001all the r gespi here Schubert here Johnson here sees here L here Olivas here okay on the public coms you would have had to have signed up before six pm to speak we ask that you respect the three minute time limit and ask that you respect the confidentiality of our students and staff uh Mary folz hello thank you so okay so what brought me here tonight is that um um some of you know some of you don't know that I'm actually running for the Schoolboard right now and something was brought to my attention and I think should be brought to the school board's attention because you're not aware of it because it's a private page however there is a easo staff member that is publicly attacking adults families that are in the district including myself
002and my grandchildren and they actually said on their post that they admit that they are a easo staff member in their post that's on the Easter page that's for mothers who have children in the district and I've been a member of that page for many many several years I'm G try to pull it up here really fast for my minutes expire I'm probably not going to get on your internet no I'm not going to get on your internet but what it is though that what what what they said on here is and what I would like to do is I'm going to print it out I'll get it to the superintendent I would like to Fe each one of you to have a copy of it and what it was that I'm G try to
003go Pera what it said was that um that there's members of the staff including myself I'm I'm just trying to say it that have issues with you running for the board and I replied very nicely and left my phone number if they wanted to talk because they said they were staff member and so then they came back and said that well you should be concerned about your grandchildren and their issues publicly they said this and then some other things and then there's other posts inside of the same post and what they're doing is they're posting Anonymous what they don't know is that when you post anonymous is that a person can we can get a tech person to go and find out their ISP whatever address connect them to their Facebook page and find out
004who this employee is and who knows maybe they're not an employee but for them to say that they're a staff member of East Aurora and you're attacking parents that have children that are in the easo school district that is pretty sad and I'm very appalled by it and some of the things that are posted in this page are very private very personal and only a staff member and I'm gonna be honest what some parents said that well it could be a Schoolboard member I said no I don't think why would they go into all but there's it's very detailed very detailed about people's children things that are happening um the things about my grandchildren I couldn't believe that that they may said that and made it an issue publicly and my grandkids are going to
005succeed I'm not held accountable for my grandkids no one else's you know I'm I am a very big leader in this community I'm big on education I'm big on no advocating for the children families and this right here is just not should not be happening and I think that the school board should know the superintendent should know what's actually happening in our community in its public size in a private page though and I'm willing to share that information with you thank you so much I mean it won't come up so thank you okay and I believe Linda White you cross through the okay all righty okay so that concludes that concludes the public comments so we will go on to the discussion items for superintendent search so good evening I'm Dr Deborah Hill managing director
006of bwp and Associates and one of the co-leads for the superintendent search for East Royal School District 131 my colleague um Dr Anne Nolan is joining us via phone uh and but she can hear all of the conversation and we'll be able to contribute to the discussion and and so I'm going to just tell a tale out of school here we are freezing to death ANS in Florida so I want I want you to feel sorry for um although she says it's not really warm there yet uh however uh we did submit to you and and uh one of our other associates will be joining us interestingly enough he's finishing up h a meeting with his uh finance committee and his home district and so then he'll he'll be joining us and I'll have give
007him an opportunity to introduce himself I'm pleased to be able to come in without having run through the door like I did the last time um I came and met you and and spoke with you so I was here early actually got a chance to find the place and settle in so again I'm pleased to be able to uh provide this information feel free to interrupt me at any point in time relative to the discussion that we're going to have um you have received electronically I believe the uh Community audit leadership profile report you have now have hard copies of it and that's the latest uh iteration of of the actual report any additional changes based on your reading them and say feeling that something was missing or should be added or should be you
008know included let us know and then we'll make those changes and submit a final copy so consider this kind of a a working draft we prepared um a PowerPoint presentation that summarized is this report again the notion of a community audit and cont and its contribution to the leadership profile report really is something that we talked about initially when we um were selected to work with you the notion um that finding out what some of the strengths and some of the challenges but particularly what skill sets and um characteristics you're looking for for a new superintendent would be very important in terms of soliciting head hunting tapping people on the shoulder and ultimately you're selecting your next superintendent so I think I'm gonna go to the next slide which I should do in okay so
009again the uh Consultants that were working with Dr an Nolan again is on on the phone uh Dr Sheila Harrison Williams Dr Hector Garcia all of us have been superintendents uh Dr Garcia is currently a superintendent and so we're coming in from uh years of experience in terms of working with with the superintendent's role as well as I think an has done probably over 100 searches I've done a few about probably about 70 because as managing director I direct the other uh nine uh directors in terms of their superintendent searches but it is a national search so it's not just local uh it's a national search so when we talk with the board initially about the purposes of this community object uh Community um engagement process and I'm not going to be reading all the
010slides I'm just going to be uh highlighting them but there is a purpose one of the things coming in as a superintendent you want to walk in and have some some sense of community support uh support for the board because they are the people who selected you and who you're working with but a lot of that is coming in with some information with regards to the community as we mentioned when we first met with you the role of the board of education is to select the superintendent it is not the role of the community to select the superintendent if they want to be a part of that selection process they need to run for the board however the community's role is to provide feedback and input to the board with regards to their selection and
011so to do that we engage uh in this um process where we're looking for the strengths we're looking for um the challenges and again we're looking specifically for skill sets and characteristics that will enable us to to present a leadership profile that becomes our blueprint so that means all of us the board and the Consultants um are walking from the same page we're looking at the same issues and the same things and while there may be some things on either end uh of the project we really focus on looking at that leadership profile so identifying the desired qualities and characteristics enables us to hone in on specifics and you'll see what that looks like it also enables us to build community understanding and support having been a superintendent there's nothing worse than walking into a
012district and having to deal with people who feel like they didn't they didn't vote for you so therefore they're not going to support what you do and you've got to spend your time trying to calm those Waters rather than spending your time boots on the ground in schools working with staff working with principles working with the board working with children uh which should be the the goal so that's part of the objective in terms of this kind of process and then finally ensuring the broadest possible Community participation one of the things that we say uh we ask uh the board and the staff to notify everybody in the community about what their role is and uh we'll talk a little bit about what those components look like but we like to say from from the
013standpoint of the community if you didn't know about it that's one thing but if you knew about it and chose not to participate at that's something alog together different and so again your staff has done a Yan's job of getting the message out um to the community in terms of their participation and I again I'll talk about what that looks like momentarily so here the things we did we conducted some meetings um we talked with board members either by telephone or email all the board members everybody was ask the same questions which I'll go over in a few minute we had some conversations there were about 84 people who we spoke with over a two-day period uh 101 of those um uh in terms of some of these conversations responded to an online survey in
014Spanish and so again from the standpoint of Outreach to your community I think there was an excellent job done with regards to that engagement activities we started in December and so it's always difficult to gather people when they're the holidays uh you've got to work around vacations and holiday planning Etc uh but we started December 8th and concluded January 12th and we talked with teachers and employees and students and parents and Community leaders and community members to get this data bless you and get this feedback so not including duplications and I need to just say that typically the duplications are minimal uh some people who come to a focus group and then also do the survey uh but that's usually not a large number and it was not in the case um here as well
015there were approximately 890 participants CommunityWide now for a district this size it's not quite where we would like for it to be uh it's representative uh but you're a large district and so again um we took the information that we received your percentage of participants in the survey was on the low decent end uh we were we were hoping for a thousand uh we tried to push a thousand we ended up with 800 and again 101 of those were uh those who responded to the survey in Spanish and I have to tell you that in districts uh your size or larger or even smaller we rarely get that many responses in Spanish um and so that that's a real plus relative to that information that we received question so far no an you want to
016add anything okay there were four key questions that we asked all participants and that were really the basis of the survey what do you see as the strengths of East aora School District what do you see as the greatest challenges facing eoy school district and again those two things are really important because applicants look at that they look at those components to say how does that match who I am or what experiences I have or what you know expertise I can bring to the FL by looking at just those two components we usually get asked by candidates if they get to the point where they're interview tell us about the board uh and so again having an opportunity to have that kind of of concrete information coming from the community plus the board's responses and
017reactions again give your incoming C superintendent a a good opportunity to know what they're walking into the next are what qualities and characteristics will the next superintendent need to possess and to demonstrate what's really interesting about this is the same shoe does not fit every foot there are people who are great superintendents out there but they may not me be what you need and that's why it's important to identify those skill sets and characteristics you may have someone that's a super duper person relative to finances and uh Gathering grants well you guys are pretty okay in that that Arena so yes you want somebody with some experience there but that doesn't have to necessarily be the top of the the Heap in terms of skill sets and characteristics um so again that allows us to
018Market your school district and then provide an opportunity to to find the best fit and then finally what are other factors the board should consider when reviewing candidates and there's usually always a 50-50 split but you want us want people to have an opportunity to respond to whether that person should have a doctorate again it's a balance some people say a doctorate is important because you have staff who have doctorates and so you want someone who they feel like you know is on their their level others say it's experience experience experience uh there are PE plenty of people out there who have great experiences who who are all but the dissertation and so they've done all the classwork and done all the homework and just didn't get to the dissertation so we asked that as
019one of those other questions another question do they have to be a seated superintendent there are many many um administrators out there who do superintendent work and don't have the title and so again that gives us an opport Unity to determine whether our applicants and you're really actually looking for someone that has superintendent experience or just has a superintendent title and then finally um should the um individual have to live in the district some school districts actually have it as a part of the board policy that the person needs to live in the district again that's something that we need to share with the applicants so that they'll know what their uh options are relative to that piece we recognize that it's very important for them to be connected to the community but that can
020be done in various ways but again you get your um your your constituents a chance to have a little bit input relative to that piece so those are some of the other kinds of things that we ask people to respond to whether they were uh being interviewed such as you the board or whether they were in the focus groups or whether they did the survey so that we could gather this data and have both quanti ative and qualitative data to come up with some some focal points some things where there seemed to be some agreement everybody didn't agree on everything and everybody had an opportunity uh to share what they wanted to share but we did advise that the uh their information was Anonymous we would group it according to groups but no individuals names
021were mentioned even at even at the board level uh and we just collected that data and actually wrote what people had to say uh and then did a statistical analysis which is called a frequency distribution process to look at the result survey results and what our notes had to say from the um communication that we had in person an so we talked about the fact that we had meetings uh there were in formal we did them in group uh we did some introduction we gave them an opportunity to understand the process continue to hammer home you don't get to vote um because that sometimes is is a major issue in school districts where community members think that they ought to have a say so uh and that's going to come up again when you have
022your discussion about uh how you're going to proceed once you get candidates that you've identified what kind of community engagement you will be um utilizing in order when you get to get down to that level comments that were frequently me mentioned or particularly relevant and insightful were Collective and that's where that frequency distribution comes in so when you had a number of people that said uh communication communication communication some were specific about what they meant others were just saying communication could be improved by the same token diversity was something that came up frequently the diverse population of your community and what a joy that is and what a plus that is and so that's kind of how that uh unfolded and then we listed The prominent responses in the report and one of the things
023that we found over the years is that when community members feel like they've been heard and they can actually see some of their language uh in a report then you don't continue to get that push back and that feedback that says you didn't listen to me you didn't listen to us here it is we've said it we've now plucked out those pieces that um that meet kind of a a median and now we're going to move on so you can't say you did you weren't heard uh and so that was that's one of the other components in terms of the success of community engagement activities as I said we wish we had had more participants more participants in the Forum um but you got what you got and we reported it and now again we
024can move on from there people can say if stepped up then they were heard an and again that the notion of what happened with your survey uh as I said we were hoping for a th but 800 out of that is not a bad you know it's not a going so uh we were we were pretty that so when we looked at the survey results remember You' got the survey results and you have the uh qualitative results here are some of the strengths that uh came out of the survey both and we combine both the the uh Latino responses the Spanish responses and the English responses to say culture and a supportive Community excellent teachers and the resources and Technology those were considered strengths and what you you will see in the report itself is
025there really 10 we took the top 10 uh of those uh strengths that were listed in in all of those formats but here were the ones that were highlighted in the survey where you can actually see the data uh the top three challenges culture and supportive Community excellent teachers available resources and technology sometimes you get some of the things that are positive and some of those same things you feel people feel like they're they're good but they to be worked on some more uh top three skills needed in the next superintendent communication leadership and organizational skills interpersonal skills and again uh when you have applicants and you're looking at their experience and what they're bringing um to the district you want to make sure that they can demonstrate good communication skills what have they done
026to demonstrate their lead leadership and organizational skills and their interpersonal skills so it it forces us to take a look at what they're saying that they've done and to examine it and does that meet what you're looking for at the level in which you like to have it and then finally the three top three characteristics Community commitment integrity and trust and a good decision maker and again you want candidates who are going to come in and be able to show and and share how they rank in these particular areas and okay so remember I said there were 10 uh We've called them out we did gave you five 10 they are not in any kind of chronological or importance in order they're just listed uh the top 10 that that came out of both the
027um survey and the the groups I've already shared with you the three that came out of the survey but again the excellent teachers and staff the supportive diverse Community the financial management we heard a lot about your fiscal management and Technology activities and programs that support students um again Tech those technology activities curriculum education programs people were pretty were proud of that um attracting and maintaining highly qualified teachers student achievement educational programs options and curriculum your climate and culture and high levels of community engagement questions challenges again we have some of those that are crossover uh attracting and maintaining highly qualified teachers the student achievement um activities educational programs and option and curriculum climate and culture and high levels of community engagement person oh we lost you well let me give you an example one
028of the things they talked about were great the great programs at the at the high school level and the Middle School level at the elementary level they felt that some more could be done for elementary students that's the dichotomy so that um a trust factor and then special education programs and delivery and this is typically one that comes in a district special education uh is an entity in and of itself I have yet to go into a school district out of the 50 years that I've been in education where special Ed was considered solid and everything was going well yet to do that U my daughter is a special ed supervisor and she's been in a couple of districts and it's always the same the programs and the delivery the programs and the delivery so
029you're not unique uh in that as as one of the challenges or concerns other considerations remember that set that fourth set that I said that people thought that the board uh should consider uh EXP erence in strategic planning um having worked in a similar siiz District the teaching experience often times we will have people that respond that say you know they they have to have been a classroom teacher but also a principal also a central office for me the teaching experience stood out um because sometimes people are just kind of they won't start teaching experience they'll they'll say yeah they should have probably had some teaching experience but it's not been highlighted as it was uh in in this particular case has served in administrative roles uh principal district office staff Etc and I have
030to use myself as an example I was a classroom teacher I thought taught everything from kindergarten through seventh grade over a number of years went to central office curriculum coordinator director of curriculum assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction I never was a principal but I had to supervise the Middle School principles so I was in their buildings a lot uh and learned a lot having to work and supervise with them but then having again the district office uh uh experience and then moving into the superintendency and I used to tease one of my colleagues as a matter of fact one of the members of our board the president of our board that I did not want to be a superintendent when I grew up I loved being assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction because I
031was in the classroom I was with the teachers and the superintendent has a whole different role uh to play and I I was fortunate in that I could go to a district where I could do both uh because it was it was a tiny District uh has aen track record of success in schools and districts people will come in and tell you a whole lot of stuff uh one of the things that we do is we go back and verify uh I started this program in reading and the scores were off the chart okay well let's take a look at that show us the data let us talk to colleagues uh who are familiar with your District did that really happen and so again it's asking people to prove what they say uh and be
032able to come with to you with some data uh and with some information that supports what they feel is their success uh interestingly enough like I said this one is always a 5050 a doctorate would be nice since many of the staff have the degree but not required uh and must come with experience and so again that becomes a negotiable in terms of that particular piece and the Board needs to have an open mind um and that you can take that any kind of way that you want to in terms of however that comment uh came to be the person does not need to live in the community but must maintain direct ties here and shouldn't be too far away so you don't want somebody necessarily uh working here and living in Indiana uh because
033just the travel time how do you get to participate in activities uh and be on campus and be visible if it takes you you know an hour and a half two hours to get from work to home Okay uh the Board needs to listen closely to the candidates descriptions you are now going to be listening for those keywords those those things that then match what you think should be happening in your district and you want to have candidates that can come in and and share with you that uh speaking Spanish is not required but it would be an asset uh one of the things that happens is there are people who are not by lingual but speak Spanish uh and so you want to take that into consideration as well as well as having staff
034that can support the individual um because they need to understand the importance of the that language in this community does not need to be a seated superintendent we kind of already talked about that they have administrative credentials and experience and most of the time they have superintendent level experience so after we got all of this information and we drafted this description We Believe that most of the participants um in the next superintendent from the characteristics and skill sets we have heard will be what we are going to be looking for on your behalf we'll present this profile to the board as a complete listing and no recognizing that again you may want to Wordsmith it or have some minor modifications or add or take away something and so that's why it's really considered a draft
035but overall if the board approves the profile tonight we then start because we're already we already how many applicants an and so by by having that kind of settled then we can begin that screening process right now we haven't begun screening we're just taking who's ever applied and touching people on the shoulder but once we have sort of solid in our mind what you're looking for that enables us to start the screening process so in a couple of weeks time we're not trying to interview 30 people okay so um again the profile becomes the blueprint we also then take this profile to help develop interview questions uh and so that it remains focused we develop interview questions that bwp will uh respond to we will be um meeting and reviewing applications uh at the deadline
036and then from that we will individually select about 10 8 to 10 individuals that we think meet the profile so we do that on an individual basis then we get together as a team and we hash through all of those applications again and then we look at who our top 10 are and we come up with a top 10 that the team can then agree on those candidates are then invited in for an interview uh we do Zoom interviews because it really equalizes the playing field nobody's having to fly in or take the train in or as I did one year take the Mega Bus uh and everybody has an equal opportunity to show us that they meet that criteria identified in the leadership profile from that we select the and and while we have
037that 10 we start to do that background check we start to again talk to people once we identify the top we want to say four to six that we think really meet at at least an 80% level that leadership profile then we start digging uh we do U media search we start calling people that we know who know them or who know somebody who knows them to verify so that when we come to you as uh to to present uh to the board here are the top people that we think meet your leadership profile again at about an 80% level and here's why and so we go through that whole process of actually presenting the candidates because reading stuff from an application doesn't necessarily give you all of the information it really becomes down to
038talking to or listening to that individual person and putting that together with what you see on paper and then knowing what you know about your district and looking at that leadership profile and so it becomes a you know a really concrete process in terms of our coming to you the other thing that happens when we come to do the presentation of the Slate which is what we call it is we do an inservice we teach you and help you develop your questions the protocol and process so that the interviews are fair to everyone um help you design who's going to ask what when how what that should look like one of the key things that's going to have to happen immediately is you're going to have to determine what your schedule looks like what your
039calendar will be for conducting those interviews because it should be where everyone is present that everyone is present for each of the interviews uh and when we present the four to six you get to decide whether you want all four you you know you're you're accepting our recommendation with all four or all six and G to interview all of them or if there's one that based on our presentation you're not really sure that they're going to meet the need but we recommend that you accept those because we've done this thorough background and screening uh based on the leadership profile so that's then what happens and once we finish with that training you're set to go you're set to conduct those one-on-one interviews with uh the staff we recommend that that first round of interviews again
040be done via Zoom because we expect that you will have applicants who are not from Illinois uh from across we have people from across the um the country when we present that we are also presenting a final report and that final report kind of Recaps what we did with this part but it really uh hones it down to here's what we learned um about the candidates we do not let me repeat that we do not give the list of the applicants we give the list of the people that we are recommending the r remainder of their um uh Personnel information remains confidential we then send to the board after we've done this presentation we will do what I call it one pager where we have a one-page description which could later be used to to
041um introduce the person to the community um but we give you a one pager when we're summarizing and presenting the candidate and then helping you establish that um interview schedule and then we send you all of their personnel records via a system of using a secure Dropbox so that you have everything that we had about the candidates that you're are now going to interview it protects the cand who appli it protects those applicants and it protects you and that then you it we tell you you can't download the information you can't copy it so you can't give it out and share it because then that puts you in a very lious position legally with regards to Personnel files so you have that information you have your your uh protocol for conducting interviews you screen those
042applicants down from the four or six to your final two or three then there's a second round of interviews again we will have prepared you for your second round of questions uh when we did that first uh training session you'll have two sets of questions one for first interviews and one for second interviews and then you will interview the candidates the second time around and from that we hope that you uh select uh by hopefully we'd like to really have majority you know uh unanimous vote and decision on that individual occasionally it doesn't happen but 90% of the time 95 % of the time it's a un vote that's kind of how the system and the process works based on having developed this leadership profile and and you're you're breaking up off and on okay
043well one of the things uh we talk about in that training is we talk about decision making and how you can reach consensus and we'll give you some strategies and some skills for doing that as a part of the training you can choose to use them or not but you will be prep prepared if you need to have those strategies uh to be able to do that and so we think that that's an important aspect of everybody coming together Focus using the leadership profile that will get you the kind of person that you want to have now I also have to say that if when we go through these 30 plus applicants we don't see anybody that comes close to your leadership profile we will come back to you and say we don't see anybody
044that meets what you need when you have 30 that's going to be kind of probably not going to happen but there have been occasions when we've had to come back to a district and say we haven't found anyone that meets the profile at this level uh and so we need to extend the application deadline we need to add some other dimensions you know then we talk about how to build that up and again normally that doesn't happen but you need to know that we're not just going to bring you anybody we're going to bring you people that we think will be a good fit and match for the district so here's the good part the leadership profile a person who is a good commun communicator who work with all segments of the district and the
045community real real solid real easy an individual possessing good and strong leadership interpersonal and organizational skills and if you remember from the survey that was one of the high U ranking comments that came out of the survey someone who has excellent personnel and management skills and who is a who is a lead learner for administrators and staff to follow so you don't want somebody that's just going to come in and sit down they're going to come in and actually be moving forward um a professional who has a good handle on financial operations and ways to get funding your funding structure is pretty solid but we all know that that can change in the blink of an eye given state of Illinois given the state of the nation uh and given what happens with money and
046finances and taxes and all of those things so you want somebody who has that skill set that may not be the most critical skill set that they need to have um a leader who demonstrates a commitment to the community and again that goes back to whether they need to live here or not but the the demonstrating a commitment to the community means you need to be out and about you need to be at meetings and talking to people and having coffees and other strategy IES U that demonstrate that you are committed and that this is not just a drive-thru stop by on my way career move that is going to be someone who is going to be dedicated um to you and to the district a collaborative team Builder who is child centered I can't
047emphasize that enough if we don't have someone who really focuses on the kids why are we doing this uh the kids are the center that's what this is about uh and set a clear vision of success on both a micro and a macro level I was looking at the award that you guys just received that those things are important and you need to celebrate that because those kids are going to be the ones who are going to be taking care of you because I'm already retired but you and your retirement and so you want them to have all the skill sets and and all of the um uh emphasis of things learning that they need to have and one of the things that I always emphasize in this is we have to stop being so
048insular in terms of being Americans because there's a whole world out there and so we want kids to have Global thinking and Global processes and not just about Good Old USA um a person who will build trust has Integrity a great work ethic and someone who combines District initiatives into a comprehensive vision and so again that's that's a mouthful but if you break it down it really is somebody who will work hard knows they need to work hard and comes with a vision and helps you deliver that Vision helps you um announce that Vision helps the community recognize that vision and everybody's on board holding hands you know they're outliers but for the most part centrically people will be on board with that I love this phrase an audacious leader who is not afraid to
049make a decision and stand by it and who can provide the rationale for decisions that are being made made uh and we know that sometimes there's some differences between what the community wants what the board wants what the individual superintendent will see so you need to have somebody who will say well we're not going to do X Y and Z because this is how it impacts students or we're going to try this because this is what's going to be good for our students and so being able to take that on uh will be an important characteristic someone who is a good listener and demonstrates empathy and understanding of the issues of a diverse community and then an individual who has worked in a diverse setting and has person has a personality that stands strong in
050the face of challenges as I said there are some individuals who have done a great job in the communities that they've served but they haven't necessarily been Multicultural uh in the scope of that particular district and I think that that's an important um milestone for people to have coming into a District like East aora in terms of what your student population looks like so questions questions on the profile obviously people are coming from out of state you want them to Comm their Community not just to our right well if they're coming here you want them you want them have demonstrated that they have had a commitment to the community again a lot of that really means how involved were they how engaged were they in that Community because that's what you want for yourself um
051when I was superintendent in Glen viw Northbrook I didn't live there you know I had to travel there but I was there for everything I was on the rotary I was in this I was in that so all of those components indicated my commitment to the community even though I didn't live there and I had to travel 20 minutes uh 25 minutes to get there but those are the kinds of things you're looking for in terms of that commitment being engaged being involved being a listener uh one of the interesting things that I did was I decided I wanted to hear what people had to say and so I had our Communications Department arranged to have some in-house coffees in various neighborhoods and then I asked people to invite their neighbors and so I would
052go and sit in their living room or in their dining room or in their kitchen and they would have six or seven or eight of their neighbors come and we would talk about what was happening in education and what was on their mind so one Friday night I was in a parents home thinking I'm having a great time talking to these parents with little glass of Rosé uh and chatting about the good things and things that we need to work on in our district because I'm committed to trying to make sure that our kids are getting the best educ and going straight to the the community going within the community on a you know small scale basis 10 or 12 people at a time I did that over like four months um gave me much
053more of a of an Insight in terms of where people were so it's that kind of thinking I mean that was a you know an example but you want someone that's going to come in and demonstrate that they have a commitment by virtue of the things that they've done e the the other piece is the recognition that people recognize who the superintendent is no matter how large the district is uh and talking talking with some of your students uh a couple of them indicated that at one point they didn't know who the superintendent was they had never seen them didn't know who they were and it's like and the others would said oh no you know I saw them once or I saw them you know it's someplace and again so for students that connection
054is important that commitment is important so my own story about that is I'm in the shopping mall in the summertime and one of my students comes up and has their cousin with them and say this is our school superintendent Dr Hill and I was so pleased that the student introduced me knew who I was and introduced me to a family member proudly that they knew the superintendent and you know had that connection so those are some of the kinds of things that you want to look for and hear about uh as you're interviewing the um the applicants and the candidates I just have a a procedural question once we get to the point where we have to interview the candidates is that something I mean you mentioned that it's on Zoom is that still something
055that's executive session or is that something like a session or like today it's executive session ex session y yeah right correct me if I'm not wrong this is pretty much our last public meeting and then the rest will be pretty much executive yeah and you will decide how you know how you're going to then approach the public in terms of what your final decision is yeah okay um yeah we'll be we'll be helping you uh navigate that and and the components of that one of the things that we find um and I probably have gotten in trouble in a couple of States uh and school districts pushing back is that people want to know well who all applied what's their names because they want to then go and do their own research and Google search
056that's a no um it it minimizes your pool and I ask people to put themselves in that position where somebody has their name they don't even they haven't even decided whether they're going to apply they just kind of indicated and now you have people Googling and calling and and and all of that and in a couple of instances uh we've had people who were thinking about applying somebody got their name they blasted it all over the news and the person got in trouble because within their community and they weren't even one of the final candidates yet uh they were just thinking about it but was like you know a referendum was coming up well why should we vote for the referendum when this person doesn't you know think enough of us to stay here on
057the in the job I mean that's some of the kind of thinking that goes on so we keep that all inhouse and you will find that you will have candidates that will be one of the first things that they ask is what's the confidential nature and when they get to the point where you're they're one of your finalist semi finalist or your finalist then the expectations that they may tell their their superintendent or they may tell their school board or whoever needs to be notified that they are in consideration for this but that usually is down to your final two or your final three because you don't want to disrupt anyone else's career uh by virtue of people wanting to have that information and like I said I've pushed a lot of buttons in terms
058of people why can't we know well why do you need to know is okay so this is what it looks like we're doing the uh under specification which is one of our components for this month we're asking you to approve the leadership profile at least in the broad context and again if you want to Wordsmith some of the pieces that's fine but overall the context of that uh report and dependencies made available to the public you get to determine how much of that if any of that at least the primary part of the report you may want to share with the community again you want um to have this as a transparent process in terms of this is what we heard this is what was reported we're moving on um so that's that's all being
059done at this point from January 31st when the applications um conclude again bwp will be taking over there doing that screening uh doing the followup in terms of uh reference checks Etc and preparing the Slate of candidates and then preparing uh what I call interview protocol for the board and then as a part of that having you um select the candidates again that we recommend now you may have a candidate that you're recommending that we don't recommend uh that's not wasn't a part of our pool for whatever reason you still have the option of including that candidate as a part of interviews what happens with bwp is then we don't guarantee if you select that candidate um that we will conduct a search if that doesn't work out because one of our guarantees is that
060whoever you hire um if they come in for and they're solid for two years then you're good if if after two years it doesn't work we redo the search without consultant cost we just do it for um administrative cost so again we're we're backing those candidates that we're recommending to you but know that there is an option for not having U having a candidate that we did not recommend then February March the board conducts its first round of interviews so again we're looking for dates in February uh we recommend that you set aside that you not try to interview more than two candidates a night uh it gets confusing it's hard so if you have six candidates you're looking for three nights within a week you don't want that spread out too far that you
061can interview those candidates um then after you after that again we'll give you some strategies and uh a mechanism we're going to give you some rubrics and some other information during that training that you can use to help you screen down from that first set of interviews selecting semifinalists uh those again people now you want to do some more in-depth discussion and questioning of um and then selecting your finalist negotiating contracts we assist you in that we will provide you with um what the candidates say that they're interested in in terms of contracts so that you're not going into it blind uh not knowing what people are what they expectations are and then you negotiate from there uh and so we think that that really cuts down the amount of time that it takes for
062negotiations because everybody's coming to the table already with what with what they're considering for that particular position and then uh we talk with you and help you determine how you're going to introduce a new superintendent to the community and the date that that's going to happen and then the new superintendent begins on or before July 1st so that's the process okay questions if if Dr nurel isn't she leaving July 1 wouldn't we want and she's leaving July 1 wouldn't we want the person to start before that so there's some overl up or not well I think you know HED by March yeah they will have their that transition with each other yeah MH okay other question I have a actually to build that um does the current superintendent have any role in this process prior
063to the transition at all no there there's no okay unless they took the survey right right I just want to be but we didn't we didn't have any interview or focus group discussions with the current superintendent so the survey would have been their opportunity much like the rest of the community okay thoughts comments questions okay so so we're back to what do you think about the profile yeah I think it's broad enough that uh we can get a variety of individual who may be interested in working for the district um it's not as specific that I had hoped it wouldn't be but I like it Broad so candidates would not steer away from that applying for the job for the opportunity well you know I think it is very broad so I think you know
064it'll it should be able to attract a lot of candidates I think the proofs in the pudding you know when you go and you know start interviewing them and seeing how they actually fit that type of thing yeah so we're starting off with about 30 people already one of the things that then we do put on on our website is the profile you don't put all the rest of the report on it but the profile so the candidates can go and look and see because then they may determine that they want to withdraw because they don't match what the profile says or they may determine that they're going to complete their application because they've got some things going on and can come in and feel like they would be a good fit and so it
065really does allow us to have that initial screening um of the 30 candidates I suspect we're probably going to be maybe have 30 35 and maybe five will drop off so I think we're still going to be around that 30 when we get ready to to do our screening uh process um uh and you just need to know that that's a pretty good number that's a pretty significant number of applicants uh for this position you're a um medium-sized large District uh as opposed to you know something like Chicago uh which we did the search for uh that has 34 4,000 kids uh and so you have you've got a good set of people out there who have an interest in and they've been in districts either in similar size or just a little bit smaller
066and they're looking to take on more looking to take on more of a challenge so the fact that you know I've done searches where we only had 20 C uh applicants and by the time we screened them down to that 10 uh we had lost half the people coming down from 30 um it's going to be a challenge for us and it's going to be a challenge for you we want for you to struggle we want for you to struggle we want to give you such outstanding candidates that you're going to struggle to find the one that best from your perspective meets that leadership profile and we're going to help you be able to filter that out um and again that's one the reasons why we don't list the profile uh components in any kind
067of Chron chronological order because you need to determine of those things you know what you're looking for in terms of individual candidates rather than they have to have number one number two number three number four and five if they have six out of 10 seven out of 10 where they are solid and again we can provide some evidence then they're somebody worth considering if they only have three no not so much all righty okay so at this time would you like us to if everybody's happy with the profile which you i' like to call a motion okay yeah I I will make the motion that we move forward with the profile that the leadership profile that was presented to us this evening okay so it is motion to approved the superintendent leadership profile secretary call
068the rooll second second oh we got a second okay call the rooll L yes Schubert Olivas yes Johnson yes sentes yes gaspie yes okay thank you so much we pick the dates for sorry question do we pick the DAT for interview now or is that something that we do later e no and you need to know that that's going to be about a twoh hour s it's about two hour two and a half hour session we use probably an hour and 45 minutes of that to do the training and then the rest of that part to actually do the candidate presentation well guess we can all look at our calendars and pick it at the next board meeting then okay okay okay all right so I think we're motion to adjourn some move second secretary
069called the RO Olivas yes sentes Schubert gpie yes Johnson yes L yes thank you thank you thank you thank you everybody stay warm thank you let me introduce Dr Hector oh hi Hector just before you leave I apologize but it's a pleasure to meet you thank you very much for the information you provided and uh we're really excited about uh about the work so it's a pleasure meeting you tonight I'm happy there see you sure sure um seems like just yesterday but uh this is my 32nd year in education started off as a teacher moved through the ranks All In the western suburbs so I'm very familiar with uh with your community I was the recent superintendent in PLO not too far away from here and I'm the current superintendent in Hinsdale District 181 so
070it truly is a pleasure to be here and uh thank you again for for this opportunity all right pleasure meeting you want