001call the meeting to order let's stand for the pledge please the flag's over there the north corner I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you we'll have attendance now please yep uh president schaer here vice president Dr ree present secretary Summers here treasury hanser present and trusty mcdna here trusty Schultz here and trusty Whitney here all present okay changes to the board agenda there are none um schedule public comment for agenda items only we received one request by Marissa Prince so I'd like to invite you up to talk now you'll have your three minutes just like the unscheduled you'll have to use the table well it's whatever you're more comfortable
002with okay so um I wanted to start by um thanking Dr marovich for carrying us through to this um superintendent search that'll begin tonight by choosing a search firm and express my optimism for the future of the district because I feel that our wonderful students and staff will persist in their growth and learning um sort of independent of who our superintendent ends up being but of course we need a qualified strong superintendent so I listed a few questions that I would expect to see asked of these three firms number one have you read the guidepost report the recent guidepost report and what are the key takeaways for you as it relates to this search number two do you have experience finding a new leader for a district recovering from a crisis and if so please
003describe it number three we have a former board president and Treasurer who resigned and have been outspoken that Administration lied to them and they were threatened by lawyers that exposing the truth would bankrupt our district do you plan to be honest with candidates that you are recruiting about this shameful history here number four please describe your plans to engage students staff parents and the community in this process and ensure that the board will not once again choose someone who is unfortunately unable to endure the challenges of this position due to their proximity to the awful events that happened here and number five are you familiar with the district's three threee plan and are you prepared to have candidates propose any changes to it so um those are just my suggestions of things that I think
004are important as we um interview these three firms tonight and I encourage you to choose the very best firm even if they're the most expensive um because I think this is super important for us and our children and our staff um moving forward in the next few years thank you [Applause] okay thank you Marissa um moving right into the superintendent search firm interviews um so our first one is with mli the Michigan Leadership Institute do we just set a timer or okay okay John you want to come come on up or introduce yourself or sure yep good evening evening I'm John sver and I'm representing the Michigan Leadership Institute uh this is my colleague Tim Stein and we will kind of introduce one another just briefly give a little bit of background so uh both
005longtime Educators uh I've done just about everything in a school district over the course of years teacher counsel or principal Central administrator superintendent in two separate districts Maryville schools in St Clair County uh relatively small district and the Waterford School District here in Oakland County pretty large District um since retirement which is kind of a semi-retirement uh I have not only been working for the Michigan Leadership Institute have taken on numerous interim roles during that time too which include uh being the interim superintendent in Birmingham schools and I am currently serving as the interim superintendent in the Rochester schools as well um so I will be doing double duty if uh if I'm fortunate enough to be granted the opportunity to assist you but as part of the reason that we're um working together on
006this because any conflicts that I may have um will be mitigated by Tim's involvement good good evening my name's Tim Stein I'm the regional president from Central uh portion of the state if you would uh draw a line from laning to Sagen and then uh across to the thumb you'd see my region um I'm a uh have done everything very similar to John um I began my career as a teacher in the Fenton district and uh early on became a principal in the grant blank District um my wife and I lived in Flushing and raising our children and the opportunity arose in in Flushing to become a principal and from that principal ship I became assistant superintendent and then the last 10 years of my 33-year career I was superintendent in the Flushing Community School
007so um you know when I got the call from John uh you know asking if if I could provide some support on this um uh worthwhile task I I uh gladly accept it and be very willing to participate in the process so all right so as I dive into our PowerPoint presentation I'll just add that I have been uh with mli since 2015 I've been involved in over 30 uh searches with districts throughout Southeast Michigan during that time um and have had some experience with Oxford schools and would uh welcome the opportunity to come back and and assist further so uh sample search steps and timeline uh we look at this generally as being about a 14- week process what we would do is come in with a draft timeline for you and we would
008work with the board so we would modify it to meet your needs if there was a need to go a little bit more quickly we could modify to do that if you wanted to go a little bit more slowly we could do that as well but ballpark generally this is what it's going to look like we start with a meeting with the board just to review the process overall except parameters come to agreement on some basis um steps that we're going to be taking together weeks two to three uh we meet with stakeholder groups we we do this two different ways we want to gather feedback from stakeholder groups um to help form primarily the candidate profile what are the key characteristics that you're looking for in your next superintendent uh we can do that
009and typically do that in two different ways one through a survey where we give anybody who would like to the opportunity to respond electronically but we also like to be on site and have opportunities to meet with folks too and take their feedback face to face we put all those results together and look at the most common responses to then form that candidate profile which ultimately though the board has final say on and once that's put together and that's cobbled together as part of the um position announcement that we're going to post we would share that with the board you would get give have the opportunity to provide us feedback on that before we were to go ahead and post so that process is going to take uh roughly a couple of weeks um once
010we're ready to post that position we're looking at about a 4 to 8 week uh timeline there uh we post that on numerous professional sites throughout the state of Michigan um and uh there's a national reach too uh there is an additional charge that we'll get to if you want to specifically post on National sites uh that is simply to cover the cost of of what it costs us to post that's not a profit making Venture for us but it's just to enable us to do that that for you um our experience is though that we do typically attract some out of state candidates just by the the posting that we naturally do um we during the time the applications are coming in we're reviewing those as they come we have the opportunity to follow
011up and ask questions of the candidates um start doing a little bit of background research on them as well so uh you don't see those due to confidentiality but we do and so we stay on top of that um during that time we also are doing recruitment um that's especially important these days because quite honestly the candidate pools for superintendencies are not as deep as they once were um so it takes a little bit more work on our part we've got to be really proactive in that way um part of that job too is not just to reach out to anybody to try to get anybody or or anyone to apply um we know the district we get to know the district that much better through the first part of this process and so so
012the people that we reach out to are those that we feel like have the requisite skills and experiences that they may well meet your candidate profile um and that they could be potentially a really good fit for Oxford schools so um week's 9 to 11 we would come together with the board the one time in the process that we go into close session and do anything out of the public eye the only time is when we present uh the applicants to you candidates on the applic ations can check a box to indicate that they would like their application to stay confidential and virtually everyone does so 99.9% of the candidates I think checked that box so for the open meetings act that permits you to meet and review those applications in close session to preserve
013the candidates confidentiality we don't hold any of those back you're going to see anybody and everybody who applies we try to help you along the way we don't tell you who to choose to interview but we do break the candidates down into categories to try to make it a little bit more efficient for you um we have a top tier of candidates who we think closely match your candidate profile and have uh the most uh relevant experience the second tier of candidates are those that do meet the qualifications and have some uh experiences that are relevant as well maybe not to the level of the first tier but still people that you may want to consider the third tier are those that are either unqualified or that we think that they're may be reasons that
014uh there's there's cause for concern but even having said that you're going to see all of them and you have the opportunity to choose any of those candidates any of the applicants that you would like to to interview but you don't do that in close session in close session you cannot deliberate so you're going to come back out into open I won't get into too much detail but you do it in a way that still preserves the candidate confidentiality until you have identified specifically here are the candidates that we're going to interview then we announce those names publicly and we talk further on that night about what comes next specifically in particular we're focusing then on first round interviews and preparing for that so um we then actually start pretty quickly uh the candidate interviews
015once we have that meeting normally we're uh fairly soon thereafter within a week or so we're bringing the candidates in and starting those interviews um interviews are all public and uh we do uh provide an opportunity for members of the community who are watching the interviews to provide feedback for your benefit you're going to see all of that feedback so that you can get a pulse on what your constituents are thinking about what they're seeing and hearing of these applicants you're the ones making the decision and you can't abdicate that responsibility but it's still important to know how others are seeing these candidates and know what they think so that as you're making decisions you can take that into account um as you make the big decision um during this time now we are starting
016formal reference checks we cannot do that until after you pick the candidates again because they have requested confidentiality we're doing kind of rough background checks including simple Google searches but that's where our networking really comes into play frankly we're very likely going to know quite a few of the candidates who apply here and we may well have vetted these folks previously um those that we haven't though through our Network we're able to learn some things about them that could be beneficial to you so when we do go to close session I'll backtrack a little bit we are sharing anything and everything we know about these candidates with you that time now that you've picked the candidates we can go ahead and start the formal reference checks during which time we not only um call the
017folks that they have listed as references but we go well beyond that and call people who we think will know these candidates and can share helpful information about them so you're going to then pick finalists uh from among those who interview at the beginning typically it's four to six candidates not always always but almost always it falls within that range there's not a necessarily a minimum or maximum but that tends to be where it falls once you go through first round interviews ours tend to be a little bit more robust than other firms we schedule 90 minutes for first round interviews uh because of that typically we do no more than two per night um because if you get to three you're going to be here for a long time and uh attention can start
018to WAN a little bit once you get to the third candidate so I recom recommendation is that you stick to two you can tell us if you want to do otherwise um if you have then six candidates let's say you're looking at three nights of interviews we recommend although we'll talk about this that you don't on the third night break and come back and make a decision on finalists we think it's better that you have the chance to walk away from the table think about the experience reflect you have a chance to go back and review the application materials that you will have in hand that they've submitted you'll have the opportunity to review additional materials that they are very likely to hand you when they come in for the interview that'll give you ample
019opportunity too if you haven't been able to get through all of them to look through all of the feedback forms that you've receiv received from your constituents as well so that you can really think about that decision come back together the next night and then we'll go through a process where you're going to make a selection to get down to final candidates again we don't tell you that there has to be a minimum or Max maximum um but it the ideal number of finalists tends to be two if you can find two from that group wonderful uh sometimes the question is what if there's only one that we want to advance then that's what you do which doesn't mean you've already selected your superintendent you finish the process and you still have two choices left
020then it's either this is the person that we're hiring or we haven't yet found the right person and we need to keep looking if you think there are three people who are so close that you can't differentiate yet and you need to get a closer look and you feel like you need to bring three back you can do that all right so I want to be clear on that you have that choice so those folks would come back the following week um they would conduct a second round interview with you and at that time we also include a presentation on a topic of your choosing um it could be on literally anything we've seen districts ask candidates to present their 90day plan of Entry uh depending on issues in the district it may be something
021that you just feel is highly relevant where it's an opportunity for you versus hearing a response to a specific interview question where typically candidates are giving roughly a three to four minute response ballpark um you know up to a 20 minute uh presentation they can go far more in depth on a topic so partially it's about the content partially it's about their presentation skills because as you know for a superintendent that's critically important as well so you get a chance to kind of see them in action in that way and then follow up with additional questions for the candidates um with you'll have a lot of input in those interview questions by the way for both rounds we we provide a bank of questions for you to choose from typically in the first round boards
022rely more so on that bank of questions to select questions but when you get to the second round based on what you've seen and heard of those candidates you're you have the opportunity to get more specific um and ask questions that are really more relevant for the those particular finalists and so you we'll be looking to you to provide input for those as well so you'll have that chance for those finalists to conduct those interviews see the presentation but during the course of those days we separate those you could obviously do two interviews on one night but we normally will separate them and have you do those on two separate days because we have the candidates come into the district earlier in the day spend time in the district interacting with stakeholders and having uh
023those folks have a chance to ask questions um when the question is which stakeholder groups normally that is typically the same types of groups we're collecting feedback from upfront we want to hear from your parents we want to hear from your community members we want to hear from your staff members even students typically will focus more so on high school students and they can be very insightful in terms of what they provide um even upfront when we're developing the candidate profile but also when they have this opportunity then to interact with your finalists they asked some amazing questions there are times honestly that I think the kids questions surpass those of the adults so we like to include them as well we'll also take some direction from you as we're meeting and talking about the
024process in terms of particular groups that you would like to include if if Beyond those kind of broad groups there are others that you might want to be sure to have present both at the beginning for the candidate profile and then to interact with the finalist as well you certainly can provide that kind of guidance to us we'll work together on that uh when those stakeholder groups are meeting with the final candidates uh and even upfront we ask board members not to be present the presence of board members can inhibit people's responses when we're meeting with other groups too same with administrators we would uh separately meet with administrators to give them an opportunity to provide feedback we don't have administrators present at the other meetings for the same reason we want people to just
025be able to be free to say whatever they need to um but because you're not present for the interactions they have with the finalists it's really critical now that we get feedback from those participants that we can give back to you so we're pretty pushy about that at that time we'll have forms on hand that we're placing in people's hands or what we've done before too depending on your preference we can use a QR code so that the the responses come in electronically which we can share with you that way either way as people walk in we're placing those things in their hands uh if it's a paper form we're collecting them before they leave and then copying those for each of you if it's a QR code obviously we'll have those responses collected and
026again we'll make sure to give those to you so that you can consider those as you make your decision so there are opportunities which are essential for the stakeholders in the district to have input in this process and we do I know you do too strongly encourage people to to be highly engaged and and to be present and to use their voice uh to be part of that process and part of that decision- making although again I want to come back to uh It ultimately is your call and that's important for you to recognize because you're seeing and hearing information that everybody else is not necessarily right and so it's going to be really important that you take feedback into account but recognize that you need to make this final decision uh the other step
027that we can add as you see in weeks 12 to 14 board visitation to finalist work sites or finalist tour of the district with a meet and greet you're going to help us decide which of those is preferable to you and as we get further down the road we can talk in more detail what that looks like but briefly a site visit is a subcommittee of the board no more than three of you would literally go to the work site of each of the finalists have the opportunity to interact with stakeholders there um and get some direct feedback on what their firsthand experience is with these folks so that beyond what we're able to find through background checks reference checks and what you're able to hear from interviews um you're able to get a firsthand
028Accounting in that way of what their the experience has been in the district that they're coming from um if you would prefer not to go that route the other thing would be to have the candidates come in for a meet and greet uh where we would provide an opportunity for community members staff members whomever to come in uh in kind of a more broad large group setting to be able to interact um where you could be present but not collaborating with one another you don't want to violate the open meetings act just to kind of see what that interaction looks like and then typically with that we have the candidate come in and have them take on a kind of a guided tour of the district where they can pop into buildings and interact with
029students and staff members and um those who are able to accompany them can see what those interactions look like and and see what you learn from that too so as we got closer we would talk about those options and you would determine which of those makes the most sense so this slide covers a lot of ground before I move on I want to give you a chance to ask any questions that you might have to this point questions I do so week one given what you know about Oxford I'm sure you profiled us as well and you worked with us in the past what what would you say week one would be what week of the year oh and what time of year would this take place all right so you're going to help us
030decide that too that could start I would suggest as early as January I think most typically I think I would say February is generally the time when districts are looking to have a superintendent in place by July 1st um I don't think you'd want to wait any later than that so I would think that likely would take place in on January or February and for that very first meeting probably the earlier the better honestly you're going to structure the calendar at that meeting yes you will so and we'll come in with a draft to help you have something to work from but then we'll modify that depending on your calendars and any conflicts that may exist in the district and just what your preferences may be and then the feedback forms um you had said
031that you'd give them in paper there could be an electronic version so since there's two different modalities because we do have a lot of folks that watch our meetings online that may not be able to attend in person will you be aggregating that for us or will we get like a hundred just pieces of paper that we have to aggregate ourselves uh the feedback for the candidate profile we aggregate we do do all of that right that that falls to us so what we share with you is the aggregated uh or the aggregated results in the form of a candidate profile the the comments that you get um as a response to the interviews and people will be able to provide feedback for both first and second round interviews and the feedback you get from
032those stakeholder meetings uh with the finalists um those will come to you just as they are in in part because it's there's narrative responses and you're just going to want to see what people have to say that's my next question there could be a heck of a lot to go through so but we'll ask you too that if if for example because of that if it would be simpler easier for you just to stick to electronic responses even what we could do for the people who come to to the interviews physically are present is we can hand them a card with a QR code uh to take them to that so that all the feedback is coming back in the same way okay for now all right yep I have one oh go right ahead
033sorry that's right just a quick question um you mentioned if we like had one candidate and then we chose not to have that candidate if we have to start this process all over again is there an additional fee to the district no there's not no it's it's go ahead Tim well he's going to cover that on one of the coming slides but uh no there isn't no there isn't I mean until you find an acceptable candidate we're going to be here right the job's not finished until you have your next superintendent selected and and under contract sure anybody else no okay all right so our our fee is $88,200 uh plus direct expenses not to exceed $800 so the total cost of the search would not exceed $9,000 could be a little bit less depending
034on what those expenses are um you will find that our fees tend to be um a little bit more moderate than you might see from some of the other firms uh sometimes I think uh the presumption that people may make was is well if others are charging more we must get a lot more for the money that we're paying uh we're just an organization that serves public education and we understand we're all former superintendents in the Michigan Leadership Institute we understand that uh funds are limited and uh districts and school boards don't have unlimited funding to spend so we're proud of the fact that we're able to keep the cost at a reasonable rate and an affordable rate for school districts and so what you see is what you get um the guarantee uh is
035if we uh endorse the candidacy of the selected candidate and that candidate leaves um within the first year for any reason other than uh that candidate's personal health or the health of of a family member we would then go ahead and conduct a follow-up search at no additional fee other than expenses going back to if uh like we said if if uh you reach the end of the search and decide you have not found the right candidate yet at that point we would talk about where we go from there and what the next steps would look like but then we would just work together and we would restart we there are different ways we might approach it at that point but regardless we're going to stick with you until we find your next superintendent so
036our organization uh we do think our logo speaks to who we are and what we are we develop deploy and support outstanding leaders uh primarily in public education but not limited to that uh we develop leaders in part by the superintendent Academy it's nicknamed The sups Academy we've prepared roughly 800 uh educational leaders over the years who are potentially aspiring these are people who are interested in possibly becoming superintendents honestly sometimes they go through our Academy and that leads them to decide that this is not right for them which is probably a good thing but for many of the folks who participate they are interested and it gives them the opportunity to understand um what the job entails what they're going to need to do to be a successful superintendent and even speaks to the
037process of of going about applying where we really emphasize by the way that fit is critical um and that they should not be applying just to any District because they want to be a superintendent they should do their homework and know that the place they're applying to is the district that they think there's going to be a close fit in terms of what they bring to the table that's really critical but it gives us a um group of candidates that we can kind of go to that we've come to know through the sups academy there a potential pool of candidates to reach out to uh when we're in recruitment mode um it is interesting to note that nearly 25% of the current superintendents in Michigan are graduates of our sups Academy um diverse group of
038candidates in our sups Academy and we do follow up not only from searches but just in general um we provide coaching to leaders of all kinds not only superintendents but we've coached Central administrators building principles you name it um that's one of the services that we provide as well and we're always happy to share our expertise with those folks uh so in terms of deployment as we talked about we recruit and consult with prospective candidates um work with you in terms of finding that best fit which is really critical we lead you through the process what we typically say is we'll personalize the process when we meet with you to meet your specific needs but we really emphasize that um we bring experience to the table that most of you don't have uh we've done
039this a lot so we ask the once who're in into it that you trust the process and trust that it's going to lead to the result that you need um even when you get through the end of the process we typically don't get directly involved in contract negotiation we advise that you use your your U district attorney for that purpose but we're ready to advise and consult and assist you with that um in any way that we can and we do use propri proprietary documents uh and procedures to ensure that the ction is as successful as possible we do provide mentoring for the new superintendent for the first year that's not an additional charge as part of the fee that we provide so um I would say the candidates it's a mixed bag in terms
040of how much candidates take advantage of that we don't push ourselves on people but personally the range has been from candidates who will I might check in with them a couple of times three few times a year because I don't hear from them just to see how they're doing to others where I've scheduled monthly meetings with them and then I period periodically in between the monthly meetings get phone calls emails texts all of which is fine we encourage them to feel free to reach out at any time for any reason and we're happy to share our expertise with them um we offer Executive coaching even beyond the first year there would be a fee for that but we can continue on if it's a successful relationship and that's what's desired we're active in Masa and
041other professional organizations which really uh helps with the networking that comes into play when we're doing searches and we do provide a lot of other services to districts just to touch on this uh we support districts in a variety of ways we assist with governance strategic planning negotiations districts and organization functional analysis facility utilization Community forums focus groups I personally I've worked with districts and help them with grade level uh configuration reconfiguration Bond planning un name it as former superintendents we've done just about all of those things so we're in a position to be able to step in and help districts when you're faced with some of those processes uh we keep up on current research and on uh best practices in leadership uh as we talked about we deliver leadership in governance acms um
042we do know the requirements of Foya and the open meetings that part of our job is to help keep you out of trouble so if you're about to step into it we're going to help you st step out of it and uh make sure that that uh you follow the open meetings act and and follow the rules of the game in a way that will um ensure that you don't inadvertently have a problem along the way it is important to note that everybody on our team again all former superintendents contribute to this so while I may have a particular knowledge uh with and connections with leaders throughout Southeast Michigan Tim does in Central Michigan we have folks like us who are assigned to other regions of the state the western side of the state and
043the northern side of the state and so um we collaborate with one another too uh and support and assist one another both in the recruitment process and in the vetting process so for example if we got a an application from a candidate in the northern part of the state that I don't know Tim doesn't know probably the first step we would take is reach out to our colleague in the north and see what they may know about that cand in addition to the other things that we do so we do work together as a as a whole organizational team um our collective experience of more than 130 years when you put all of it together of successful superintendent experience um allows us to have a a wealth of context throughout the state and even Beyond
044which really comes in handy in these situations as we said the guarantee the search will continue until you have an acceptable candidate as long as that may take uh we talked about that guarantee that second part of that um if you were to decide to contract with us for quarterly governance workshops during the first year of the new superintendent's tenure we'll extend that guarantee out to two years we do also is just part of our service if you would like for us to come back once you selected your new superintendent and get things started we would facilitate a new governance team workshop with you too just to try to get everybody all of you on the same page as you start this new relationship together so that's part of the service we provide you're going
045to hear from other firms and all of us can do this for you right I mean let's not kid each other any firm has the opportunity to come in and lead you through a search so the the biggest question for you is why would you choose us over the other firms um touch on these points experienced and knowledgeable Consultants all successful superintendents in our own right that extensive network we have of outstanding leaders both people that we know who we can consult with and those who are prospective candidates our process intentionally is thorough inclusive uh of your stakeholders and it's transparent which is really important too um people should know what's happening and why um we have a very strong reputation which we would encourage you to check out for yourself we did provide you
046a list of references if you haven't called them um we love for you to and even if they're not references that we provided in any of the districts where we've done searches we'd invite you to call and uh and talk to those folks and see what their experience was like we're very confident you're going to like what you hear um our why we don't lose sight of the fact that we're helping a public school district choose a new superintendent and the ultimate beneficiaries of that are students it's children so we recognize that that's why we're all in this business together and we don't lose sight of the fact that one of the reasons this is such an immense ly critical decision is that it's impacting thousands of students on an annual basis and so it's
047it's of the ultimate importance customer service and commitment which we provide at a high level we will be readily available to you at any time um with questions concerns um we pride ourselves on being accessible and uh we're ready to to assist in any way that we can throughout the course of the search um we this is feedback that we've gotten from others which we love we love to hear this that we have helped make the search easy for the board but we the decision is difficult the decision is difficult when you have some really outstanding candidates to choose from and you find that decision at the end to be difficult that's where we hope you are even though that makes it tough for you um that would be ideal so again if you trust
048the process we believe it's going to be pretty seamless for you um but we also hope you're faced with a very difficult difficult difficult decision in the end which means you got some great candidates to choose from uh hi ongoing support well after the search is completed as we indicated to you high degree of client satisfaction which again if you reach out you will hear um our organization is dedicated to outstanding leadership that's our business so when when you're looking to hire an organization to help you find a new superintendent a new leader for your District that's what we're all about and we know the role we know the job we've done it we understand what it takes to be a successful superintendent so we think we're unique in that way and and that could
049be of great benefit to your District some of the recent oakal County searches we've done you see there on the screen and if you want to reach out to folks in those districts we'd welcome you to do so and this just reinforces our motto and uh the fact that we are all about developing uh outstanding EX executive leadership and um I'll just add that having had the experience of working previously with Oxford Schools um during a very difficult time and uh also assisting uh with placing your current interim superintendent uh we would love the opportunity to come back for for me it would be almost a little bit personal that way that feels like a little bit of unfinished business that uh we'd like to come in and assist with um and I just there
050there's something about uh Oxford that uh as I was here and experienced it that just is very special and uh I know how important this is for you how critical it is that you get this right and just want to assure you that we will put whatever time and energy we need into this process to make sure that you have your best chance to get this right we know how critical it is and we'll honor that and and uh step up to the plate and give you what you need anything to add Jim no I you can tell this first has done this for quite a while so he he um you know this is an opportunity I think for us as a firm uh to help you uh through this process and I think
051it's a great opportunity for a superintendent to come in and work with you to make a dist or a a a a difference for this district and for the students so uh thank you for the opportunity we'd welcome any other questions that you might have of course do you guys only place in Michigan districts we have uh very limited experience working with districts or organizations outside of the state of Michigan normally it's Michigan yes okay and then in your guys' current searches and stuff you see how much I guess it's kind of hard to put a number on it but do you see a lot of candidates coming from outside the state we don't see a lot uh I would suggest to you too I think you're going to find that with whatever search firm
052you hire even when you hire firms who work in other states um we tend to pay close attention just because we're interested right this is what we do so as we see in searches that we're not a part of when we look at the candidate pools who are interviewed and who are ultimately selected um typically they people in Michigan there's a lot of reasons that that folks from other states are not necessarily looking to come to Michigan but for those that do you know again we have the opportunity to to use some national Publications if you desire to really kind of broaden the scope of who may see this but our experience is if you have people from out of state who are looking to come to Michigan um to be a leader in this
053state for whatever the reason might be they know where to look and they find these postings and they submit applications so the majority that you would see would absolutely be from Michigan but you would very likely see others and then my last question have you ever been contracted with a district for superintendent search where you hadn't been able to find or that relationship has been severed for whatever reason never had the experience of it being severed and I don't know in our experience I'm not aware of that happening I mean I haven't had that personal experience Tim hasn't I don't think it's happened in the organization um there happened a couple of times that it was a struggle and it took some time and we had to step back U we went through the first
054round uh the board said we haven't found the right person yet and we had a kind of res start and go back through it again um but again if that's what it takes it's more important that you get it right than that you get pick somebody the first time what we urge you to do is you cannot settle in these searches you cannot so I'll go back again no matter the number of finalists that you have I use the example of one if you have two finalists you have three choices right candidate a candidate b or we have yet to find the right person and we need to keep looking so you always have that additional choice and and you're not going to get pushed back from us that's the right thing to do if
055you feel like you have not found the right person yet okay thank you sure anybody else Mike as far as the search is relatively local to our district uh when were the most maybe two recent ones and as far as your tiers were concerned how many candidates were do you have an idea of how many candidates were in each tier each tier oh boy or something maybe maybe just first tier something like that well I could talk about fville last year we had candidates um 32 I believe and there were um in the top candidate uh profile category we had 10 10 individuals in that category and that second category that John talked about um there were I believe six to eight candidates in there so I mean there was a good selection of candidates
056um the last one I think that I went completed in the county was West Bloomfield I believe um I'd be hardpressed I don't want to give you an inaccurate answer in terms of how many in each tier I think the total was in the mid 20s roughly um and it was fairly balanced uh in terms of dividing those groups up into finalist so you'll normally have if I had a hazard a guess in the ballpark of if you're looking at in tiers A and B we would hope that you would see at least 10 to 12 in total that you would be able to choose from as you're looking to select four to six sometimes it can be a little bit more sometimes it could be a little bit less it just really depends on
057the particular search there is variance from one District to another we find in general with the searches we're doing I think ballpark total number of applicants tend to be somewhere in the 20s generally but sometimes and Tim gave the example the fville you see a little bit higher than that sometimes honestly you see even a little bit bit lower it's it it varies from District to District looks like you may have another question Brewing no okay you're thinking about qualified candidates I mean in general when you do a search yeah and and as I mean you mentioned I mean it was it was brought up out of state I mean we certainly know the current climate in general yeah um but also Oxford is is unique in some ways certainly and um I don't want
058to get in a situation where we're you know uh having to settle on on candidates and so um I think the question about out of state was trying to cast a wide net to make sure that we have a number of quality candidates to choose from and so that we are making the best choice for the district versus having to I I'll say this typically what I'll tell boards too is that um the quality of the candidates who are in the field is more important than the number of applicants right so ultimately you could have 40 applicants um but if only five of them are people that you might have interest in it's it's a poor candidate field versus you could have a field of 20 applicants but you've got again 10 to 12 that
059really stand out that make it difficult for you to narrow that down to four to six even to interview that's a great candidate field so sometimes people get caught up in the numbers and it's it's really so not so much about numbers as quality and as we're recruiting we're really mindful of that we don't want you to be in a position where you have really very few strong candidates to choose from so our our goal is to make sure we bring a field of applicants to you that has as many of those high quality candidates that you have the opportunity to choose from to make it a difficult decision for you but Mar okay do you think it would be difficult for an out ofate candidate to come into to Michigan and learn a lot
060of new laws um is that part of a learning curve for a superintendent or I mean how different are we I I certainly there's a learning curve I I I don't think there's any way to get around that if you've been a superintendent in another state there are differences in Michigan and and so there's an adjustment but there have been people who have done that successfully so again I think it depends on the individual I hate to paint those folks with a broad brush right I I think I wouldn't rule anybody out because of that certainly if they're willing and they've applied for the job they understand that's going to be part of the process for them and and you know uh through the isds and and the other support structures fellow superintendents and neighboring
061districts there's a lot of support out there for superintendant as they learn the process um of the state and and uh so I I don't think that's will be an issue for and bear in mind we have that mentoring relationship that we provide too so if you were to hire somebody where there was a steeper more steep learning curve we would recognize that and we would offer to support and assist that person to uh to flatten that curve as quickly as possible I have a question Manda for the candidates do you conduct personality tests on each candidate and compare those to what you find in the stakeholder groups of what is desired in the next superintendent candidate so that's not part of kind of the basic services that we provide but we have uh a
062relationship with an organization that does that okay and so if you have interest in that when we have that first meeting we could come back with additional details about that and talk about the cost of that and then you could determine if that's something that you wanted to include okay and given your understanding of of Oxford our community and what our district needs right now and just a a a few words what do you think are important qualities of the next superintendent that's a great question um boy I would say you need somebody with uh high level of empathy somebody who's a a really strong listener and uh not just can listen but really uh hear what people have to say and take that into account be able to be responsive um be able to
063make difficult decisions because even along with that when when you you're going to hear from different people and you're going to have people sharing different viewpoints too right and feel very strongly about that so you realize part of the difficulty of this job is that it's impossible to make everybody happy and so that can't be your goal the goal has to be though that you take all viewpoints into account and ultimately you make decisions that are absolutely in the best interest of your students and sometimes that takes courage uh it can be difficult so I I think having uh that level of Courage too um where you are taking those viewpoints into account but that you recognize that ultimately your responsibility is to do what's best for your students and your district and that you
064will do that unflinchingly um I think is going to be critical as well I would just add it's got to be somebody that's approachable yes that can build trust yep um I think that's going to be key for you um and so uh I mean I I uh and I think they're out there I I you know you're talking about candidates you're going to get good candidates we're going to find somebody so it it this might be totally inappropriate I almost want to flip the question if you don't want to answer that don't but if you select us we can get into it we'd want to hear from you too that's part of in yeah anybody else yeah just given the current um environment in the state of Michigan you know we see the news
065articles and all the stories about the number of superintendent positions that are open obviously you're even filling a role over in Rochester how do you think that's going to play into um the timeline and our ability to attract great candidates to this District that's it's a great question I would think um it might I would suggest what we would suggest is that that might be a reason to move more quickly and get out in front possibly of some of the other searches as well um although um with other districts being available and going through searches too they're going to be enough differences I think that when uh the good news in that might be that uh there could potentially be candidates who bypass applying to Oxford because they choose to apply to another District distri
066instead where there's a vacancy but the good news within that is if if candidates look at all of the opportunities that are there and say this is where I'd like to be it's Oxford um I think that's a good indication that you've got the right people applying for the right reasons versus just somebody applying because they desire to be a superintendent somewhere but again if you want to get a little bit ahead uh I think probably the more quickly you move on this that might increase those ch chances to uh to start yours up maybe before some of the others do okay anybody else John and thank you very much for coming we appreciate your presentation your time you're preparing everything for us it was a pleasure to see you and meet you thank you
067very much thank you well thanks for the opportunity good luck with your decision thank you our time okay perfect 555 perfect timing we right okay okay okay so does the Angela go out and give you for hello hello everyone how are you good how are you guys good thank you for coming in oh you're so welcome you go there I know I just need a second to get organized here [Applause] please and my Flipboard is in the other room I'm going to run grab okay okay this whenever you're ready okay M we're all set good thank you again for coming well thank you for having me uh tonight and uh my name is Mike Richie and I represent hait young and AA and Associates hya just briefly about myself um I've worked for Hy for
068the past six years and uh have 25 years experienced as a superintendent and I also serve I I'm retired and I work for hya full-time and I also serve on the executive committee of the National Association of uh School superintendents so excuse me I have two partners on the search um Serena Shivers is U from Michigan and she is currently the deputy executive director of professional learning of the Michigan Association of superintendent and administrators and she also has 5 years experi experience as a Michigan superintendent and over 20 years of experience as an educational um a career in education across Michigan lots of her work focuses on um Equity understanding diversity and social justice the third person on our search team is Scott winch and Scott also has over 20 years of experience as a
069superintendent and he has he's the past uh president of the Wisconsin Association of athletic directors of of the Wisconsin Association of um Athletics and also uh Scott and I do a number of searches together as well so you'll have the three of us on the team and um we work very well together so why you know why Oxford what what would draw people candidates to to this school district um first of all if you look at your vision you talk about you know a worldclass education you also talk about you challenge all students and when you look at your programming uh it's amazing what you what you offer so that that alone is going to help draw candidates to the district uh next slide please I I have the clicker I guess it okay so
070if you look at this next slide when we talk about um you know why hya what what can we do for you so so uh first of all it's really important that every child has the right to that quality education and that starts with our recruiting for you we have to recruit the Right leader um for your District also we work for you we work for the board and we will customize our search to fit your District needs we'll save your time well I'm going to talk about our techn technological uh infrastructure that we have as we go uh in the uh process here and then we're affirm that you can can trust according to the market research Hy completes the most searches and the lowest superintendent turnover of our competitors when you look at
071the slide when you look at the graph you can kind of see over the past two years how many searches hya has done compared to some of our competitors also if you go to our website you'll note that right now we have 27 searches posted on our website all hya searches and if you look at the other uh competitors that you're interviewing tonight the the they have uh a lot fewer than that on the website we're a national company um of those 27 searches we have posted uh we that does cover 15 different states so um that Network that we have Across the Nation is huge also we have very strong partners with um some organizations that also help us with the recruiting process as well so when you look at our search um process
072what we do it's really really three different areas three different phases so the engage phase is the first phase then we move into the recruitment phase and then the select phase so just going to kind of break those down a little bit and talk about each of those phases so in the engage phase we're going to start with having a board uh planning meeting we're going to go through the whole process the timeline uh what we need to do we're going to interview all board members individually and then we're going to have a number of focus groups Community fors we're going to really uh involve your stakeholders okay that's part of our process for our search is we do a lot of community engagement and then we also have a survey that we'll send out
073to your community your staff your students as well we take all that information and we put that into a robust leadership profile report that report um then it becomes a great Road mapap for your new superintendent we're going to encourage the district to put that report on your website for transparency and we'll also place that on our hya website so as the candidates apply they're going to want to read through that report so it's going to talk about the strengths of the district the challenges of the district and then the characteristics of what you're looking for for your next superintendent so as we do our focus groups what we're going to uh do is how we're going to run those focus groups is we're going to um do most of them face to face but
074I'm going to tell tell you prior to co we did only face Toof face Co hit we only did zoom and then after Co now we do a blended model so we'll do some Zoom as well um Zoom does draw more people than face to face but we're going to go out into your community and we're going to um go to where your stakeholders are so if there's a language barrier or if you have a maybe they're more comfortable in a center uh we're going to go to where they're at we're we're going to have flexible time so what we found is Sunday nights 700 p.m. Zoom works great for parents okay they're usually home um they're getting ready for the week and it's a great time where they can sit down for 45 minutes
075and talk to us about the school district so in our planning meeting we're going to also talk about what groups you want to interview what groups should we do focus groups with we're going to always have your staff your support staff your certified staff your pto's your administrators Your Business Leaders your parents but you might have specific groups that you want us to Target so what we're going to do is in that meeting we're going to come up with 15 20 25 different focus groups that we're going to be here and and do run those focus groups the one group that we do insist that we talk to is your high school students we'll go into your high schools and we will talk to your high school students um we'll do a couple of different
076focus groups in this report we don't identify any of the groups we just look for common themes except the high school students we feel it's really important that the board the community the parents the staff the administrators they all should know what do the students think of your district and so and we want a good cross mixture of students we don't want 25 National Honor Society students we want at risk students we want special ed students we want a cross mixture of athletes um theater um You Name It We we want to make sure we have a good what does your District really represent that's who we want to talk to so two quick examples of why I think talking to students is so important and these are actually statements that students said in our
077focus groups this one happens to be from Lincoln Nebraska here's what a high school student said the new superintendent needs to have good taste in music so we know they have good taste in this decisions students were hopeful that the next leader will continue the legacy of previous superintendent and be willing to listen to students gain input from students be open-minded to change and then another group from South s City Nebraska said you can hire an old superintendent but they must be like a fun grandma or Grandpa they must have a sense of humor so students really want to see someone that can relate um to students and it doesn't matter who hire but they have to be able to relate to students also in our engagement phase we're going to have a online survey
078and there's just a sample of what it's hard to see but there's a sample of what the survey looks like for some of the results and you can you're going to have six different subgroups you can pick from and this is a a a research-based um survey where it's Norm reference so you're going to compare six different subgroups uh to each other and I'm going to use the bottom the bottom right example where you can see those dots the further the dots up are a part that's where the groups differ than what they think the district is really like and attend the administrators and teachers tend to have a little higher opinion of the district than students and parents so as those you can see from this example on the left you can see the
079students and parents are a little bit more um thinking we need some work again you can take this information your new superintendent can figure out why those dots are not closer together and what we need to do to get everyone on that same page then we'll move into our recruit phase and we also believe that it's we have a commitment to diversity equity and inclusion we will definitely recruit uh numerous uh candidates and we want to again find that best fit that matches your District so as we go into our recruitment phase um we're going to do a number of different things we have about 130 Associates and the one thing I did forget to mention earlier is you have the full proposal in front of you I'm just trying to hit some highlights and
080so I'm not going to repeat everything that's in that proposal so as you go through the proposal you're going to note though that we do have 100 over 130 Associates Across the Nation um so we talk to each other daily uh we email with what jobs we're doing we ask for candidate pools I can see all of their applicants for every job so for every hya job that's out there right now I already mentioned this 24 I can see every applicant for all those jobs so I have a pool of people that I can at least look at we also have a dashboard where people have to fill out a a um enrollment form with us where they they go into our system so I can I can go in and I can say Okay
081Midwest I can go school districts of 5,000 to 8,000 and I can see what we have out there as for for to start start looking at some recruiting we also have that our website there a national website we not only list our searches we list all of our competitor searches as well so again it's we get about 25,000 hits per month on that our e uh newsletter goes out to 22,000 subscribers um we attend National and state conferences and so we do heavy recruiting there we develop recruitment Flyers uh we have those strong Partnerships so again that Nation or reach is really important to us as we go into our select phase um what we're going to do we're going to screen and vet every single applicant that applies and so we do that regardless
082of if we screen them before we'll screen them again because the number one question we'll ask them is why Oxford okay you applied for a job maybe three years ago but why Oxford and then we get into the discussion of why they want this job also um we have we have a board portal that's another thing that separates H from other firms you're going to see every single application as they come in and we we they go into a board portal so think of the board portal as your own private password protected website we're not going to give you a 100 emails you're going to get very very few emails everything we do goes into your board portal so one click you can see let's just say for example the application is 30 pages Along
083by this candidate one click you can click on the name all 30 pages are right there you can just scroll right down and so you can see every single applicant as they as they come in and then we put all the other notes in there schedules in there proposal contract um day in the district schedule so everything will go into your board portal so as you start narrowing down before we narrow down I'm going to going to deliver the Slate of candidates to the board and we're going to put those in three different tiers so as we present the Slate we really try to encourage you to interview six or eight candidates we we like no more than eight because that gets to be too many six is probably the right ideal number but sometimes
084it's hard to just pick six so when we let's say we have 30 people that apply we're going to give you a slate that's tiered so the number in tier one will be the best fit for your District according to what we found with our reference checks with our background checks with our Google searches with our interview our pre-screener uh the profile report what your stakeholders want those people who we think are the best fit will be in tier one people in tier two will be not quite as strong as tier one and maybe we found something in their background and then the people that we placed in tier three we're going to tell you we don't even need to talk about these people because they not the right fit for your District but if
085you want to ask any questions why they're in two tier tier two were tier three we'll be happy to share that you're the board we work for you if you want someone from tier one move to tier two we can do that tier two to tier one we can do that but we'll tell you the reason we put them in tier two is because of this and then um that's how we kind of start once you get that first round of interviews narrowed down three candidates is ideal for finalists they will all get one full day in your District we feel it's really important that they spend the full day in the School District so we're going to set up tours uh normally we like the principals can lead those tours because they can talk
086about instruction they can go into some classrooms they can tour the schools they're going to meet we call them meet and greets they're going to meet with a number of different stakeholders and so they're going to meet with staff after school they're going to meet again with groups of high school students in the day they're going to meet with parents Business Leaders at night um these are called meet and greets and then we also design a QR code so when we have these meet and greets the the stakeholders can give the board instant feedback we make it very clear to the stakeholders that this is the board search but they want your input so there's two questions that that they they can respond to the question is if this person were hired what strengths would
087they bring to the district and then the other question is what would concern you if this person were hired as they type in their notes they go right to a spread sheet right to the board portal and you will see those notes instantly and that's how they give you that that feedback for you know for that um and then we'll do a thirdparty background check for your for your loan finalist and then we'll do a number of other Google searches and reference checks and blind reference checks we know they're going to give us you know great people to call so we're going to call other people uh as well so just I already mentioned in the board portal that next slide just represents what you'll find in the portal so just if you want any
088information about the search you know just simply go to that board uh portal so the hya distinguishing difference you know why hya again will customize your search transparency is so important to us throughout the entire search process we will we will respond to your communication instantly okay I don't care if it's a Saturday morning a Sunday night Tuesday night we're going to respond if you email us if if you text us if you call us we're going to respond right away you're going to have all of our emails all of our cell phones um and and again that communication is so important so the other thing I want to say about case you know Serena is on on the team she's got a wealth of information across Michigan um she wanted to be here tonight
089she is teaching a class tonight she teaches on Tuesday evenings she's teaching aspiring superintendent right now so uh she apologizes that she could not uh make this uh and she also does a lot of work for the uh um Institute for Education um Innovation where she actually works with aspiring superintendents across across the state of Michigan and Across the Nation as well so the other thing about I've worked for Hy for the past six years I've done just over 30 searches now I'm really happy to to report all 30 of my superintendents that I replaced are currently in their position no one has left or retired yet I know it's going to end somay soon um because people do retire people move on I've done some very large districts and some very small districts so
090the people in smaller districts like to move up to larger districts I know it's going to happen but the reason they're there is because of that profile leadership report it's because of what the stakeholders told us in the engage phase and we found our best match you know for those districts um according to what your community wanted and then you can see some of our p searches that we've done um in Michigan and just recently um we have been awarded the an arbor search and the Midland Michigan search as well so uh we have that National presence yet a great Michigan presence as well I talked a little bit already about some of these things on this next slide um just so you about 75% of the superintendant that we place are recruited by Hy
091Associates we don't believe if you po post it they will come we call people we go after people and you can have other organizations say yeah we'll just put something out on a national aasa website and online and it be good no that's not good enough we we even though it's posted nationally we still have to recruit those people the next slide shows just gives you a sample of a few of the Searchers that I recently LED wondering what the pool is like I'm just going to pick one of those I'll just take Littleton Colorado had an enrollment of about 15,000 students had 24 applicants 17 were from out of state for 71% and they had a very very strong slate so of the 24 we actually had 11 in tier one um that was
092a very nice job well sought after and then you can see the breakdown of what states uh those 11 candidates were from and then the eventual hire for Littleton was actually from uh Indiana but just gives you an idea timeline we have a a timeline this is a tentative timeline in the board planning meeting what we'll do is we will work with you we're going to say when would you like to announce your superintendent and then we kind of work backwards from there but that just gives you a rough idea of what the timeline looks like that's why that planning meeting is so important to bring your calendars and get all those dates in your calendar because a three or four month process is going to take three or four months but you're going to
093want to get those dates in your calendar so you're available for those interviews when when you are involved um board satisfaction you can see on that next slide um boards are very happy with our work and I always tell U school boards when you do a reference checks on the search firms it's really important that you talk to school districts where the team that's doing your search actually did the other search so if you talk to another school district and I was not involved in the search it doesn't really mean a lot I would be the lead person on your search so you're going to want to see what kind of job I did good or bad according to another District how I perform for that district and I would hope that all my searches
094you're going to get some pretty good uh feedback the other thing that we have that is very powerful is at the end of the search you hire you new superintendent now what we have what we call a transition dashboard so again this we offer to you free for the first six months we'll have that exit meeting with the board with your new new superintendent we'll go through that leadership profile report and we'll take benchmarks from that report this can become part of the evaluation tool or your evaluation process so you can set that dashboard however you want based on what's in there and you can set those benchmarks and set those goals for your new superintendent and then you can see as that person goes the first 90 days the first six months the first
095year how they're measuring for what you set the bar to be so it's really important to get that feedback to the person uh to know what direction they're going in and to have measurable goals as well um so that that becomes a great uh again a great tool for that new uh superintendent and so I think at this point I'm going to stop and see if you have any questions and and if I can answer anything else that you saw in the proposal that I did not speak about here tonight questions Callen sure um thanks Mike that was great um so you're you're from out of state so how would that if you were leading our search how would that work for us well I was on a plane at 600 a.m. this morning and
096here I am okay my partner right next door I love her to death but she's teaching a right now we work together we're we're a team so we have three people on this search um and we are a team and when I say we are three we are three people who do all the leg work but you really have 135 Associates because we will be contacting numerous Associates that work for hya about the Canada pool other jobs maybe some maybe another associate did a job in Michigan um we'll find out but we're going to focus on the Midwest we want those Midwest values we're going to really focus heavy on the Midwest but but also consider um every other um aspect of the search the national reach as well but we'll be here you want
097us here we'll be here so the 24 oh sorry Mike the 24 you have two open in Michigan currently or are there more in Michigan that you have open right now we are currently in Michigan doing an arbor and Midland go ahead make well I guess first off I know we we spoke about the um personality tests and things like that so maybe just touch base on that because I know that'll come up sure um and then I'll ask some other questions yeah so we do have a number of different test personality tests that we can administer um again if if you what some boys will do is they're going to say okay let's do it for our final or three finalists maybe I don't know if you're going to want to spend any extra
098money in doing it with you know all the six for the Slate or the eight for the Slate um but if you want to do uh personality test we've got a number of different ones that we can we can administer and the cost would be roughly anywhere from um 150 to 250 uh per person so it depends on what test I don't administer those we have other professionals that do that for us um they're trained and and certified so we've got about six or seven different options for you to choose from and again we can talk about that in that in that board planning meeting okay yep Amanda all right so based on your understanding and research of Oxford and what our district needs can you just give us excuse me a few attributes of
099what you think the superintendent would look like for us a fun grandma or Grandpa no I honestly I think that that leadership profile report is going to speak volumes once that's done and you can go on to the Hy website right now and you can look at any of the searches and you can the ones that the report's done it's going to be posted next to that search and so you can if you want to see what it looks like you can certainly do that but I would I would go back to your core values I would go back to I think on your website you talk about trust Integrity commitment collaboration honesty accountability those are those are you know that's what makes that superintendent but again you can take all of that it has
100to be the right fit so what you need to listen to your community you need to listen to your stakeholders you need to listen to the students take all that input and make a a a great formed decision by the board and and and Trust the process you're going to hire a search firm you have three good search firms here tonight it just depends what you want do you want that local Michigan field do you want the national reach field do you want the combination um that's going to be you know up to the board but but the right fit is is is critical and it has to be it has to be a Visionary it has to be someone that is not afraid to set the bar High make those difficult decisions hold people
101accountable and at the end of the day what's most important is we're here for the students that person has to be here for the students that person has got to really make sure when every graduate leaves this District they're ready to succeed no matter where they're going um in the future what happens as far as billing and fees go we get to the end we we have our finalists and they're not good and we got to start the process over we are here until the bitter end if it takes a year if it takes two years we're with you and there's no extra charge okay our fee is our fee and I'm going to be the first person to tell you don't hire someone just to hire someone it has to be the right fit
102and you have to be comfortable with the person you hire this is probably the this is the most important job you have as the board is to hire that that that next leader that superintendent but we will be with you until you're completely satisfied and I don't think we talked but we we have that guarantee if you read our proposal there's a guarantee in The Proposal as well is a price match as long as it's Apples to Apples in The Proposal as well and then my my followup question uh that I've asked the other uh firm have you ever been contracted with with a district looking for somebody and something hasn't worked out and they've basically CED services with you and gone somewhere else not me personally I I have never experienced that so I
103do know that we we had some Hy did have one search that ended in covid just because they just didn't want to continue with it but never because um anyone was unhappy with with the services of hya um I think if you look at every search that I've LED I think you're going to get a pretty good reference because I'm committed um I do this 247 I'm completely retired one of our policies for hya is we do not hire sitting superintendents um they're too busy um how can you run a school district and and and then try to lead us search as well so we we we hire retired superintendant and we have a number of our um our Associates that have been on or currently are on school boards and so it's a great
104mix thank you anything else okay um thank you Mike for coming in um and thank you for the proposal that you prepared for us and and and all the questions that you answered we appreciate you coming in you're so welcome thank you you're welcome thank you here's just a sample this is one of and again part of our a big part of our fees those days we're going to spend a lot of days in your District physically be here spending a lot of time with your stakeholders engaging your community thank you thank you again wel thank you thank you right now yeah thanks okay we're going to call call us back into order here and I'd like to introduce um Dr Barry Carroll and Dr Shelley Jones Holt um they're here with us tonight from
105mcferson and Jacobson and um I'll let you guys go ahead and take over thank you very much it's a pleasure to be here and an honor to be in your school district uh uh Dr Hol and I will briefly introduce ourselves and just tell you our background so you know that we have some credibility coming in to to help you with your school uh your superintendent search of selected uh we're glad to be here tonight and tell you about our company and tell you about ourselves I was an educator for 30 years uh served all the way from began as a teacher and coach in a school district in Tuscaloosa actually and uh served in several school districts in Alabama I am from Alabama so I'll just go ahead and tell you that up front
106so everybody's not trying to figure out what's that accent that he has I'm from Alabama uh served there for 30 years in education 10 as a superintendent then I went to the corporate world and served in educ education in the corporate world and in 2017 started Consulting and that's when I joined mcferson and Jacobson as well as doing consulting for other companies as well love this work love what we do I think our company's great uh we have had many successful uh superintendent searches executive director searches through the years we've been doing Executives I haven't but our company's been doing those since 1991 and we have you have the list in your packet if you've looked at that the ones that we've done I personally have uh been involved with quite a number some that
107uh you'll recognize would be Jackson Mississippi uh uh fton County Georgia which is Atlanta uh Tennessee State Department of Education and uh Rowan Oak Virginia North Virginia those are ones that I've been uh deeply involved with in the past six years in addition to quite a few others so uh it's a great work I believe in our company I believe what we do we will tell you about how we recruit fruit and how we um select how we narrow the those uh numbers down and work with you the most important thing that I think right now that I can say is this is our process but it's your search we will uh we're going to be very transparent with you we're going to communicate constantly with you we're going to talk with you uh once
108you've determined who that person is that we're to relay all the information uh to and from uh we will do that on a regular basis and uh as I said we'll be transparent we just tell you what we find we'll tell you where we are in the process and how things are going and uh we're easy to work with if you say along the way uh you as the board not one board member but you as the board would have say would maybe we' thought about maybe adjusting this a little bit we'll work with you on that uh we're not it's our process that's been defined and been very successful through the years but we will be happy to work with you on changing anything that you we that you you think we need to
109change in order to be successful so I'll stop there and let Dr Hol introduce herself thank you um so my name is Dr Shelley Jones Holt and um I started my career about 25 years ago as a teacher I will always consider myself a teacher first because that's um what I do what I love and it's what I still do uh to this day I elevated through the system at you know I did the typical route you know becoming a teacher assistant principal principal all the way to superintend Ed actually here in Michigan um so uh I actually transferred from California here to Michigan I think it's September it's been five maybe six years I might have my numbers off um that I've been here in Michigan and so I do love it here in
110Michigan um and what we're uh doing as a state but uh I prefer to do the superintendent search route because I want to ensure that our superintendant are supported um and so that's part of where my role really comes in yes I do assist with the search and finding the right candidate but for us what's most important is making sure that that candidate and the board have the support they need to work together as a team and so um when I left the superintendency I started my own company um coaching and supporting superintendents executive officers um cabinets board and superintendent relationships and have been extremely successful helping people maintain their superintendencies and their board relationships even through some of the toughest things like negotiations like tragedies like there are a lot of things that happen
111that can strain that superintendent board relationship and we need to have support in order to really see that through and so um I'm a mother of eight um I know I look good to be a mother I like to say that because it reminds me that you know I'm not totally stressed all the time right um and I still teach at the University so I work at three different universities as well as doing the superintendent search and um coaching uh executive teams so that's a little bit about me and um what I've done and I think we can go ahead and get started yeah and I I'll just add to that that for me I I do other things as well so I generally do two to three superintendent searches a year if we're selected
112for this search uh then my focus and attention will be and so what Dr hes will be on your school district and helping you find the very best superintendent that we can help you find that will be our Focus so I'm not going to be distracted by working in other places when we lock into one or at least I and I've told our corporate office that when I lock into one that's the one I'm going to work on I'm not going to be scattered all over working with different school districts so we'd like to talk to you about our process and and uh certainly there going to be questions I'm sure that will rise that you want to ask at the end so we're going to try to run through this pretty quickly so that
113you uh have an idea of what we do and how we do it and uh we do some things the same as other search for firms and we do some things differently than other search firms uh but we are a a leading National search firm when you say mcferson and Jacobson Across the Nation with superintendents and generally with Schoolboard members people have heard of us they know what the work that we do and the quality work that we do uh we uh have a network of experienced Consultants uh about 130 Consultants Across the Nation who the majority have superintendent experience uh uh and and having served as a superintendent having an understanding what superintendent deal with and what uh that board superintendent relationship what's important in that so uh most of our Consultants uh as
114I said have worked as superintendent we believe in sustain sustainability in leadership and keeping people in place we do have a guarantee and you saw that in our contract that if this if you were to hire someone and they were to leave within two years we'll do the process over it no charges except for expenses so I'll get that out of the way right up front front but we don't expect him believe I've yet in all the superintendent Su searches that I've worked with in the past six years I've not had one to leave they're all still in place where they were selected and so that's pretty phenomenal for uh for that to occur but uh that's the truth and that's the the the way it is I think it's like 80 80% or 85%
115of our superintendents in the past five years are still in the positions where they were selected by the board so we do a great job of vetting and matching and working with school boards to determine what is what are exactly are you looking for and we go out and recruit and try to find the people to match uh your District uh that's U how that's part of our vetting process because we believe for you you need someone who can come in and be a superintendent long term a lot to work on uh I'm I'm sure and if you continue to have that revolving door with superintendent this the school district suffer so we want you to find someone who can can sustain uh with the district stay here uh for a long period of time
116and work with you all and helping the school district uh we believe every student is entitled to a high quality education I'm not going to read all this you have a copy of it uh I I but I do believe that that every student is entitled to a high quality education and I know your school district well enough from doing research that I know you you provide that so or you try to provide that so we believe that as our company as well we strongly believe that quality education is dependent upon the leadership you find a great school system and generally they're going to have a great superintendent so that's part of our role in helping you uh to do that some of the background for us we don't hire superintendant we don't have we
117have individuals who apply for superintendent position but we work for you we don't work for superintendent we don't have uh Dr Hol and I had this conversation earlier as we were waiting is we don't have a list of our buddies that we're waiting to bring into here to you know to put in front of you that's not what we do we vet the candidates and we make sure that the person uh who that the individuals we're bringing to you are those individuals who best have the best qualifications the best characteristics the characteristics that you're looking for uh as a school board uh to match your criteria that you set forth we represent the board we work strictly for you we don't work for anybody else uh we um are recruiters of talent you say well
118how do you do that there's a variety of ways MC bearon and Jacobson has been in business again since 1991 so we have a huge Rolodex of individuals who have applied in the past that's one way we also are very well connected Across the Nation through aasa and uh through a lot of the organizations superintendent organizations and even Schoolboard organizations Across the Nation we're very well connected we know people uh I I've been out of the superintendency for over 10 years and I still know superintendents from Across the Nation uh still know those individuals I can call and say is there anyone that you know who might this is what we're looking for do you know people uh that might fit the bill and we do that Nationwide from from from Washington to Florida to
119Maine it's it's all all across the nation we have individuals that we connect with uh and uh to try to recruit the very best people that we can there's that statistic that uh 85% for the past five years are still in place 55% over the last 10 years that's pretty remarkable and 40% over the past 15 years are still in place where they were placed by mcferson not by mcferson and Jackson but those individual we brought forth that the board hired are still in place so that's pretty remarkable uh that's just some information about uh basically the investment that you're making uh and I don't know where our number fits with others I I couldn't tell you that but uh you know I can say you get a good bang for your buck with our
120company and all the things that we do uh we provide you with five phases uh and I'll we'll run through those of the superintendent process you also get advertising uh in or in journals like a uh aasa Journal uh Ed week uh those some of those are mentioned up there top school jobs uh we do average iing and it generates a tremendous amount of interest from Across the Nation from those individuals who are involved in those National Organization we do stakeholders meetings uh one day of inperson stakeholder meetings where we meet in we meet with the groups that you've identified and have invited those individuals into a could be a room like this and we will spend at least an hour with those individuals I say an hour 45 minutes with the individuals we ask
121them questions and we get feedback from them about the school district and it could be parents it could be teachers it could be administrators it could be the clergy it could be your city uh government it could be whoever you want that to be we're willing to set and you usually can do up to about eight groups in a day so you get that as a part of that where we'll come in and uh spend time here in your District talking and listening to people without you in the room because people will not sometimes will not speak up if if board members or the superintendent in the room so we we get that information we put a document together that we share with you uh along the way that so we don't put a name
122to what was said but we do tell you very transparent we'll tell you what's said and how people are feeling we want to listen to the community um we can also do online stakeholders uh meetings uh I don't know if your Hispanic population is is high or the parents here but we can do it in different languages as well uh video interviews of candidates that's amazing I'll talk about that just a a little bit and then in the end we do the uh criminal financial and educational degree background checks for these uh individuals who are chosen by the board to be interviewed uh or if it's the final candidate uh we can uh we we certainly do that we want to make sure that and we vet them we vet them uh through the whole
123process and checking these individuals out but in the end we want to make sure that they don't have anything in their background and we asked that question is there anything in your background that would embarrass us embarrass you as a candidate or embarrass this board if you were selected is there anything we ask that question over and over during the process and some some of the things will say well I you know I had a parking ticket one time you know they're most of the time they're very honest and will tell us that we try to draw that out of them so we want and we tell you we tell you those uh types of things uh travel expenses for consultants for scheduled trips to the school uh district and then office expenses that's what
124the contract is about uh these are the five phas es of the superintendent search and uh I'm going to talk about the first two and I'm going to talk talk uh excuse me turn it over to Dr Holt and let her talk about uh the last three and especially phase five which is really her uh her love of this process but uh phase one we'll identify the desirable characteristics we'll work with you we'll come on site with you and talk with you about what are you looking for in a superintendent such things as what personal characteristics do you want them to be personable or do you want you know what is it about this person do you want them to be approachable do you want them to be uh what is about this person from
125a personal standpoint and from a professional standpoint as well do you want them to have a doctorate must they have had superintendent experience so all those kinds of things that you will identify and say to us this is what we're looking for and we'll help you with that we'll go through a process to identify what those characteristics are uh and uh and we tell the candidates that we tell them exactly what you're looking for and they'll know that and then again we match what they're what they say with what you're looking for we establish those timelines and Target dates we'll work with you on that uh and putting that information together uh putting a calendar if you will of events together and a sequence of those things together and then we'll determine which media uh
126advertising venues you want to uh you know if you want to uh go outside of well we do National for sure but if there's certain for whatever reason you want us go to other state associations we do that certainly the Michigan Association we would try to advertise with them uh if they'd allow us to do that and U but you help determine that and some of that's in in included in the contract and if there's others outside of that may not be included in the contract but you we can still do that stakeholders voices I think that's very important been very involved with those uh and the searches that I've done and they've been very very successful and communities students want to be heard teachers want to be heard parents want to be heard just
127community members in general want their voice to be heard and that's one way that we try to make sure that their voice is heard and again we put that uh document together we try to capture everything that they say to us we put that in the document and we share it with you and we even share it online and you can share it on your website as well so people can say well this is what the community we we don't let anyone get personal or talk about individuals but it's issues or concerns that they have about the school district and then as I said we prepar the summer and get that to you and then we developed through that a unique application for you an application that we think are the uh questions that should
128be asked of those individuals when they're uh going through uh applying for the position we develop a vacancy announcement advert a position we post it uh notify those individuals uh who are interested we we recruit we try to uh recruit those individuals we think would be good for your school system we're not going to recruit everybody because everybody's on of match everybody it's not a match exactly uh oh you're fine keep we keep the applicants informed we keep you informed along the way and we keep the applicants informed you know we talk to them we tell them what the process is we tell them where we're transparent with them as well we tell them what we can tell them if there's something we can't tell them we won't uh tell them but uh or we'll
129tell them we can't tell them but generally we talk to them we tell them how things are going how it's moving forward they must have this and by this date and We Gather a tremendous amount of information on all of these candidates uh as and we I'm not going to say we make decisions about them but we vet them along the way there are timelines that we're going to follow but we vet those individuals and the cream usually will rise to the crop uh rise to the top pretty fast so um then phase three I'll turn that over to Dr Hol and let her take it from here all right thank you um and so in phase three basically what we'll do is we'll review all of the applicants and basic we prepare for the
130interview phase and so that uh part of the process is where um we like he's been talking about we conduct the reference checks we um speak with each candidate personally um we do ask them questions we get to know them pretty well and developing that trusting relationship because as you can probably um surmise you know when a candidate comes in we're the um search firm folks so regardless if it's for this position or another position it's in their best interest to be open and honest with us and um that's part of the work that we do during this phase is figuring out how do we vet all of the candidates that we bring in um this is also where we really focus on developing a very unique set of interview questions so that'll be a
131process that we'll do together we do not have a can list of questions that we just say here you go now is there a bank yes and we can go to that bank if we need to but most of the time as we're looking through the process we're going to look at that stakeholder input see what the community has said look at what each of you are looking for in that one person that you hire and from that together develop a set of questions that each candidate will answer and bring forward after we do that part of the process we notify all the candidates of um that were selected for the next phase of interview the next phase of interview and I don't know if it goes into phase four after this um is that
132they do a video interview so before we actually bring the candidates here and end up you know spending money to bring people here if they're from out of state or out of the area we want to talk to them and see them a little bit right and so what we do is a video interview process with a u as many candidates as you would like to see um this with I've we've seen this up to 20 candidates that have done the video interviews and they do a three minute interview and you get to watch those interviews um some people have said said we want to watch all of the uh video interviews more power to you others have said you all look at them and bring us the top five six whatever it is whatever
133it is that you want us to do we'll do that part of the process after we see the V video interviews together then we'll decide who we want to bring in for an in-person interview and so you'll get to see a little bit about who they are and what's um uh uh you know kind of their mannerisms and such from the video portion before you get to meet them personally um after that we uh establish the procedures that are going to happen when they do come if you want to have a visit um if they want them to visit here or if you want to go and visit where they are we'll arrange all of that um as part of the process now um where the whether or not that is in the visit to
134their site um and their visit here is included in the cost is really up to um it'll be part of the process so we'll see what where that cost um sits finally all that we will do all of the scheduled interview times now we do not sit into the interview process once we get you to the interview it is your candidate your person you get to do that interview process unless you would like us there we can most certainly support with that me being local here in Michigan I have no problem um you know it's it's an hour drive it is not it's fine we'll come over even if we have to do more stakeholder meetings that's happened before especially with a district that um is close like Ohio or here in Oxford um well
135I will definitely uh come for another day if we have to because that's um it's in our best interest to find the best candidate it's also in our best interest to make sure everybody in our community is heard especially considering what's happened in our community and that we are in a place of healing right now and so even when we're in a place of healing it's even more important that everyone feels heard and respected and um and and knows that their voices and opinions have been considered finally we go on on to um making the per after you make your selection so once you decide who it is that you want to choose we will personally contact the person and then work through the actual verifications and background checks and support you through the negotiations
136process which is part of what I love is um negotiations and um and that part of the work and then it moves into stage five which is the fun part in my opinion that's where we start establishing that board superintendent relationship yes the process that we go through to find the candidate is critical and important but it's a the whole purpose of this is to come up with someone that we are going to connect with that will be able to lead this district for a minimum I would say of five years personally because that's what you need right now is someone that is willing to stay um understand the community and heal after all the things that have happened and move us forward into our next phase of what Oxford's moving to and so that's
137when we do to phase five which is um we stay with you we don't leave you you after a few months and say okay byebye that was great um we stay with you for at least a year nurturing that relationship supporting that superintendent answering some of their questions if you get someone from out of state like I was there's going to be a few out of state questions usually around budget um which are not hard to figure out I mean I came from California it wasn't rocket science to figure out Michigan's budget but you're attendance the way you calculate that and and fund balances that it's a very fun process let's just say um but it's definitely something that can be learned or taught to someone from out of state um the the differences um
138are not as vast as sometimes folks would think they are and then we also have a guarantee if that person um for any reason uh doesn't work out we will come back and do the search for free uh for you and so um only time I've ever seen that happen is unfortunately someone um was no longer with us uh that's that's the only time I've personally seen that happen but um it really doesn't happen very long very often because of that phase five because we stay with you and work through any of the Kinks that occur during that beginning parts of a relationship and so with that um like we said the these are additional services that we can provide um with the job description and um uh de the actual development of the contract
139we will support you through it but we don't actually develop the contract we work with the candidate and you to kind of support through that process and then of course the arranging for like I was talking about earlier the arranging for the on-site visit to their campus if if you would like to go see them we can help with that but that's not something that usually we include so with that um the timeline for this uh you are actually I know this may not feel like a really good time right now uh because it's mid year and you know we're looking for someone for July 1 but I would say you're in a really really good time period because most of the time folks start looking right after the first of the year um January
140February is when most folks are starting to make that decision over the holiday break that all right we're going to go for it right and then we start looking in January February and so um we can complete this process it usually takes about 90 days uh for the entire process to work through and my understanding is you're looking at a July one start and so we would nurture that relationship to that July one start that's actually a great time to start that's what super tenants Across the Nation I would say would expect or would prefer as a July uh one start uh you know if you're doing a superintendent search in the fall sometimes becomes a little more difficult to recruit people away from their uh current positions but July 1st is is perfect so
141I think that's that's great and really that's that's the 30,000 foot view of our uh of what we do we believe in transparency I've said that over and over we're going to tell you we've had situations and and I won't say where it was or who it was we had a situation where there was some negative publicity that came out on one of the candidates we did an we I already knew it but did an investigation of that uh talked to the candidate talked to the school district got all the story together we presented that to the board we're not and we didn't say this is our opinion we said this is what we found you have to decide if this person should be a candidate for the position or not and once they met
142that person heard that person's side of the story went through the whole situation they hired that person that person is still the superintendent of that district and is doing a phenomenal job so sometimes there's those things that if you've been a superintendent there's probably something somebody along the way could dig up about about your past or try to make an issue out of your past uh we vet that we tell you we're we just tell you right in front this is what we found and we want you to know it but you have to make the decision whether you want to take that person on as a candidate or not again we've said sustainability of leadership we believe that is so important I'll be honest with you I don't I love doing this search I
143don't want to do it again for you guys if if we can find the very first time the person who fits that's what we want and we want it for you and we want it for us we don't want to have to come back and do it again and then we believe that last one and I really do I've been involved in so many of these and I think that is a valuable valuable part of this process is listening to the stakeholders and we'll do that for you you don't have to we don't want you to be in there when we're talking to them we want them to speak honestly openly and we'll collect their thoughts and their information and and then you will see it uh but uh we think that's really import uh
144important for students I love to meet with students and talk with them they glow they just think that's so cool to be able to talk about their school district the positives and even some of the negatives of things they think should be improved in the school District they like to do that uh they think we're important we're not but they they think that uh and so we passed that information again along to you so I'll stop there uh I hope we've kind of covered the 30,000 foot View and you may have some questions you'd like to ask us please questions I'll go first I guess you you touched base on as far as the process starting but as far as phase one if if we were to go and select uh to work with you
145when do you envision that that starting we'll work with you on that but it it could be as early as December uh or we could push it back to after the you know December's pretty busy for a lot of reasons we could push that back to to January and start that but we can start as early as December we'll work with you however you would like to do that and we only take one search so just know that we don't have multiple searches that we do as a consultant team we are the team that you would have and we have one District that we would be focused on as far as a search not trying to do 700 searches at the same time no we have one focus and so we get to know you
146all in your District pretty well okay now does the firm have any open searches in Michigan right now not that I'm aware I don't think so do you know when the last Michigan search was I think it that information is in the contract I believe or in the packet that we were sent but I I don't have that in front of me so I'd have to think they Mike I was I was Mike I was looking in the last five years they haven't had any in Michigan that's what's in the packet so okay that could be looked at two different ways as a negative but it could be a positive that you know that uh you have the opportunity to work with us and for us to bring in or bring candidates to you you
147may not ever had the opportunity to meet before admittedly this is only the second presentation I know I personally have done in Michigan so um and the first one they brought their previous superintendent back so yeah it's an interesting situation but they just brought them back Amanda yeah so I understand you know it's a very collaborative effort in finding the characteristics of the the next superintendent uh but just based on what you know about Oxford what you have researched what do you think are the top attributes of our next superintendent want me to go go ahead I'll I'll fill the Gap I think first and foremost you need a Healer you need someone who is going to listen understand what's happened in the community listen to all the concerns challenges perspectives um the the community
148is still healing um in my humble opinion I I live an hour away so of course I knew and about what happened I have kids in the school district so um it's you need first of all someone that can heal and but I someone I can heal I mean someone who is willing to live listen someone who's not going to take what's happening or what's said personally that can really just listen to understand and then be able to lead a team and so you need someone who understands the Adaptive and Technical aspects of leadership meaning they need to know how to run a a multi-million dollar organization but also know how to support the people within the organization who are still um for whatever reason maybe going through some things and so that adaptive and
149Technical leadership um aspect they need both of those and um quite frankly I think you need someone who understands the fiscal and financial um uh capital G uh uh I'm going into Bond language so I don't want to go there um just understands the the fiscal financial and um what is the word I'm looking for the operational aspects you know the building buildings the facilities um pieces that are going on so that we can definitely move forward in a positive direction so forgive me my my brain was just a little off to add to that I you know from the research that I've done I know you've had the the tragedy and some situations like that I think leadership finding a leader means uh more than someone just taking the helm I think it's someone
150who uh someone who can influence someone who can build trust in the community with people someone who can uh build a team within the school district and outside the school district to support the school district someone who's collaborative we we all use that word but really can be out there who's a people person someone who's honest and transparent personable approachable all of those those are the personal characteristics I would say a person would need uh in order to do a good job uh in this position and then just to round that off an educator someone who understands the curriculum instructional aspects because what's happened after Co and with the tragedy we need need to get back to business and we need to focus on elevating this U the the the standards and the way that
151we are approaching the standards and getting back to some of the basics of educa of educating but also the Innovative parts of Education there's a lot of innovation that's happened um over the last few years and so you need someone who understands all of that you know that Tech that's what I mean by that Technical and adaptive the technical pieces of the work are you know the education the what's happening in the classrooms being able to support principles and central office folks the Adaptive piece being the people understand that people make this business and so you got to be able to connect with them especially after everything that's occurred anyone else James so I've asked the other two firms so I'm going to keep in par with it um have you guys ever gotten into
152an agreement or contract with a district where it hasn't worked out and you guys have had severed or had to you know in that terms with them us personally or the organiz the organization I'm not aware if we have I've never been a part of one U where that where it's been severed the contracts been broken for any reason and they parted ways I there may have been some in the past I I couldn't speak to that but I've never been I'm never been aware of any okay but that is some information we can get back to you if um we can call the office and find out and um send you an email with that information if it has happened okay thank you so when you present the candidates to us you had said
153that you won't give us all of the candidates you'll just give us the ones that based on our profile I understanding that correctly that you feel are the best suited do you differentiate them in any way or fashion yes U and again this is up to you as the board how you want to do this um in Most states with most searches that I've been a part of we get the uh all let's just use the number 30 let's say there's 30 applicants okay we vet those we try to narrow that down to what we call the short list we will vet the ones out that just don't have the qualifications they just don't have the experience for whatever reason they just don't seem to fit TR I would always try to get that number
154down to 10 or 12 in the short list then we start really doing some intense work with that 10 or 12 and do reference checks and talking and we'll do a tremendous amount of uh communication with each other and with our company and then we narrowed that list down to a what I call the short list I mean excuse me the the um the semi final list which may be four people may be six people uh and we do those video interviews that Dr H's already mentioned generally it's around six people and that way you you get to see them and that's that's a taped uh interview we give them like three questions and they have three minutes to answer each question and what that does for you and for us is get the opportunity
155to hear them speak get the opportunity to hear them whether they answer the question or not that's been asked uh we get to see them their their facial expressions their mannerism their passion all of that about education what they believe uh in those video interviews and we'll share those with you sometimes you do that in person sometimes we do it by Zoom uh and and then you at that point tell us these are the maybe the semifinalist or the finalist these are the three that we really want to focus in on we want to bring them in for a in-person interview and and we go from there so you know it's it's a stepbystep process of narrowing it down and you drive you will drive the Train on that if you say but we want
156to see all 30 applicants EXA we can do that we we'll allow you to do that I would say my last search in Connecticut they want the board wanted to see all of the candidates there was just some things going on and so they we did we shared all of the candidates and they helped us um with the narrowing from their perspective as well so it's not impossible it's not unheard of yeah the one thing we want to make sure though that we do Define that process in the beginning because we need to tell those candidates candidates here's the process this is what's going to because they're going to ask especially if they're a sitting superintendent in a successful District first question they're going to ask ask us is will my name be released to
157the media exactly and if it is we most of the time they're fine with it as long as they know at what point you know we don't want to be uh blindsided we don't want to Blindside them we don't want to give them misinformation that either all names will be uh will be released to the media or just the finalist or just the semifinalists those will and you'll make that determination we don't drive that we'll help help you and advise you or suggest but you make that determination anybody else I do have one um as far as the community feedback you said it was be organized in a document put together what does that look like what is it just literally a it's a packet a packet that we would all get a copy of
158yep it's a packet of information we give you the answers to every single question only thing we remove is if there's any foul language or unappropriate language for children to read that's the way we think about you know the you know the words or if they mention anyone by name we will take those names out um but you get everything that they say as written so what we do in the stakeholder processors and I won't tell you the questions now but there's basically four questions that we ask and so for every group that we meet with we ask those four questions and they give us feedback that gives us the opportunity to compare and contrast answers well the parents feel this way but the students feel this way the community members feel this way the
159government officials said this some of them you know they we look for those uh common threads throughout all and those are the ones that we'll give we'll give you all of them but we'll identify a list of those that we think that we heard more of than anything else it could be anything but uh uh we'll we'll identify those but you'll be able to pick those out as well as you go through that document and then with the candidate see that packet the candidates see that packet or would it just be up to us to it's up to you that communicated it's up to you if you want to put it on your website many school districts choose to do that put it on their website we ask you before we put it on our
160website but if you say we're going to publicize it we put it on the mcperson Jacobson website and and tell candidates it's there if they want to see it it's helpful to them actually they know what the issues are with and you can tell which candidates have read it and done their homework and yeah which have not so it's a really good resource anybody else okay thank you so much for your time thank you for coming out it was a pleasure hearing your presentation appreciate it thank you very much thank you again nice meeting you nice meeting you nice meeting you Barry nice meeting you Dr VI ask question are you to make a decision tonight I think we are thank you okay okay um section five of the agenda consent agenda um minutes from
161the November 14th 2023 regular meeting can I have a recommendation Aaron move to approve the consent agenda as presented uh Amanda support any discussion all those in favor say I I I all those opposed motion carries superintendent report Dr Markovich yeah very briefly I just want to uh Point call to your attention we did uh uh pull together all of the feedback that we got from our listening sessions we held 14 of them uh last week we spoke with 41 uh parents we spoke with uh 81 um staff people um and uh all of the uh verbatim um both the group conversations that were up on big chart paper as well as the written responses we collected from everybody are given to you in your board packets tonight we will post them on the website
162tomorrow under the guidepost tag so that everyone can read them we're reviewing this as we are going through the guidepost report uh again uh in light of what we heard and um uh this will then become an appendix uh to that re to our response to that report as well so I just bring it to your attention that it's here tonight and it will be up tomorrow okay thank you um Board of Education matters selection of superintendent search [Music] firm does anybody want to make a motion I know it's I will amand okay uh move to approve to select Hazard young AA and Associates to conduct the superintendent search for Oxford Community Schools second second James okay discussion I'll start go ahead Mike please I'm sure everybody's got something to say no I was I
163was just going to say one of the things I mean obviously we're seeing the packet here I know it was up on the screen but uh we had since we had formally asked the other uh firms they do have the timeline draft right up in here mid mid December so they would they're they're planning a starting mid December with a meeting with the board and determining the process and then even mid late December having those uh individual board interviews and then we'd start so I just I know we we asked specifically those question questions with the other firms although I think that they were all willing to start as soon as we need it I don't think any of them said that they wouldn't um I'm just wondering if um if uh Amanda you can
164start with why um why this was your choice and maybe we can start with that yep okay sure so I'm glad to hear that others um age Hazard young I thought in the the research phase of looking at their proposal they did an excellent job of putting it together they really tailored to Axford I thought um you know I I think all three of them tonight did did a great job and uh are are certainly capable but I really think that Hazard young stood out for a lot of the right reasons uh I think that they understand our Community I love that they focus on stakeholder input and involvement I love that they go a little bit above and beyond what the other ones do as far as that goes with the focus groups the
165attention to the students and what they're looking for the parents uh I like the detail of interviewing all of us separately to figure out what we want I thought that um you know of course you you know me and I love stats and figures and I thought that they did an excellent job of backing up all of their their information and the process every step of the way with you know research driven facts and so just all in all uh they were my favorite okay James so you know listening to all three of them right uh they to me stood out as the strongest not only for for the points that Amanda made but just I mean I go back and and kind of confer or I guess agree is the word I'm trying to
166say you know they they laid out the tentative timeline right it's not up for questions um going through the different sections I mean it's very detailed on here um I guess I'm actually repeating everything that Mana said none that I'm hearing it aloud but I do like the sample interview questions that are there I mean it's just it's very thorough and it was a good presentation um you know and and the reason why I second them is listening to the other ones um I I had some concerns with the last group on some of the like the unknown cost and things that kept kind of creeping in like that's an additional cost or we don't have that and I don't we don't need that you know we need we need to have some assurity stuff
167but definitely the the listening stuff and and listening and being versatile on it listening to what he was saying about you know the in person and zooms and being flexible with with people in the community I mean yes ultimately you know we we have to make the decision but we need input from everybody all the stakeholders and I think their approach of doing that is going to give us the best information of what other people are thinking within the community okay I would also support that and the fact that they were succinct they were organized they have a lot of resources to support new board members experience board members the community and even our students through the process mentioning things like adapting to our parents schedules and doing Sundays at 7:00 p.m. you know light
168bulb moment most of us are home at 7:00 p.m. and you know post dinner you know kind of settle down phase and available maybe to participate um they really did a great job in the proposal and went into a lot of detail um and they've placed some school districts that have had some unfortunate um tragedies like our own so I think they have the relation services to know what recovery looks like um be my two cents I agree I I really I felt I felt that all three responses were professionally done were um professionally laid out I feel like all the timelines were also very similar even though they actually had one that was um specified um they all spoke to the timeline and and and did and I think we're willing to get going
169January 1 type thing anyways um but I I too felt that they were really The Proposal if you really kind of apples to apples um if you do a more of a comparison I felt like they were really um as far as inviting the public participation inviting stakeholder participation inviting staff participation student all of it just the transition phases from one to two you know um most of you um up here have never done this before so it's a big process and it really is the most important job that we do so I felt that they were really prepared they they would all do great though I I appreciate the response I thought the rfps were all responded to well and just just to note I'm surprised no want to mention the portal I'm looking
170uh as far as their their their portal it looks like board portal they mentioned it looks like the the data and and input that we would be getting would be very organized and easily to go easy to comb through um I would have I mean I honestly I would have some concern with just getting a whole packet of uh of community response and um and that was definitely a strength that I noted for for hya um and and honestly because I was the one that was following with with Mike as well uh and he really he really did respond whenever I needed him to whether it was uh Friday night or whenever right so so I saw that as well in physically so yeah I want to agree with that board portal I thought that
171was fantastic and I think my favorite part of that was the the transition phase aspect where for the first six months after the superintendent is still receiving feedback from board members through that portal and can adjust and pivot as necessary so yeah I I just want to agree that that portal sounded like a really you know good tool I think awareness of Michigan um searches that are currently happening is important too um as we know there are a lot um occurring in the fact that they've already secured too they know what the challenges in the market are going to be and clever they they've really personalized our our thing which you know those are little details but um details also stand out so those are little details that make you feel like they really took
172the time to do their own research on Oxford and use our pictures and our local go and just just little details anything further yeah I just have one comment I actually liked the first two um firms they would both um I think that Hazard young um will just cast a bigger net for us and I I think we're at a time where we need to cast a bigger net um so agree I I liked them a lot I liked everything about them so um so um were they working on any other Michigan searches right now did we ask that question I'm sorry kind of went together believe oh they're the ones that are doing Ann Arbor and Midland so they're already okay okay but not this sorry pardon not this team believe I believe it
173might be well at least one there's three of them sorry I believe I believe at at minimum it's it's led by Mike well and those are different those you know we're kind of in the middle of the now I don't know the size of Midland but an arbor is huge and they've got they just got a lot of bond money and they've got totally different things going on than we do um I don't know the size of Midland so I mean that could prove to our advantage also um in recruiting do you know the size of that District yeah so Mike the guy that came here would would actually out there be um okay you could ask him if you wanted to I guess oh okay Midland yes okay interesting okay so it's I mean
174it's a different it's still a different type Community but the size is similar that's um that's good to know too um you know being up north okay thank you thank you everybody okay any more discussion okay all those in favor say I I all those opposed motion carries and again thank you very much to all three firms mli um Hazard young and ATA and mcferson and Jacobson for coming for your presentation for your time um for your response to the RFP thank you very much okay um Board of Education meeting schedule location I can make the motion if you want go ahead move to approve the change of the meeting location for the remaining Board of Education meetings for the 2023 2024 school year or to be held at Lakeville Elementary School support James discussion
175all those in favor say I I I all those opposed motion carries curriculum and instruction um Miss Anita and Mr Wolf no Gary uh yes uh Gary's going to be presenting for us tonight it is a little fuzzy right how are you good we have a whole team that's great a good team great team there's all kinds of Middle School trouble over there all right uh good evening this is Gary Van stavern it is good to see all of you again and with me we have our Middle School ins which is individuals and societies teachers we have sixth grade Noah gr sixth grade Mike Forester seventh grade Noah Gro and then eighth grade Brian SS hello good even hello and so what we're going to talk to you about tonight is our curriculum resources that
176we have had an extended pilot process on uh just over a year and so we're going to be asking for your approval to adopt that those curriculum resources and uh with that I'm going to turn it over to Brian all right good evening ladies and gentlemen uh we're here to talk about some of the changes that have been made in our department over the last years some out of necessity and some just out of the best interest of our students and so we're going to start with uh what we were basically using to guide us as we rewrote our uh our unit planners the nyp framework IB Middle years program and our students putting those things first are going to lead to our eventual result we're looking for in our district and that is the
177portrait that graduate we want our students to graduate with skills that are going to make them successful contributing students or should say citizens in the global Society next slide so this is just a brief overview of the process appas Rubicon is where we house our units uh each unit is essentially a blueprint this is a guaranteed and viable curriculum meaning that any student who attends Oxford Middle School it doesn't matter if they're on the blue team or the gold team they're going to get the same education and the same experience and it's viable because these blueprints in Atlas they they just need to be followed by whoever comes after us and so it's a pretty slick curriculum one of the things we were really focused on in the beginning was not just the content that
178the state of Michigan says to teach but Concepts those transitions those things that are transferable across all disciplines and skills the approaches to learning so those are embedded into each of the unit planners next slide please so the need for change I discussed that some of this was out of necessity in 2019 the state of Michigan changed the curriculums 4 K through 12 content standard social stud studies in 8th grade Ryan Clark and I we got lucky we didn't really have a lot of changes so not a lot had to be done but in Sixth and 7 grade geography the state of Michigan chose to move a lot of the content into different places and so a lot of work had to be done amongst the six and seven grade staff and so a lot
179of that work was done last spring with r van St our former uh NP coordinator and I'm very proud of the work our department has done so we're here to highlight that all right moving on to the next slide I told that the 8ighth grade did not have a lot of content changes but we had a little surprise in the fall of 2019 when our online textbook resource wasn't there didn't was gone it turns out that that company through using the online textbook U website along with the actual hardcover textbook they had gotten bought out and then that Edition had been Rewritten and updated and so they had a brand new website ready to go Ken Weaver back to 2019 purchased a class set of textbooks for buying clet so we have brand new textbooks
180they're awesome uh our old textbooks were really old and tore up and the new website with this new textbook it goes along with the old one because this company bought the old one it's a seamless transition for the 8ighth grade so that's why we adopted it straight away and we continue to use it today but sixth and seventh grade are a little bit different our students in eighth grade are ready to move on to high school but sixth graders certainly are a lot different than our eighth gr I'm let the seventh and sixth grade teachers talk to you about their process for uh coming up with various resources we'll start with no 7 gey perfect thank you so as a seventh grade uh cohort just andreo and myself we piloted three different uh products or
181textbooks uh hmh um TCI and then SAS we settled on SAS we thought that was a a resource that really benefited our students um going through more of a project based um environment so using that text to really engage their learning throughout the units rather than just a normal textbook that is why we settled on the SAS text because it has the interactive online portion so students are able to take that textbook home with them engage online and also have the classroom set in the uh classroom as well so again it gave us that versatility at home in the classroom along with working together with that collaboration piece again with the Project based on learning so that is where we set on and uh I'll give it away to six all right uh good evening
182uh so actually most of my career here at Oxford um I have taught seventh grade so I got I'm very familiar with the seventh grade curriculum which I I enjoy you know ancient world history that tells some narrative you know throughout thousands of years and this this is my third year teaching teaching sixth grade and I have a Fortune of teaching with a cague named Paige Kelly uh this is her second year in Oxford and she was an awesome hire and she and I last year as we were going through the the sixth grade curriculum uh we what we ended up doing is we were piloting for about a third of the year uh Curriculum by TCI and then also a curriculum by saop and what we found in evaluating both it seemed like the
183students seem to be more engaged with the TCI curriculum uh it offered different entry points into um helping build the knowledge and and the skills whereas maybe as a teacher and teaching a while with the text from SAS I that's how I I mean I was very text based learning when I when I was growing up and it's different now uh textbooks yeah you need the material you need whether it be online or or the textbook um TCI has has some interesting things that we we can integrate with with our curriculum and one of those we have mapping Labs uh prior to learning about different regions of the world um they have interactive student notebooks um they have to they're asked questions here different times where things can get pretty rigorous and they have to
184rely on finding information in different resources uh they technology wise with the TCI uh there are different different tools that they have as part of the online portion uh where where students uh in terms of differentiation um students have with the technology they have the option they can have the text read to them if they want and that is a need for some students not to get distracted with decoding the words and and but listening and comprehending that way and so um that's one of the features of that but there there are a whole variety of things and resources and we've kind of in some ways we've only scratched the surface with that uh but we thought that with the TCI that was going to be a better way to help sixth grade Learners uh
185be introduced to geography at the sixth grade LEL thank you Mike thank you Noah what it comes down to is that these resources are the best fit for these grade levels sixth graders are different than seventh graders seventh graders are different graders and so on so the next thing I want to talk about are kind of the nuts and bolts of our department since our department last presented curriculum there was no PLC last time PLC is a professional learning community and I'm honored to be the leader of our Department's PLC when we meet in our PLC as a department we are one of the highest functioning plc's in the building we support each other through and through we get along as friends and what we talk about in our discussions in the meetings are all
186Student Center instruction curriculum assessment data and in those meetings we get a lot of uh feedback from each other to help each other out so we work through some of our problems and then of course our course goals throughout our department we really just want to strive to have our kids become that portrait of graduate kids that are going to be ready to go the job for of the productive citizens and Global society and then in the end of the presentation we'll have time to view these examples we're going to start with some eighth grade examples unit one was already taught uh my job is to teach the Revolutionary War the early or last half of the 19th century so that's our unit m in app this we have those units and that's their time
187frame then this is our first unit our statement of inquiry is the process of decision making impacts impacts interactions within a system so systems are the concepts that we're talking about across these grade levels vertically it's covered we have our inquiry pieces our approaches to learning the global context and included some examples of learning these are the things you would see in the unit planner Blueprints and the teachers who would come after us could follow the blueprints that we've set in place and of course these are living griefing documents we always want them to be the best for our kids the next slide is going to highlight some of the learning experiences the students have in eighth grade early on they do a breaking news story live act out the Declaration of Independence has been
188signed uh we talk about conflict resolution we have a founding father's display in our school that we do a scavenger hunt on that's a lot of fun we play a lot of games in class very engaging stuff because history can tend to be boring I keep them engaged through games and we have a lot of fun as you can see these kids over here I kind of forgot I put that picture there but they try to be silly sometimes but still it's fun so I'm going to let um seventh grade go ahead and just kind of briefly discuss some of their examples so again uh right up here our units are broken down into six different uh units the unit six kind of spans over a a large time frame or many units so it's
189more so broken down into five that are consecutive but we start out just thinking like a historian our class in seventh grade is more um the first more so history class that a student ends up having throughout their educational Journey so sixth grade is more geography when they get to seventh grade it's more so getting into that kind of ancient world history and the first time that they really kind of do deep into that um so again after we go through that and we go into the you go back to that thank you so as we go through that again getting into uh starting civilizations and things like that we're uh on unit 3 currently so we're talking about Mesopotamia kind of the Middle East at the at the moment so starting the civilizations thank
190you so going on to our uh thinking like historian so time place space again understanding where in the world things are happening um you know when they happen didn't happen yesterday and it's you know not right next door again it's across the ocean again over there so again that's kind of a snapshot right here again a lot of uh pieces from the classroom uh being able to okay so up here again being able to use our awesome campus at the middle school a hunter gather hike so as we kind of start our unit um understanding where the best place to would be to start a civilization or um have resources to continue uh as we get down here here is one of our ancient uh Rome uh leaders posters so again being able to research
191and then use the kind of cross perc with the you know art or Interest being able to do that there cassandre yo was able to with her windows in her classroom create a woman Mosaic which was very interesting very engaging for the students that they were able to conect them so again it's just a just a quick snapshot you guys have them in front of you um that's about it for next yeah and this will give you an overview of what our curriculum is all about and they think they're trying to learn how to think like historians in seventh grade in geography is trying to think like a geographer and our brains automatically think geographically you know you always want to think well what's the quickest way of home or this way or that way
192um and and so our brains are kind of has that spatial aspect to it so we go through the year and and we we introduce them to geography geographic terms and skills and as we go through the year with these different topics we try and integrate different different regions of the world as we do that all right these units all follow the same basic blueprint so we'll just take a look at some of the examples from the sixth grade learning I think you have so these are some of the TCI resources that they're able to showcase for you um the T it looks a lot different than the textbook that I use in 8th grade US History this has a lot more graphics and things I like the eth grade textbook because it's written more
193like like a high school textbook so to speak but this works really well for I think the sixth graders you can see they're engaged they're creative they're building stuff I love it yep I summed it up pretty well and uh we've already engaged in uh some some Project based learning uh where they had to create tissue box um what were they called back in the day diet di back and I'm from back in the day but I couldn't remember the name for it and they created in groups they created these and for different climate regions in in uh North America uh they enjoy doing that but yet they're using they're using the knowledge they're using the creativity and you can see some of those right there um using our technology uh with the Promethean boards
194and thank you for that purchase that that's another way that kids they it's not just me using the interactive uh whiteboard but it's it's an opportunity to get kids involved with the technology reporting out their their answers um the TCI materials visually appealing but there's there's content to back it up as well that's all we have for you tonight great do you have any questions for us about anything I know we probably took more time than we wanted to sorry it's not easy to kind of sum up the things we've been doing over the last few years in just a short amount of time we appreciate the information and like you said the last time you guys were here it was much different it I remember like completely different yes times have changed yeah so
195appreciate it we're changing with the times good all right any questions thank you oh I'm sorry Mary has thanks I just had a um I did have a comment it's great to hear that the plcs are working really well for you and you know and it's great to see that you're collaborating across the grades and we don't have to use the same we don't have to use the same materials because we have the blueprint you know of what we have to teach but it anyway it's great to get that feedback too that the PCS are working well conern for the board that we're using three different resources but we feel like the resources are best for each grade and that's why we did that and that's and it's great that you're working together so you're
196sure that they the students can also transition to a different type of learning but they're changing every day too it's Middle School you guys make got Middle School sound like fun thank you it is fun I I did I wanted to pipe in a little bit um as as our department we're fortunate to have Brian as our PLC leader because that with his leadership it's kind of set a tone for us where we can you know we can talk about you know things that uh you know how to do things better but you know we we care about uh each other individuals too and that I think uh that's important to have that also than you sure is right thank youone very nice job Miss be good evening I'm going like to ask you to
197appoint an Oxford parent representative to the Oakland County parent advisory committee will sit up open schools each school district is encouraged to appoint one or two um parents of students with disabilities who either have um an ifsp or an IEP and receive special education services um to send them to the Oakland schools to have historically exford has hit two Representatives um they attend monthly meetings they talk about membership work legal updates and they get training on various various topics related to special education um then they come back and I meet with the our OPAC they call themselves The Oxford pack and we talk about what we can do here in Oxford for our families with students with disabilities um so like I said we typically have two represent two board appointed Representatives um we recently
198had one whose child left the district so it left an open chair I asked I ask our special education teachers for recommendations on parents who interest or high interest in special education advocacy so I am here tonight to ask you to appoint Emily Les now to our Oxford parent advisory committee um she was recommended by a teacher for being um very interested in that special education advocacy work she's attending classes to the Miss Alliance families and then I had the opportunity to work with her a few times this school year and her passion for special education is truly there so um Emily is here give away she came tonight um if you approve her appointment she can attend next month's meeting at open schools and then she can meet with me in the other bound
199any questions well thank thank you Emily for um for offering to do that and for offering to be a voice and an advocacy for our special ed kids um I remember meeting you several several several years ago and you and I having a conversation do you remember that yep about our kids um so I I just appreciate you stepping up to the plate and doing something for those kids and willing to be an advocate takes a lot of time to do all that and to go all those meetings and it's a sacrifice so thank you um I'd like to do the motion then move to approve the recommendation ation to appoint Emily lenau to the Oakland County parent advisory committee as presented support Erin discussion thank you again thank you again there she is all
200those in favor say I I all those opposed motion carries thank you thank you very much um we'll move into unscheduled public comment I'd like to remind everybody of um the rules that everybody has given three minutes it is um you know we ask that you try and stick to those three minutes you'll get a um a buzzer well first there'll be a light to let you know um over there that you have 30 seconds remaining on your time and then a buzzer we really would would ask that you please try and wrap up your thoughts and your comments um to be fair to everybody it's unfair if someone takes an extended amount of time um so if you could try and follow those rules we would appreciate it and we'll um go right into
201it here Max Reed um I think so table is that okay thank you hi hello hello everybody can hear me yep I think so all right hi for those of you who don't know me which I'm assuming is all if not most of you my name is Max Reed and I am a senior at Oxford High School I am 17 years old I was 15 at the time of the shooting I could not even drive a car yet let that sink in for a second I couldn't even drive how are you going to sit here and tell me with a straight face that I went through a school shooting because of your negligence I am not one for public speaking so this must be pretty damn important on November 30th at approximately 12:51 p.m. I
202lost my innocence because each and every one of you has failed us you failed us the children you were supposed to protect and you have proved time and time again that you will continue to fail us you failed when you brought in not Dr Henry when you shut down Counseling Services not even 6 months after the tragedy had occurred you hired counselors who are more focused on our grades than our overall mental health and well-being I have been sent back to class during a panic attacks regarding the shooting because my education is quote more important tell me how I'm supposed to learn when it feels like the walls are closing in on me I can't I can't breathe I can't see because I've been crying too much and my heart is in my throat could
203you learn like that anybody didn't think so you can't even step foot into Oxford High School and yet you make us walk in that building every single day the building that we lost classmates family members and some more I lost myself that day and I'm considered lucky my best friend clay Schilling lost his older brother I am changed forever as a person I am scared to go to college I am scared to have kids someday for fear that when I drop them off it could be the last time I ever see them before they die because of people like you you were responsible for keeping us safe we trusted you you will never earn that trust back I may be a senior this year but I will come to as many board meetings as I
204need to to get my point across to make sure that my baby brother won't have to deal with such ignorant people do the right thing resign we need to heal and we cannot do that with you guys in charge thank you Max Jazelle how are you doing today I'm fine how are you not great hello my name is jelle Gillum I'm a junior at Oxford High School as I'd hope you remember I'm here to kick and scream and stomp my feet on November 21st I became the student leader for the we will be heard walk out and rally we hung a homemade Memorial and took a moment of silence for Hana Tate Madison and Justin we also had a conversation we talked about our feelings and the things we wanted changed for the first time
205in 2 years I stood with an army of wild cats we felt like we could speak up and that's exactly what we did I addressed the Press with a group of students that I love dearly standing by my side and spoke to my community now they hear us too it has been 728 days since we lost four beautiful humans 728 days since hundreds of children's lives were changed forever 728 days since you failed to perform your duty failed your responsibility failed your expected function and failed to follow or Implement policies and procedures to protect your children every morning I wake up and grieve the loss of the Innocence of children you were responsible for protecting every day I wake up and feel the pain of the experiences of November 30th every day your lack of
206responsibility and accountability takes a new toll on the lives of my wild cats that is 728 days of new pain and new scars that you are responsible for one thing I'm not sure you understand yet is that just because you weren't sitting in those chairs on November 30th doesn't mean that you aren't responsible it doesn't give you immunity as long as you sit and refuse to defend and protect us your faces are just as disgusting to me as the ones whose actions caused this as as long as you sit there and defend the people accountable while refusing to resign you cause fresh wounds in 2 days this community will wake up and know that is that it has been two years since the shooting we will know that it has been two years since you
207have done anything to assist in the healing and protection of the students you claim to love it's insulting to me that you believe standing here with your stone cold emotionless faces will help us heal if if you truly care then resign the only thing that you justify doing to us is silencing us you have proven that day in and day out if there is anything you wish to do for us resign the morning of our walk out I had Oakland County Emergency Services dispatch a crisis trauma team to stand alongside and support myself and the students participating they were kicked off the premises and threatened to be arrested their vehicles were searched and they were unable to be present for the students that needed them this is the same team that attempted to come and
208provide healing for students after November 30th and you refused their access yet again what else do we have to do how much more will it take Vicki when you told the press that you didn't know what healing Services we were asking for these are the ones the ones you have removed over and over other than that comment you had nothing to say to the Press no comment every time if you want to protect us resign if you want us to heal resign if you love us resign if you care resign if you are so passionate about this community resign if you claim to want what's best for us resign Vicky Heather Mary Mr Wolf Mr Hopkins it's not appropriate for you to be here to show your faces in this District leave resign we don't
209want you here [Applause] okay Leila zers did I mispronounce your last name no it's s okay thank you I assume you can hear me I have no idea okay good evening my name is Lea zers I am 18 years old and a senior at Oxford High School I have gone to Oxford since my freshman year and it is now my third school I came to Oxford in hopes of a fresh start and the opportunity to connect with new people all around while I did connect with new people I never thought it'd be due to the fact that we had to endure a school shooting together each year I have hoped for some normaly but time and time again we are failed by all of you as well as the people you have running our school
210each year all of us hope for you to get over yourselves and admit to your wrongdoings and the fact that you are all so childish to the point where you can't even admit that you messed up and have ruined our lives bit by bit you have ripped our hearts out and stomped on them over and over again by trying to cover up everything that you have caused you've claimed time and time again that you've provided us with ways to cope and help but all you have done has made our lives a living hell and thrown away any chance we've had to heal you shut out the opinions of the people's lives you've affected just to give yourself a good name but you can see now how well that's working out for you this is never
211going to be over until we get what we want I came to Oxford High School in the first place because we were told that the opportunities were amazing that there were so many benefits to it I used to love coming to school but now it becomes more and more of a chore each day having to walk those Halls each day knowing that we had friends and family die there is something none of us should have to do we were told months before it happened that oh this one ever happened to us we're least likely to go through a school shooting but here we are 2 years later and we were lied to we were told if anything occurred that they would have it handled and nothing would happen to us and that we were oh
212so safe I was just a sophomore and had recently turned 16 when the shooting occurred I've lived through two years and still nothing has changed sure we have evolved now in our security but where is it when everyone's out of school as soon as school ends the doors are left unlocked and anyone could walk in while we had have few drops of Hope left in us to believe that it won't happen to us again the anxiety of allthough what ifs will never go away we live every day wondering if it'll be if we'll be next and constantly checking our surroundings and scoping out every possible exit in case it were to happen all over again I was just 16 while kids in other schools are living their lives and going to school just happy to
213be there and see friends we're going to school just hoping and praying to make it through another day because we don't trust anyone anymore we live each day wondering if it'll be the last we hug all of our friends tighter and tell them we love them more now because we've gone through this once and we can't trust that it won't happen to us again the trauma never stops and the nightmares never go away and while we were going through all of this all you did was cover Your Tracks and lie your way to Victory and here we are now we may not be able to get rid of the trauma and the nightmares but we can and will get rid of you you can't silence us anymore you will hear our voices we're not going
214to shut up until this hell is over this was our lives that you stole from us you stole our trust and happiness from us all you've given us is a lifetime of trauma PTSD anxiety depression and so many other things you did this to us you deserve to have to sit here and listen to us speak Our Truth until we get the Justice we deserve we will fight and yell and do whatever we need to in order for you to get over yourselves and grow up and realize the mess you cause but won't admit to the blood is on your hands own up to it already Okay thank you Lea Woodruff hello my name is Jack Woodruff and I'm a senior at Oxford High School I had absolutely no intentions of speaking out loud today
215but after nearly 2 years of being quiet I realized it's exactly what you wanted so I won't be quiet and I'll speak my peace before I get shut down I find it amazing that 728 days later after November 30th of 2021 we are still standing in front of you begging and pleading for some change to start the healing process November 30th plagues me it eats away at my very existence every day I wake up and I think of hearing gunshots in the hallway that I used to play with with my friends in and learning now I go down specific hallways and I have to call my mom to go home because even being in the proximity of which my friend died I break down the first and last thought on my mind when I wake
216up and go to sleep is that four wild cats are missing from our small town and can't go home I attended the the last board meeting and the reactions I got from the school board were absolutely disgusting and made me sick to the core I witnessed the ashes of Tate sitting next to his father and I heard Madison's MOM stand up in front of you with everything she had begged you to resign and you sat with Stone Cold faces with no empathy or remorse for your guilt to add insult to injury just over a week ago me and along with 37 other students from Oxford High School walked out of school and a select amount of you wouldn't even permit our principal to announce the walk out to the rest of the students at Oxford
217High School instead you sent emails to parents and teachers stating that the consequences of trying to make a change and remembering the Fallen would result would result in an absence for that class I stood outside crying for hanging a wreath for Tate Hana Madison and Justin Oxford as a community and so many other surrounding communities are so tired of seeing the neglect and failures of Oxford High School staff and their board leaders and to be quite fair so am I I'm tired of crying and having my eyes swollen shut in two days will be the twoe mark that I seen my friends children being carried out in stretchers two years since I walked alone to Meer without a phone or any friends to consult me two years since my friends thought I had died when
218I shot thought I had been shot when I left the bathroom I was originally hiding in two years since I cried at my mother's feet begging her to tell me it wasn't real 2 years since I lost my friend I'm tired of sitting and being so utterly depressed about what happened on November 30th I'm so tired and exhausted from the Survivor guilt that I still feel this to this day I feel so awful about myself that I got to go home and others didn't I'm tired of seeing your face sit in power in front of me and the countless other survivors as if you aren't directly involved with the death that occurred on the 30th I want you gone 2,000 plus people want you gone your faces make me think of my Fallen classmates that
219were senselessly taken from me and murdered and Cold Blood you disgust me I'm 17 I've been fighting this war for too long need to go to a bathroom and not only try to wash the blood out from your hands but maybe take a deep look in the mirror and think huh to maybe help 2,000 plus kids like feel better and even just help myself from being ridiculed and hated every day maybe I should resign we want you gone we want Hopkins gone we want everybody directly involved with the 30th and the horrors of that day erase completely from anything to do with oxd on November 28th and 29th I select few had the chance to stop the incoming Slaughter that would take place less than 48 hours later when I was a freshman I was
220taken from my class and walked down to the office with two security guards with two of my friends and was held after school to be searched interrogated and questions because they thought I had a vape in my possession you knew there was a mentally troubled and heavily challenged kid kid in our hallway with an attraction to violence weapons guns Gore and death there were very very specific drawings Google searches and over five eyewitness accounts to support the claim of a kid searching guns and ammo and to also to support the fact that there were dead bodies and guns drawn on homework pages you even had a bird head in a jar filled with what seemed to be piss in one of your bathrooms no one ever thought to handcuff him search him question him you
221sent him back to class with a slap on the wrist and during passing time he killed four and heavily injured so much more this is who our school board is this is why nearly all of my friends I had during the 30th have either moved out of the state completely or moved to different schools it is because of the fact that there has been no healing process there has been no change the first step is to eradicate the people that made mistakes out of our schools and especially the school board as my best friend said to me at the last meeting your faces are our greatest triggers and you do not belong here please for if not for yourselves if not for me if not for the 2,000 plus students traumatized and hurting because of
222your failures on November 30th resign for the ones not here today do it for Tate do it for Hana do it for Justin and do it for Madison please allow everybody here and not here today sitting in this room to begin their healing process of what was your failure allow the kids and parents crying themselves to to sleep tonight and so many other nights before tonight to start some healing and have something to grasp on to do it for the community you love and care about so much give up up your throne of trauma and pain and leave please [Applause] resign okay thank you um Andrea Jones thank you to the students first of all for coming and speaking tonight that's hard to follow um so my first question well it's not even really a
223question it's more a fact is our thread assessment forms the the form given to us by the Department of Homeland Security was issued in 2011 11 it was revised in 2013 so in the 10 years between 2013 and uh 2021 sorry not quite 10 years eight years how many near misses did we have that we don't know about how many times did we get lucky in those eight years um when we weren't completing any threat assessment forms not 8400 form on file for the entire district for those eight years um but we were doing huddle UPS um with no real no real followup no real structure um I'm glad we don't know how many near misses we had um but I'm sure that they were there if our number now with how many threat assessments
224we're performing in a year how many should we have done in that amount of time again things that we would know if people in the district cooperated with the report um um that's information that should be made available to this community um my next question is about the superintendent search so I would like to know and have it made public what characteristics and criteria you as a board are asking for of these candidates I think we have a right to know that um and I believe that shareholders should have input into what we as a community want um and what you're going to ask for um all of that needs to be transparent 100% um there is zero trust in this District um hiring someone from within this district is not going to do anything
225to repair that um it needs to be somebody from outside of this District that's how you begin to repair and prove that you're not keeping the circle small that you're not secretive that you're allowing fresh eyes into the circle uh if you do not do that how could we ever trust you we've been through four or five superintendents now how many board members and everybody's come from within the circle prove it to us prove that you you you want the trust that that you're earning it allow other people in allow fresh perspective uh because the perspective outside of this community is not not great what happened here um and I think we need to be looking at uh how do you actually change that our kids deserve that the the the district needs to be
226given back to the community at this point so we can begin to heal and decide what direction we want to go not the direction that you want to protect that's all I have to say [Music] tonight thank you Nicole Barnett Miss Barnett hi thanks for having me thank you for coming used to presenting curriculum so this is different okay I'm going to try to stick to my three minutes so for me today the Tuesday after Thanksgiving will always overwhelm my heart with grief and sadness with that being said I want us all to remember and honor Tate Hana Madison and Justin as we continue into this week of remembrance I'm not here to spute hate rather I'm here to just offer the perspective of a teacher present in the 200 hallway oh sorry uh exact
227almost exactly two years ago to the entire Community since that day I have listened to most board meetings read numerous news articles watched media outlets and have had read every single word of the guidepost report please keep in mind that on November 30th staff walked into the building on that cold morning as a mentor and an educator for high school students and walked out as part of a mass murder investigation tonight I wanted to offer perspective Ive and I'd like to begin with addressing the concerns surrounding the staff participation with the guidepost report personally I recall getting an email about the third party investigation beginning I was never told or informed not to participate we all were encouraged by the district and offered compensation for our time I was quickly scheduled and interviewed for over
228two and a half hours at the beginning of August of 2022 were teachers concerned or had questions yes so your next question is like why let's go back to the morning of 11:30 we Educators love kids and want to make a positive impact on them the moment our school made headlines the attacks began I saw buard on the news saying a different timeline than what I recalled I saw people on the news blaming the school complaining that their teacher wasn't in the room I saw media everywhere writing their own narrative lawyers on the news as lawsuits began and then the staff had to sit as a whole district and listen to an almost as traumatic speech from our leader that was completely out of touch before we could even properly grieve or say our goodbyes
229to our students we were marked even though immediately as we entered Meer on that snowy day and the many weeks to follow we all voluntarily complied eagerly with interviews with local law law enforcement FBI agents and investigators we wholeheartedly participated when guidepost came to be the staff that did not choose to participate in additional questioning did so because of many of the following reasons a they were not present on the 30th or felt they were not near the event and therefore had nothing relevant to share B they oberved the treatment of Staff by the media and the community and wanted to protect their families and themselves C they were involved in litigation and therefore under lawyer recommendation or D they did not want to open that wound up they felt weak they already participated in
230the criminal investigation over the past months and that lengthy interview of many resulted in a downward spiral in their mental health personally I have felt for many years beginning during Co really that the Educator's voice has not frequently been a priority therefore after 16 years of wholeheartedly giving my all to Oxford I chose to take a position elsewhere at the start of the school year I'm sorry it still saddens me because I should have I should have retired from from here the Divide of the community the fear of speaking freely without backlash and the disappointing support of Staff involved drove me to this heartbreaking decision I support the families I support the students I care dear deeply about them all I also support all of Oxford Community Schools who continue putting education and the student
231students as number one daily in the face of backlash while navigating their own healing it is a job that's difficult and I'm not sure anyone but Educators can truly understand in the end I believe that at the core of all of our grief sadness and anger is great love the greatest loss will always be our own but I believe this community can lead with love to gain truth perspective conversations and justice for all of our families and for one another together I do have a few other teacher inputs but I know my time's up so I can always come back it's okay a different you want me to read them yep they all went over okay so I asked um some teachers if they wanted me to speak on their behalf so I had a
232few reach out these are not my words um so I will just read those as theirs um oh gosh oh sorry okay um okay so the first one well we appreciate so many of the things that have been provided to us the lunches during the week of the 30th the mental health resources and the wellness teams who have been looking for ways to help us as a staff heal from the events of November 30th there still feels to be a whole in the support that we've experienced November mber 30th was a day none of us could imagine it impa it impacts are still felt deeply by us all today no matter where we feel we are on our healing journey and we know that these impacts won't go away anytime soon each time the event
233rears its head in the news or in our community it reopens and sometimes deepens our psychological wounds I understand that these are not things the district can control the trial the community's reactions the media tension these all happen no matter what the district does or does not do but what the district can do is show that it stands by its teach teachers its staff and its administrators es especially when those teachers staff and administrators feel they cannot stand up for themselves there is no question about it that we are here first and foremost for our students every day that we walk into the building the students are our priority fostering their safety their well-being their learning and their Joy will always come before anything else however soon the only people who will be left in
234this building who were present on November 30th will be the teachers staff and administrators how will we make sure those people feel the support support and Care they've been giving the students every day since we came back to school after our tragedy some of our colleagues have been horrendously vilified colleagues who did the right thing in the toughest of circumstance some of whom even sacrificed their own safety for the safety of our students those colleagues and every member of the faculty and staff here should feel like they're consistently concretely and actionably supported these are the people who come back day after day to this building a building where the unimaginable happened a place where many of us experienced what was likely one of the most horrific and traumatic Days of Our Lives to provide an
235exemplary education for all of our students to make sure our students feel seen feel heard and most of all feel that they truly matter because they do there are a lot of wonderful things about Oxford Community Schools and they all deserve to be recognized but without the hard work and unfailing dedication of the staff and faculty our foundation will surely crumble please do the right thing by making it clear that through your actions that the district stands by and supports all of its employees and then okay this a different different one hate leads to a lot of evil in the world we have seen hate play out in the world with Angry Words people harming one another and War there is already so much of that in the world hate even filled the heart of
236a young boy in our own community and led to the attack on November 30th which hurt so many of us in this community and so many ways but in the words of MLK Darkness cannot drive out Darkness only light can do that hate cannot drive out hate only love can do that love can mean compassion forgiveness unity and healing we have seen what hate can do now let us see what love can do okay I'm sorry I took a lot of time thank you thank you very [Applause] much Mark Gillum um so I'd like to address you first Vicki I just noticed that like during the listening sessions that you held with guidepost I'd go to that meeting and you had armed security and you had scanners on that everybody had to walk through and
237then i' had go to the high school to watch the theater play and there was no security guard in his seat the scanners were blocked off and I just think it's interesting the number of times I noticed when you have meetings with you you make sure you have special protection and security but when it's just the community you kind of shut the scanners off and put them in the corner and that's kind of the feeling we're getting from you um on on many topics so this the confusion scheduling this meeting tonight I think we can do better than that um listening to The Firm speak about what we want for a new superintendent trust empathy listening to the students all the things how are you even capable of picking that person when you don't even
238meet the criteria yourself you're going to hire somebody and you you already have you you couldn't even be hired for the job yourself because you don't meet the criteria and you sit here you're just going to make us keep doing this so every board meeting until you're removed is going to become a signing session for anybody in the community that would like to join us in removing you um we're going to take signatures we've got the documents and we're starting that process to remove you since you're not smart enough to remove yourself so um you know $3 million for your report in two years that you and Dan helped set that up we could have had it done right away for free but you guys drag your feet and you try to keep protecting yourselves
239and you know we've got a whole team of people now that are documenting what you're doing and it's not okay with us it's not okay with this community and um the the icing on the cake for me was um the student walk out um Oakland County Emergency Services dispatched a team incident number 23 04471 to 745 North Oxford Road when that team that was dispatched and they did their job they showed up Vicki you had them told that if they didn't leave they would be arrested okay that team was specifically put in place to support the children why would you do that you think you're smarter than the Emergency Services of our entire County so you're just your Rogue operation and you're using our Law Enforcement Officers to send people away out of the parking
240lot that were commissioned to be there I think I think you guys are way out of your league I think you've over I think you got major problems I'll be shocked if Happ if you aren in handcuffs before this is all over cuz it's not the crime it's the coverup it's the things that you're doing and the way you're going out of your way to mess with this community um we aren't taking it so you go ahead and keep sitting there we're going to start collecting signatures and um we're going to iron this out because our kids deserve it and they're watching and you know the more people we talk to I keep trying to find people that are willing to defend you I can't find any so you know wherever they're at I know
241you know um do you think you're doing a good job could you could you just get up and leave right now and we'll let everything slide you're not going to do that you going keep forcing yourself in our faces I mean the last meeting listening to the entire room talk to you people and you sit there just like you are right now I watch you when you're listening to the firms talk and present you got this kindness on your face and they talk about children and love for children but when your own students were sitting in front of you you look like you would choke them if you could get away with it what's wrong with you you don't know okay so I think you all need a psychological evaluation and I think the new
242superintendent also needs a psychological evaluation because something's going on here and uh we're going to keep chipping away at it and um again I'm just trying to figure out where do you get your confidence it's you against the entire Community we are 100% United against you [Applause] yeah Cory Vander all right all right so Tate Hana Madison and Justin did not die for you to have a second chance at doing your [Applause] job you were here part of the board not [Music] keeping the superintendent or the administration accountable so again I'm asking for public accountability we can't trust the district until there's public accountability the district was responsible for keeping Madison Tate Justin Hana and all the other OHS survivors and students safe and secure but failed to do so the district needs to stop
243acting like the tragedy was a random unavoidable event it was preventable especially if staff would have followed the district's policies and use the district's threat assessment form that was available on the district's website there were significant failures and negligence you're part of that Mary you're part of that hether everyone involved directly involved needs to resign immediately and then only then can some healing begin to happen so again I'm going to ask for the resignation of board members miss hanser and miss schaer because you were on the board before and after November 30th when concerns were raised to the board about the district's threat assessment policies guidelines and practices whether they were followed no cabinet level administrator has accepted responsibility for ensuring that the district's threat assessment policy was being implemented correctly and that caused a
244serious breakdown you need to resign out of respect it's just out of respect just you need to resign I don't [Music] understand why you're still here I'm not sure what you think you're you're bringing to the board that is so important that you can't resign just out of respect for these families and for the [Applause] survivors Melissa Williams good afternoon can you guys hear me all right I am page 379 of the guidepost report I introduce myself to you this way because for almost two years now that's what I feel myself my former colleagues and this board have been reduced to our actions on and around November 30th did we do what so many you of you in this room thinks that we should have done as that day is reflected upon with the benefit
245of hindsight the memory of that day will haunt me forever the video footage of what that evil did to our students is forever ingrained in my memory I will not be a part in giving that evil any more of what he wanted and that includes unrelenting chaos and divide in our community I have been an active member of the Oxford School parent Community since my now senior started kindergarten after moving to Oxford I decided that the best way to meet people was to jump into volunteering at our schools and that decision has shaped my life's journey for the last 12 years and that's what brings me here tonight Heather schaer was a regular face at our PTO meetings always helping always feeling the needs always willing to give herself without anything in return she has
246had a heart for serving this community since I met her which is why she ran for school board she saw a need and she filled it now I watch her at these board meetings being verbally abused week after week she remains being beat down and broken she stays when others turned tail and rant you will find the same Community First mentality from Mary who spent years supporting our robotics team and Colleen who serves at St Joseph's Church Aaron who gives hours of her time to ojw Mike who has been volunteering at school functions for as long as I have known him these board members do not sit here for the sake of power or glory for God's sakes the abuse that they take week after week without being able to Def defend themselves is sickening
247from how I see it their job is to approve policy and financial decisions on behalf of the community not Implement them that responsibility is left to our District administration and its leadership it would be unreasonable to assume that after a policy is approved that the board then micromanages our district leadership to confirm its implementation that is simply not how it works the board approved a threat assessment policy and with good facei good faith in our district leadership at the time assumed that it would been it would have been implemented for that reason I do not call for the resignation of any board members in 2017 I started working at the high school in the counseling office I worked side by side with Shan Hopkins he was by far the hardest working most dedicated counselor in
248the office he did not care what case load of student fell student fell under if they were in need he would help he is a softspoken man who has a heart of gold and a heart for students after returning to school after the covid lockdowns the instances of suicide adiation among our student population had increas increased substantially that was the environment that consumed us and that was the what staff had been on high alert for Sean Hopkins is a son a husband a father he is a human as an employee Shan Hopkins worked within the guidelines and policies provided by that District administration for that reason I do not call for his resignation in 2019 I took the administrative assistant position to the principal I worked directly with Steve wolf during that time he led
249OS through Co lockdowns online learning the unpopular State mandated policies like contact tracing quarantines and masking Mr Wolf was our rock on November 30th and every day after he provided leadership to a staff that were all victims of a mass shooting all while being a victim to to himself he led with integrity and honor as an employee Mr Wolf worked within the guidelines and policies set forth by that ad Administration and for that reason I do not call for his resignation I ask you to join me in taking this fight to where it will make the most difference I call on the Michigan Board of Education to initiate a comprehensive threat assessment policy requirement for all K through 12 schools as well as public colleges and universities there is a desperate need in this regard
250and we need to act now to prevent another tragedy like the one that we have endured let's move beyond the hate and the victory all and work to make a difference that could save future lives and I'll I'll close I'll close by saying this there is not a day that goes by that I do not think about Hannah Madison Tate or Justin I believe the best way to truly honor them and remember them is to lead with love just as they did these four kids were extraordinary in every way each one of them were kind funny intelligent resp respectful talented and loving I am choosing to lead with love to honor them and the way they live their lives thank [Applause] you thank you Melissa Sarah Taylor hi my name is Sarah Taylor and I
251want you to listen to me as I speak my mind and what I have to say but based on your refusal for our pleads for help before the 30th I doubt that's possible for you guys to do I want to start by saying in two days I will have to relive my worst nightmare a nightmare that was completely avoidable by someone just doing their job it's been two it will be two years since I went home and cried to my family asking if it was all a dream asking them to tell me it wasn't real and that everyone was okay but I knew it was too real because it was right in front of me on the news shooting at Oxford High School so I want you to look at me and tell me that
252my opinion means nothing to you because clearly it means nothing I'm curious is my face good enough to be next I'm an Oxford High School graduate of the class of 22 you might be asking yourself why is she speaking if she's not in high school anymore well this is why I went to school one day a normal day for me but I felt guilty walking in those doors I walked in and I had a heavy gut feeling that something would go terribly wrong that day I pushed it aside just like you guys have done to us but anyways I pushed it aside and ignored it I thought it was nerves for a big test that day I later found out my gut was right it was it was far worse than a test in a
253way it was a test that day a test of surviving I went about my day with that terrible feeling hoping it would go away but it never did and then when that time came I thought this had to be a joke there's no way my School Oxford High School a safe place is getting shot up but as the shots got closer and those screams of those kids got louder and louder I quickly realized it was all too real I fortunately was able to lock down in my classroom but some kids weren't so lucky I locked myself in the classroom without any full awareness of what was going on where did the shooting got out so fast but how come we weren't notified notified as soon as it happened as soon as those first shots were
254fired we should have been informed and locked down no we weren't though I remember being told afterwards when I was met at gunpoint by police officers to watch where we step but don't look down well me being me I looked down I looked down that hallway and I wish I didn't the things I saw replay every single day in my head those are things I never should have experienced I should never had to text my parents or anyone in that matter to tell them that I love them and that I might not see them again and the only reason I had to do that was because you failed us as a school system and you keep failing us day in and day out you claimed there was no signs you claimed there was nothing you
255could do but if you did your protocols and you looked in that bag or you did what you were supposed to do this could have been avoided I wouldn't have to be here speaking today but since you failed to do your job here I am spending my afternoon fighting for justice for my friends and fellow classmates who are brutally murdered a coupled down for me I should be out with my friends who are sitting right behind me having fun I should be living My Teenage life but instead I'm here speaking honor of them because you failed them you failed me you failed their parents and you failed every single person in that building and you continue to fail us every single day the blood of those kids are now on your hands no matter how
256hard you wash or you scrub your hands their blood will not come off and will never come off you the school system failed us that day you ignor our cries for help and our worries and told us we were being dramatic and just to go back to class you continue to ignore us as if we are invisible but I'm here to tell you we Are Not Invisible and we refuse to be silent any longer I'm speaking for the ones we lost for Hana for Tate for Justin for Madison but I'm also speaking for the ones who are still with us for Aiden for Kylie for Phoebe for Eli for John for Miss Nell and F Riley those are the people who are shot there are lives in the students who were lucky enough to escape
257without getting shot are still left traumatized because you failed as a system you failed us as kids we had our teenage years ripped away from us because you could handle doing your job if you can't handle doing your job then please let someone who can and actually cares for us do it for us I'm sure you can get hired flipping burgers or something like that if you're that lucky so today you heard my story and their names and I'm here to make sure you never forget their names and the trauma you caused us that was completely avoidable if you just did your job I would I would be able to be living my life without the fear of will this ever happen again I could end up could I end up being the next to
258be buried I want to be a kid but because of your actions that's not possible [Applause] anymore thank you Sarah cie rasner so this is the best you could do this from all the facilities we have here it's cold echoey the lighting is terrible for people who are envisioned and pared this is terrible terrible room all the money we have in our district and this is the best room we have so as a crisis expert here I can say What's Happening Here is is inexcusable it's selfish it's cruel you are a distraction you are costing this District money you're taking money away from the education of these kids for your security and for these long meetings and all of this distraction you're causing trauma you serve no useful purpose here if you left their trauma
259would be mitigated they wouldn't have to to look at you they wouldn't have to know that the people who did this to them are still in control of the district and I'm ashamed that somebody would come up here and defend people who were negligent when you control the school when you're a teacher when you have a license when you have a responsibility and you fail to your to do your job inconvenient things happen to you we expect it right it's called accountability right whether they're a family member or a father they need accountability that's what we expect and and for someone to come up here and defend that is is kind of outrageous to me and it's it's further traumatizing these kids it shouldn't have to be happening you should be gone and this business
260can be back to school and we can work on the recovery services that these kids need and move forward you're causing a complete stop and going backwards th this has become a police state I I walk in here today and I go through the scanner and I'm told to put my stuff on the table and then I'm told to go back to the scanner and I have to wait in line and and then I I come back through only to find that the person at the table has emptied my purse on the table and is going through my clipboard that is not legal you do understand I do have constitutional rights nobody asked for me my consent to go through my purse and take everything out I have ID in there that's confidential that she
261should not have seen I want an NDA signed right you didn't have authority to do it and I want this addressed this is what the kids are going through I'm I I'm at your school because I got called in in the parking lot causing no harm prior arrangement showing ID and I am approached by a swarm of vehicles and told that I have to leave the property and then I'm told and I have the video tape that it's private property hey guys this is a public school this is public property okay and and your own policies the Board of Education recognizes that the school facilities belong to the school Community right School visitors the Board of Education welcomes and encourag visits to the school by parents and residents of the community well I live in
262the community okay and then we have a policy for student disorders and for you know protest and things like that and and I remember a protest in in May of 2022 and I've got the stuff on here where hundreds of kids you know go into the gymnasium and then they're escorted out with staff and all of this right this happened right parking lot wasn't shut down people weren't being thrown out then here's here's a picture of hundreds of kids and and adults and strangers on the football field with these students right here we are more of it strangers here's a picture in the newspaper of a stranger gawking through the fence well within the parking lot watching this along with a whole row of people they weren't kicked off the property why is that because
263you approve their message but you're not going to approve the message of children who are standing up and telling you there's an issue they need help and you're not providing it instead you block the people who were specially called in to help them every one of these students should have a crisis trauma specialist ready for them out the door have you prepared for that you know they're speaking you should be prepared so I was told that you weren't going to be prepared that day and anything that happened off the school property there'd be no services so Services were called in and you kicked us off the property we weren't going to give services on your property we were servicing kids who are outside the property who you said would not be serviced I see therapy
264dogs in here in this I see all kinds of services being provided to these kids for their protest but the one request that these parents had and and you denied it to them and and made it more traumatic and and more stressful and you've got bylaws and it says that these are your board member ethics that you remember that your first and greatest concern is for the education and Welfare of the students you're not doing that and and you're supposed to employ the best qualified people to serve and insist on a regular impartial evaluation you have people that are named in report as being extremely neglectful and they're still employed these are your rules these are all your rules you shall do it you shall do it you shall investigate you shall do this and
265here you sit two years later nobody's accountable you you're still on the board you're still causing trauma we've submitted a complaint because you're not doing your job it says you have to so we submitted a complaint and and then you left before we could give you the page after page of community members who also signed that complaint your 30-day clock is clicking ticking on the complaint are are you going to do your job are you going to stop hurting the kids don't leave before I can give you the signatures thank you [Applause] Callie Morgan I don't have a last name oh Morgan Gillum yes today it is hi that is your last name though right Gillum yes yes um my name is Elizabeth my daughter is jelle whom you already know is a junior at
266OS and spoke tonight as well I have incredible admiration for her bravery I have not approached the microphone on this topic till now for personal reasons but I love the students so intensely and because of this love I am here speak speaking for one of these precious ones Morgan Maxwell before I do that I'd like to make a short statement in response to the comments from Miss Williams I do not support personal insults or character defamation and I agree that love wins and we need unity and healing in our community but I'd like to use the analogy of a lovely kind woman driving through a neighborhood full full of playing children this lovely kind woman is speeding she inadvertently runs over and kills a child do we dismiss the consequences for her involuntary manslaughter because
267she is a lovely kind woman no neither do we dismiss the negligence of the lovely kind folks who sadly neglected their duties and children died so no I don't support personal attacks only Justice Morgan is a senior at Oxford High School because this topic is so heavy and difficult and the mental strain she has chosen not to be here this evening and has asked me to read her words because it's important for you to hear so as difficult as this is for me and for all of us to continue it must be done and thank you for listening 728 days ago my life was changed in two days it will be the 2-year anniversary of Hana Tate Madison and Justin being killed in the building for which you were responsible how does that feel I'm
268sure you are hurting as well as some of you had kids there that day through the hurt one thing that you all should be feeling is guilt because you are guilty not for pulling the trigger that ended the lives of our four angels and permanently scarred seven others but guilty for failing to implement and enforce the policies that would have prevented this tragedy today I struggled to get out of my bed because I had a dream that somehow another person got a gun into my school and was chasing me I woke up when he shot me in the face do you know what was done to make me feel at least a little more safe today she believes absolutely nothing no I had to take notes for Math and write a research paper and make
269sure I stayed caught up because it's almost impossible to get caught up after falling behind every day I Flinch at loud noises and start to panic at kids laughing in the hallways because sometimes the laugh is a little high pitched and it almost sounds like a scream someone will bump into a locker and I am left sitting in my seat wondering if that was a gunshot and they were about to storm into my room what would I do hide under a desk run to the window throw my pre-cal notes at them I will never feel normal again all my friends are in Oxford except one of my best friends Raven Raven and I have been friends since the sixth grade where we met at Frankenmuth Middle School they have been as understanding and amazing about
270the 30th as they could be but sometimes people say things they can't control I go to a lot of their family events and of course once people find out what school I go to they have a million questions I do my very best to try and put myself in their shoes I would have questions but I really can't understand when people ask so how did it feel to like almost die or did you know any of the kids killed personally both of those things were asked to me at a baby shower I quickly became the center of attention and felt like a freak who was there for people's Amusement while I don't think that was their intention that does change the fact that I felt so alone and isolated in a room full of people
271I have come to realize this is how it is in any situation in which people who are not in Oxford no I go to school here it is a very lonely feeling and I'm sure I'm not the only person from Oxford who feels this way the reality of it though is no one should have to feel that way my perspective of the world and how I interact with others is different now I notice little things in certain situations that a normal non-mass shooting Survivor would not take into account through everything the thing I've learned most is how to deal with the reality that my life will not be like a normal person I am 17 years old and was 15 7 728 days ago when my life changed I am no longer a child but
272a Survivor I guess I have the board to to thank for that so Heather schaer and Mary hanser you are the only members left from the board responsible for November 30th the others did the respectable thing by resigning now it's your turn especially after finding out what was in the report and the things clearly identified as the failures of the board now every day you sit in your position is an insult to the students and the victims thank you for listening Christina Johnson my husband and I are Oxford alumni and now we are raising five Oxford wild cats we had two in the high school that day Oxford is our home I am a mother of a child that has received two victim rights packets from the state of Michigan by the age of 17
273years old the first one was received 7 years ago when my child was deeply wounded by someone who was trusted to love protect and keep them safe though I didn't lose a child I have had to endure a endure a pain that no parent should ever have to experience I've had seven years to process and heal but not a day goes by that I do not think about it some wounds become part of you that way putting purpose to my pain I approached the school board in late 2020 to speak about Aaron's law a mission Michigan Law that was passed that requires schools to teach age appropriate body safety education because of aon's law hundreds of child abuse cases across our nation have now been brought to light the board listened to my speech and
274they acted on it and now Oxford too is part of the solution two members remain from the board that I spoke to in 2020 Mary and Heather I know Mary and Heather care deeply about this community they've navigated the Worst Years our community has ever seen they've stayed to be part of the solution even enduring ridicule for doing so not many people have the strength to do that I've watched as they were verbally abused and personally insulted at the board meetings even threatened to be physically removed from the room and that is what I am not okay with that is not the community I grew grew up in it's not the community I live in and that is not the witness I am giving my children we can disagree on what should have been done
275what has been done what will be done but dehumanizing one another is not the answer looking back on the time when it was my child was hurt I've realized though anger and hatred was part of my journey it was not the part that brought peace and healing as a community I challenge us all to give space for the anger the pain and the hurt but in a way that recognizes the dignity in all of us that's the peace that's been missing on the early morning of November 30th 2021 I sat in a chapel not far from here and I read the day's devotion it was taken from John 15 as it reads the light shines in the darkness and the Darkness has not overcome it Darkness did overcome four shining lights that day but I
276believe this devotion was meant to be read that day as it stands as a promise that Darkness can never push out the light it only takes one candle to dispel a room filled with Darkness but what dark doesn't account for is love it is not our anger that will change anything but our love because it is the only thing in this world that cannot fail it's Eternal I can't watch A Rainy football game without thinking of Tate or pass the bowling alley and not think of Justin when I see the delas bloom at the farm I work out at I think of Hana when I see a painting or see a girl with unique fashion I think of Madison our four shining lights will always shine because of their love and our love for them
277will Outlast any lasting Darkness on this community it is the key to our healing love is patient love is [Applause] kind thank you Eric Barnett good evening November 30th is a day that we're not going to forget any of us in the Oxford Community I could stand up here and spend 3 minutes telling you things that you guys have heard for the last two years I have a daughter that was at Oxford High School that day the text I got and texted with her for 45 minutes till I knew she was outside of the school is something I wish on not even my worst enemy those of you that are on the board now and prior you guys have been through torture verbally emotionally everything I don't know how you guys can take it if
278I was in your shoes I would have quit a long time ago so I give you guys props I give you guys credit for all that you've done throughout all of the stuff that I have seen watched heard over the last two years at the board meetings there's three words that I find that are missing respect grace and mercy as adults we are to set the example for our kids and for others in community on how to be respectful through that we can hopefully show Grace and most of all Mercy John chapter 8 from the Bible talks about when Jesus was talking to the woman who had been accused of adultery and there was a mob that was calling for her to be stoned that was the legal punishment for her for that crime Jesus
279knelt down in the sand started to write and he looked at him and he said those of you that without the first or that are without sin can cast the first stone not one person through that stone none of us in this room none of us in this community are perfect we all have our faults that means none of us has a position to call for resignations to call for hurt to slander people to physically try and threaten them nothing we need to as a community come together to heal and the only way we can do it as has been said this evening is through love and respect we have to come together that means adult s set the example for the kids the kids can also set the example for us my wife and
280I have trained our children to love and respect people we do it to the best of our ability do my kids do it 100% of the time no but you know what I can send them to school and know that they're going to treat people with respect the majority of the time I encourage each and everyone in the community to do that and to the board members I want to thank you for all that you have done and put up with for it will last two years thank [Applause] you okay that concludes our unscheduled public comment thank you to everybody who participated um item 10 on the agenda goes over our scheduled activities um Dr Markovich any administrative clarification no no okay final board comments I think you know it would be remiss to not
281say that the 30th is two days away and that there is um a couple emails that I think went out at least for the parent community and those for the community they'll probably posted on Facebook about um the the silence and then the moment of silence and then of course the um The Luminaries you can get from the resiliency Center to light up Oxford again I know a lot of the students were coming home with them um eron I just need to make one clarification the resiliency Center is not passing out The Luminaries this year they're in all of our um school buildings and we're passing them out with students and children if there's a Community member that wants one and they could go to the school nearest to them and ask for one resiliency
282Sunny is is doing other things okay anything else okay this meeting is adjourned