new building project as well as our operational needs which are also you know significant so it's you know but I do think that you know we will have people who will vote against us no matter what I mean we had a 90 reimbursement back years ago and still 1600 taxpayers voted no a 90 reimbursement so you're always going to have that but I still think there's enough excitement and pride in in this our community to move the schools forward we have to

097so I appreciate that well we're running out of time so I think I think we'll have to wrap up and I just want to tell you about our next steps we will be deliberating and making a decision in Open session on Friday morning at 7 30 a.m on zoom and I'll send you the link if you don't already have it if you're interested in watching our deliberations we hope to make an offer subject to contract negotiations to one finalist on Friday okay um and I just want to thank you so much for expressing your interest and sharing your background and and your your passion for education and and it's it's very exciting for all of us to think about the future moving forward with and new leadership and we really appreciate your taking the time

098and and effort to to come and share your your skills and background with us and I just want to close up by saying thank you very much to all of you I really appreciate this opportunity I'm humbled to even be able to be here with you today and to have been able to meet so many great people yesterday and um you know I I wish you the very best and uh hope to hear from you on Friday so thank you very much thank you for coming so much okay thank you good evening everyone Welcome to our school committee meeting we are gathering here to interview our superintendent finalist candidate Dr Peter Burroughs and welcome Peter and welcome uh to our audience an audience at home and what we'll do starting out is we'll just go

099around and introduce ourselves just so you know who we all are and and about um you know kids that we might have in the schools or whatever uh Betty White and I'm a school committee member that I'm on my sixth year and I have one son who's grown and graduated from the public schools in 2013. my name is Anna varghese this is my first year on school committee I have um the I have two daughters one in Pierce in sixth grade and one at the Cunningham in fifth grade I'm Lizzy nice to see you again um I have let's see this is my second year on school committee and I have two daughters as well at Tucker one in kindergarten and one in third grade it's nice to meet you so Beverly Ross Denny this

100is my second year on the school committee I have three children in the Milton Public Schools I have two at the high school two sons one's a junior one's a freshman and I have a third grader who's at the Tucker and uh Selena Miranda nice to meet you and I have a daughter in at the Cunningham she's a third grader and I'm in my first year great Ada Rosemary and chair this is my sixth year also and I have three kids that graduated Milton High School in 2008 10 and 12. um and they're all off doing their thing now so welcome that's quickly yeah welcome we're glad to have you here um so as you know but I just want to sort of let our viewing audience know about um the screening committee that preceded

101the work that we're doing here tonight the screening committee included 11 people that reviewed 19 applications that were submitted to us and the screening committee was a group that consisted of one assistant superintendent one principal one teacher three school committee members four parents representing all of the levels elementary middle and high and different parts of our community and the screening committee narrowed down the applicants to a group of seven semi-finalists who were interviewed and the screening committee touched on teen topics that were deemed important to the role of superintendent that were informed by focus groups that we had held prior to the screening committee and a survey that was conducted to inform our process we asked the same questions of every candidate and school committee members have received that list of questions asked during the

102semi-finalists around and the screening committee completed their work when they arrived at recommendation of the three finalists to pass along to the school committee and yesterday all of our candidates including Dr Burroughs had the opportunity to visit our schools and talk with members of our community to learn more about Milton Milton public schools and today's school committee interviews will be a little different each school committee member has selected questions based on what we all think are important to Milton public schools from our perspective as school committee members some questions may be repeated from the semi-finalists round and some questions may be on other topics we've all had a chance to review the candidates resumes personal statements deib statements written references phone references and some of our questions made further on some of those items uh

103we'll go around the table and we'll ask all our questions for 75 minutes that we have allocated for this interview and we've got a clock on the table there just so you have a sense the time and our plan is that this interview should wrap up around 6 45. um so and toward the end of the interview we'll provide about five to ten minutes to give you a chance to ask us any questions you may have or make any final comment that you'd like to to to make so I'm going to just start out with questions and first question is why Milton why now and would you please begin our time by sharing why you're seeking the superintendency here in Milton and talk a bit about some of your key experiences in your career and

104your dis and our district that make you well suited to be the next superintendent great um yeah so why Milton why now I I start really far back I think I'll start back to graduating from University and kind of when I started my career I began my career as a as a teacher and after University spent the first 10 years overseas teaching English during that 10-year period I got a master's in ESL and had thought that that was what I was going to do for a long time my experiences overseas living living in other cultures and and the kind of the impact both to myself as a person in In Living outside of kind of where I grew up and and what I knew was increasingly powerful in terms of I felt like my work

105and after 10 years it was starting to feel like it might be better to be home to start a family and so my wife and I decided that we would stop The Expatriate period of our lives and come back and we ended up going back to Oregon where I was a high school English teacher and within that same school I was assistant principal and principal uh growing up in Connecticut before I went to Oregon for University growing up in Connecticut most of my family is in the Northeast and so one of the big draws in looking at at the time I was looking at a transition to a superintendency in Oregon after being a high school principal and I thought you know I would like to be closer to family being a superintendent as you

106all know is a really big commitment a big commitment of time it's a commitment to the community and so we decided to move to Vermont which in some ways it's kind of analogous to Oregon I think people think of those two states similarly they're they're pretty different but um made the move to to Vermont and have been there for 10 years and after 10 years as a superintendent there it's been a an incredible experience I'm feeling like it's time for me now to explore something a little bit more challenging more diverse I'm more drawn to at this point in my career being in an urban or more urban environment which is what drew me to Milton I mentioned earlier before we started that I also have a connection to Milton from my brother-in-law and so

107I knew that Community well I know how they talked about Milton I mean they moved to Milton for the schools I think a lot of people moved to Milton for the schools and I think that shows a real commitment from Community from staff as well so that that's what drew me to to Milton was commitment to education commitment to the right things I spent a lot of time before applying reading through everything I could online related to the Strategic plan the Cambridge quality review board minutes board video you know I kind of did an exhaustive research just to better understand where I was applying so I I did not and I have not applied all over the Boston area I'm being more kind of targeted because I I am really excited about this community I'm

108excited about what has been articulated in the Strategic plan I think my sense from visiting schools and talking to staff yesterday is there is a commitment on behalf of staff to really carry that forward and it it feels like there needs to be um that the the school systems at a place where there needs to be some leadership to help to bring together a lot of these kind of action plans that have been set forth that that might need a little bit more leadership to kind of get moving and and become coherent so so that's that's kind of what drew me to at this point in time right now okay yeah thank you all right I could ask the next question um so I'm going to ask a question about your leadership style and I

109did notice that when you wrote in your personal statement you you talked a lot about yourself as a leader so if I think about this quote that I had from this morning the growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership so I was going to give you a chance a little bit to elaborate on your growth as a leader and how you motivate others and recognizing their potential leadership skills as well yeah well I think I've always been a collaborative leader and when I think back to uh you know I started kind of entering into leadership positions in University through a number of different organizations that I was a part of and I kind of naturally went went to those positions but my style and who I am as a leader someone

110who wants to empower other people and what that takes is both the ability to listen the ability to understand the desire to to bring people together to to find a shared Direction I think that's very different from you know the kind of typical top-down leadership where you know the leaders tasked with knowing the answer and then making sure that get a straight line to to you know get to the the outcome that you want to get to in a school system which is highly complex which involves so many different layers and levels there are many cooks in the kitchen in public education right and so it is it I think it's critical for any any education leader to be able to Galvanize support to be able to engage differing viewpoints to be able to speak

111clearly and articulately about what the leader's vision is and and to live by that and to be transparent to be open to be honest and even when things get tough and when you have to make hard decisions you've got the Groundswell of support with you and people understand and and it's not just things aren't Just Happening from Left Field they're they're happening because there's a culture that the leader is developing together with the entire community and I think those things are critical so when you when you talk about that I think it's a you know any good leaders as a leader who's really self-aware okay thank you um I would like to ask you um about inquiry cycles and in recent years Milton has implemented several major initiatives to improve student academic and social emotional

112outcomes but we know the work isn't done would you please tell us about a time when you engage in a cycle of inquiry to learn from and build upon a major initiative that you may have started you know multiple years before sure so when I uh went to when I first got to Middlebury Vermont where I currently am we really had no kind of strategic plan no Direction there was a real need to to do deep inquiry to understand where we were and where we needed to go and I knew I mean it was clear and when you come into a new system the first thing that happens as a leader is everyone comes up to you and says this is what you need to do and you need to do it right now for

113yesterday uh and so I definitely got that when I got there but I I knew that I had to take some time and listen and understand before we moved forward I also understood that if if I talk to the smartest people in the community and they told me these this is what you need to do and I just did it it's not going to work because everybody else needs to be a part of that process and so we spent I spent about um nine months with a you know I articulated an entry plan in terms of the kinds of things I was going to do in the community to let the community know how I was going to be engaging with them to better understand what the needs were and what kinds of things we

114needed to put forward we then did a year-long strategic plan which um you know it's in terms of that question around the inquiry cycle we you know instead of me as superintendent doing all this inquiry we tasked action teams with essentially engaging in as you have in your strategic Plan Three Pillars we also had three foundational goals that the board set and these action teams then worked to went out essentially out into both the inner Community meaning like the school staff and also out into the community to kind of better understand where are we and what are the the like real key objectives that would and action steps that would help us to get where we want to go um and so that that process took quite I mean it took you know close to

115two years to finish from when I got there to the completion of that plan but that plan then led to having a real basis for all of the work that came after that one of the biggest things was a movement to International Baccalaureate and we did a lot of work on that over many years it took a lot of sustained leadership in order to to move through a three-year authorization process for that um I could talk a lot longer about that as well in terms of of the why but I'm getting back to your question you know regarding inquiry I think it's really critical that any any kind of direction that that a school system takes has to include that inquiry cycle throughout that we have to keep coming back and monitoring and making sure

116that where we thought we were going is where we were going they're also invariably when you make a three year or A Five-Year Plan you you can't know what's going to happen in two years or three years that will change and shift shift what you thought was some static reality and so it's really important also that there's there's a lot of tending that's involved in in sustaining the vision and I think the the more that that staff and Community are connected to that Vision the more possible it is for that to be realized thank you sure um thank you for that and um so I'm going to actually ask a question that I asked this morning but I'm going to tweak it a little bit because I've been hearing uh from folks and I want

117to make sure that their voices get heard and so um you know Milton as you know you've noted is definitely a diverse community in terms of definitely you know income cultural and racial uh you know they would definitely would have that diversity and I think it's much more diverse than other suburbs in the area for sure but we have sort of a number of students by box students mostly black students who haven't felt necessarily a sense of belonging and families have made the tough decisions to perhaps pursue a private education because you know in search of that sense of belonging we also have a growing population I think of more visibly I don't think it's a new thing but visibly transgender students we also have because of the cultural diversity different you know celebrations and

118Etc and in fact I myself this year had to um well not myself my husband did but reached out to the superintendent and said hey we haven't seen anything around latinx History Month we see the others but we don't see that and my daughter is half black half Latina and so that's important because we talk about it at home so there is sort of this need for us to think about diversity Equity inclusion and belonging so when you hear sort of yes you know Milton is great and we're doing wonderful work I think we've made progress in the right direction but there's still a ways for us to go so if you could speak to how you would sort of address some of the issues that we remain we have we're still seeing here in

119the district and or strategies perhaps that you've you know applied elsewhere that you might bring here and some of the challenges especially with those voices that will pin the the ebi efforts against academic excellence yeah it's interesting it's it's somehow talked about in this like either or which I mean it doesn't make any sense um yeah so there's so much to say um you know I've read through a lot of the the div and and um the work that has been done already and you know the research that's Madonna mentioned the quality review um and there's a lot of I think great kind of direction for the district that's contained in in that report talking about making sure that Equity is not something that's not on the side but it's it's a lens through which

120all of the work is done looking at the um Partnerships that I know it mentioned the Community Partnerships that have been strong in some ways but haven't people don't feel like my sense is that there's a feeling of Disconnect between what's happening in in schools around Dei m what where how the community either wants to be involved with it or the projected outcomes of that work so I think you know looking at disproportionality looking at um all of the the kind of issues there has to be I think first and foremost an understanding of of kind of where we are and I think given where we are in 2023 and what we've just been through over the last three years there's a lot of dissonance so it it I think it's really important that we

121we can get to a real understanding of just kind of where we are and I think that that review did a great job of of trying to lay out here's where where Milton is in terms of the data so I think that piece is important I think another really critical piece of this is the the development of the culture of inclusiveness and and what that looks like and what does that mean for every individual both within the school system and what does that mean for the community and in my experience oftentimes the there are groups in the community that that interact with the school system but oftentimes it feels like it's it's siled and I think for this transformation to really happen to get to to real change it has to be Beyond these silos

122of people that feel strongly about it to everybody has to carry this it can't be carried by a few people the um you know thinking about the the disproportionality and and looking at where the numbers are and I know one of the things that I read about was that the um looking at outcomes versus looking at representation was another really critical piece that can't just look at having you know the the number of students taking AP exams for example versus how they're what the outcomes are for those exams so I think there are lots of of kind of pieces of this I I really feel like this this doesn't change like you don't change and and really move Dei work if it's one person whether it's the superintendent or the school board or school committee

123whoever it is it's it has to be a complete and total Community effort and we have to be listening to students as we're doing this student voice is is another piece that is is really really critical to you know you were mentioning families that have reached out to you or your own kids who have talked to you about their own experiences and students if we can Elevate student Voice through this and you know in my experience adults really listen to students in a way that they don't listen to other adults and and being able to elevate their voices as we're we're looking at things that we need to change we look at systemic realities that are you know people are like well that's fine that's good let's keep keep it that way that we need

124to push against and change we need to do that but we need to we need to do it together and we need to um the together piece is is the biggest challenge and that's where you know as superintendent it's I feel absolutely committed to to this work that is the work is serving all students and making sure every student is feeling safe is feeling successful but I also see that I need to do everything in in I can in this position to be able to engage our entire Community to do the work that needs to happen and it doesn't happen in a week right this is this is undoing a lot that has that has been constructed over a long period of time so there's I mean I think it goes without saying that there

125has to be a absolute commitment to it Could you um share examples of how you've provided High achieving students the support they've needed to stay engaged in learning and then could you also talk about supporting students who are grade levels behind and also our students in special education sure um I I think in in kind of the the gamut of of high achieving and students that need more support that it it's not creating two separate systems and I think traditionally when you look at at education the education that we all probably experienced um there were kind of two two kind of tracks right and we've been over the last I would say probably 20 years in education trying to deconstruct those tracks because they're damaging in in a lot of ways so the the the

126challenge and I think the the really important piece of this and and my own beliefs about this is we have to the bar has to be high for everyone and the supports have to be there for students that that need more support to get there but we don't start to shift and change outcomes based on identification or based on um you know like essentially tracking the the challenge in my experience with students that aren't engaged in school it's not that they're not bright it's not that they don't have the same abilities as other kids just that they don't care they don't they don't see the the meaning behind what they're studying and unfortunately as you if you look at what plays out across the country with data you know students that come from families with

127strong educational backgrounds and and support and financially stable homes will tend to do better statistically and so schools as a whole need to be doing more it's our our job is no longer to get up at the chalkboard whiteboard now smart board or even past smart board at this point but you get the metaphor um but it's we're no longer just providing a service right like we are a social good we are a social we're we're helping to sustain and support students well beyond their their academics and I know Milton has done a lot of work on SEL and it's one of the pillars safe and supportive schools where an SEL kind of comes underneath that that has to be a an integral part of making sure that students are are achieving is making sure

128that there's a focus on the whole child as opposed to just one piece of it another part I think is is um and I know this is you know in the context of Milton and the fact that there's a number of private school opportunities and you mentioned private school earlier in terms of what happens and I had heard that prior to to coming that that was one of the things that um have been in conversation at the committee level and and obviously at the community level too I I think this this also falls to communication I mentioned this earlier I think it's really really critical that the superintendent and the central office I mean it's really everybody but that that there is there's greater communication happening about the great things that are happening um and

129really listening and hearing so if if there are things that the school system isn't providing and of course a public school setting and a private school setting are different and will always be different right but I think being attuned to what what are the things that are you know if parents are coming forward and saying well you know we really like this you know we love the elementary experience but we didn't like this about middle school or or something about high school or whatever the issue might be that if if we're listening [Laughter] so classic somebody somewhere all right so hit a button in my bag sorry I've never done that before that's fine that's fine so I think I was saying you know listening and understanding and investigating where the the school system might

130be falling short is really important and then figuring out is that something that we can fix is that something that we can work towards is that and and sometimes I think it's a communication issue sometimes it might be a systems issue a lot of times with this kind of thing I think it's a perception issue too and so that it's important to engage in that conversation and and understand if it's a perception issue you know what's at the root of that and how do how do we how do we communicate in a way that we can help to to shine more light on what's actually happening and and where the strengths really are okay definitely so communication was actually one of the things that I was going to ask you about um but and I'd

131like to add to other topics because I think these are things that persistently come up um in our conversations I heard I heard them in the focus groups and all the kind of um discussion leading up to this process so you were just really I think laying out like a vision or a philosophy around communication I'm wondering if you could also provide like example of an a way that you've approached communication as superintendent where you kind of Applied some of what you were just sharing so that's the first thing would be the communication and then there are kind of two other priorities that I'd like you to also share examples around change management like I know you've been involved in your role in leading your District through a number of pretty big changes like how

132do you approach that because that is a need we have in our next superintendent here with around the Strategic plan that you've spoken to so that's the second thing change management and then third thing is just I think something we need to name it's kind of been in the space alluded to is our racial achievement and opportunity gaps here and the fact that we need to eliminate those gaps so do you also have um sort of relevant experience from your District that would lead you to try different strategies on that piece yeah I mean I think my theory of action around communication is I think it has to be broad so I don't think it falls to one person I've done many many different in terms of application and experience I've done lots of different

133kinds of communication as a superintendent and as a principal as well I found that uh differentiating communication between staff and Community is important I think there's a different tone that you use with staff there are different things you talk about with staff so I tend to write you know I have a kind of a monthly thing that I send to staff and also do kind of listening tours and visits with staff yearly to check in and listen and you know kind of like in an open kind of way just be present and when when you hold the title of superintendent sometimes it carries with it you know people say oh it's the superintendent like and there's this distancing that happens I think it's really important and my own bias and belief is that it's really

134important to be kind of like I don't carry the title as being any different than anyone else and I feel strongly about that I think the title carries a lot of responsibility but I want people to feel like they can come and talk to me I want them to feel like I'm I'm here I'm listening and I'm fully present and there's no kind of like differentiation you know between us in terms of we're we're kind of two people trying to to kind of make things better um so I think I think it's it's you know I guess I would say it's multimodal in terms of communication I do think we're in the day and age where having a communications director or coordinator is is pretty important given just how quickly things happen um given the

135fact that one person in this job doesn't have enough time to really do all the communication that needs to happen you know pushing things out to social media like all those different things that are are I think more critical now than they were 10 years ago and when you don't have you're you know when you're not set on communication and things happen you don't communicate quick enough you know what happens right like things grow in mushroom it takes you know like 20 minutes on Facebook for something to just all of a sudden be like this like giant thing that you can't contain anymore so that that part of the community that's something that I learned over my tenure as a superintendent is I I did hire a communications director and I am now I think

136we're in a much better position with with that position in in engaging families and getting out information in a way that is kind of more kind of palatable and direct I mean if you look at most school public school communication historically has been pretty bad if you compare it to like businesses or I mean that's my experience websites you know you go on a school website and it's like you know crawling through trying to find stuff so I I mean I I approach our communication I try to approach our communication as uh it's a real priority because I think every people need to be engaged and they need to understand and the more people are with schools the better it is for our students the second thing change management change management change management yeah uh

137some of that I think goes back to being sure that that you're really clearly articulating process with people I found that I'm someone who definitely thinks sequentially and thinks about how we get from here to here but I I also try to work in in terms of that process orientation really working in how are people becoming involved along the way and being sure that everybody understands how decisions are being made so that once once we've made the leap we've made a decision that people then don't come back and say well what happened I didn't how did I I never heard about this no one said anything and now we've decided to build a new Middle School what happened so so it's it I think it's really important with change management that you're thinking about everybody

138that you're thinking about process and and you're also keeping people along that that timeline I've seen a lot of change management get lost in special interest you know where people start saying let's let's go in this direction and they start moving that direction and then someone comes in and and it starts to move kind of left or move right and and you don't white ever get there I think to get there take takes both that that kind of process orientation but it also takes the ability to step back and to see the system as a whole to understand all those different pieces and parts which is something that I've kind of reflected on in terms of Milton is I think it is kind of ripe for someone to come in and step back and look

139at all of this work that's happened and and help to in that same kind of change management way help to like figure out like what are the real key next steps how is everybody aware of what those next steps are how are we communicating them and then just the last part was around the um racial achievement gaps and you know this is as you mentioned earlier around the sense of belonging with deib work um it's you know these are long-term systemic challenges but you know it's clear that we need to make progress here a faster Pace progress on this issue so do you have um experience either in your school or District leadership around essentially moving the needle on that type of work so um actually when I was a principal in Oregon I in

140my first year I created a group called The school it's called Willamette High School called the Willamette Improvement team and one of the things that we did together it was it was a course that students took with me as principal and it was predominantly students of color and they essentially were kind of like my means of understanding kind of like where they were struggling both in terms of culture and experience and also in terms of academics and I think you know it because I think you mentioned it this is so complex and and you know making faster you know the progress as fast as we can has you have to be looking at all these different kind of layers it's not bringing in one new Academic Program and expecting that to change things right because

141we're talking about social issues we're talking about systemic issues within how we operate so so part of part of like going fast with this is is I think going back to what we talked about earlier which is understanding one really understanding where we are and understanding what are the strongest levers that we can pull you know based on you know lots of people are doing this work throughout the country So based on on what is proven to work you know and there have been so many recommendations that have already been articulated for Milton to follow I'm not sure I mean I can't tell from the documentation which ones are engaged at what level they're engaged right like that's that's unclear um so I think that's that's one of the first steps is just figuring out

142okay of these high leverage actions which ones are engaged which ones are just kind of like were stated but they're still just on paper and I know in reading through the the survey notes for the hiring process I did see a number of community members talking about that too saying that we've spent a lot of time talking about the opportunity Gap when are we going to take action right and so like I said I don't I don't know that yet just from from my vantage point but I think that would be one of the first things to do would be to really understand like of those leverage points which ones are are moving which ones are not and then it it has to be part of the whole system so it can't this work can't

143be done over here on the side as like you know all the other work of the school system is happening here it has to be it has to be integrated um I've got a question about um coming to Massachusetts yeah um and the Massachusetts education laws and and and that whole system in which we operate and I'm just wondering how comfortable or knowledgeable you feel about the requirements of mass education laws and and steps that we might need to take to implement those laws and grant opportunities things like proposition two and a half overrides that the communities need to do for more funding and the like so just wondering yeah so some of these things have already come up and I've already learned them I mean I made the transition from Oregon so I knew

144or the organ system well and learned the Vermont system pretty quickly so I feel confident that I would be able to learn the ins and outs of of what's different and that's just there's a lot that's the same too in terms of superintendent role there's definitely State legislation that differs that you know I would obviously be learning I have made contact with Tom Scott who is I don't know if you know who he is okay and so I've talked to him about you know kind of like what would be helpful for a superintendent coming into Massachusetts and he gave me a bunch of resources so yeah I mean I I I'm a I feel like I'm a quick study and we do a lot of research to understand you know how things operate here I'm

145not afraid of calling people and making connections and and you know if if I'm in if in doubt or not understanding something which would certainly reach out and figure that out I think part of part of understanding that you know the laws new new community and everything else is is that kind of communication piece of working with Town up town officials and developing relationships with them to to work together I know that's a a big piece of budget development here is having a really strong connection with the town and so that would definitely be a priority in terms of being sure that understood where things needed to be and and was doing what needed to happen do you have town meeting in Vermont we do yeah yeah so we do too here so it's pretty

146raucous sometimes oh yeah they are yeah and we have representative town meeting I don't know if Vermont has every whoever shows up um but yeah yeah representative at least they're elected representatives but um but it is it's part of oh it's a huge Depot getting a budget passed yeah but it's very I think there are a lot of similarities honestly between Massachusetts and Vermont and I my mother lives on the vineyard was a teacher there for a long time and so I also know the system just from her as a former educator [Music] ask you a little bit about teacher Recruitment and staff Recruitment and certainly I think post pandemic a lot of people have left the profession feeling like they couldn't do it anymore we're feeling burnt out um so I was going to

147ask you to talk about how do we recruit staff how do we retain staff and also the Dilemma of trying to recruit staff who are culturally diverse racially diverse that represent our students who need that role model in the classroom and that connection I mean I know we've made efforts but I think it's also not unique to Milton I think lots of districts yes more Tucker than the other schools yeah so I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about your thoughts about how to try to reach you know reach out and recruit staff yeah uh I mean one of the things that that was really exciting yesterday was just the level of energy that I felt staff had and um just given what they've been through over the last number of years

148and to see uh you know I think a lot of them came up to introduce themselves and it felt like there was they have they definitely seemed more refreshed than I thought they would be so that was really a huge positive I think I think the staff here are really strong and you know talking with um other people in Boston and other superintendents in Boston they've shared that they have significant Staffing shortages that I don't think Milton is facing which yeah it's definitely knocking out wood because it's a national crisis right in terms of Staffing I think the a couple things are really important one if staff are feeling supported and heard that goes uh billion miles so talking again about culture and about what the staff culture is if staff are coming to to

149their to their work and they're feeling filled if they're feeling like it's doable if they're feeling like there's a clear direction if they're feeling like there's um there's time to kind of balance between the work in the classroom and professional development uh in some systems I've experienced staff feeling fatigued from a lot of central office Direction so when central office comes in has a meeting everything's really clear at the central office because you're not in the building and you're not teaching students so you get this like objective view but one of the challenges of that objective view is that it also creates blind spots in terms of you kind of even if you were in the classroom you forget what it was like to be in the classroom so I think one of the things

150that's important I mean I've heard this in like four or five states I'm also a delegate per Vermont for ASA so I talked to supertests across the country and um Simplicity and like clear Direction and simplicity is really important and I think especially after what people have been through with the pandemic I think that that's important I did hear that yesterday from from some staff members that they sometimes feel like there there are lots of different initiatives coming at them and they want to like slow down and just like do the things that are important so that and I think that falls to like the superintendent and central office to be sure that you're monitoring and managing that so I think that's one piece of Staff retention one p one piece of Staff retention and

151and um obviously is is financial too so looking at comparables and I did see some comparables I can't remember where the probably school committee presentation of our budget presentation that's yeah yeah so I think that that's important um but people will move I mean I talked to someone I can't remember if it was last week but they were saying that um Educators in Boston come to Milton and stay in Milton even though Boston pays more I think at some levels so you know how how the salary works the grid works so maybe like they were saying a beginning teacher makes more in Boston but some of those teachers were coming to Milton because they wanted to be at Milton so I think that that piece is really important so the financial piece is important but

152also again creating that culture and then I think there's the obvious needing to go out I talked about a communications director earlier going out and being sure that you're being aggressive around Recruitment and that you are able to articulate what what makes Milk Milton different than other districts so that first question in this interview by Milton you should be able to answer that to someone who's trying to pick between you know increasingly you know before they had two options now they have six so this one's got to stand out in a different way than the other five so my question is can I just finish sorry um and then the part about um you know attracting staff color I think is something that has to there has to be a strong plan behind um it

153can't just be like a hope and a prayer and let's you know it might happen there has to be an actual plan to make that happen so that I think oftentimes means communicating with um I mean Boston's a wonderful place to make connections with higher ed that's where I would start is talking with teacher Ed programs and creating a pipeline between teacher Ed programs and and Milton so I think not just teach around but I think there are lots of other ways that you could could go about um again making those connections to to to bring folks here so every just building off of this every organization is comprised of Staff the range of capabilities you might have more tenured staff or high achieving staff and you have people that might be at the earlier

154part of their careers or just in general need support can you give examples whether it's ideally at the teaching level but even at central office how you've prepared High Achievers for growth how you've supported a staff member that might have needed a performance Improvement plan and for people for whom you know this may not be the right career how did you support their transition great questions I have I mean I have so much experience with this because in my role both as a principal and as a superintendent this is a big part of the work I guess speaking to the the high performing employees and keeping them engaged I think it falls back to the the mission of the of the system as a whole and being sure that their their fulfillment and everyone gets

155something different right from the work in terms of like what they need but making sure that the the the I guess the vision of the of the school system is strong enough that it's carrying them and they're excited to be a part of it so it's developing kind of that team almost I mean I see when when staff members are excited to come to work they're excited about being part of a team they're excited about what the mission is they know why they're doing the work they're they're feeling sustained by the work so I think that part is really important in terms of the evaluation are you talking about actual evaluation or oh so if anything if you know I had an employee who was an assistant principal that was struggling and this is what

156I did so specific examples in each one of those categories sure yeah I mean I think it's it they're every year there are a number of of employees that I'm working with on this kind of thing what I have found is a kind of Socratic approach is really helpful in um and probably before even talking about a Socratic approach caring is actually the most important thing and when I sit down with someone and I'm talking with them and they can feel that I actually care about them and about what they're doing that in and of itself is more important than anything so I will say I think that that piece I think is critical when you're working with someone else and we all know that we are our own worst enemies right in terms of

157self-judgment self-doubt like it really hard when you're being evaluated to be present in that sometimes and so that that piece I think is critical in in working directly with people it's it's um I mentioned some kind of Socratic approach that's really kind of like asking questions and helping helping the employee to understand what either what I'm seeing what other people are seeing that they may not be seeing and oftentimes it's surprising you you would think okay like this employee knows that they're doing X Y and Z and oftentimes they don't it's a blind spot it's something that they don't see it's so engaging them in a conversation of inquiry and exploration on that has been really profound it's actually some of the work I really enjoy is is helping employees to you know improve and

158it's often through self-reflection helping them to be kind of strong or self-reflective so that they are able to to be better at whatever they're doing whatever their position is and some of those you know some as as you know some of those conversations can be challenging right like you have to call out things that are really hard and and you know for some people if you know they're doing something and it's not going well and and things aren't improving then you know obviously there's um action has to be taken but it's always better if the employee is understanding that and and you know ultimately in my experience when you can be clear and articulate and help them to really kind of like see what it is then change actually can happen the challenge is that

159there's never enough time because the work pulls you in a thousand different directions I think this is true for principles true too you know in a lot of school districts across the country supervision evaluation becomes somewhat perfunctory because there isn't enough time to do it well and sit down with people and really talk about you know really talk about the work and we're actually in the process now of redesigning our supervision evaluation system to try to make it so that there is more like real interface between um both peer-to-peer and between Administration and staff thank you yeah yeah sure thank you so we are in this very interesting point in time and I think it is easy to get lost in the fact that it's not unique a unique experience in Milton that we have

160seen learning loss it's across statistically it's like a grade level or so correct right it's it's not and again it's not unique to us but it's easy for us to get sort of I think to Zone in and just focus on on the experience close close-up so it's a broader issue right that that's what's going on we have unfinished learning we have to recover right games that had been made and at the same time we need to continue to address the racial disparities and uh also our inability to meet the needs of our students with disabilities in the best way possible right so there is a lot for us too that we had to do anyway right that we needed to continue to work on but there's also this reality that we were hit with

161a pandemic hadn't been through this before and here we are right now seeing the results of that and in your conversations you're a seasoned superintendent you've been doing this for a while and in your sort of conversations across the country just wondering sort of what how do we approach this how do we begin to recover in a way that is realistic that understands the need of our Educators and also continues to meet the moment that we're living right now that says we can't carry on as as we were before and we need to pay attention to differences we need to think about belonging and taking care of our young people so it's just a very particular moment so I'm just wondering just to Milton specific but also in general how do districts and communities begin

162to Rally around the work that we need to do to be able to continue to make progress for our students well I think it's a it's a huge opportunity right now you know in a lot of ways I think this is a good time to be bringing on a new leader the pandemic you know I read post pandemic the other day so I think it's done everyone was scared about saying that I'm not sure it's done but um people are writing postpandemic act at least uh yeah I mean I I think taking this moment and stepping back and you know people talked about during the pandemic that education was going to be totally different starting now pretty much I mean I had so many conversations and I'm sure all of you have too like when

163when education stopped and everyone was hunkered down at home waiting to see what would happen people started realizing we don't actually have to come back and do all this the same again and I I do think that there's an opportunity for us at this moment in time to rethink some of the things that we've done for decades and decades that are part of what has gotten us to where we are which is some things are working really well and some things continually aren't so I think I think this point in time is an opportunity and it's it's fighting the desire for I think most people to get back to normal and normal for a lot of people I mean it's getting back to what they were doing before because that's comfortable right it's like kind

164of what we've been conditioned um to do so I think as a in in grasping This Moment In Time when you know we're kind of like in this recovery phase there's I assume most of the ARP funds are now spent right I mean in the next in the next budget cycle so you know all the federal monies are going away I think this is now the time to you know we we talked earlier about the the Dei work that needs to happen we talked about the work that needs to happen around communication so this is the time to take all of those pieces and create a cohesive vision of where Milton needs to go and I think it's not the time to try to like go really fast on one thing or one thing or

165one thing without people everybody understanding like this is this is where we are these are the things that we we need to commit to and here's how we're going to get there um so I think it's like a I think it's a really exciting time um a lot of the money you know a lot of that art money has gone to interventionists and um you know like other support Personnel I think in most districts have spent money to to try to kind of bring um you know some of the the learning loss back giving students additional time with like reading and math and and you know like just trying to like Infuse with more people to try to to support increased achievement but um that wasn't ever really I think in most systems I've seen

166that that wasn't a systems approach it was more of a like let's get some people in there to try to to try to help almost like emergency people going in and doing treatment but what what I think is going to really make the impact is going to be looking at you know these issues that and these objectives that have been articulated by all of you and by all the the community and by staff and creating a really strong plan to make things happen cool I know where are you asking a budget related question no but you can no well I just I know we maybe only have time for a couple more questions so maybe you ask your question but then I'm hoping because you were just mentioning Our Father Esser I had a budget

167question but I can okay so can can we fit that in after Anna's question if if we have that 10 minutes left total so and I'll just be in my car so you can see yeah um could you please outline the process by what which you led your current District to up become the ninth International Baccalaureate World District in the country and the challenges you overcame success sure so I talked a little bit about the lead up to the Strategic plan and um it was clear when I when I got to acsd back then it was acsu so we had um a number of the governance structure changed while I was there we as we started that strategic plan and and started to look at and it was kind of clear to me in like

168January or February of that year of building the plan that we needed to do more around helping our students understand the world that they were going out into and as a community that's you know we're like 91 White students do not have the context for you know most students leave Vermont so Vermont doesn't keep a lot of their the the students to graduate a lot a lot of people will come back eventually but oftentimes in their 20s and 30s and then maybe never you know population of Vermont has been dropping for some time so it was clear to me like in terms of my own values around what I think is important for students to experience that's something like International Baccalaureate and I I didn't come in with that like we're going to do this

169you know I I I shared my values alongside all of our you know all of our staff and community and said like these are the things that we've articulated are important to us is this a vehicle by which that we could we could get there and so we spent um you know to get everybody involved so it wasn't just something that was my idea that I was carrying we had we had groups go and start to do research on International Baccalaureate and went to went to visit some schools traveled to School in Massachusetts had someone come to Middlebury to talk about it we went to some conferences in different places so we did a full like a long year and a half study to determine is this is this the direction that we want to

170go and um and what was really appealing about it were I think some of the things that you've you've articulated in your three pillars was the you know personalized learning and making learning meaningful to the student in the IB context students drive a lot of their own learning and they do units of inquiry that's how the class is structured at least in the primary years program it changes as it goes up through the grade levels but the the it was really powerful to work together with everybody and that was part of the change management question two keeping everybody focused on what the values and what the what our objectives are in terms of what do we want for our students you know and I you've probably heard of Simon sinek that the why that's like

171this really famous leadership YouTube video that everyone seems to know but I think it kind of just kind of rings true in that like people really need to understand the why to to be engaged and that that was as I think about our process leading up to deciding yes we want to do this and then we brought it to our our board and we had this really big kind of research IB research team who had gone and done all the research and they came forward and presented I mean it was a beautiful moment because not because the accomplishment of it but because of how it happened and the fact that people were really engaged and were people were feeling that why and I think that is critical in in any kind of move you're going

172to make to to shift and change something thank you yeah so budget the town of Milton good stuff I know right okay hit it hard in three minutes this is the easiest question you're gonna get now all the way down Milton has a structural deficit and it limits our ability to fund services and supports that we require and it's more than just the schools this is in the town we've been using arpa money just like everyone else in order to address this in the short term we would likely need to raise residential taxes because we don't have a commercial base and we don't have non-profits that are equally providing Revenue what approach would you take to convince local taxpayers that the public schools are worth the investment to I mean I think it it it

173is um I it goes back to I think a few things that I've already said related to helping the community to understand what the schools are what they do um and communicating and and I think expecting because it's a big hit to people's purses to expect them to support something without understanding it I think uh you know it's obvious that they won't they won't support that so I think the the work I mentioned earlier around marketing is kind of more of a private term right like schools don't really talk about marketing but they probably should right there there's a lot of marketing that needs to happen to to help the community understand you know what's happening in schools where where are the challenges I I know in talking to staff yesterday that the the issues

174around schools space and enrollment in crowding are real and people are feeling it and are are frustrated by it so I think the more the way to like engender that support is through understanding through helping people see both you know what schools are doing what impact schools are making in terms of the lives of students and the life of the community I think a lot of times you know people think well you know when I have kids in school I care and when I don't have kids in school anymore I don't care and I think I think there are lots of people out there that do care regardless and I think helping people to understand that schools are a Community Asset they're not an asset just for parents and I think it's it's probably you

175know in this area too really really important to be closely connected to the town and to you know all the different people in town that are are kind of working to help move these kinds of big rocks that we'll get to you know you're probably talking about an override right and I know from talking to other Massachusetts superintendents that in some communities they'll do an override every couple years and the community will support it and other places there's like this real like whoa so I don't know I don't know what the response is here but a little bit of both I like the movement though visual [Music] well I we're coming coming time to to wrap up here but I just want to offer you a opportunity to you know if there's anything else that

176you'd like to tell us about your candidacy or yourself before we wrap up yeah I mean I had a bunch of questions but I don't think I have time so yeah unfortunately yeah that's fine sorry yeah I mean I just I uh you know I left yesterday at the school visits feeling really really excited and felt like I made a lot of connections with people and and could kind of see myself here so did want to share that uh you know I think given my my background where I am in my career I think where I want to go I think this feels like a really good fit for I think both my strengths and what Milton needs and also um you know want to make up my next kind of long-term commitment somewhere this

177feels like a good place to land so happy to talk further about anything and I'm just really excited to be here with you today and and hope to continue the conversation so so we will be deliberating um and making a decision in Open session on Friday morning at 7 30. I'm Zoom um I will send you the link if you're interested in I think I saw it watching yeah okay yeah um it's out there so we hope to make an offer subject to contract negotiations to one of our finalists on Friday um but I just want to take this opportunity to thank you for coming and sharing your background your experience and and your ideas about what what you see um Milton might be do next and it's a very exciting time for us to

178think about having a new leader here and and um you know really appreciate your your coming and yeah it's been awesome so thank you all so much thank you thank you so much yeah yeah all right yeah okay [Laughter] access team can bring us down into recess we'll take a recess briefly okay here we go with this and and what we'd like to do is go around the table and introduce ourselves so you know who you're talking to Great uh and we'll start with uh Lizzy sure well I just said hello but hello again I'm Lizzy it's great to see you and um a member of the school committee this is my second year and I have two children at the Tucker School in kindergarten and third grade nice create ages ages my name is

179Beverly Ross Denny I've been a school committee member for two years and I have three kids in the Milton Public Schools two boys at the high school one in 11th grade and one in ninth grade and I have a third grader at the Tucker and Selena Miranda and I'm in my first year as a school Committee Member and I have a daughter a nine-year-old who's a third grader at the Cunningham Elementary nice it's nice to meet you eight of Rosemary and I have three kids who graduated from Milton High School in 2008 10 and 12. so they're all off now I'm Betty White and I am the sixth year of the school committee six years long time and I had I have a son that graduated from Milton High School back in 2013. I'm Anna

180varghese we met yesterday I this is my first year on student committee I have a sixth grade daughter at Pierce and a fifth grade daughter at Cunningham I have two daughters as well so just to um sort of introduce our evening tonight you know as you know I just want to share with the viewing audience about the screening committee that the process that you went through prior to arriving here um there were 11 people on that committee that reviewed 19 applications that were submitted to us the screening committee was a group that consisted of one assistant superintendent one principal one department head one teacher three school committee members and four parents representing all levels elementary middle and high and different parts of our community um and the screening committee narrowed down the applicants to seven

181semi-finalists of which you were one who were interviewed and the screening committee touched on 15 topics that were deemed important to the role of superintendent and informed by focus groups and the survey that we conducted to help inform our process prior to the screening committee's work we asked the same questions of every candidate and then the school committee members have received the list of questions that were asked during the semi-finalists around although they didn't have the advantage of being there like some of us were to hear the responses but the screening committee completed their work when they arrived at recommendation of an unweighted list of three finalists to pass along to the school committee and yesterday you and our other candidates had the opportunity to visit our schools and talk with members of our community

182to help you learn a little bit more about Milton and Milton public schools and we're really glad that you were able to come for that we really enjoyed having you it was fun you know and today's school committee interviews will be a little different than the screening committee each school committee member has selected questions based on what they think are important to help the public school s based on our respect to the school committee members some questions may be repeated from the semi-finalist round and some questions may be on other topics and we've all had a chance to review your resume your personal statement your deib statement your written references and your phone references and some of our questions May probe further on some of those items as well what we'll do is we'll go

183around the table and ask our questions we've got 75 minutes set aside for this interview and we've got a clock on the table in front of you so we're planning that your interview should come to conclusion around 8 15. and toward the end of our interview if we manage our time well we're still working on it five to ten minutes to give you a chance to ask us any questions you may have or share anything else about yourself that might not have gotten to okay um so that's that's the overview of what we're going to do tonight um and um so I'm going to just do an opener and that is a question that you've probably heard before which is why Milton why now um and would you please begin our time by sharing uh

184you know why why you're seeking the superintendency in Milton what brought you here and talk a bit about some key experiences in your career and our district that make you feel suited to be our next superintendent great um well I'll start it's very easy this is an easy question for me as far as why Milton I think you all have one of the best vision statements I've ever read as an educator the language around learning experiences being aligned to students strengths and needs and a balanced approach to academics and SEL that is who I am as an educator that that is my belief system and further supported in your belief in your vision statement is your well designed and articulated strategic plan I think your strategic plan the focus on personalized instruction personalized experiences for

185students the safe and supportive schools and equity in learning that is again who I am as an educator and what I can bring to that work is the life that I've LED previously in all of my different roles so um what brings me to Milton at this time is I feel it is important for superintendents to have had the experiences to walk in everybody's shoes so I have been a classroom teacher for 16 years I was an inclusion teacher as well I have been an assistant principal a principal a central office leader I have been a leader with the state of Massachusetts in a school turnaround and now I'm the assistant superintendent of teaching and learning so I feel that as a superintendent I would be able to support the work of everybody in the

186District central office people curriculum people data analysis teachers so I feel that my skill circle is complete and I'm ready for that next step so I'm going to ask the first question um I'm going to ask topic is leadership and so the um one of my quotes is that the growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership I just wondering if you could describe your leadership style and talk about how you mentor um others to become leaders as well great so I would describe myself as a servant leader I feel I am in in a leadership position I'm in service to First students and then the parents and as well as teachers so as a superintendent I would also see myself in service to our Central administrative team so really asking how

187can I help people in their work how can I remove barriers to progress how can I prioritize budgets and funding to support vision and the work that's happening in the district um I'd like to say I'm a collaborative leader but I feel like collaborative is one of those words that's overused in education I'm just a person in the work I like to be shoulder to shoulder with people there's nothing I I wouldn't do as a leader that I would ask somebody else to do I fill in for principles when they're out of the building I'll cover their lunch duties I will attend hearings if somebody's unavailable to do that um I will you know check in on we have a if we're having busing issues I will help the transportation director there's just nothing I

188won't do to help somebody be successful in their work the the more cohesive you have as a team the more successful and ultimately the best for kids as far as what I do in my work to support and Mentor folks I repositioned a some funding I had some funding that was allocated for a reading teacher and it wasn't when we were looking at data it just wasn't resonating with kids kids weren't making the progress that we were hoping for through this identified tutor so we repositioned the tutor and I tapped into somebody who I felt was just really she had wonderful buy-in with her with her colleagues and she really had great approach with kids and so I it took me a while but I talked with her about taking on a stipend position to

189work with adults and and to work with adults on teaching reading and and through that she fell in love with that position and now she applied for and is in a coaching position in the district So within two years she has left her teaching position had an additional stipend position and now she's in more of a coaching position and a leadership role in The District so um I also have started a women in leadership group with all of the female admin in Marblehead we attended the Massachusetts Association of superintendents Women's Conference last year together and we make time for each other even if it's just as a think tank what are we struggling with how can we support each other in the work and included in that women's team are coaches instructional coaches assistant principals

190and principals and myself so it's a pretty comprehensive group of folks I also once I get to know people well I have a standard question of where do you hope to be in five years and how can I help you get there so people often are like well I'm very happy where I am and I'll say well I just I want you to think about it I see I see you you know doing great things I want to make sure that you're feeling challenged and supported and Now's the Time to kind of plan for where you want to be in five years so when you're ready to make a move you have all your ducks in a row and so I've um I'm coaching right now two women towards director certification so they're currently in

191coaching roles and we've gone to the Department of Education and they're doing some work under my supervision to become certified as directors um not that they want to be directors right now but that they may one day and then when they do they'll have that certification so um those are some examples um also very encouraging of um people planning to um in internal in in the system so being proactive when I know there's a vacancy kind of going to people who I think would be a good fit and encouraging them and helping them see how they might be able to grow in that role so they might not necessarily have thought of themselves as ready for a jump but I make time to have those conversations with people and to help them understand what I

192see in them and how I would support them if they took that jump and oftentimes they do thank you I would love to learn more about your background and how you arrived at this position today could you walk us through your resume sure as well as the transitions as you may went from one role to another I'm sorry okay um first and foremost I'm a life lifelong educator I have spent my entire career in education the first 16 years as a classroom teacher I never set out with a vision of becoming a school leader or a central office leader I was very happy as a classroom teacher it wasn't until I began to see the impact that central office decisions began to have on my curriculum opportunities my professional development the culture of art school

193and so it was it was about 10 years in that I started to think about I would like to create a school culture that is grounded in what I think is best for teachers and kids and so that's how I entered into educational leadership I was very fortunate I landed in Lowell Massachusetts as an assistant principal and my experience in an urban district has been transformative in terms of who I am as an educator I was assistant principal for about a year and a half before the principal was asked to serve another underperforming school in Lowell that was getting State the state was intervening and designating it as level one I'm sorry level four and so he was moved there and the superintendent elevated me to the principal and it was that summer that the

194MCAS data came back in a very comprehensive reporting situation there was what we call CPI there was student achievement there was student growth data there were rankings and what we ended up finding out was the school that I had just become the principal of was the most the the least effective school we were 14th out of 14. so we were designated High needs level three by the state and although we were not allocated the two million dollars that the level four school was allocated we were put on the state radar and so we I gathered together my team of Educators I said this we can do this we don't need two million dollars the answers are in the room we started talking about high leverage moves that we can make instructionally what do we need

195professionally and we put together a really comprehensive plan grounded in what was best for kids um at the base of that plan was kids can if adults do and so there was a lot of change of practice because we were no longer saying um the kids can't because there's they're second language Learners our kids can't because they have experienced so much trauma we started focusing on trauma-informed instruction we started using data to inform our instruction we started to there are 11 essential conditions to school high performance in schools and I selected two aligned curriculum and effective instruction and everything we did was grounded in those two initiatives in four years we became level one which is the highest level that you can receive by the state of Massachusetts and the commissioner of Education came out

196and toured our school and brought his team to talk with teachers and ask you know what what's the magic formula because we want to duplicate it around Massachusetts and the teachers were very clear that there is no magic formula it's about doing what's best for kids and um and being very cognizant and concise in your instruction and having fun while you're doing it and building a culture of of kids wanting and loving being in school after that the superintendent in Lowell elevated me to the director of accountability and school Improvement in the hopes of bringing some of those practices to our underperforming schools and through that work I met our Department of Education colleagues through the Statewide systems of support who were in those schools that were designated for targeted support and they talked to

197me about taking the challenge of coming to the state and working with them as a member of their team and I worked on the [Music] South Shore a little bit on the North Shore in underperforming districts with superintendents and their leadership teams and we looked at data and we talked about developing cohesive plans to improved instruction that didn't resonate with me because I was in and out of districts I was in talking and then out and really what I missed was being in the work with the team so I went back to school based central office work where I knew I could be part of a team and I landed in Marblehead as the assistant superintendent of teaching and learning and I have had just a fabulous couple of years there of course we had

198a little you know diversion of the global pandemic that we that kind of really changed a lot of us in education but I had a wonderful partner in my superintendent and we navigated that situation really well and I think our student data and our students and our our teachers would say they felt very supportive even though it was traumatic time so that's kind of story thank you sure sure so um I wanted to touch up on the topic of diversity Equity inclusion and belonging and thinking about you know our district and you know heard from folks passionately about sort of yes we've done a great job at sort of increasing the sense of belonging for many of our our students which is great but that there have been experiences of bipoc students in particular lead

199black students who haven't necessarily experienced that positive have had that positive experience and so families have made the hard decision to take their kids out of the district and you know go elsewhere sometimes for you know private schooling and so you know thinking about that population of students also thinking about a growing visible population of transgender kids you know our students with disabilities are you just you know you the gamut right of diversity cultural and ethnic and everything else and sort of thinking about you know our our desire to make sure that the district works for all students and um so in your experience right very comprehensive across yeah um as an educator in terms of strategies that you've used to address these uh pressing issues and also how have you have you confronted sort

200of this tension or this what I what I call a false dichotomy between sort of Dei efforts and academic excellence and how have you addressed that okay great question important question the um I will I will start by saying I think the the work I think some of the issues around diversity equity and inclusion that have come um from the community is around the lack of understanding of what's happening in schools and so I I think we have to be clear that our work around diversity Equity inclusion belonging and justice is embedded in what we do every day it's a value it's a core it's part of our work there is no add-on there's no additional it is the work and we hold strong and true to what we value so what I have learned

201is when we don't as a central as a school system communicate out to our teachers our students and our parents the what we're doing the why we're doing it and the how we're doing it that's when things can get hard often we'll start great professional development with teachers and it will be great but then when it's implemented a student takes a piece of what was implemented home and that causes some sort of confusion for the family what do you mean you were talking about transgender that you know for whatever the family that that doesn't fit with the families understanding of what school is so we have to be out front and very clear about the work we're doing in schools and with that comes very purposeful and clear and intentional instruction for students around what

202is unacceptable and what are consequences that follow racist comments anti-Semitic incidents um bullying tormenting we have to be very clear with our kids as they are developmentally as a developmentally appropriate um we in Marblehead are lucky we host the mecco program so we have students that come from Boston to to Marblehead every day they ride an hour on the bus in the morning and they ride an hour on the bus in the afternoons and they will tell you they do not feel like they belong the kids are very very transparent with me and honest with me they will tell me that implicit bias is part of everyday experience for them and that's hard to hear but it's it's fuel for why we're doing what we're doing so we have to be educating our entire group

203we have to be educating our students educating our teachers and educating our parents and our community members about what we're doing why we're doing it and how we're doing it so we can all be rowing in the same direction so in terms of how I've handled it um I don't think there's a superintendent in Massachusetts right now would say that hasn't been an issue that there's never been an issue that we've had to deal with we've had a number of issues in in Marblehead and um although we manage them well in the moment we could do a better job of making a proactive plan so we have a great partnership with um Coalition against hate and Marblehead we have a great partnership with our police chief we we have I I have um actually I

204have a meeting tomorrow with our all of our ministry leaders of ministry and it I'm their guest speaker and I'm going to share with them the what the why and the how of Marblehead public schools and so and ask them where does that fit in your work with our community so that we're all teaching our community the same things at the same time um so we what I actually have been talking with our our police chief recently and we had said we would address this after the holiday break is how do what what are some proactive plans we know what's going to happen again as much as we don't want it to um how can we be thinking about restorative justice how can we be thinking about um making amends depending on what's age-appropriate how

205can we be embedding some of these things that we know will arise ahead of time so we're not scrambling and feeling so out of control when it when disappointed when it happens press releases kind of be thinking about how do we write a thoughtful press release that incorporates the what the why and the how and you know this this incident happened but these are the things we're doing as a district to ensure that that it stops um and those are hard to write when you have to write them in two hours before all the kids go home so kind of working on having some of those things um ready and well thought out and planned in advance and in addition more of the what do we do you know you you bring in um we've

206brought in speakers we've we've talked you know when there's an incident around anti-Semitism we had our student leaders Jewish student leaders go to the elementary school where it happened and talk with kids so we're very engaged in in the teaching moment teachable moment but sometimes we wanted to go a little deeper than that okay thank you so we've seen an increase in the number of students referred to special education okay last several years could you provide some examples of program supports and strategies you've implemented at the instructional level to close these gaps and bring the students to where they are need to be great question in fact I was talking to your principals about this yesterday there's really good professional development right now being presented to your some of your staff and schools I didn't

207get to meet all the principals but the principles that I did speak to they are bringing in professional development around universally designed instruction and hand in hand with that goes multi-tiered systems of support so that that strategy is around really closely looking at our kids and providing interventions for students and not looking to refer to special education to close any learning gaps that constantly asking how can we change the students experience so that they can receive what we're teaching and move to the next level so oftentimes that's a change of instruction that's time I don't haven't had a top an opportunity to talk to teachers about this but where in the academic day is their time for teachers to remediate to go back to reteach to challenge we've got students sitting in front of us

208that know everything's coming out of the teacher's mouth and can recite it what are we doing to push them so where in the academic day is there time in in I brought the concept to Marblehead and it's we call it the Wind Block what I need block so there's a 30-minute block every day at the elementary level where students are getting what they need so you're looking at data you're looking at the students that aren't making progress what do they need you're looking at the students that are really excelling and you know what can they be doing differently for half an hour to push themselves academically so really using time to try to fill some of those gaps before you're referring to special education I think sometimes teachers feel stuck they're trying everything they're they're

209working with what they have and they don't necessarily have the professional development or the um the additional curriculum and resources to reach really diverse Learners really you know so making sure that they have what they need and then also really looking at our referral system so I know a lot of referrals come from parents and there really needs to be a conversation when parents refer their students for special education they can by law do it but sometimes after an after a conversation when I would have them with them as a teacher you can get teachers you can get parents to understand that it's not a disability it's just they need more time with a concept that the Gap will close if we give them additional time and skill development um so kind of like really

210trying to assess and tease out is there a disability is this something that a student is struggling with academically or social emotionally that an intervention could help close that Gap and remediate that so kind of talking as a as a district and a school-based team I know every team has student support teams where you refer students to as a teacher not for special ed but for support how can I reach the student that I'm struggling with do teachers know how to really create good interventions do they have the materials they need do we just in Marblehead invested twenty thousand dollars on decodable texts because we did not have texts for our circling readers that they could decode so you know sometimes teachers don't have the resources and so they don't know where else to go

211those are some of the things but I think most critically is having a data culture in schools where you're constantly looking at students in progress so you're not all of a sudden in April going this to the student just didn't make it as far as I was hoping they would go and so maybe they need to be referred for special education yeah so I wanna um ask you about a few things that I think are related to many of the topics that have already been discussed okay um obviously there are a lot of priorities but I think through the focus groups process and conversations um these three things have emerged as like to me top things are not superintendent needs to focus on so um communication you were speaking a few moments about like Crisis

212communication um I'm wondering if you can speak to communication strategy more broadly and how you see the role of the superintendent and the needs of like your basically experiences as a strong Communicator to come into this role so communication is the first piece the second piece you mentioned the Strategic plan in the beginning would be change management you've been a turnaround principal you know clearly you have skills in that area but could you speak to what your background prepares you to do as a leader of change management in Milton okay and then the third piece if you could just speak to your experiences with eliminating racial achievement opportunity gaps um because I know that you know that's that is turnaround work but that's work that's overdue in Milton so okay I know those are three

213different things but just concrete examples um that I think build on what you've already been sharing okay so closing racial achievement gaps um change and communication and communication so I think I love that communication is first because communication is everything communication is how your stakeholders learn to trust you so a number of different strategies that I have and I use strategy Loosely because they're habits I I believe in them um I am at everything I am a visual Communicator I I want you to see me I want you to know that I care about your child's concert I want you to know that I care about um you know the Athletics program I care about the school play I care about our local library I go to you know when there's a local library event

214or an art show that the students are having so I think that's strategic in a way in that you you you're showing your community and your teachers and your students that what you're leading you actually really care about um I also again getting back to the What the how and the why the more the more transparent you can be about the work in the district the more support you're going to gain so being very purposeful with parent newsletters so as a you know as the assistant superintendent I put out a seasonal newsletter to parents and and in that seasonal newsletter I include updates from elementary middle and high school different activities that they could be engaging with that they're across you know what kinds of things are happening in town but as a superintendent I

215would see myself as either doing a weekly email um just kind of highlighting things that happened in the district and work that's going on in the schools things that students are engaged in um I also as a school principal I used the um Blackboard connect so I would send out a message every Sunday night Sabal Murphy calling to let you know that this week is you know this is what's happening so I could see myself as a superintendent also seeing that the benefit of that is it goes to student phones and so if you want to get students informed at the middle and high school level about things that are happening or coming up or things they need to be reminded about um that's a that's an important tool that I think a superintendent could

216use um I um the superintendent in in Marblehead also has monthly coffees so it's just coffee just come and sit bring any kind of concern issue compliment whatever you want to bring I also attend our PTO and PCO meetings so that parents are able to ask me any clarifying questions about things that might be happening in the office of teaching and learning I go to staff meetings so oftentimes I'll help principals plan professional development but then I don't sit in my office while it's happening I actually go and support it and help help you know be part of the breakout Circle and be part of the conversation helps inform my work when I know what teachers are thinking about what we're doing um the I've also held a number of parent forums so when there's

217something that's coming up we had a report card update and change and that was going to be very confusing for some parents so I communicated I sent out what was called the screencastify which is a recording of my voice walking them through the new report card explaining it and I pushed it out to all elementary parents so they could watch that before they got their child's report card then I held a parent Forum come bring all of your standards based report card questions to me I'll be available on Zoom from six to seven and the biggest compliment I got is that nobody showed up so you know [Music] I've gotten what they needed from the communications that I had provided so it's great so then just the change management change I think the most important

218thing to recognize and honor is change is hard and that you're going to meet people in different places so there are going to be your early adopters that are so ready for the change and so ready and excited for the new whatever um you're going to have people that are like ah you're going to have to sell me a little bit more on this and you're going to have your resistors hopefully and what I've learned is they're more in the minority once they start to see their colleagues moving along they're more out to join but I think you have to respect that you can't you can't set and determine a change and walk away you have to accept that people are going to need different things to make that change actionable so you have to

219think about what is needed for this change to be successful and sustainable a lot of times change will start to happen and lose momentum because it hasn't been thoughtfully planned out plan has to go from beginning to sustainability you have to be able at the end of a good change walk away and know that that's going to become part of the practice of Educators and if you don't follow it all the way to the end it doesn't resonate and stick and you'll find three years later there's only a few people doing what you attempted to do so that's one thing I've learned that you have to be very thoughtful and you have to explain to everybody where you're going and what the indicators for Success are going to be and you can't overwhelm them and

220say we're going to change this and then we're going to change this and then we're also going to tweak this you really have to think about what is the priority and provide all the levels of support for your large Continuum of people in different some people are going to be able to do it independently some people may need somebody to go in and model lessons and do some one-on-one coaching there may be a need for um you know a student survey to check in how does the how is this feeling to kids you know so you have to kind of think about all of those things as you're moving forward but the change this hard piece is important to remember throughout the entire process because it can be hard at first and then it turns

221exhausting and when it turns exhausting is when you start losing people so you have to think about where where you start feeling and sensing the exhaustion and kind of do something to reinvigorate the the cause and restate the purpose and help people um I think another thing that's important about change is we don't celebrate along the way it's like this is all really hard work we're going to do really really hard work for a really really long time [Laughter] and it's we're going to require a lot of you and sometimes it's it's great to just allocate some professional development time to just let's look at where we've been right where did we start five months ago and let's look at where we are now look what we have accomplished and most importantly how are kids

222benefiting from that work and once you turn a teacher's lens to why how what they've been doing is translating to kids you're you're reinvigorating the cause so I think that's a little bit of my experience on on change but I think also one more point on change is you have to have high expectations that it's going to come together that you you you once somebody starts to once the leader starts to waver people will start to think that maybe they can get away with not doing certain things or you really have to hold people accountable to the work so there's a complexity with that um and then closing racial achievement gaps I can give you a very concrete experience that I've had and it involves the work that I'm engaged in in supporting our vetco

223students from Boston when I came to Marblehead it was clear that our students from Boston were not excelling academically in the same percentiles as our white population of students and so I started to really be concerned because these kids are on the bus for two hours a day and they're coming to Marblehead to succeed not not to fail and so the principal and I and the student support team at the high school have more consistent communication about student progress so after every term at the high school the principal send me a report of every student and how they are doing and highlight for me the students that are at risk of failing and what's going to be different for that student in the next term so we can't keep doing more of the same we

224need to identify when we're not meeting a student where they are and make changes immediately so I will say in the course of two years that has really that that really focused lens on our students has improved we have been able to create a Marblehead Academy that students can access and we've offered it in Boston so that students don't need to come to Marblehead for that additional academic support but that we will offer it through tutoring in Boston and so we by bringing it to the Forefront acknowledging that it's happening looking at historical data it's been happening for a while what are we going to do differently and I'm also through through the my work at the state I've been very lucky to learn Edwin which is a data tool that the department of Massachusetts

225Department of Education offers Educators central office educators which a lot of people don't know they have access to and so that's one way that I track how our students are racially subgroups are doing and I also recently took advantage of a free subscription offered to Massachusetts superintendents called MCAS Explorer that tool I can put in some groups and it will tell me the achievement the growth percentiles and it will align with our district formative data so I have I ready in there and MCAS data and it will show me my subgroup so that's another way I track our special education kiddos too can I just ask to follow up a little bit with Lizzy how many Medco students there are coming to Marblehead and are they for all the different grades or are they mostly

226on high school level we welcome students from first grade to um preferably we want them just to have a high school experience there so we like to have them come by ninth grade but we'll we've taken 10th graders but hopefully they come early in their career so we can have them throughout their their time with us and then their siblings will come so there is no we haven't taken kindergarteners yet only because day doesn't and the bus ride is really hard for kids at that developmental level we have had in the past in Marblehead up to around 80 students and now I think because we haven't really found our way with the program in the last few years we're down to 44. I think that is part of pandemic related you know kids um come

227back after the pendant you know some of the remote learning piece um they went to the Boston Schools but it's also because I think there are other communities doing a better job with the metco students and so parents are advocating for the best experience for the kids and so they're choosing other districts can you speak to the actual outcome of the program so you said that it sounds like a couple years ago is when you established it any gains that have been made so the mecco program is is was established in the late oh no I mean Marblehead Academy intervention that you you had for these particular students what were the outcomes okay so um students were able to either make up work or close a gap so they could go on to the next

228class so they weren't going to have to fail something so they had this opportunity to have additional instruction so there wasn't a an and or situation they they were able to get what they needed to be able to continue on the progress of the Continuum and move forward with the next course selection so if there was a student that um and and this Academy is also open to everybody we did not it came from us looking at our black and brown student data knowing we needed to do something better for those students but we opened it to all students so we do have students that are in similar academic standing that attend because they need additional support as well this is all I think we've only had it um we had it for I think

229we've done two sessions and I know we're we're talking about it right now because we're in the budget season but we're talking about it again does that answer your question thank you okay um so you've probably got to see a little bit of that or overcrowding yes while you were visiting didn't um and and you may know Milton built or rebuild all six schools in the early 2000s and the challenges that we built them and then they came and now we're overcrowded it started at the elementary schools and Elementary level it's still there but it's moved up into the middle school and the high school yeah and to the point that the elementary level where we really have five schools worth of students in four buildings right and the town has established the school building

230committee to address this long-term issue and has been working for several years on that two members of the school committee sit on that as well but a school building project will take a great deal of Community Support as you can imagine for building a new school and I'm just wondering what you would see your role would be as a superintendent in bringing the school building project to fruition so I I think although it is a problem I think it's a celebration that the Milton public schools are retaining students and that we that families are not choosing some other private school systems that they value the work that our teachers are doing in Milton they trust the school system they are rewarded by the high achievement that kids are able to to maintain here and they're

231choosing to keep their kids here and that is a really important part of the messaging to the community is that we have a really good problem that I think sometimes schools can talk about overcrowding in a way that doesn't celebrate the why behind the overcrowding and a lot of districts across the Commonwealth are with the complete opposite problem we are finding our students are leaving us we are not retaining our students and that our enrollment is declining and the impact that has on us financially so it's it's really a good thing that we have that issue and I think getting first and is is supporting principles in thinking about the space in the meantime because they're frustrated they're they're wonderful and they talk about it in very creative ways there's they're so Innovative in how

232they're using space but there still as a former principle frustration around that and so having a thought partner and somebody as a super as a superintendent that can say all right I'm going to really advocate for this in the community but in the meantime I know you need things so let's think creatively here let's what what can we come up with to meet kids what and what they need in the meantime um but as far as community and getting the community on board we have just um experienced a failed override in Marblehead and I think the problem behind it was the community didn't understand our requests they didn't understand what we were asking for and they they a lot of our tax base and is do no longer have students in schools so I think

233we have to think strategically about how can we help community members who do not have students in the schools see the importance of our schools and the value that it brings to their community and to their own lives so um I our Marble Head choir I just attended they went to the community center in Marblehead and did a concert for our seniors and I thought this is what we should have been doing all last year is showing our community how amazing our students are because then when we're asking them for an increase in taxes they're like I get it that that Pro that music program is really fantastic I'm going to get behind that you know I get why they need that having having students um you know out in the community you know there

234there's a lot of opportunity for them to be you know are we offering senior citizen day at athlete at sporting events are we offering community members for free entrance free day you know bringing the community to us is important part of the superintendent's role is thinking strategically about building that bridge how can we get our community on board with our needs because it costs them money and so and so everybody wants to know what they're going to get for their money every good spender so let's show them all the wonderful things that we have how much our students are benefiting from what they're getting at our schools so I'll go another time um I just wanted to ask you a little bit about talking to us about teacher Recruitment and teacher retention and particularly with

235the diversity of our population cultural and racial diversity trying to attract teachers who also represent that diversity in our student population because that's always that's a challenge not just for Milton but for lots of communities in the area so what what specific steps would you consider or think would be helpful to try to improve our recruitment in that Arena Okay so so I'm gonna I'll speak to retention first Milton is a destination district for an educator they they should [Music] um this community is is very supportive you have a robust budget that supports teaching and learning but teachers need to feel that so in order to retain our teachers our teachers and our educators they have to um feel valued and feel respected and supported we have to know that coming out of a pandemic

236there are people that I work with and have worked with for years that are leaving the field of Education they they just don't have the bandwidth for it so leading and and teaching through the pandemic we talk a lot about pandemic recovery and academic recovery for students and social emotional for students and we really need to be thinking about what are we doing for our staff and our teachers it's been hard um so getting back to being really thoughtful and strategic with your initiatives and change you have to even be more sensitive to what teachers are experiencing right now Everything feels really heavy um so what's worth the lift um really needs to be worth it because you can't ask them to lift everything right now you really need to respect where they are and

237help them return to the joy of why they chose this profession there was a lot of loss of Joy during the pandemic and then there was a lot of loss of Joy because we have to continue to make sure our kids catch up and and don't have long-term effects of the pandemic academically and emotionally and so we had um we've put off whole school assemblies we haven't maybe had as many opportunities social Gatherings for kids we haven't had large groups of families events in schools because we're still a little timid and shy around covid and pandemic related Communications so we have to be thinking about where does the joy fit for our Educators and our leaders because um that's why they came to this field they're driven to do what's right and they want to

238enjoy what they do and so we have to be mindful of that so I think as far as retention it go it is very thoughtful around what we're asking of teachers and making sure they have what we they need to do what we're asking and I think if you ask teachers they don't always say that's the case that they feel that they've been asked to do a lot they've been they've had parents in the classroom via Zoom they've just they've been through a lot and so they I think being very attentive to their needs right now and showing them that we value them and respect them and that we can't do the work without them so we need them as far as recruiting staff and in particular recruiting a more diverse population I think I

239I said this yesterday at the community Forum I I love the diversity in Milton you know you walk around the high school and it's it's something that I'm not accustomed to seeing in Marblehead it's wonderful students deserve to see all different representations so we have to make that happen for them students need to be able to come to school and see themselves they need to be able to say I want to be a science teacher like you know they want us they have to be able to see themselves and who's instructing them and that again I'm very intentional with my planning you can't just say all of a sudden it's spring we need to start thinking about recruitment this has to be a strategic initiative and a strategic plan that that you're working closely with

240the HR department and and that you know you're including in your budget for travel we have to go to communities where the the graduates that we are seeking to recruit can meet with us it may be out of state it may be you know more direct student colleges of color let's go and let them know how fantastic we are in Milton and then we have to talk with the school committee and the town of how do we make it affordable for people to come to a community like Milton on a teacher salary so that's often overlooked we want to recruit but with recruitment comes investment if you're asking somebody to come to very expensive Community which borders very expensive communities you have to find and plan a pathway forward for them to be able to

241afford to live here and that's that's something that I think town government needs to be part of we have started that conversation in Marblehead we started it last year not not in terms of teacher recruitment but in terms of adding diversity to our community of Marblehead and just recognizing that we are not in economically diverse Community we have one way in and we have to we have to add add Avenues so that would be another kind of conversation to have a broader scope does that answer your question okay okay I would like to talk about inquiry especially as it comes to district-wide planning so in recent years Milton has implemented several major initiatives to improve student academic and social emotional outcomes okay but we know the work isn't done yet you please tell us about

242a time when you engaged in a cycle of inquiry to learn from and build upon a major initiative that may have started two to three years prior in the event somebody listening doesn't know what the cycle of inquiry is it's it's it's around developing kind of thinking about um an issue targeting a focus thinking about a focus of improvement planning for that Improvement and then measuring the improvement over over a course course of time so I don't know those of you who are newer to school committee may not know this language but race to the top money I don't know if you all you do remember so race to the top money which was provided by the Department of Education in Massachusetts years ago was very clearly outlined to be used for cycle of inquiries

243and so they that's where a lot of districts became very good at doing that work so um in Lowell we would would talk about I remember going through a cycle of inquiry around instructional strategies for our second language Learners and using so we were trying to um identify a high Leverage approach so we looked at student data around trying to tease back my memory here it's been a bit but we we looked at our students fluency and ability to articulate to a prompt and then planned for opportunities for purposeful discourse and conversation regard with scaffolds and with little sentence stems and kind of measured over the course of time taught that with that particular tool and then measured for growth and did that translate and and so those kinds of cycles of inquiry during that

244time when we had a lot of funding were happening quite often in classrooms at the district level we were looking at all different kinds of things and sometimes your cycle of inquiry would come full circle and it'd be like nope nothing um so but that's that's where you go with with new information then you kind of start again with a new strategy and measure that one so as far as coming into work and using the cycle of inquiry into something that's already been established for a few years is that your kind of question is how does the cycle of inquiry fit into that no it's like how have you gone through it like literally whether you started the initiative or not okay it might be two or three years in you're saying okay did this

245work if it didn't work what what was the outcome what are we going to do differently and okay I feel like we're short on time I'm very sensitive so I will I will hit on something that I participated in as a cycle of inquiry not something that I developed Win race to the top money was allocated the um the central office at Lowell we went through cycles of inquiry as administrative teams so we would pick a problem of practice that we were having in a school and then we would meet with our administrative colleagues talk about the problem of practice they would help us come up with something to try and then we would go and try it and then come back and debrief and so that was something that we had that I had

246participated in thank you okay so we are getting close to to the end of our time oh my gosh sorry okay um and I just want to give you the opportunity if you have any questions for us or something else that you'd like to tell us about your candidacy or yourself um I'll I'm very appreciative of the opportunity to be in the district yesterday I feel like my conversations with principals and with the assistant superintendent affirmed that the work here is something that I want to be a part of I also took the opportunity to talk to the school leaders as we were walking through buildings and kind of asked each of them what is it that you're looking for in your next superintendent and what kind of support are you looking for as a

247leader and um surprisingly they they all the the three principles that I spoke to kind of had similar responses in that they're looking for a superintendent that can come in and help them kind of plan forward so take the Strategic initiatives take what work has done has been done in the district and think about the through line for the next couple of years so what is going to happen how is it going to happen when is it going to happen what do we need to be thinking about to make it happen because they've one leaders um terminology was we kind of work in silos and so we're looking for a leader that can kind of bring us together and help us form a plan that we all are on board with and all have a

248sense of how that plan looks in our building and then help kind of manage the plan and support the plan and um so and after hearing that I felt like you know that's kind of the work I've done and feel confident in they also articulated that you know they they want a leader that recognizes and honors autonomy and that you know trust in in school-based leadership and as a former principal I know what that means I know that what you need as a principal there's time you need you're a superintendent and there's time when you need autonomy and so I I can honor that and and recognize that and relate to that so I feel like a lot that I learned yesterday from building leaders and again in the conversations with the assistant superintendent I

249feel like my skill set can add to the team you know you know add to what the work the team is trying to accomplish I also feel like in my conversations with Dr mcginny McKinney you know a kind of transitioning him to the ways of Massachusetts like we are a unique little community and being able to understand commonwealth law and how it relates to education the special education laws being able I'm pretty confident and fluent in my Massachusetts state standards and being able to walk into a classroom and know what standard relatively close to knowing what standard is being addressed K-8 I'm still working on my high school standards but they're very comprehensive and Massachusetts as you well know has very rigorous expectations of students and we lead the country in that and so I

250feel like I can support him and his work in transitioning been in Massachusetts for he was telling me since July so he's you know there's there's a learning curve there also being able to partner him with some outstanding assistant superintendents I know throughout the Commonwealth um being able to partner with some other districts that are like Milton and kind of have a think tank with superintendent leaders um and kind of bring state learning to Milton so I am part of the Massachusetts Association of superintendents professional development committee so I plan professional development for all the superintendents we work on a retreat that we all attend in in July and this July focuses on diversity Equity inclusion and academics so somebody asked the important question about where is academics in all of the additional work that

251we're doing and it's the answer is it's not it's it's combined with that and we need to we need to now as we come back out of a pandemic really get back to what good teaching and learning needs to look like and sound like and feel like for kids and and make sure that they get the Dei experience and feel like they belong and enjoy the process so I feel like as as we're working at that level with the superintendents I can bring that directly to our administrative team here and those resources that we can tap into so I'm excited I think I can add to the work and be a partner in the work and um I hope I've been able to express who I am and my my style throughout the two days

252thank you so much we will be deliberating and making a decision in Open session on Friday morning at 7 30 a.m on Zoom um a challenging part of this process um but I will send you the link to that if you're interested in watching our deliberations we do hope to make an offer subject to contract negotiations to one of our finalists on Friday okay um but I want to just take this opportunity on behalf of all of us to thank you for coming and sharing of yourself and sharing your background and your passion for education and it's very exciting for us too to think about the future moving ahead but it's a great opportunity for you all yeah it really is so so thank you so much for coming in and sharing everything that you

253have with us great thank you okay thank you so much thank you too um and I'll make a motion to adjourn second and all those in favor have a good night everyone thank you [Music]