Board of Education Special Meeting January 31st, 2022

001good evening everyone and welcome um we are going to rise for our pledge flags behind us i think yep i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united for which states stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you everyone uh and welcome to this uh special board meeting as we are going to begin to have interviews for our potential candidates um it's also a regular boardroom open board meeting which means there's a chance for unscheduled audience participation if there is anyone here wanting to speak when we get to that time um on that island back there where the water bolt the bowl of water and ice is grab one of those begin to fill it out there are instructions on the back of that um card that explains the

002process of unscheduled audience participation and then gradually get those cards over to angela and at that time she'll get those to me and then we can uh seamlessly go through the unscheduled audience participation um i think that's really the only announcement to start with uh mary would you do attendance certainly president natalie here vice president griffith here secretary hanser present treasurer bailey here trustee d'alessandro here trustee foster here trustee shafer everyone is here thank you very much uh there are no changes to the board agenda we have just a brief consent agenda we have um corrective minutes for january 20th minutes of the special meeting on the 25th minutes for the closed meeting on the 25th would someone like to move uh the approval of the consent agenda eric move to support the consent agenda

003has presented thank you support chad support discussion all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion carries all right we are going to move towards our first interview with mr john bernia if you're coming in new if you want to speak at uh unscheduled audience participation please grab one of those cards back there on the island and um and uh give that to angela and we'll get that to she'll give that to me at the appropriate time all right mr bernier welcome and by the way have we tested the microphone at that table all right thank you so much thank you so much evening everybody good evening and welcome on behalf of the oxford community schools i would like to welcome john bernier uh to this interview for the position of superintendent mr bernier is

004the chief academic officer for warren consolidated schools in warren michigan and i want to talk a little bit about the format for this interview process the interview can take up to 90 minutes there will be 23 questions broken up by all of us board members that will be asked uh towards the end of the interview time permitting we will give you the opportunity uh to ask us some questions um and to make a closing statement we will let you know in time um if time is becoming an issue and there is a need to pick up the pace so that we can get to some of the important stuff at the end and not have it lost as the board hears from each candidate and weighs this critical decision it will be doing so through

005the lens of the candidate profile that was developed with considerate considerable input from our stakeholders our intent is to identify the candidate that best fits the profile which board members have at hand for those present in our audience you may submit feedback by way of the form provided for this purpose could someone hold it up so i know that you have a form there we go although the task of choosing our next superintendent is the responsibility of the board of education as the elected representatives of the community we value and consider the input that you're going to provide as stakeholders in this process welcome and thank you again thank you i'll begin mr bernie while we have had the opportunity to review your application uh the materials audience members may not have and so please

006briefly review your background and share what causes you to be interested in this position at this point in your career sure all right mr president members of the board good evening i want to before i get in i want to thank you for the opportunity to be here uh it's it's a thrill and an honor and and truly i appreciate the opportunity uh just to sit with you and to talk with you for the next little bit here as an outsider who doesn't work in oxford and i i also want to back up before i get going and just let you know how sorry i am for everything that's happened over the past couple of months uh these have got to be hard times for all of you and i want you to know before

007i get into it we'll we'll touch on topics all night long um but i want you to know that that's where i'm coming from and i really want to extend my sympathy before i get going as you mentioned my name is john bernier i'm the chief academic officer for warren consolidated schools warren cohn is a 13 000 student district southeast of here we service parts of warren sterling heights and troy we have 12 elementary schools four middle schools three comprehensive high schools we have a career prep center that houses 13 of our 21 cte programs in the district we have an alternative high school we have a middle school performing arts program and a high school performing arts program our high school performing arts program is actually nationally recognized we have a middle school math

008and science program and then we're the home of the macomb math science technology center which has been educating some of the top students primarily from south macomb county for more than 30 years my role is to really oversee the day-to-day operations so the principals report directly to me and i support the leadership and management of their schools i'm also charged with their leadership development i lead the office of curriculum and instruction the oci office has our executive director of curriculum along with administrators for assessments english language learners multi-tiered support we have a team of instructional coaches and we have a team of curriculum consultants that work in oci that i lead i oversee the special education department who reports directly to me i oversee people services so things like count day and in addition to

009that recruiting our schools of choice campaign those are my projects and then i also oversee the public relations department so that's everything i'm responsible for i also have the good fortune for the past six years that i've been in this role five and a half going on six i have the good fortune of serving as a member of the superintendent's cabinet and so in that capacity in the superintendent's cabinet i get my fair share of growth opportunities i've worked directly with our office of security and crisis management a couple of times when we've had some internal shifts i've actually been the director of security and crisis management off and on so that's been a learning opportunity i work closely with our business office on things like our budget development projections on student enrollment i work

010very closely with human resources i'm on our bargaining team with the warren education association and the warren administrators association and then last year we'll get into this at some point i'm sure last year doing an internal shift i actually stepped in as our chief negotiator for a little while which was a unique and interesting opportunity overall i have had the chance working with our superintendent to just have a wide variety of opportunities in bond work millage campaigns and things of that nature and i'm sure we'll get into a lot of that tonight i'm a graduate student i'm working on my doctorate i've got my data and i'm doing my writing my target my goal is to be done in april but you know if you've been through that process yourself you know sometimes your target

011is april and it ends up being june i'm excited to be done i'm excited to finish the process and i'm not as excited as my mom and i think it's primarily just because she wants to say my son the doctor but overall uh i'm excited and i'm working through that process my wife jen and i have been married for 15 years we are the proud parents of avery who's nine years old and in the fourth grade and micah who's five years old and in kindergarten and so it's a we've got a busy household and it's a little noisy from time to time i'm here tonight my cover letter says it i'm strongly interested in serving as the superintendent of oxford community schools my family until i was 10 we lived just south of lakeville technically

012it's on the romeo community school side of the border i hope you won't hold that against me but our mailing address was oxford and we were in and out of this town a lot when i i started my career i started my career in lake orion that's something else i hope you won't hold against me um but for 12 years i was a dragon and i was a teacher and an assistant principal and a principal in lake orion when i moved out of my parents house because i got my first real job as a teacher my apartment was on pontiac street here in oxford when my girlfriend who later became my wife said you know john you need to grow up i started looking at real estate i bought a house on glaspy where we

013lived for nine years uh our first daughter was born there our pets were adopted from the canine story rescue league just north of town and so i'm strongly interested in coming back here and serving the community because it has a special place in my heart there's not a lot of opportunities professionally where you can go back to a place that's as special as oxford is to me not just from my childhood but from again becoming a parent becoming a husband growing up starting my career you know just so many wonderful things happened to me in oxford and so when this opportunity presented itself i spoke to john and and expressed my interest and started to work through that process i was really interested and had made the decision to apply and was working on my

014materials in mid-november and obviously that's when tragedy struck and i've had some time to do some reflection and do some thinking about that and i think it was kind of all of you to give folks the opportunity to withdraw in that in that period um but i never thought about doing that and to be honest with you it strengthened my resolve to make me want to do this more i'm not here tonight to answer your questions and to proclaim myself a savior of oxford community schools but i am here because i want to be part of the solution and i want to be part of the healing and i want to be part of the process to move your district forward in a town that has meant so much to me thank you very much

015we're going to look at the um the first 90 days if you were to have this job yeah and so as i'm i'm i'm speaking you you know you may want to write or whatever but what are the immediate challenges you would expect to face as our superintendent within your first 90 days on the job sure and then given these tell us how you would hit the ground running on your first day and be ready to address those challenges sure so tonight you're going to get a copy of a plan from me that outlines kind of the big focus areas that i see and what i want to achieve in my first 90 days it'll it'll give you my focus areas it'll lay out some very specific goals that i'm going to that i'm going

016to complete it'll lay out some actions that you'll see for me it'll also outline some outcomes that you can expect and and in my memo to you that overviews this and we'll get specific in a second i say that you'll see results from my work as we go throughout that 90-day period but we'll come back at the end of that 90 days and i'll give you a full presentation on everything i've learned all the data i've collected and everything that i've analyzed so i've had the good fortune as an assistant principal a principal and as a chief academic officer i've gotten to start leadership roles five times and each time i've done it i've done what i call a listening tour where i meet with people and ask them the same questions where do you

017think we're strong where do you think we need to grow and what do you need directly from me and then at the end of that process i come back and i present it and we celebrate the things that we're good at and we build goals on the things we say that we want to grow in and then i build goals based on what people say they need from me and so that process has served me well and i would start that process as soon as possible so as soon as getting that call i would be working with you to line things up with the board of education and to line it up with our district leadership team so we could get going on that so for me you know it boils down to issues related

018to governance obviously we have to build a relationship because you're going to be counting on me for a lot and it's important that you get to know me and i get to know you i get to know your preferences and we establish things like how we're going to communicate with each other how we're going to communicate between meetings how you like to receive your information and i'm sure you have systems in place i'm not looking to change all of those but at the same time it's going to be important that we work together on that i think a second challenge that we're going to encounter is obviously the ongoing crisis that you have and this period of healing and this period of working through the various challenges that i think most people are familiar with

019from the news but maybe don't know the inside story so i'm gonna have to get caught up on all of that and my plan articulates how i'm gonna do that and and then it starts to get into things related to organizational culture teaching and learning governance operations and community relations and my my goal in that 90 days is to get out and be as many places as i can meet as many people as i can and hear as directly as i can from folks now i will say that coming in at this time is a little bit tricky because april is a high time with respect to district operations right so when i come in in in march april we're going to be building a district budget for next year we're going to be making

020decisions about class offerings and we're going to be working through the process of what 2223 is going to look at look like and i'm going to have to hit the ground running and understand those processes because when we get to august and school's ready to open if i'm not doing a great job when we first get here and making sure that i have my arms around the decisions that are being made you're all going to come back to me and say you've been here for the months what are you doing and so i think that's an immediate challenge is the timing of it so it's it's the crisis it's the relationship building and then it's it's also the timing because at a district level you kind of have your foot in both camps in in

021march and april in terms of finishing out this year strong and making sure that we conclude this school year on a high note especially for our seniors because this is that final you know the walk across the stage and all of those events that go along with it we've got to make sure that we're on top of that while we're also making sure that we're on top of how we're going to open next year thank you again a little longer term given the research that you've done in our district what do you believe are the two or three most critical long-term priorities our district will need to address and how would your background and skills help to address those when i i was the principal of oakview middle school on lake george road and when

022i was the principal of oakview we went through a period where unfortunately a number of our recent graduates ended their lives and unfortunately as it worked out many of them were connected to oakview in one way or another so they you know a young man's younger sister was one of our students we had students that were cousins of the of the recently deceased we we had neighbors and friends and relatives and it was a very hard time plus we had teachers that were struggling too and so what that taught me and helped me to do was to really think about support for adults and support for kids because in a crisis situation everybody goes to the kids which is the right thing and the right instinct but the best thing we can do to stabilize

023our environment and stabilize our kids is to stabilize our adults and so we developed a plan that we've used that we used at oakview and that i've used in warren cotton unfortunately in my time as chief academic officer we've lost seven students um five from our high school uh in different different instances we lost a fifth grader and we lost a first grader and we went through and used kind of the same approach which was how can we tailor support for our adults and how can we tailor support for our kids what can our counseling staff do what do we maybe need to bring in some outside help for and bring in some outside resources so right away based on my homework i think that that is it's a short term but i also think

024it's a long term because getting those steps right is going to set you up for some long-term success as a board you saw a presentation last fall about your strategic plan i reviewed it on your website when i was doing the homework it was outstanding and we're going to have to pick up and see where we go with that and how the crisis in the aftermath of that crisis is going to impact that work and how we get that work back on track because it was a long-term plan for success and then i think you know i think a lot about your portrait of a graduate which is first rate and it articulates so well what you're looking for not only not only as outcomes from the system but the inputs that are required of

025that and i think that we have to take a look at that and say where are we and and is this reflective of where we stand now is there any changes that we need to make and what updates might we need to do and so i think those are just some of the long-term challenges that that i think we're going to face and and i think that we're going to be ready for and then i think the other piece of the puzzle that i'm very sensitive to and i've done a lot of thinking about is you know the reality is you're interviewing five candidates and three of them are internal and so if i'm your choice those three folks are going to be on our team and i'm going to have to show them that

026i respect and value them and want them to be on our team because i i know two of them from my career and the third if that person is a candidate they deserve respect and they deserve my respect so it's going to be also how do we build a high functioning leadership team at the district level because that impacts the the buildings significantly and so that that's also a challenge that i'm sensitive to and that i'm going to be doing a lot of thinking about john thank you um vice president griffith is going to follow up with some other questions thank you good evening how are you so um a few minutes ago you spoke briefly about community relations yeah so maintaining healthy relationships with school and community stakeholders is important for the board of

027education um if you could share with us how you have gone about building and maintaining successful relationships with all members of the school community sure uh you know i i guess to take it all the way back to where i started um it it really began for me as a school leader just getting to know people and letting them get to know me and taking an active interest in who they were and it wasn't just who you are between the hours of 7 45 and 245 it was who you are all the time so i i made it a point of pride to get to know our students and staff all the time i made a mighty point of pride to be at events make sure i know about people and make sure that that

028they know that i'm interested in them not just as a teacher or a student or a support staff member but as a person and so one of the things i've i guess prided myself on is my the way that i've gotten to know our staff and our students and their families and and gotten to know them over a period of years um i had to stop at meijer today because of course i had to stop at meijer um i have a nine-year-old and a five-year-old and um while i was there i saw a former student and it was just a thrill to see him and hear how he's doing and he's working for the family business now and he's thinking about getting into electrical work and that was a that was an awesome moment for

029me and that's that's where i get my satisfaction in the work that's the part of the work i like the most when you can make connections with people and let them get to know you and get to know them it's a thrill when people ask me how my kids are doing it's a thrill when when someone shares a big moment with me and and i think that my commitment to relationship building has served me well across the continuum when we first got into the situation with covid in warren conn you know we're we're roughly we're hovering right around 71 percent of our kids qualifying for free and reduced lunch and so when you think about building a food distribution network in an urban center like we are over 32 square miles like we have it's

030a it's a large challenge and one of the things we were able to do is partner with some of our community organizations so some of our churches we were able to build a partnership with gleaners food bank who we had a relationship with and we were able to build relationships with community members who are willing to come out and help us in just this huge maze that was our food distribution network and that happens from relationships and that happens from the ability um that's built up over time right it's making those good deposits in people's emotional bank account and then when you need something from them they're willing to give it to you because you've shown such an interest and so you know i'm really proud of not only not only my relationships with the

031folks that i've had the good fortune to work with or the kids that came to our school or the kids that go to our schools now i'm really proud of the community partnerships that we've been able to build not just with our faith-based community but also our our business community thank you what are some of the examples of community activities uh in which you provided leadership and in what ways did that benefit the community for the district sure yeah well i i talked about our food food distribution network a second ago which was pretty critical to our ongoing operation another partnership that i'm i'm particularly proud of is we've been able to build a partnership with st john hospital and they have a clinic that operates out of one of our high schools and we've

032been able to offer services whether they be physical health services or mental health services we've been able to offer those to the community in a really meaningful way and then they're located right at warren mott which is on 12 mile and it's very accessible for our families and i think that's been a real benefit and i think that's been really really helpful for us um we've coveted or cultivated coveted we've cultivated a partnership with wayne state university where they've sent us a lot of student teachers and and that helps us kind of not only does it give us extra staff to help support our kids but it's also been really helpful in the sense of you know kind of helping us build a pipeline of our next generation of teachers and support staff and et

033cetera so those are two more examples how do we create a district-wide and a community-wide culture of continuous improvement including strategic planning in aligning our actions to those strategic outcomes i guess i would what i would say to you is i would argue very strongly you already have a culture of continuous improvement when i was a very young administrator ah gosh this probably goes back to about 2009 i had the good fortune to get a get some time to talk to dr skilling and it was big for me because i worked in the next district over and we were kind of rivals but the thing that i walked away from the conversation everything he said he said and then we're going to right he would say we're here and then we're going to and that

034goes back more than a decade and that's what i've seen from oxford and that's what i've seen from your system is this this constant striving to do better in this constant striving for improvement your strategic plan that i mentioned a few minutes ago is exceptional work and it's it's got your targets and who's responsible for it and your outcomes and so i think you have that culture i think it's just now building on that culture is number one and number two our state right now is transitioning from the old school improvement system to a continuous improvement system and i think what that gives the opportunity to do is is really align it it was hard in the old school improvement system to align a strategic plan in the school improvement system i think this continuous

035improvement system is going to be simpler to do that at least from what i've seen in the early stages of the game in our district we have a strategic plan and what we're most excited about is that what we've been doing and all of our teaching and learning initiatives and that is going to align very nicely with the continuous improvement framework so we're really pleased about that and i think that's going to help here because the more overlap you have and the more alignment you have the more likely you are to achieve those things and do those things that you set out to do but i i would argue very strongly that you already have that culture here thank you mr bailey i'm not trying to ignore you folks over here it doesn't the chair

036doesn't turn this we'll put it on a swivel it must be me no it's yeah yeah exactly good evening i want to switch gears and touch on some of the finances sure um can you describe your experience with budget development and financial management especially discussing having to make difficult budget cuts sure so i guess let me start with budget development then we'll talk about the the very unpleasant task of budget cuts that are sometimes a reality so i was hired to be the chief academic officer right about the same time that we hired a new chief financial officer and she had worked in our district for about as long as i had and she came to my office one day and said we have to revamp our entire budget process and so i got to

037actually i was a support member of her team but i got to be part of that process to say how what are we going to do and how are we going to behave differently and so for us our process starts with assumptions so right now we're working through our assumption process what do we assume is going to happen with our enrollment what do we assume is going to happen we look at the state revenue conference we look at what the governor and the house and the senate are saying what do we assume that they're going to do you know certainly right now a major issue in the budget process for us as it relates to assumptions is where is inflation going to go you know gas prices are 53 since last year at this time

038so how's that going to impact your bus fleet when you consider you know how many bus stops we have to get you know 13 000 students to school you know not all of them take the bus but that's that's a huge issue for us so it starts with assumptions and then we take those assumptions and we build a budget and we take that first look at it and really analyze like okay did were we were we conservative enough were we too conservative were we maybe a little bit more flexible than we should have been and we really kind of talked that through and and worked with our superintendent and our team to say where's our comfort level with this and then from there we take it and we start communicating we communicate with our board

039we communicate with our with our union leadership we communicate with our principals and our staff and we really start to kind of work through this process to say this is where we think we're going to be and this is what we think the budget's going to look like next year now i can tell you that i when i got when i came into this role warren consolidated schools went into deficit in 2014 right before i started working there and when i became chief academic officer in july of 2016 our employees were at the very bottom of some very serious concessions we our teachers were taking a four percent wage concession and four furlough days our principals were taking the same our support staff was paying significantly more in their health insurance premiums and so i

040went through a time in an organization that no one would ever want to go through because it is heartbreaking to talk to a first-year teacher who loves where she's working and loves what she's doing but can't afford to make her student loan payments and has to leave the district because she's still living with her parents and so for me from a budgetary standpoint i'm all about sustainability i'm all about managing the footprint of the district to make sure that we stay as lean and responsible as we can because i would never i don't want that for if i'm your superintendent or if i'm not your superintendent i don't want that for any of you because it's heartbreaking to go through that and so for me when we've had to approach cuts or when we've had

041to approach managing the footprint we've done so in a way where we've tried to maintain our programs as best we can so how can we maintain transportation for kids how can we maintain all of the offerings we have and what does that actually look like and so for us in in our district it has looked like you know we've had a school closure i've gone through that process it wasn't fun but in the end it was the right thing to do because it put us on a more sustainable path and it allowed us to maintain programs because we took two elementary schools and made one and by doing that saved ourselves and were able to still offer that same pre-k5 program to all of those kids so for me it's when we do have to

042make cuts it's going to be how do we maintain the programs that we have because i don't think you want to give any of your programs up you know i think it would be a mistake to give up your cte programs which are a big point of pride i think it would be a mistake to give up you know your ib program or your early college or your virtual program or all of these other opportunities that you provide to kids i think that would be a mistake so how do we maintain and how do we keep our programs in line while we still manage that footprint and i can tell you just from that experience that i went through if i am your superintendent i'm i'm very conservative on the fiscal matters and i'm very

043conservative because i never ever want to be in a position where we have to go through what warrant con went through thank you what opportunities do you believe budget limitations present and in tough financial times what would be your top three priorities well my top priority would be you know maintaining our programs and maintaining what we have for kids because i think that's that's our core business and that's why we're here and when you start taking away from your programs you drive kids away right so you just exacerbate the problem when you do that so that would be a top priority for me and then in addition to that you have to think about how do we make what we're doing viable for staff you know what what how can we retain our people because

044i'm i'm sure you don't want any of your folks you don't want any of your people to leave too so so i think it's it's a push and pull there because how do we how do we manage that and you know how do we you know kind of we call it squeezing the balloon in warren con sometimes but how do we do that in a way that tries to retain employees and maintain our programs what can we do you know those are those are probably my big two right there and and i would say to you that that i think on the opportunity front what i'm about to say to you is going to sound crazy but i believe we're stronger in elementary reading in our district across our 12 elementary schools because of the

045budget limitations that we had because it forced us to sit down and use our resources instead of looking for other resources or instead of trying to find other opportunities it put us in a position where all 12 of our elementary schools started to do the same thing and started to use the same literacy program and then they could start talking to each other across schools and it became really really beneficial because when you had a teacher who left say green acres and went to teach at holden there wasn't a whole new lingo to learn and there wasn't a whole new thing to develop it really was as simple as picking up what you were doing and putting it down over here and that level of consistency as crazy as it sounds it came from our

046budget limitations when we were in a position where we had to say we can't buy more resources right now because it's not responsible when we have employees taking the wage cuts that they are it's not responsible for us to go out and buy new materials we have to use the materials we have and use them well and so i think that was a that was a big help for us so what are some ideas uh that you would explore to raise money for the district and have you had success in procuring additional funds for the district so for us in our district you know a lot of our funding comes through grants you know and so i've become really familiar with with grants and the grant writing process and and how that works and what

047that looks like i think that those are those are really nice opportunities and we're at a point now in in the state of education where the federal government made a lot of promises and put a lot of money out into the system and i i think that and and it's not just michigan it's states across the country they're all looking around going what do we do now right and and so there i think there's going to be a lot of opportunities there to pay close attention to you know some of those federal sources as they're flowing into the state and what those are going to do i think that's a really important point and i think that's really something to keep an eye on thank you i will turn it over to heather all right

048back over here i'm back over here i appreciate that yeah thank you for coming thanks for having me and thank you for applying yeah thanks for having me um i think this is such a great question that's i was really glad it fell on my list but um i think especially with covid and everything that we've been going through here in oxford that superintendents are are very often faced with the challenge of making decisions um when there is no clear right answer yes and they are definitely not going to make everybody happy um so talk about a time that you were faced with that situation um with a difficult situation where you knew that there was going to be a group of people that it was just gonna be you know hot spot if you

049will um that they were gonna be unhappy with your decision um whichever way you decided there was gonna be a group um how did you go about making that decision and getting those people on board afterwards with the direction that you wanted to go sure so when i first came into this role um i mean obviously i could talk about covid because we managed to make no one happy right um and i'm sure that's just a warren con issue um but we we've managed we've managed to satisfy no one um despite our best efforts um and i think philosophically through the covet experience i'll get back to that example i was going to talk about in just a second but i think as we've worked through the covet experience our philosophy on our team has

050been no matter what we do people are going to be mad at us so would you rather would you rather than be mad at us because we took too long and got to the right answer or would you rather they be mad at us because we told them the wrong answer in our rush to get an answer out the door and then had to change it on them and change everything you know what pick your poison right and we we've often and and i will tell you if you look on our facebook page from last year or if you go to some of the news coverage that's what you would hear warren khan moves too slow warren cohn moves too slow warren khan moves too slow they never go back and say more often than

051not it ended up working out the way that it was supposed to because we moved a little bit slower but we got it right and that was the whole thing that we were always trying to do so i think that philosophically that's where i come from when i first got this job much like i'll do if i'm your superintendent i did a review of everything and so in the process of doing my review of everything warren consolidated schools built an early childhood center in a neighborhood north of 15 mile road between ryan and mound and and it opened and when i started to review the data what became clear was a few things number one the vast majority of the kids who went to the early childhood center lived in that neighborhood very few were

052living in our neighborhood along frazo just south of 696 and driving up to that to the early childhood center we weren't seeing that and in addition to that from an outcome perspective we were not necessarily seeing kids leave our early childhood center and go into our kindergarten programs which from a business standpoint is not good right if you're just going to become a free agent that that's not going to help us so i studied it and you know we have an old saying in my family if you're going to tear the fence down you better know why they built it in the first place so i've tried to figure out why did they build the fence in the first place and i went back and i looked at all the documents and all the publications

053and everything that went into opening our early childhood center and what i found was that they wanted it to exist for all kids they wanted to [Music] see a transition into our kindergarten programs and they wanted to have all of our programs in one place thinking that if we got them all in one place enrollment would follow and one of the things that was puzzling to me about it is like i i was looking at some of our programs and my daughter was young at the time and i was looking at them and saying these are great classrooms these are great programs how do we not have a waiting list for this because almost all of them are free and we didn't and so i studied the data and i looked at the data and

054i also at the same time in this data study saw that we were sharing a building with the mccomb intermediate school district on also on the north side of our district and our alternative high school was housed in one hallway and the macomb intermediate school district had basically just kind of kept just creeping around the building not a creepy dangerous way but just expanding their program and so our alternative high school kids were down to this small hallway and so i started to think very critically about is that right is that what we want for our alternative program and so i came up with the brilliant idea to decentralize our early childhood center back into our buildings so our elementary schools could have a pre-k5 footprint and we were going to take the bond money

055that we had scheduled for the alternative high school and the bond money that we had scheduled for the early childhood center and we were going to build an alternative high school at the early childhood center and it was a bold move but we also knew and i also had this suspicion that the mccomb intermediate school district might want to buy that building from us because it keeps getting bigger and their footprint keeps growing so i made a three-fold recommendation number one decentralize the early childhood center number two move the alternative high school from flynn over to heatherly and renovate it using bond money and number three see if the isd will buy the building and i will tell you if you come to war and gone they will tell you that at the same time

056that i was doing this and at the same time i was recommending it troy broke ground on an early childhood center walled lake broke ground on an early childhood center and rochester opened an early childhood center and that worked for those communities but at the end of the day we were not seeing it was not a program the the aspirations of those programs was to be good for all kids and that was not the case we were not servicing all of our kids so we made that move now i will tell you sincerely if you come they there are still people in warren cot to this day that would tell you i was crazy but what i will tell you is if you visit our alternative high school it is awesome it is nothing short

057of everything an alternative high school should be and their program has steadily expanded they're doing community service projects they have their own building and they have their own school pride our strategy to move kids into our pre-k five buildings and so that they could build an identity so now if you're in a pre-k program willow woods is your school and then you just stay for kindergarten so our you know our world of forest preschool program 87 percent of those kids are in our kindergarten classrooms this year we measure it every year 87 percent of those kids and that's way up our world of forest footprint has more than doubled in this time our transitional kindergarten program which is your developmental kindergarten program same concept different name almost a hundred percent of our kids in tk

058go to kindergarten in that same home building and we've been able to streamline that and make it better for them so it made business sense because we retained those kids and they became our students which is good but it also allowed us to align those early childhood programs and it was also good for the early childhood center it was also good for the alternative high school and the isd got to buy a building that they can use for their purposes and for their programs and so i think everybody won but it's still not all the way popular there's still people that would tell you i was crazy well i think you know in my role right now you know i work directly for our superintendent i just told you about a bold recommendation i made

059to him that he followed along with uh and supported my peers on cabinet uh i work our you know our union leaders don't work for me they work with we you know we we go back and forth but i think if you were to come and talk with our our board who i who certainly doesn't report to me um or our superintendent or my peers on cabinet or union leadership i think they would tell you that i have earned their respect and i've earned their trust and i've done that by showing up for work every day and making sure that they know that i'm dedicated and invested in doing the best job that i'm capable of and and i think they would tell you that while they don't always agree with me i don't think

060anybody would tell you that i'm not always trying and that when someone says something to me i'm not reaching for all of it and so i think my ability to lead people that maybe don't report to me or that i don't necessarily have authority over i think it's really a matter of earning their trust and respect and and them knowing that when i give you a recommendation number one i really have studied this and this really is to me the best move that we can make at this time and number two and and i say this very sincerely i would never recommend something in warren consolidated schools that i would not want for my own children and i'm very serious about that and i will never recommend anything to you that i wouldn't want for

061my own children and for their school system because that is my that's my golden rule as an educator is that i i aspire to be the educator that i want my kids to have and then i want to work with them and so i think that because people know that that's where my heart is and people know that that i'm genuine and that i'm studying things as hard as i can and i do my homework i think that's how i've i've been able to do that um i think it's about all of you knowing me and have and knowing that i we were always going to be able to communicate with each other i think for me as a superintendent one of the biggest commitments i can have is making sure you all have a

062common pool of information to draw from when you're considering any decision that's in front of you big to small i think it's very important for me as your superintendent to put you in a position where you have all the information you need all of your questions are answered and we can work through a process and that's in my entry plan i talk about how are we going to establish a system not just at board meetings but between board meetings so you can ask questions and get information i think part of a part of my role is also ensuring that you're part of the good stuff our superintendent one of the biggest lessons i've learned from dr liverenoy is his drive to ensure and make certain that our board members know when good things are happening

063and are invited to them right so when someone's gonna get an award or when there's a big performance or making sure that everybody knows what time the game is on friday night like those things are important for you as board members to be at and to know about and it's it's unreasonable to think you're going to be able to manage that for a whole district on top of your board responsibilities on top of your other responsibilities so it's it's a few things it's number one developing a relationship and letting you get to know me and letting me get to know you i i hope for the day where you know you can you meet my wife and kids and i can meet your families and we we can develop a good relationship i think it's

064also about making sure you have the information that you need and i think it's also about setting up for success so you can be at the good stuff because that's that's i think the fun part of your job us from um from living here yeah as a member of our community and looking back growing up around here what do you think our vision um for our future how about you how might you well i i'm not i'm not coming here to serve as your superintendent to to own the place or impose my vision because i think pieces of your vision are already there and i think it'll come out in the listening tour too but i think when you look at your strategic plan and your portrait of a graduate you have a pretty compelling

065vision for the outcomes that you want for kids and and so for me it's more about where are we on that journey and how do i help you take those next steps and how do i help you improve that i think your vision is one of excellence and i think your vision is also one of opportunities the thing that i marveled at when i looked at your website from the age of as young as three all the way up to the post-graduate special education students this district is doing all it can to provide opportunities for kids and what i think is is your biggest boldest vision when we stand on the stage at graduation and we shake hands with every kid that comes across to get a diploma we want to know that those kids

066have options and places that they can go in places that they can succeed and success might look like attending a four-year university and beyond and success might look like andrew finn james who i ran into at oxford who aspires to take over the family business and and what what your system has done for years is create those opportunities and i just want to continue to build on that and i think that would be i think that's your vision and i think that's what i want to help you do okay all right yeah okay i appreciate that that have led to improvements in student learning i i guess for me one of the one of the big reforms um that i'm most proud of when i when i was the principal of oakview middle school we

067made a move collectively it wasn't i didn't impose this on them i worked with our department and we felt it was the right move we made a move in our language arts curriculum from really that whole class novel approach to building in student choice in what they were reading and book challenges and talking about the skills of reading and so we went from maybe taking a test about characters in a novel to talking about reading and talking about your reading skills and talking about the components and what good readers do and for us it was a game changer in terms of our our achievement and it wasn't it was about student achievement but it wasn't about student achievement we saw more kids reading books and that's awesome right when when we when i would go

068into the media center at oakview and more kids would be checking out books that made my heart happy because i think good things happen when when kids read and and it opens their minds and makes them think about the world in a different way so for me the biggest outcome i mean i can i can tell you about the reading scores and what it did and it's impressive but what's most important and what's most compelling about the example and what's most important to me was more kids read more books even kids who said they didn't like reading thank you what is the biggest risk you have taken to do what's right for children like closing an early childhood center [Laughter] um coming here to be the superintendent you know um i i would say to

069you that um i so i was working at lake orion and and i was very happy i really was um and and i think if you go i think if you ask around people would tell you wow that guy was a good principal he really liked him and i i still see people and hear from people from time to time but i have to tell you sincerely i was not as good as i could be and i had to find a way to go get better and i had to find an opportunity for myself to be a better leader and to sharpen some of my skill set and so i made the decision to become a principal in another district and work for another superintendent and then all of a sudden six months later i

070got appointed to this position which i didn't anticipate and didn't see coming but i think the risk was i started over again um you know chances are i probably could have i probably could have worked another 20 years as a principal in liquorian and been happy and and done okay work but i'm poised now to do better than okay work and i'm poised to do that because i took the risk of going somewhere else and getting better and and starting over again and that was a that was a huge risk but i think for me as a leader now i'm a better leader and so if i'm a better leader i'm going to be a better leader for our leaders who are going to be a better leader for our teachers who are going to

071be better for our kids and i think that's going to impact the whole system okay thank you what do you what do you believe are currently the biggest challenges with special education in our region how should these challenges be addressed i think we're all moving in different directions in the world of special education and i don't think we're having enough conversations about outcomes and what we want to see and what what really are our goals and what really are our aspirations and i think that because we're having so many different conversations number one and number two and and you know you can you could put some of this on the pandemic you could put some of this on the state we assess kids in special education so much they are tested more than their general

072education counterparts and sometimes it's just unfair and and i i try to put myself in the chair of a learning disabled eighth grader who has to keep taking tests after test after test after test that's no fun right when does he have fun like what is his elective where he gets to go and be an eighth grade boy and i think that so i think it's twofold i think that what we've done is we've tried to over over measure and over collect our data and i think we've tried to do that because we're pulling in all these different directions because we haven't had a good conversation about what are the outcomes that we're looking for and what are reasonable responsible and appropriate outcomes okay how do you how do you meet the needs of college

073readiness while also providing high quality relevant career-focused opportunities for students i alluded to this a moment ago if i'm your superintendent one of the most important things to me is that when kids come across the stage at graduation and shake hands with all of us and one of you gives them their diploma we're gonna know that that child is set up for success and opportunities and for me that's not up to me what success looks like because i think about my own family and when we sit down for thanksgiving we get we run across the continuum right and we've got people in education and you know we've got people that work at a doctor's office and graphic designers and my brother-in-law's a musician and you know we just we we have this whole continuum and

074for me success looks different and it looks different for different families and so what we have to do as a school system is make sure that i say this very sincerely to the families in warren county i'm going to meet with the incoming kindergarten families in two weeks and i'm going to say to them when you get to the end of the line wherever you want to go whatever success looks like for you whether it's a four-year university and beyond or whether it is taking over the family plumbing business because it's you're the fourth generation and you're going to keep it going wherever you fall on that continuum we have a program that's going to help you get there whether it's career technical education whether it's ap courses whether it's dual enrollment or early college

075opportunities we have got to think very clearly about our high school kids and make sure that number one not only do we offer the programs but we honor all of the programs because i think that's something else that that gets lost sometimes when you start to think about you know we we've got honors nights and we we have college signing ceremonies and acceptance letters and we praise these things what about the the young man or the young lady that just got into one of the leading cte schools or what about the young man or young lady that needs to take maybe a business class at occ and is going to be poised to to take over and run the family business you know we need to celebrate all of that so it's not just about

076the programs we offer but it's also about our culture and what we celebrate and i think that's going to be really important for us all right uh everybody was assigned questions i'm gonna ask juan real quick do you prefer john or mr bernie just call me john okay yeah just kind of good it was painless i just threw that in there because i like to know yeah what you prefer john what's your biggest concern regarding the political climate of education in michigan and as our superintendent how would you advocate for political action that benefits our district and overall public education throughout our state yeah i'm gonna if it's okay with you i'm gonna take that in a couple of stages um so i the oakland county superintendents have a legislative committee and to get ready

077for this i was in contact with the chair of that committee who was generous enough to give me some of his time and to tell me some of the things that the oakland county superintendents have been thinking about and i did that because i know what we're thinking about what we're talking about in macomb county but i didn't want to assume it was the same here as it is there and i was really pleased to hear that some of the issues that you're thinking about and talking about in oakland county is what we're talking about too i think the sliding moving target that has been the covet guidance is a huge hindrance to what we're trying to do in public schools right now because i understand science has evolved but i also understand that i

078that politics has also played a major role in some of those responses and i think some of those responses have been driven by the election coming up in november of and i think that's problematic um i think the k-3 reading legislation is another issue that is big in macomb county and it sounds like the oakland county superintendents have been talking a lot about that um for me anyways i i think that personally i'm opposed to that because it puts the state department of education between a child's parents and their teacher and their principal to make a retention decision i think when the state can come in and just mandatory say you're in third grade again i don't think that's a good i don't think that's good policy and i think that the rollout of that

079has been sloppy quite frankly so i was pleased to hear that there's some overlap in what you're talking about funding is always a major issue and how schools are funded and and the impact of the election so those are kinds of the big things that they're talking about one of the things i appreciated about oxford when i lived here one of the things i appreciated about oxford and lake orion when i worked in lake orion was the independent spirit that you have in this in this town and in this district so i i do think that there is a role and i think that it's important for it'll be important for me to participate with the county superintendents it'll be important for me to participate in those but it'll also be important for me to

080retain the independent identity of this community because i'm not here to advocate for my political views i'm here to advocate for the system and so i think one of the important things that we'll do is that'll be really helpful to me as your superintendent we're gonna we're gonna have a workshop and we'll talk about politics and we'll talk about political views and i'll get a sense of where you're coming from and where the system is coming from but i also think that for maybe probably at least the first year we'll talk a lot about those things because it'll be important for me to have a sense of how to best represent you how to best represent our teachers and how to best represent our administrators and support staff so i do think that there's a

081role for that i think and i think it's there's a role you know oxford community schools is represented in seven municipalities if i'm not mistaken so it's going to be important for me to know those local leaders and advocate for the school system on the local level on the state level and then of course with the federal government as well okay what are specific ways in which our district should be working with other local districts to help meet our students achievement goals primarily just their achievement goals you know i i when i was working in lake orion we we got a grant and it wasn't just us it was it was us an oxford and clarkston and we worked together it was a school safety grant that went all the way back to 2009 and

082we had folks from the secret service come in and give us some professional development and the outgrowth of that became our district started talking about what we were doing and we started to have some constructive how how is that math program working for you how's it working for us so we started to visit each other's schools um i had the good fortune of you know because i was right there you know i had the good fortune of coming up here a couple of times and seeing some of your classrooms and seeing some of the things that you were doing when we were revising some of our stem rooms and some of those things i actually came here to oxford middle school to see what you were doing and so i think that you know that

083kind of collaborative spirit is important and i think those are some ways very specifically that we can kind of open the conversation with with the districts around us to to improve outcomes for kids what impact has standardized testing and teacher accountability had on our education system here in michigan you know i'm not afraid of accountability i'm really not i was part of a team we built this whole plan we built this whole thing around the explore plan a ct test and presented it to our board we were going to build five-year cohorts of data it was going to be really i think good for kids and we were going to commit to our community this is what we're going to show you and then the test changed and and it's been a moving target ever

084since and so i don't think that it's been rolled out well i think when you give a child a test in april and don't give the results until august and you and you won't let the educators see the test and then you use it to punish people that's not a healthy system i'm not afraid of accountability it doesn't bother me at all but it bothers me that the state has created an environment where if we're going to create accountability for ourselves with our community we have to do it ourselves so we're talking about local data in our district we were talking about local data in uh in in warren county or in lake orion when i was there and that that's not how it's supposed to work and so i think that the intent you

085know i don't i'm not afraid to be accountable i'm not afraid of any accountability measure but i i do think that it's been haphazard and how it's been rolled out i think it's been sloppy at times last year we were watching the state assessment site as the projected scores were being published and every kid that fell below that cut score on the k3 reading law got a letter from us saying you're going to receive a letter from from the state department of education telling you your score fell within this range we painstakingly worked through it with our principles and we were surprised not surprised we were stunned in august when kids had still not received their letters or when the state had not identified kids or had identified the wrong kids you know and that's

086the kind of thing that i've seen time and time again and so i i don't have a problem with the state coming in and saying they want education to be accountable that we're going to have test scores i don't have a problem with any of that i have a problem with the way that it's been handled and i have a problem with how it's been rolled out john thank you for your applying to oxford thank you very much i'm glad that you're here mr all right i'm here thank you very much thank you how would you interact with other administrators in our district how do you strike a balance between giving them the support and autonomy they need effectively while holding them accountable as appropriate and necessary yeah i i think if if you come

087to our district and talk with our team or our principals i think they would tell you the vast majority of the time they work with me i do all i can i i have a team that i meet with every monday and i have a team that i meet with every thursday and i i praise debate i praise disagreement it's i say all the time we shouldn't sit down here and if all eight of us agree we didn't try hard enough and so i i try to create this respectful debate and dialogue within our team and i i thrive on that because i think that's where we get to our best answers and and i i hesitate i don't thrive on conflict but i i do like a good productive healthy conflict when we're debating

088an issue as to what's best because that's when we're going to get to the best answer and that's the kind of environment that i seek to strike now folks will tell you that you know there are times you know if someone's in danger or if someone's behaving in a way you know if we all come to a collective agreement on something and someone's behaving in a way that's not in alignment with that collective agreement people will tell you yeah he knocked on my door and said something to me about it i think they would tell you that i treated him respectfully and that i was professional about it and that i kept it to the to their job right i separate your work performance from who you are as a human being and i think

089people would tell you that that has happened but i think if you came you would hear from time to time like yeah yeah he asked me to stop by the office at the end of the day and said you know if i remember correctly we all agreed to this and you didn't do it what happened you know and and i think that they would tell you that that does happen from time to time but for the vast majority of time people work with me and and i'm a relationship driven kind of guy and and i would tell you that i i get a lot of joy out of that and i think that that gives me a better return at the beginning of every year i meet with our team and i tell them very

090openly that one of my big non-negotiables is if we have a leadership meeting or we have something going on and i find out you were here with me and you weren't at your kids soccer game i'm gonna have a real problem with that because i'm not gonna be the reason you miss the night your kid scores a goal i just won't do that we will get you caught up i will call you tomorrow i will send you the notes now there are some things you know you can't miss graduation right like you're out of luck there but at the same time that return i think i get better performance from people because i care that way and because i show them that they're important to me one of our principals just a couple of weeks

091ago he had to miss he had to miss our leadership team meeting and his daughter scored her first basket right that's the best what's better than that right anything we were doing a leadership team you can get caught up on you're not going to miss that and i think that those kinds of those kinds of things have engendered people to me and have made people um feel valued by me and so when with those relationships that we have when i have to call you on the phone or call you in my office or stop by your office and say hey where we at on this you know we agreed to this and you did that or you know this you know what's going on with this or what's going on with that i think that

092that has let me have some course corrections in a healthier way that people know i still value them and and that i'm i just want the best and i just want a better work performance what would you suggest in terms of a comprehensive professional development plan for our educators specifically what would be the key priority areas as well as the delivery system well i'm an outsider so part of that is going to be driven by my listening tour and hearing what people say you know where are our gaps i can tell you that we have a very strong social emotional learning committee in warren consolidated schools that reports to me and does work with us and one of the things that they recommended is we started to do some trauma training and it's been very

093well received and it's given our our staff a very healthy perspective on our kids and themselves and it's helped support them i don't know what the trauma training picture is here but i will tell you candidly everyone in oxford community school suffered a trauma and and you have to reconcile that in some way so maybe it's already happening and it's okay and maybe it's not but i think that that's a need and then and then i think it's about digging in and saying you know where are we what do we need to get better at and then kind of fashioning some training and fashioning some goals i'm for teacher-led training whenever whenever we can i'm for principal-led training in our district you know holden elementary which is located it's it's big beaver in oakland county

094it's metro parkway in macomb county um but it's it's 16-mile and ryan give or take and the vast majority of those kids are english language learners and their families really don't speak english and wild elementary which is on the other side of our district i think eight kids come from homes that don't speak english it's very small and so we had to strike a balance where we created some flexibility because the needs of all of our schools are not necessarily always the same so i'm not you know there are times where i think we need to be one district in our development but then there are also times where i need to give principals and teachers the flexibility to say hey we need to get better at this part of our game whatever that is

095and i think we have to let that balance out so that that would be my overall approach thank you you've already spoken about this a little bit but if you can go into some more to describe your experience with labor relations and negotiations highlighting how you have been able to reach agreements that are fair for everyone without compromising too much simply to avoid conflict oh gosh also yeah in one word how would the president of your teachers union describe you trustworthy um so here here's a story for you so january i i alluded to this at the beginning like we're starting to work on next year right so my oci team we're knee-deep in figuring out our assessments for the spring and getting ready and my pr team and and my people service team they're

096coming together because we we've got to start recruiting and welcoming the new ground of kindergarteners and early childhood program kids and our principals were changing semesters and so it's a busy time for them and so in the midst of all of this in january our superintendent walks into my office and says john i have an opportunity for you and i said i don't need another opportunity but he said no seriously and he went on to outline that we were about to go through an internal shift this would have been one year ago so think about where we were with kovid a year ago in january and the challenge of that on top of all the other challenges that we were working through and he says we're going to have this internal shift and he outlines

097what's about to happen and he says you john bernier are going to be our chief negotiator with the warren education association um which is one of the largest teacher unions in the state and is led by one of the most experienced ea presidents in the state you're going to be our chief negotiator and in addition to that you're going to be the chief negotiator with the warren administrators association and i said great i've got a lot of time and so um i went to work and and found some support so i i first had to find who can help me right and i will tell you sincerely like what a seasoned hr person could probably pull off in 45 minutes took me nearly three hours um but i think i i earned the respect across

098the table when they saw how hard i was trying and when they saw how committed i was to getting it right and when and we didn't agree on everything we had to come to some compromises because what they wanted and what we wanted you know we had to find a middle ground and we had to work through that process and we did and i was really pleased we ended up getting a two-year extension with our teachers and we ended up getting a two-year extension with our principals and i guess what i would tell you is we had that success that success comes from a trusting relationship that we were able to build the our ability to disagree in a productive way part of it came back from my commitment to staying prepared and i mean

099there are people in the hr office that still run away from me because when i walk down there say hey just a quick question like no more no more john um but i i think working through all of that i think helped but what was really critical and really the underpinning of that was years and years and years of positive labor relationships and being responsive and listening our union leadership will tell you they don't always agree with me but they will never tell you that i don't listen to them they would never tell you that i don't respect them and they would never tell you that i don't reach for all of it when they come to me with a problem or something that they want resolved i think they would tell you he asks

100every question and and he's trying to he's trying to get all of it so that he can work through a solution with us because ultimately that's good for teachers and and that's good for kids right if we're able to collaboratively work through those solutions it doesn't mean i cave every time and it doesn't mean i give them everything that they want but when we're able to productively work through some things i think that's what's best for kids thank you very much thank you john thank you uh those are the 23 questions i made it through them all so how about so how about you john didn't cut me off how about if you take a drink of water we have uh about 15 minutes left is that true john a little bit more almost 20.

101about 20 minutes left okay all right and and so just to give you a picture uh the last couple things that we're going to do is divide it into sections okay one is for you to have an opportunity to ask us some questions sure and then secondly um to give you a chance um to speak to anything that we may have missed and that you might want to add so as you think of the next 15-20 minutes think about how you want to divide that up with those things so we are going to take a few minutes now to ask you if you have any questions of us as a board i think one of the things that would be helpful to me as i think about this and continue to kind of get prepared

102uh is to to get a sense from you what you're most proud of when it comes to oxford community schools we're going around the room it doesn't have to be everyone but i think you just wanted to go first if one of you would like to say it dan go ahead i'm always the guy that speaks so again so i make sure that i understand the question you want to know what we feel as though it makes that we feel the most proud of oxford you're a board member what are you proud of i don't want to eat too much in your 20 minutes so okay i'll try to be brief ben most of us do this for one reason because we care about kids we care about the district who care about this community

103if you didn't do that we we should we should not be in this in the positions that we're in having done this 10 years this is what i'm most proud of i'm most proud of the fact that when i started and where we are today uh when dr skilling was here he laid out his plan into what you said and then we're gonna do and then we're going to do and then we're going to do and all during that time again we may not have always agreed but we kept doing and then we're going to do and then we formatted we we formed a foundation that was to what we are today that foundation was set we brought in the next superintendent we thought really hard what do we need a little bit different we

104need we need to provo we need to bring in heart we need to bring in we need to let our staff know that we care like no other and we've done that and i'm also proud of the fact that we give every kid or every student the opportunity to choose their path it doesn't matter where you are doesn't matter where you're going it doesn't matter where you start it's where you finish and my finish line is going to be different than yours it's going to be different than erickson this is going to be different than everybody's i want them to get to their finish line and that's what this district is most proud of that i can say that i am but all right you know let anybody answer that from there any other board

105members want to speak to that chad did you want to say something i was going to take kind of take a um yeah kind of an offshoot of what what dan was saying i think you know every point she made was was was great um so the other thing that that i would add to that is is simply tmo right and that's a that's a phrase that we use um and what it means is it it it signifies respect it signifies a a sense of caring a sense of love for the community and it's just a sense of community in and of itself i think we've we've got i think we've shown that this community of oxford is very tight-knit we know what that means and we know what that means that each other or

106that we mean something to each other and we can always lean on each other in good times and bad excellent thank you chad yeah i would agree uh teemo is something i think we fight back to all the time we have to fight back to it because there's always things that want to divide you and we you say that we're kind of a unique district independent spirit i think that's can't be lost right because i i think that will become ultimately any superintendent's greatest blessing is that we're teemo the porch of a graduate the willingness to see that that um it's not about standardized tasks it's about have we made someone ready to go out into a world do they do they do they have the ability to communicate do they have the ability to

107be truthful and honest and and do self-reflection and those kinds of things and i just i just love that one and the fact i think it's been said that with everything that we got going on we give every single child in our community an opportunity even if they miss they can get back into something like portrait of grad i mean our graduation alliance or other ways in which we are wanting to make sure they have every opportunity possible anyone else mary and i will add that we always find a way to get things done the community does it the staff and the teachers and administration they all do it and i think that's really special about oxford you know what it gets done whatever the challenge is you know people are taken care of and

108we just have such an amazing staff throughout and such a cohesive staff that i just think it's really second to none anywhere else the um so in closing we we move to a time where you can use whatever time you would like um what would you like to add now that you've faced 23 questions had an opportunity to answer those questions maybe you thought of some things you wish you could have said or would have said back then this is your time to let us know what you'd like to leave with i want to thank you for the opportunity it was wonderful to be back in oxford for an evening and so i'm really grateful to have been here to have had this chance to spend this time with you i think in the 23

109questions i've given you a window into who i am and and i think what i'd like to do if it's okay i i just wanted to close on a personal note if it's all right we're here at oxford middle school and if you take the long driveway back to the main road and take a right you will quickly end up in downtown lakeville with its beautiful lake and one party store but it's got a decent slice of pizza yeah i see and if you take a right and head south on rochester road in about a mile and a half you will drive past the hidden lakes estates mobile home community which is where i lived until i was 10 years old i was a poor kid and i know what it feels like to wear

110the same clothes to school a couple of days a week because that's what i had and i know what it feels like to have holes in your shoes when you play on the playground in the springtime and your socks get all wet because that was my life i've slept on a sleeping bag and on a floor in front of a fireplace because our heat was off i've seen my mom and dad collect pop bottles to return to the s m market on 32 in rochester road to buy milk for my cereal when i was 10 my parents got new jobs and we moved to a house and i used to ride my bike back and forth in front of the house i was allowed to go farther but i just kept riding back and forth

111and one of our family stories is when i was asked about it i said i can't believe we're rich enough to have a sidewalk um and i was i couldn't help but think about that as i was driving here uh my my house is off rochester road and that was kind of the route i took and you know it's just a little over six miles from there to here and and i couldn't help but thinking about the fact that a poor kid like me who comes from the background that i came from is sitting here interviewing for a premier job in a premier district and i have great parents my mom and dad are great people and i have a good work ethic but a lot of kids that came from my neighborhood had that

112same thing and didn't get where i got and the difference maker for me was my education i had incredible teachers and in principals and support staff a custodian who was supervising me in detention gave me some advice that changed my life and my education created an opportunity for me that created an opportunity that created an opportunity that created an opportunity that got me here and that's why i believe in education the way that i do because education in this country can do that for you and i don't know that there's another country in the world where education can do that the way that you can in america it could change your life and change the life of the next generation and my children's education is going to change their lives and change the lives of

113the next generation and the one after that and the one after that education has changed my life and that's why i'm as passionate and as serious about it as i am and when i lived here and when i worked in the next town and when i did the homework to get ready for this you all create opportunities for kids from all walks of life not just kids who come from my background but from kids who come from all backgrounds and quite frankly that that is the legacy of oxford community schools and if i'm lucky enough to be the superintendent of schools i will work tirelessly with you and everybody else to ensure that we write the next chapter of that story and to make sure that everyone knows that that's our legacy not a tragedy

114that happened but that that opportunity that we create for all kids it has been a thrill to be here i've created these entry plans for you that i'm going to leave with you i'm going to bring them around to you if it's okay um but i wish all the best i wish you the best of luck i hope we can talk again but thank you so much for having me it was wonderful to be here thanks everybody thank you very much thank you very much for coming at this classroom so mr bernier we appreciate your interest in the superintendent position for oxford community schools uh the board is interviewing five candidates as you mentioned and and know of well we will let you know thursday evening uh depending upon the snow um where where uh

115you stand in our search and so thank you for your participation in our first round of interviews i appreciate it thank you thank you sir thank [Laughter] i just got a message from a viewer asking if there's a way we can turn the volume up they can't hear it as well on the youtube this volume his responses or ours his is there a way to turn up his volume the the interviewee's volume because the people watching on youtube are saying that they're not they're not hearing that i got it from the big and tall shop and it's no longer big and tall how's that does that work is there a way to test that volume yeah are you good four score and seven years ago most of my days were spent in the principal's office

116[Music] that tells you anything about me is that a little bit better are you getting some more all right thank you very good john are we going immediately into our second interview do we have to uh do we take a little bit of a breather break 10 minutes for you to get up and stretch and dive back in all right everyone uh just so you know that we are going to take a break for about 10 minutes come back and we'll have our second interview thank you all right everybody yes you're breathing is oh good how are you yes i'm sure he says you guys have enough you're welcome right oh all the time all day okay [Music] it doesn't seem right pennies okay lisa you're ready um so one of the things we're talking

117about is at the end of every meeting okay running through a cotton machine with seven copies so that we can immediately have them here [Music] to get the community response forms copied and given to us tonight and after each set of interviews so that we're not waiting two three days to get them so does that sound right [Music] no just just just just be easier just to do it now and then i can take in that input too in context all right uh good evening everyone and we're gonna try to pull ourselves back into a order and get ready for our second interview a reminder uh that there are if you're wanting to if you're here to speak at unscheduled audience participation there are some forms back there on the um ah where the where

118the water bottles are and uh fill one of those forms out and get those to angela and then we will address those uh when we can you also should have access to feedback forms for these interviews each of you should have one of those we as board members very much want to get your input and we just spoke about that just now we're going to make sure at the end of this meeting all your forms are copied and given to us at one time same thing tomorrow all of them given to us and and and before we leave here so that we get your input and can attach it to the things that we have in in our own input um so i think that's all for the business and so if john is around

119the corner and oh there he is john we're ready if you'd like to bring in um mr weaver this uh um welcome mr weaver um as as everyone knows ken weaver is one of our internal candidates um applying for the superintendent's position and ken i just want to go over what this looks like um 90 minutes seems like a long time but you're going to be asked 23 questions plus have some opportunities to to talk in some other areas so uh wanting you to make sure that your responses are concise but so that we can move on um john is going to be keeping track of some time and so if we find ourselves in a bit of a time crunch i'll probably at some point tell you that we need to to be more

120concise but we have about 90 minutes 23 questions um and then if we have some time at the end a chance for you to ask us as a board some questions if you have them as well as kind of make a a closing statement after you've kind of thought about the 23 questions and the things that you've heard and things that you might just want to leave with us um just reminding everyone that as the board hears from each candidate and weighs this critical decision it will be doing so through the lens of the candidate profile that was developed with considerable input from our stakeholders our intention is to identify the candidate that best fits the profile which board members have at hand for those present in our audience you may submit submit feedback forms

121um that have been provided although the task of choosing our next superintendent is the responsibility of the board of education as the elected representatives of our community we value and consider the input of our stakeholders in the process and as i mentioned when john was walking out that we're actually going to collect all those copy all those so that we have your responses tonight and we can put them in our in our sections as well as do the same thing tomorrow and the same thing uh the next day and so um ken or mr weaver okay you know me long enough that's all we call it um ken well we've had the opportunity to review your application materials and uh we know you have a background with you the audience may not please briefly review

122your background with all of us and share what causes you to be interested in this position at this point in time in your career okay well thank you for this opportunity tonight i am uh to say that this has been a dream of mine for some time is is an understatement since i joined the district in 2003 and i've held several positions in the school district i am going to take a little bit different approach to this question in the fact that i've been here 18 years i do think that most of oxford is pretty familiar with my background um but that's not really the important part i think of the question the question is really why and what brings me here so rather than telling you a little bit about my resume and i

123did write this one out because i think it's important i want to tell you a little bit about my upbringing and my own school experience i was raised by two wonderful caring parents my parents were high school sweethearts who married early in their lives my parents were and are truly awesome i enjoyed a happy and supportive childhood with loving and caring parents in northern michigan small town while growing up in this loving caring and supportive family i was an a student up until the start of my 9th grade year starting in 9th grade i changed having fun and playing high school football and basketball were the only things i cared about i quit doing my homework and other assignments that i didn't think would help me i relied on my ability to read listen and

124memorize to pass my tests and all and ultimately pass my classes my high school gpa never went above a b minus average again i also became a behavior issue for my teachers i am sure that i made my teachers lives miserable as i constantly gave immature answers in class i also managed to get myself in trouble quite often by making wise cracks and pulling practical jokes during my junior year my chemistry teacher asked me to stay after class one day she waited for the other students to leave before speaking to me i thought i was in trouble again she spoke to me for about 10 minutes 10 minutes that i'll never forget although at the time i did not appreciate those ten minutes nor did i act on her advice she told me how i

125was not utilizing my abilities and that she saw in me the vast potential that i possessed she encouraged me to apply myself and to realize that i had been given many talents and abilities i listened to her politely laughing to myself and thinking what does she know as i continued down my path smaller issues became bigger issues until i ended up getting myself suspended after a practical joke went awry my principal stepped in and helped me navigate a high school faculty who was very upset with me it was after this incident that my misbehavior started to subside a little bit my attention to my studies did not improve a whole lot but at least my behavior became tolerable to the high school faculty one day in the fall of my senior year my parents told

126me that i would be going to college and that i had to take this test called the a.c.t i took the test and won a four year scholarship and enrolled at central michigan university i wish i could report that my behavior changed it did not even though i was focused on having other fun and doing other things at college i still kept going back to that chemistry teacher and what she said after a couple years at the university i happened to get involved in tutoring and coaching at my former high school where i realized it was good at working with kids i realized that i wanted to make a difference in someone else's life i wanted to be a teacher i began to take school seriously and my grades improved dramatically and i found my

127purpose and my passion at the end of my student teaching experience during my last year college my supervising professor who was also in his last year sat down to talk to me he said when i first saw you your gpa by the way i was much younger and with hair better looking i saw you your gpa your paperwork i thought you were going to be trouble but in all my years of doing this you are one of the best student teachers i've ever had he went on to say i've never said this to any student teacher before but you must go into school administration you will be fantastic at this moment i began to realize what my chemistry teacher was talking about all those years ago as i entered the teaching profession i worked hard

128to be the best teacher i could be i worked long hours on lesson plans projects i got involved in clubs after school activities coaching everything that i could all the while trying to help students fulfill their potential after eight years of teaching my school administrative team came to me and said you need to be a school administrator it's time i enrolled in a rigorous program finished with all a's which was quite a difference from the time before i attended school and after completing my leadership degree i embarked on a now more than 20-year career of being a successful school administrator at every stop along the way i've worked hard to improve the lives of students and staff who were entrusted to my care i made sure they knew that i could see their potential as

129they learned and grew under my assistance i never gave up on them either it had become my mission to help others see and fulfill their potential so why do i share my background in this manner if someone like me who had awesome parents can struggle what does that say for others what does it say for others who think or appear to have everything together you never know who is struggling you never know what the story is behind that individual i realize that education is really about helping others see and fulfill their potential much like my chemistry teacher student teaching supervisor and school administrator each had done with me their kind words of encouragement their willingness to see past the rough edges and outside appearances their ability to see the potential in me impacted my life

130for the better and i don't know if they've realized what impact that has had as i've changed the lives of numerous other kids that is the power of seeing the potential in others and seeing them fulfill it my journey has given me the expertise the skills and the empathy needed to inspire our students and staff to fulfill their potential i want to work with you as your superintendent to help our students reach and staff reach their full potential i want to help you as a board as board members to bring our community together to carry out our mission to prepare students to succeed succeed in a global society for at this time it will take an entire community to help our school just heal and rise up from november 30th together we can make oxford

131a place where all students fulfill their potential as they heal thank you i won't be as long on the other question no but thank you thank you very much um my next question has to it's focusing on the first 90 days all right so you want to hit the ground running on your first 90 days what immediate challenges would you expect to face and how would you go about doing it well since we've been living these challenges the last 60 days um one of the first things that we have to do is is make sure well first of all i'd say i understand the tragedy from the perspective of student parent community member and a staff member so i have those lenses and as i helped to prepare the high school to return is without

132that lens that we made the plans and develop them as we are in this point of returning we have to at some point realize the safety of our kids is while it is first and foremost and it has to be the priority right now but at some point we have to have a lens of a longer view and we have to be asking ourselves what type of school does do we want our students to ultimately attend and we have to balance that with that approach to safety and make sure that we are meeting all the needs of the students so in order to do that for the first 90 days quite honestly i already come with a lot of the knowledge because trying to build that plan and trying to slowly integrate the kids back

133in as i have two high school kids myself i have that knowledge already built in about the district i already have all of that but that doesn't mean i know everything but i do know who to tap i do know who to ask for help and that's what's important right now it's not one person putting oxford back together it's a team it's a team that with cabinet the board and others as well the staff and the community and the parents and everybody has a role to play in that as we move forward and it's making sure that you're we're working hard to get the input of everyone in the areas that needs to have input that was one of the struggles that we had as we presented the plan was everybody wanted to give input

134but i've got eighteen hundred kids and i look at them as my own we've got eighteen hundred kids and their needs are spread out of that along a vast continuum and trying to figure out how to meet all of those needs sometimes you can't do it completely as a committee it would have taken way too long and so sometimes as a leader you have to make the decision sometimes as a leader though you get input to make the decision and sometimes as the leader you turn the decision over to somebody else and sometimes you turn it over to a committee or a group at that point and that's the role of the leader is to realize when it's time to ask for that input when it's time to turn that decision over and when it's

135time that the leader has to make that decision and those are the tough decisions to make and those are the decisions that we've been making now for the last 60 days that have kept me up at night long hours for the last 60 days but it's willing because this i'm willing to do that because this community means so much in this school district means so much to me that it's important thank you thank you very much um the question starts given your research of our district given the fact that you live in our district um thinking longer term what do you think two or three of the most critical long-term priorities of our district should be well my answer 61 days ago would have been different than it is today the sad part that i

136have to live with is that we were heading towards it but wasn't there quick enough i think our priorities need to be first of all students students students the students we have now when i moved into this position in 2014 there was not an elementary mtss system middle school had a little bit because i was the principal there high school had very little as well too since being in the position of deputy superintendent since 2014 and i've had various titles over that time we never seem to quite settle on one um as i've gone through that i've we have worked as a team when i first got into the position to address the elementary needs then we started to address the secondary needs and unfortunately coveted so when you look at it the first priority

137is going to be students and you've got to make sure kids that know that students care or teachers care about them and that social emotional piece and that mental aspect is first and foremost it has to be it has to be in that order first you have to address that because kids that know you care about them learn a lot when i was middle school principal that's what i addressed first all the programs that i put in one of the first ones was advisory at the middle school one of the other first programs i put in was webb why because we had to address the culture that's the same thing here we need to continue to address and improve upon the culture of the school as well too so that would be the second thing

138that i would say is making sure that all schools have a culture that supports all students that's the critical piece that needs to be met at the secondary level is meeting the needs of all students of all secondary students elementary we've done a pretty good job we're working at it at the at the middle school and at the high school level and we need to continue with that work third is making sure that as we as we heal and as we grow that we listen learn and we try to figure out what type of school what type of high school it needs to we want to have and also as well k-8 as well and really really live into that we have a portrait of a graduate to really grow into that is our next

139and i think our biggest task ahead of us we have a strategic plan to help us do that but we need to address that strategic plan it may not be what it needs to be in order for us to grow into that portrait of a graduate now that with the events that occurred on november 30th and we need to look at that and try to address that and that can only be done through community input board input staff input and really going back and addressing that strategic plan ken thank you i'm going to turn over questions now to chad thank you all right um maintaining healthy relationships with school and community stakeholders is an important piece of the board um please share with us how you've gone about building and maintaining successful relationships with all

140members of the school community so for the last um seven or eight years my and it really back up a little bit a lot of it changes on the position that you have when i was the middle school principal it was the middle school parents middle middle school students and the staff that was my stakeholders at that time as deputy superintendent that changes a little bit in the fact that i become part of a team that supports mr thrawn the superintendent and it's important that he takes the lead on some things and some things as a cabinet member we remain in the in the background a little bit so to speak as moving forward with that and trying to develop really relationships one of the things that i have to i always have to be

141cognizant of is my presence and it seems odd to say but sometimes being a rather large fellow can be somewhat intimidating in a room plus being bald as well too sometimes and i have many times a stern look but many times it's just because i'm thoughtful and quite honestly most people don't realize this about me that my natural tendency is to be a little bit more shy than outgoing but as in the role of a public educator and as a role as a principal and so forth that i almost have to take on a different persona in that regard so i'm always cognizant of that in making sure that i don't dominate or overshadow the room so to speak because that is important to hear everyone's voice and to make sure everyone feels valued that

142is the first and most important part of developing a relationship is if somebody doesn't feel valued and doesn't feel respected doesn't feel like you're really listening to them they're not going to be want to be in that relationship so it's very important to demonstrate that and to model those behaviors myself and to make sure that they understand that i am listening and working to develop those relationships as a superintendent though you have to there's a whole different realm of stakeholders that you now have to build relationships with and reach out to which i've already started part of working through this tragedy is we i've already worked on the emergency management team with the county stakeholders as well as working with federal grant providers to bring assistance into the community as well as working with the

143national compassion fund to bring assistance to our families there is a lot more going on than what people realize i didn't just help with the high school plan but i've been bringing resources to the community i don't want to throw any agency under the bus but the community resources after this tragedy have been slow and coming and quite honestly it shouldn't have been up to the school to trigger some of them they are now starting to flow and thank goodness the county has stepped up and helped out as well too but also there's other forms of grants that we shouldn't have been the ones to start but i had to advocate and push for that and that's part of building relationships is being authentic being real and reaching out to people and making sure that

144you establish that and that's part of been my role lately is really starting to develop that role that mr throne many times has had to take on but this task that we have before us has been so enormous that i've had to assist more in that realm good thank you so you talked a little bit about um some of those activities community activities uh where you provided leadership maybe you could go in a little bit deeper um whether you have some different ones to share with us or maybe you talked to some of the same ones um but but turn the lens a little bit on how the ways that that benefited the district yeah well first of all it brought resources and attention to the district because um the some of the resources were

145about a month behind and the school district was left out by itself for a while and there was things that we were being asked to do or trying to do and trying to help a community that quite honestly there were resources for so trying to do that trying to to address that issue trying to reach out to different resources has allowed the district to then benefit because now we can focus back on what we need to focus on which is getting the school up and going and making sure that is safe and secure so that's how that is benefit in that regard as far as building on some of those relationships but as a superintendent i've watched mr throne he has been able to develop those relationships with law lawmakers with legislators with others as

146well too and those relationships are so key because you're going to need to call on them and recently he was just up in lansing doing that asking them for assistance so that we could rebuild and we could reshape things as we move forward because it is going to take quite an effort to do so and as as a person that would be responsible for that i would have no problems taking that role on and being able to reach out to the two others as well to bring resources back into oxford as well it's it's an important task and it's important role you become like when i was the middle school principal i was the face of the middle school and i loved that role i totally loved that role and it was fun and it

147was exciting and it was a blast interacting with the kids as deputy superintendent of curriculum instruction as you've sat through many presentations and so forth it was a completely different role from when i was the middle school principal and very aware and as well too quite honestly my role in during that time was to support mr throne and a lot of what we created a lot of what we did that was a lot of my work the portrait of a graduate the strategic plan was came from my office because mr throne in support of him asked me to help with those and that's how we work as a team and that's what's so important when you work with other people stakeholders and so forth is you need to build a team and a team has

148to work together for the same common purpose and that's how you get other stakeholders within a community to work together is they feel like they're part of that team so i worked with the federal grant people the it's the aeap and don't ask me exactly what all that is it's some kind of anti-terrorism grant but it helps bring a resiliency center that will be coming to oxford and i've been working on that for the last like three weeks it's really not what the school is supposed to be doing but others are but because there was a void we stepped in and did this and so it was important for the community it's important to get done you don't ask who's supposed to be doing this you get it done thank you so how do we

149create a district-wide and community-wide culture of continuous improvement planning strategically and aligning our actions to achieve strategic outcomes first of all improvement is done incrementally day by day you don't make especially in school systems you don't make huge leaps just it's all of a sudden you turn around and the next thing you know because a lot of times you measure it with standardized testing and not all of the best things are measured by standardized testing by any means i don't want to give that impression but all of a sudden because those are from year to year you're like oh wow look where we're at now but it's really about making those small improvements and paying attention to the small details day-to-day and making sure that you are improving and helping others to have that focus

150and that lens that you are improving day to day and you're helping them get better and making sure that you set the expectations as a principal i was clear about that i had certain expectations and was quick to address them at the same time if somebody was struggling with those expectations i was quick to support them and make sure they had the resources and everything they needed to make sure to the point where if i had to learn the computer system or the software system i did that so that i could be in the classroom and help them and and help them get past that hurdle so it's important that as you do things that that constant improvement it's it's about a culture that develops of people as a team pulling together and it's looking

151at the day-to-day practices little by little getting better every day it's not about these huge leaps in practice it's not about all of a sudden one day you're you're totally teaching a totally different way or anything like that or counseling kids a different way or anything like that it's about making sure that you're paying attention to those details because every kid matters and probably and maybe the community's not quite ready to learn that but that's one of the lessons to be taken out of november 30th is that every kid matters and it's important to realize that and to address all the kids needs and to making sure that we're able to find them and address them and that's what that that culture of constant improvement does is you're always striving to be better doesn't mean

152you're going to be perfect doesn't mean that i have that expectation that we're going to be perfect but we're always striving to be better every day and that's all i ever asked of my staff when i was the middle school principal i didn't ask the impossible from them i just asked them to be a little better each day and they did it and they responded because they knew i was doing the same thing you have to model that behavior if you don't yourself keep up in current practices if you don't read if you don't learn if you're not sitting in pd learning and taking notes why would you expect your teachers to do that you have to model that behavior you have to be the lead learner when you're the principal or the leader of

153a building or of a school district and that eyes are on you and every minute of every day you have to be modeling that behavior there was it wasn't a coincidence that i was first one in and last one out when i was middle school principal i never asked anybody to work any harder than what i did and i didn't ask them to work as hard as i did but they were willing to work hard for me because they knew i put in the work i put in the effort and i cared about them because that's how that's how a staff knows what you're really about is that you put kids first and that's important for them to understand that when you when they see you putting that as a leader kids first staff is

154wonderful always is oh my gosh we got a wonderful staff but it helps focus because that's where systemic change comes from hopefully i answered your question thank you sir um mr bailey all right i want to switch gears uh and go a little towards the finance side of things um talk to us a little bit about your experience with budget development financial management and especially making difficult budget cuts well thank goodness the times have changed and budget cuts aren't the primary focus of budget discussions so much as it was in the past and i've been part of that first of all address budget cuts and then you might need to remind me a little bit the budgeting aspect i play a heavy role in some aspects of it but it's not my favorite um so

155first of all i guess maybe i'll back up and explain a little bit i handle all the at-risk funds which is over a million dollars i handle the curriculum budget with along with mrs concha collins both of us together which is a million dollars or so then as well i handle all of the title one two and three and title four funds as well as other funds small grants that come in at one point i was even budgeting the robotics grant um which i finally gave over to mrs butts and said i don't have enough time anymore i've got to give something up so i gave her that so i have been quite involved in budgeting setting up financial plans setting up and making sure that i follow the procedures and making sure that federal

156laws and regulations are followed as well as state and everything else what the process is for all of that and doing all that but as well as i've also had a hand in district budgets for the school year and making sure that has been set up as we discussed that with sam as well as negotiations with oea and so forth have been involved in helping with that i was also involved and helped mr throne as we switch the insurance um as part of that so that all of that comes into the budgeting because what you're looking at trying to do is make sure the resources that you have which is the money that comes from the state goes to the place where it's needed most which is in the classroom you have got to concentrate

157and oxford does a really good job of that but that is the main thing in which you want to concentrate your funds on and that is what you prioritize is that money being going into the classroom and impacting kids that means you need a staff that isn't worried about being able to make their house payments car payments and so forth doesn't mean you pay them lavishly or anything like that but you make sure they have a wage that competes within oakland county you also have to make sure that there are supports for the kids as well too because all of the mtss that we have put in all of the changes that we have put in and improvements that we put in in curriculum all of that takes financial resources and so you've got to

158make sure those resources are flowing to those supports to help those kids because the classroom teacher can only do so much and then you have what we call tier two and tier three and you need to make sure that you have financial resources to support those areas so that those tier two and tier three areas are those kids that need more than what just the classroom teacher can deliver sometimes the tier the teacher can help with the tier two supports but a lot of times it's going to take those resources and so when you budget that's what you're trying to prioritize you're trying to make sure that as much as possible the the lion's share of what the financial support that comes in from the different from the federal the state goes to the classroom

159and is spent there so that they have the support they need to educate the kids because those are the those are the individuals that have that direct impact impact on the kids as principal while i had an impact on staff it was the staff that really had them made the difference with the kids it wasn't me because i didn't educate them all i didn't develop all the relationships with them i just encouraged their staff to do so and help supported them in that endeavor but it was really our staff that did all of that work they just sometimes gave me too much credit thank you and you've kind of already answered the the next question but what opportunities do you believe budget limitations present and in tough financial times what would be your top three

160priorities well top three priorities well first of all i've already answered part of that kids support um classrooms those three in that order basically you've got to make sure that the resources are there opportunities allow you when you do have tough financials i think that is one thing that oxford has excelled in and i've been grateful to be able to help with that and see some of the examples with looking at other areas to bring in kids and so forth and to be able to educate kids in a sound manner in a excellent manner while still being somewhat affordable and trying to deliver those services such as over we also developed many programs under the previous superintendent as well too to try to attract students and trying to keep kids coming to this district and

161trying to keep ourselves fresh and new so there's opportunities in those budget areas um quite honestly i'm grateful for not having those challenges anymore those were not fun times to try to figure out how to keep teachers with a livable wage um still meeting kids needs and still trying to deliver the best education that we can so that is one of the things that has changed since then um is that probably the question should be what do you do with having more money and what you what can you do and how do you get out of that mode of always looking to be frugal and start to realize hey you can put in more resources you can put in more supports we had a long stretch 10 years i mean i was here when we

162were 450 dollars per pupil was cut in one year that was devastating devastating in trying to figure out how to do that and still deliver services we've had 10 years of that and it's only been the last two or three years that we've started to come out of this and we've started to see the resources flow and for some some way reasons it's sometimes hard and we have these discussions at cabinet because i've had 10 12 years of i guess scars of all of that yeah we we have resources now and we need to spend more and we need to address certain areas and that's what we're doing and that's what we've been doing you saw the fsls would be a prime example of that thank you so what are some ideas that you would

163explore to raise money for the district have you had success in procuring additional funds so there's a lot of grants out there unfortunately many times we do not usually generally qualify that's always been a frustration due to our demographics our status although most people don't realize that you know it's tough being we we are at the state lowest funding per pupil in one of the most expensive counties in michigan and i think we're 27th i think it's us in south lyon that run 27th and 28th in per pupil funding so it's it's very hard sometimes trying to keep up and trying to keep a teaching staff and trying to keep a professional staff when they know they can go three miles down the road or five miles down the road and have a better opportunity

164for financial security so that's important to realize and try to keep that aspect in mind as you go forward can you repeat the question again what ideas might you explore to raise money for the district and have you had success procuring additional funds so yes over i mean we we've but at the same time one of the things i'm proud about over i when i came over to this position i was not well versed in virtual learning mrs xiao will tell you i had a lot of learning to do a lot and it's complicated over there but i've appreciated the journey just like when i became deputy superintendent i had a lot of learning to do at the elementary level i mean i read book after book about having to teach kids read so that

165i could have a conversation with reading specialists it's the same thing with ova and what i'm most proud about is in working with mrs shell is that we've been able to look for different opportunities to explore revenue but we do it with excellence we do it with running a program that kids complete classes kids graduate from and it's not anything that i would ever hesitate to brag about over has been something that has just been a great example of how to educate kids online with the support of their parents and that's always important to realize that's one of the things that's always very important about online learning and a lot of parents don't always realize it is a partnership it truly is a partnership when you when you send your kid in seated it's a

166little bit yeah you can kind of sit back maybe a little bit more depends on the kid though i've also found too i've got uh i found that out with my own kids some you can sit back a little bit more and some you got to be a little more involved yes you do but with with online you have to be really involved so that partnership has been extremely important so that's another area grants are another that i've obviously had a lot of experience writing and developing as well as you could look at other ways of saving money as maybe some partnerships with some other districts and so forth over what's been going reference on um you know superintendent's cabinet tim all of you guys have been faced with so many challenges of making decisions

167a right answer a perfect answer there's just been one one direction this way in one direction the other way members of the community that are just right down the middle talk about or even just explain more about a time when you were faced with a difficult situation where you knew there would be you know a group of people obviously on one side happy and the other side not happy and kind of what you did with that and uh you know how did you kind of go about making that decision and then on the aftermath kind of getting everybody else to get on board well i'm going to use the example of colvin yeah in july of that year we got the state's plan and i think it was 2021 was the year i'm using as

168an example they all start to get a little old and things start to run together a little bit so just bear with me i think it was yeah 2020. in july of that year we got the instructions from the state on how to open up and when we started talking about it mr thrawn was out of the out of the state and it was just myself and cabinet and i led us through dissecting that plan and taking it apart so we did it as a team took us two days to go through that and we had made the commitment together as a team that we were going to come back in person come hell our high water basically we were adamant that we were going to be able to do that so we knew what

169tim's directive was and what he wanted us to do so we as a team pulled apart what the state gave us we got it all set up we started figuring out what we needed to order i helped set that up and got that ready as to how much i never bought so much plastic in my life i mean it was unreal and mask so we started setting that up and discussing how much we would need and and then starting discussing with teachers as to how much that would be but it was important it wasn't just me it was a team we did it as a team at that point it was really important for us as we went through that because we all wanted to come back in person but we did it together i

170just happened to be because i'm deputy superintendent the one leading the team i didn't have all the great ideas but i relied on ourselves as a team to develop the plan then we wrote the plan and we made sure we wrote it for the different groups that we had now i wrote a good bit of it most of it actually and then helped having editors as we wrote the plan and got ready to communicate i wrote the communication plan and i was going to roll out the principles made sure we had a standard powerpoint that it would go through so that everything was systematized because we realized quickly that if all our schools were on different plans or different systems that parents if they had more a kid more at more than one school would

171quickly see that there wasn't consistency because it was already pretty contentious as to whether or not a we should be going back b the whole issue with the mask and everything else see the staff was very worried as well too and with good reason and everyone's got to remember now we know so much more about about covet and everything else but back then we didn't know in our hospitals and so forth didn't know how to fight it very effectively and we're losing the battles most often so we set it up we communicated it well we made sure that all groups had communication we made sure it was systematized got people set up got jill set up and and she did a fantastic job of organizing things and setting up the quarantine process and getting that

172set up as well too but we did it as a team that's what's important when you face those situations that are going to especially could have the potential for pulling apart a community you've got to face it as a team and you've got to stick together now when we're in that environment i've always ran my when i was a middle school principal as well as when in that situation we're going to discuss things and it isn't just ken's way it isn't just one way but every idea has to be considered as my principles know and they've all had the pleasure of me playing devil's advocate and i do it quite often with them but i think it's extremely important because if you just have a group and you all think the same and you all

173start heading down one path and you don't consider the alternatives you don't get the best ideas probably the one thing i took from dr skilling is i forget how he said it but it's still sharp and steel and i do believe that when you're in leadership positions you can't be challenged or frightened by others ideas you can't you have to rely on each other and you have to rely on others because your job as a leader is not to have the right idea or be the sharpest stick in the bunch but your job as a leader is to recognize who is the sharpest stick in the bunch because sometimes it might be you sometimes it might be you and sometimes it might be you and then sometimes it may be me but it's important for

174us to realize that as leaders that it's not about our ideas it's not about our egos it's about working together as a team and i've always worked that way you can ask any one of my principals any one of them you can ask the high school administration that high school plan coming back that wasn't what it was by me i worked with several people on it mr gibbons obviously the high school administration and many others had input into that i would have liked to have gotten more but we also had to get the kids back in and we also had to address it with the ex the mental health experts because i learned very quickly in my own situation you got to take advice from the mental health experts in certain situations especially with trauma

175hopefully i answered the question right um how do you lead without having official authority over people that might be involved well i think it's important to lead by example and i've always tried to do that i think being authentic people look people want people to lead and sometimes that be can become a problem because they then give up their own agency and so you've got to be careful with that as well too and making sure that people understand and follow the right leaders your actions speak louder than your words and that is something i've lived by and will continue to live by and every day every minute you cannot say one thing and do another so when you're not in an official leadership capacity you've got to make sure that if you need to lead

176in those cases that the way you do that is by building social capital and you do that by being authentic by being an example and what you say you do and what you do you say those have got to line up and the other thing too is is make sure you value everybody's input as well too nobody wants to i mean that is like the first thing that puts people off is if they don't feel their opinions are being heard their ideas are being heard or given any credence and another way to build leadership in those situations is to build off of other ideas to use part of somebody else's idea that's a pretty good start and build off of it so that you get to even better there's ways to do that and one

177of the things i forgot to mention as well too is just listen actively listen it's important that you hear and there's skills and tips for that like repeating back asking the question to be repeated it's important to make sure that you do those things so that as you interact people feel like they're being heard if people see that those are natural leadership skills that people then look to and trust in and expect you to lead at that point whether you have the official title title or not because it's not the title that matters you can have the title and not be a leader i've seen that many times but it's important to realize and that's where you know you got to check your ego at the door and make sure you do what's best and

178in this case what's best for the kids um what do you think the key elements are to establish a relationship with the board it's been interesting because my current role and i was classically trained as a as a i would say a cabinet member is that my role is to support the superintendent and quite honestly is really i guess i've always seen it as as speak when spoken to kind of thing and so that's one thing that i would say is different that i if i was your superintendent that would take a totally different role at that point um my role as deputy superintendent was never to outshine tim never my role was to support him and to help him be the best superintendent because that's what's best for the district that i could make

179helping make him be and he's done that i think and it's important that as your superintendent if i was given that opportunity first of all knowledge is power you've got to have information you've got to make sure that your board is informed and that there is a two-way communication that goes on between the board and that relationship you've got to sit down with your board members and listen to them and hear what they are they are the instructional leaders of the of the of the school district the first and foremost instructional leaders and it's important that they're engaged that the board is engaged in that work actively and the only way that can happen is if you've got the information that's needed to be able to make the best decision for the school district moving

180forward and not just what the superintendent or cabinet says that doesn't mean the board goes off on its own because we got to be a team and that's the job of the superintendent i think is to try to make a team now you're the decision-making body of the team but my job is to make sure that as a team you function as well as you possibly can that you all feel included that you all feel part of that team and that you all have the information that's needed to help you be part of that team that's the role of the superintendent some of the things you know like tim has done a really great job of the weekly emails and doing that some things that i might add that would change would be okay board

181meeting that before board meetings we're going to have a small quiz you got to be careful with quorums and stuff like that two three of you at a time phone call this is the agenda we're going to run through do you have any questions and do a zoom call with you to make sure you have an understanding of the of the board agenda as well as do you have any questions in advance that way if you get to the board meeting and you need to ask a question there's an answer that's ready for you when you get ready and you have that opportunity i think visiting schools is another great way to let you see and walk in and have you go with mrs kanji collins and look at workshop directly and see what effort

182it takes from those elementary teachers that was a big ask when we put that in in 2014 first the writers and then the readers workshop that's a big shift in practice that was a big shift that was a big ask of elementary teachers and they stepped up but it's something that you need to be aware of as well too and understand and appreciate so you know what their life is like as well and not saying that you don't have that idea but those are some of the things that i think are important for you to see and to be able to offer those to you and to be able to structure those so that you can go in and you can appreciate some of the nuances i mean maureen magdaleno is just an amazing wealth

183of knowledge taught her everything she knows just kidding she taught me everything i know but she's but having that conversation with her and understanding that instructional practice and that approach helps you when we bring up a library purchase you have a better idea what it's for and so that you're making decisions with that knowledge not just me or mrs congicollin saying this is what we need you have seen it firsthand same thing at the secondary and looking at some of the ib practices that we have to do and going into that environment and being able to see that firsthand and seeing what the teachers are dealing with on a daily basis and having that appreciation they're amazing at what they do they're amazing they need you to see that they need you to know that

184and i know you know that but if you don't see people and they're not in the classroom on a regular basis it sometimes leads people to wonder and question and there shouldn't be because i've worked with all of you i know the integrity that you have i know the care that you have i know how much you care about kids and love kids i've had individual conversations with each of you teachers need to know that too and the way they know that is by having you in the classroom and having you visit now that doesn't mean unstructured because i'm going to tell you what as a principal that would send me over the edge to have a board member in there without knowing it without being structured because it's like oh my gosh what am

185i in trouble for and so it's got to be structured and that's what i would ask now if you're volunteering that's a different story completely different but that's but that's just one of the ways in which i would see that relationship flourishing and continuing to grow mr throne has done a great job with building teemo it's something that needs to continue because when i came over in 2014 there was no teemo and i had a private conversation with him and i said to mr throne at that time you've got one year to change this culture outside i'm gone because i ain't living this life anymore and he did it and i want to continue that and i want to honor that work that he's done because it's important because when people know they're cared about

186they will give you everything they got i i personally think you kind of answered the next question but i i'll i'll read it um given what you know or what you what you already know about our district what do you believe our vision is for our future should be and how might you engage the entire district in pursuit of this vision well like i said before um a lot of the authorship of the portrait of a graduate yeah i constructed obviously would help from a lot of others i don't want to give the impression the guy wrote the whole thing i led that effort and helped develop it i really believe in it and i really believe in that it really addresses the whole child i think that as we move forward i mean first

187of all we have to hit pause and we have to put a school back together and we have to heal that takes precedence over everything now is not the time to look three four five years down the road we got to look immediate and we got to take care of our kids now and we got to make sure we're addressing those needs keeping them safe while also giving them an environment in which they feel loved and supported that is extremely important so i would say that in the short term we have to hit pause on some of those conversations but in the long term we need to go back as well too when when we're able to when we're able to to look at long term how does the strategic plan now fit our vision

188and what we know that we need to address and what areas can we do better and that's one of the areas in which you can structure definitely community input on and trying to get that feedback back as we move forward that's going to be critical as we look three four five years down the road and as we try to make sure that as a district that as we try to rise up the wildcat nation and that's really what we're doing that has to be taken into account but now is not the time now we got to concentrate immediately on our kids needs and put all our efforts just for an example i was at the high school today until 11 30 almost 12 o'clock then i had to then i went over to my office

189and started my own work because it takes everybody it is quite an effort especially unless you've and i was an ap at that high school but i was there when it was 1200. it is like you're managing a small city at times and it takes everybody to pull on that ore and it takes everybody to help out and everybody to have eyes on students students building relationships trying to help out in that aspect because there's a lid for every pot and that's one thing i learned as a principal you might think one teacher maybe not so good and i had this happen to me i met with a parent a parent comes into my office talks about a teacher says they're the worst teacher they ever had i literally had a second meeting that followed

190with a different parent that parent came in and it was about the same teacher and that was the greatest teacher that ever walked the face of the earth and couldn't stop singing the praises and that's what really teaching is a lot about is about relationships and while i may not be the perfect relationship for for eric as i teach and so forth but i may be for dan and it's about keeping that in mind as you build a staff and as you take your staff and through that effort to make sure you reach every child and trying to build a staff that has what varied interests not only arts athletics but other interests as well too robotics and so forth and it goes on and on and on because it's about making those connections with

191individual kids and that's with the importance of building that staff that's able to do that please give us an example of educational change or reform that you have initiated that's led to improvements in student learning okay well when i took over the middle school and and gosh it's been forever ago now 2006. the middle school was did not always have the greatest reputation and was in the bottom third of student achievement scores in the county time i left we were in the top third and i had more than a few people say that it was an excellent school and while i bring that up that wasn't me and just like before all i did was kind of help point the direction and help put the right people in the room and bring in the programs

192find the resources it was the staff because the staff was essentially the same there was only a few people that changed but it was the staff that made all the difference it's about inspiring others to fulfill their potential as i said in the first part of my question and that's what student achievement is same thing it's about dressing all of the every child and realizing every child is important and trying to address all of their needs and trying to figure out how you can do that as best as possible so when i came in in 2014 for example there was no mtss in elementary to speak up we had some reading specialists and that is it that has completely changed now we have a k-8 mtss system that we now we've been asked i don't

193know how many different times to present at different conferences it's completely developed for the most part the reading and the math part the math part is slowly this last year mrs kanjikan says that's one of the important things i realized as the position i was in by the way when i came in here i didn't even have a secretary it was me me alone for the first four years basically although i did have sean marshall who's amazing lady and i think she might be listening tonight so shout out to her i don't want to forget her because they're all important but yes she did she was fantastic but it was important for me to realize that despite all of my reading and all my efforts i could only take elementary so far and that we

194needed an elementary person and so that's why in 2018 i went to tim and said i need help first of all my wife wanted me back on the weekends and that was important but secondly i also realized there was only so far i could take elementary like you can only read about it so much you actually have to do it too and i didn't have that opportunity i was a high school teacher and a middle school assistant principal and a high school assistant principal and a middle school principal i never taught elementary now i can appreciate and i have a pretty good idea and i think mrs magdaleno would say i could hold my own in a lot of those literacy conversations but it's a big difference from doing and that part of of doing

195student achievement was important because our third grade reading scores were not where they needed to be and so in changing all of that and putting in the mtss and right before covet hit and we have had like some of the worst luck our third grade scores improved dramatically they finally started to show because we did most of our effort k2 in trying to build up the foundation but then we've had this thing called coven and it kind of has been my biggest the bane of my existence basically it shut us down for about two and a half years and we were just starting this year and now obviously november 30 it changed a lot of priorities as well too another question for you what's the risk you have taken to do what's right for children

196november 30th at 12 51 i received a call from mr wolf reporting that the school was in lockdown and there was reports of shots being fired he did his protocol suggested he had the building in alice he called central office on the emergency line i ran to mr throne told him what was going on and ran into my truck i didn't run into it i ran to it jumped in my truck and drove up as fast as i could all the time thinking it's got to be just firecrackers bb gun or whatever i crested the hill and i saw the kids and i saw their faces and so i'm on their cell phones and i knew it wasn't it was real i pulled into the north parking lot ran into pam fine in the parking

197lot she was getting kids out of the hallways and she yelled at me active shooter students down here should say student down because at that time we only knew the one i then saw mr news on the side of the building i ran and ran into the building i witnessed high school administration standing in the hallway trying to assist the student and performing life-saving i then watched as the perpetrator came out of the bathroom 20 yards from us i then had to witness other things that i had going to stop the story at this point out of respect for those families and those children i thought today my mom died it's the worst day of my life but i was back there for an hour and a half trying to help kids and do the

198best that i can will say the next day i had to walk into that building and walk through with a contractor and start planning for the return of school and i haven't stopped since but probably the bravest thing i wouldn't got counseling because there was a point where i didn't think i'd be back to ken but through counseling and it's one thing to realize as you're looking at oxford strong strong doesn't mean you do it alone you do it with others and it's important to heal with others we're humans and while we can do horrible things to each other we also heal with humans and that interaction is important and i've seen it up at the high school as student to student student to staff staff to staff as they heal slowly but but surely

199and it's important to realize as part of that process and part of bringing back the kids and making sure in attention to every detail i also realized my healing was involved in that and that was a big part and helped me a lot as well as the counseling excuse me if is it appropriate to just hit the pause button for a minute ken if you need a minute is that okay to do no not if you need it no i'm good okay i'm good because it's important for you to apologize you're fine okay it's important for you to realize that i'm okay and these kids that have gone through a lot i know they're going to be okay too because we're going to take care of them and that's important for you to know it's

200important for you to know that i'm good okay thanks for sharing that yeah and i knew that question was coming and was dreading it but well take a deep breath and drink water there okay um so switching gears a little bit uh what do you believe are currently the biggest challenges with special education in our region and how do we address that the biggest challenges that you have is with special education is making sure that you're able to meet the needs of the children once again we have done a good job of adding staff in the last couple of years and trying to address the different needs and trying to blend general ed and special ed is probably the biggest need that we have because too many times once a kid goes into special ed

201they don't come out necessarily and what i mean by that is they stay certified for the rest of their high school or the rest of their education and it's it's important to try to as much as you can special ed should be to try to get kids back out of the the services as as much as they possibly can certain kids will just always need services and i realize that but as much as possible to try to blend those services with gen ed so that there's more of a natural connection as well as putting in probably the biggest thing to help special ed is to put in mtss both in reading writing math as well as behavior mental health supports so that you can help catch things early enough that you are preventing that from

202happening that is probably the biggest thing with that would help special ed because then that would lessen the number of kids that need those services and the earlier it's just like when we address reading and we caught it k2 and that's why i dressed it k2 wasn't because of any other reason then if you catch it early that impact goes all the way through so the earlier that you can catch that a kid has a need the earlier that you can address that the quicker that you can then get them assistance and you can help them maybe not become certified special ed and not that there should be a stigma of that because that's important too to realize that every child every special ed child every gen ed child is a gen ed child first

203and foremost and that it's important to address those needs in that regard and trying to make sure there's not that stigma that sometimes comes along with special ed services and to blend those in as much as possible into the regular because a lot of kids a lot of kids a lot of kids that still have the gen ed label could still use special ed services or services like special ed and so doing that in a classroom setting where you're really able to have that tier one instruction as well as that special ed support really helps to support those kids and it helps others as well too how would you meet the needs of college readiness while also providing a high quality relevant career-focused opportunity for students say that one again how would you meet the

204needs of college readiness while also providing a high quality relevant career focused opportunities for chil for students that's one of the things that we focused on at the high school was really working on the edp process and that's career development mrs farwell has done a wonderful job up there and we use a system called naviance to really get kids and kids at this age level they're a little reluctant but it really once you get them going and stuff like that or you get them talking to somebody individually they will discuss their career and thinkings and aspirations and so forth but it's hard and it's one of the reasons why when i shared my story at the beginning that i didn't really know and and acted like i did was i saw no purpose in education

205at that point i saw no relevance i'd rather play football i'd rather play basketball i'd rather have fun with my friends and stuff that was more important i could manage to get by i didn't see the connection of my education to what would later be the next 40 years of my life luckily through pure chance i got the opportunity to start coaching and tutoring and stuff like that that all of a sudden i realized i was good at it found my love and passion and was able to make that happen but what we want to try to do at the high school level so that we can meet all ends of the spectrum is to make sure that kids first of all are given a choice it used to be back 40 50 years ago

206and 30 years ago when i went to school and that many times we pigeonholed kids and we placed them as administrators as teachers staff and so forth that has changed now and that thank goodness is different in the fact that we allow kids to choose their past kids to choose their opportunities kids to choose what careers they want to go into and it's important for them to do that with information and that's what the edp process allows them to do is to start looking at some of that those resources it allows them to explore cte options which we've really start which we've expanded dramatically over the last like five six years and that's been intentional as we try to give the different options because there's a lot of different paths to being successful having a

207college diploma is not an automatic ticket and as we've seen stories all over the place of unemployed college-educated people there are a lot of people that are successful that either didn't do well in college or didn't stay with college and there's a lot of reasons why people end up dropping out of college a lot of them a lot of the reasons don't have anything to do with intelligent just has to do with their life circumstances and so forth and so it's important to give all these kids these different opportunities and these different ways of seeking their own success in life after cop after high school because that's what we're here to do is prepare them to be successful contributing adults and that means not only as learners but as members of society and contributing to

208make a productive and happy environment for others to live in hey ken as we transition to dan we've got about 18 minutes left and so we got six questions plus a couple spots for some open communication so i just i know i just i just i i want to make sure that we get to the end and and and that you have an opportunity to say some things at the end if you choose to so dan ken thanks appreciate it um in your role you don't really deal a whole lot as a primary function of the political you do a little as you stated what is your biggest concern regarding political climate of education in michigan and as our superintendent how would you advocate for political action that benefits our district and public education throughout

209our state well i think first of all we have to value educators that's first and foremost i don't know why where exactly that came off the rails but they can't be blamed for all the ills of society and they become a political punching bag basically public schools have um if there's something wrong let's blame public schools if there's something we don't like let's blame teachers and so forth and we've got to change that that aspect of education one of the things i think that would do is as much as possible whether whether it's republican or democrat you've got to be talking and bringing legislators into the school so they can see what's going on and have a better picture and a clearer idea of what goes on because many of the legislators you know i

210drive by a hospital doesn't mean i can run a hospital and i think we got to realize that that we need to we need to depend on the people that are actually in the schools and and get input from them as to what needs to be and what how to handle things now that doesn't mean that you ask and just just throw money at it because that's not the answer either as well too money helps but you got to also have accountability that's one of the things that has helped as we've gone along is the accountability piece is there now the money's starting to come in but you got to put the two together and have old people accountable for how they're spending their money as well too but that's one of the ways in

211which you you can help with the legislator and them understanding the impact that when they make certain statements what it has on the morale we're having a harder and harder time getting qualified people because if i can make more money or the same money in a different profession people are why would i sign up for that is it appropriate to skip a question to give more time to think i think what might be a little bit more prudent to staff and personnel or do i have to ask all the questions that we ask other candidates i think it's best to give ken okay all right what are specific ways in which our districts should be working with other local districts to help meet our students achievement goals well i think that one of the things

212you can do is share practices and ideas so we have a monthly meeting with uh brandon lake orion waterford clarkston or not waterford sorry clarkston and holly and we have a monthly meeting in which we talk about different shared practices ideas and stuff i think that's the biggest thing that you can learn is from what other districts are doing well and what seems to be working from them and take those ideas back to your district that is one key way in which you can do that shared partnership there's other ways in which you can partner up with them uh for example royal oak we partnered um to bring in a pd and of course uh i'm getting his name um cultures of thinking you know he's responsible for cultures of thinking uh and we've teamed

213up with royal oak to bring him in and we shared the expense of doing that with those districts so there's ways to team up and to really rely on each other's expertise because you may be really great at this area they may be great in that area and you can share practices and stuff my last question ken is what impact has standard has standardized testing and teacher accountability had on our education system in michigan well it's been good and bad the the good part is that you know i always think that there's nothing wrong with accountability uh when i was principal i i held my staff accountable i held myself accountable um and i've never seen anything wrong with accountability as long as it's focused and directed in the right manner and at least they've

214in the last re iteration of the law they've kind of got some of that straightened out they still have a long ways to go the bad part that is that has happened is well and let me just also say that it's allowed us to focus on certain subgroups and populations that before went unnoticed and that has been a huge part certain demographics that weren't addressed now the sudden it helps you focus and helps point the finger or i shouldn't say point the finger helps you see that group and then be able to address their needs and to be able to i guess point the figure to the to the staff and say listen we got to help this group better these scores are not acceptable and that needs to be we need to figure out

215why and what's going on and staff like i said before they're wonderful at that point and as soon as they see the issue they're quick to jump on board one of the issues that i would say that i have with uh essa is the fact that it focuses on just reading and math and it's taken away some of those things that kids while reading and math obviously are the reasons why we go to school and writing as well too like kids they'll come to school like little ken weaver came to school because of the athletics the friends he had and some of the classes that he actually enjoyed and applied himself he didn't come because of ela class and math class if it was left up to him based off of that he wouldn't have

216probably been there and it's the same with others as well too and while those skills are what we work on as a public school and they are so important to make sure kids can do that and i don't want to like belittle or demean their importance but at the same time if you are a parent of a child you know that your child is much more than an sat score an act score or whatever standardized score that you have the other thing that i would say is standardized test scores if you look at how much they follow demographics you would wonder why we even use them i could probably give you your test scores without you even taking it it's almost a one-to-one correlation off of demographics so you got to be careful how you're

217measuring and what you're measuring and is it really that important and that's where i say that you know there's still some work to be done with that legislation thank you mary hi between giving them the support and autonomy they need to lead effectively while holding them accountable as appropriate and necessary well i don't think i would change anything that i do currently i think they all know that that i that i work with them as a team that i value their ideas their inputs i help them set the expectations they set them along with me they tell me the how say okay but have you considered this have you considered this have you considered this and if they can answer those questions then we're all full at that point we're all full speed ahead and

218we move forward i think it's important that your administrative team see themselves as part of a team and not just being spoken to that they contribute to decisions and that's an important area that i think individually i've done a really good job with is when i work with the middle school on their initiatives i work with the high school on their initiatives and and as a team when we work as initiatives but i think as a district when it comes to some bigger decisions that probably a little more inclusion with administrators would be warranted but at the same time like i said before there are decisions that cabinet has to make and there's decisions that add team which is the bigger extension of cabinet and all the administrators make and then there are decisions that

219like as a district or as a school we may make and stuff like that and it's really up to the leader to understand which is what when it calls on which of those decisions to make and i think as a as being like the superintendent at that point i think it's very important to build culture when i was principal we did all sorts of activities to build culture culture fun activities engaged in all sorts of fun activities played with the kids in basketball and volleyball and did all those things to do culture we had our own on pd we had scavenger hunts and we did different things to also build culture culture is so important and i would continue that culture that has already been established through tmo because that is so important and many

220of us identify with that team and we feel and we have a good feeling about it and it helps us to be able to feel part of a team and that's the most important thing we have about nine minutes left two questions from mary and then a couple spots where you can speak a little more so let's be brief on these next two so you get to those others what would you suggest in terms of a comprehensive professional development plan for our educators what would be the key priority areas as well as the delivery system well i think if i was an outsider coming in i'd answer this question a lot differently because i think first of all you have to do a needs assessment and i think given the current circumstances and that everything

221has happened i think we have to hit the reset button in some ways and do and do a needs assessment now as to what are the needs of the teachers and other professional staff so one of the worst things that you can do as a as a new leader as somebody as a principal or anything like that is to come in and present yourself as having all of the answers uh it doesn't matter that i'm still in the district and i have a pretty good idea but if i don't take input because tim's leadership is different than my leadership and those needs are going to change with my leadership it may not be the same as what what they would have said with tim at the helm so there's there's got to be a period

222of time where you listen to your stakeholders listen to your staff to get input on that and a lot of times you don't come in with a comprehensive pd plan because elementary is not the same as secondary it's not the same as middle school they're all different and so it's not a one size fits all so you really need to come in and the delivery model needs to be one that fits the needs of the staff and what their needs are you wouldn't have pd the same at ova as you would at the high school so you really have to tailor individual plans i'm more about when i sit down with and work on school improvement tasks we worked the certain buildings separate i work with bridges and crossroads separately from ova which then i

223work separately with the middle school and the high school because they have different needs middle school and high school are ib so we work on those needs now given the events of november 30th we need to readjust and look at different priorities for the next probably two years we'll be changing those and looking at that and that's where we need to do the needs assessment and see what are those priorities that that the district needs at that point so it wouldn't be one where we i wouldn't want to ever think that i could come in and yep i've got all the answers i've told you that before it's something that you have to build together so it wouldn't be something that i bring to the district but i do know how to build pd plans

224i've been doing it for a long time thank you please describe your experience with labor relations and negotiations highlighting how you have been able to reach agreements that are fair for everyone without compromising too much simply to avoid conflict also in one word how would the president of your teachers union describe you do you want to answer that andy's here okay well the one word means i can't lie um no the what i would say is probably um and i don't know that it's one word but i would say that he'd say i put kids first um we've always had a good relationship we've always been able to work things out but he also knows that at the end of it my decisions will be made on what is best for kids first and then

225staff as well too because you can't just do kids first at the expense of the staff because that isn't going to work either but you got to make sure you balance it so it's important and i know it's cheating a little bit and it's not one word but i would say he would say that i put kids first okay my experience with negotiations and so forth i've been involved in all the contract negotiations i've been part of sitting at the table i've been involved with sitting with mr gibbons and talking independently of sitting at the table on different issues and things that come up i don't see any reason why that wouldn't continue and be productive because it is in the best interest of the school district to have a teachers group that is satisfied

226that is taken care of and feels like they're appreciated and money isn't everything but it is one way to make sure they understand that they are appreciated but there's many other ways as well too and that's one thing that i've always been able to do is make sure my staff felt that i appreciated their efforts and that i know what they're doing i lived their life i was a classroom teacher for a long number of years and i know what they go through i know what it means to be correcting english assignments on a weekend as you're sitting there trying to watch a little football while you're grading a 180 papers and i know what that life is like and i know what it's like to work two three four jobs to try to make

227ends meet as a new teacher and so i can appreciate that and it's important for us to value our staff they're the ones that work directly with our kids they're the ones that impact their lives directly they're the ones that can change lives just like in mine it was teachers that made that difference in my life and that's the one thing that i think i bring to the table and always will continue it's about making sure that teachers students fulfill their potential and bring their best to change lives because that's the power a teacher has it was impacted in mind in my life i saw it firsthand and i that is my drive and my passion is to continue that and to pay that forward thank you ken it's back to me and and we

228have uh two potential things but we only have about four minutes and so one of them i guess is to see whether you might have any questions for us as a board but the second one is to allow you some time to make a closing statement so i don't know if you have any questions for us as a board if you do you can ask uh one or two if not you could move on to your um kind of a have you missed anything something that that has popped in your head that you want to just complete your interview with so i would like to just ask first of all i guess i have only one question is there any clarifications that you would need at this time for me on any of my answers

229um i tried to be as brief as dan would probably attest to i'm not always the most succinct at times um i don't know it's sometimes a curse and sometimes it's a gift i guess i don't know how you look at it but i want to make sure that i answered your questions fully and that if you have any questions or concerns or anything that i could address them now board members anything that you you would need clarification on in the notes that you've taken no see uh yes did you ever let that chemistry teacher know that you went into teaching i just have to know what's right yes you know yes my the the staff was quite shocked at most of them that i went into teaching because i really did give them a

230hard time and the practical joke that i did was not funny um and it was something that it was uh their jaws hit the ground when they saw that i had become a teacher and that and why and they realized that despite the rough edges and all the the things that i put him through they saw what was inside me and that's what's most important is to see that in every kid and it's sometimes difficult because sometimes as kids we get a bit prickly and we get a bit ornery especially as we're growing up and things are changing and we don't know what's happening to us necessarily and some things that were important to us are not important to us anymore and some things that weren't important to us are and we and we don't

231really know and quite honestly growing up nowadays with social media i don't know how the kids do it because it was bad when i was growing up but it's a whole lot worse and i think that's the beauty of teaching and that's the beauty of teachers is to be able to see that to see that in a child to see that in a kid and to be able to bring that out and you do that through love and caring and inspiring and that's important that's probably the most important thing we do much more than teaching any content much more than doing reading writing and math is to see that and to have somebody believe in you because it changes lives the only thing that i would clarify at the end is just to make sure

232you know at one point i pulled my name out of the search i did it to protect myself i realized i had a student ella boyd write me a letter and she thought we should only do four half days when we went back to the high school and i sat down and i responded to her and said ella we're trying to build resiliency we're trying to build stamina we're trying to build those skills that are important to build in students and for ourselves as we go back and it's important that we do those full days so that we can build that stamina up and we can build that resiliency to do those full days when the next week comes and we start second semester i got done hit send and i realized the only reason

233i pulled my name out was because i was afraid of what the answer was no would i be able to take care of it i can't ask that of the kids if i don't ask that of myself and i realize that that i'm okay and i'm gonna be okay i endured a lot on november 30th but i love those kids and i'm willing to go through anything for and that's the end ken thank you uh we appreciate your interest in the superintendent's position for oxford community schools the board is interviewing five candidates as you know uh we will let you know thursday evening where you stand in our search process and thank you for participating in this first round thank you i do have something to give you um most of it you can probably

234ignore um quite honestly if you want to read it there is stan there is a there is a little usb in there that i would like you to look at um that is the only thing i would ask that you look at my heist is the probably the proudest thing that i have in my career thank you thank you uh oms staff made that for me when i moved over to district office it is a short video that i have occasionally when i get down thank you ken [Applause] for those of you who are here and are going to be leaving here soon um if you have your forms don't leave with them please make sure that your re your review forms end up back there on the table angela is it possible to have

235somebody uh begin to copy them for us now even mrs beasley thank you thank you thank you so if you have a form please put it in the basket there make sure you've identified the interviewee on the forums that you have so that we can separate those and and thank you thank you so much is is john still in the room john silvery i just want to know if he has anything to close us out of this section before i go into unscheduled audience participation and do we have any forms are there any forms up there on the debt on the table or anybody have forms for unscheduled audience participation anybody see anything filled out that we need all right very good i think we're good john do you have anything else before i proceed

236through the end of the meeting uh no okay um seeing that there's nothing under unscheduled audience participation we have a list in number six of scheduled events coming up a number of those are our special meetings i don't have anything under clarification um except just so we all know we have another meeting tomorrow at 6 30. two more candidates we have another meeting on wednesday one candidate and then thursday meeting to reduce that down to possibly two as we talked about in our previous meetings and so then we would progress all right with site visits and those kinds of things so um yes ma'am if we get the snow that we're expecting we just happen to not have school on jersey or something but we still have our board meeting john and i are going

237to talk about that um we we certainly want to get through wednesday but if thursday are gathering together to pick uh you know to bring that five down to two um we feel that if we have to move it to friday we possibly could or was that monday possibly that we said i don't know that we were definite on that so i think it would depend on board availability obviously can you do it as a zoom or do you um legally have to do it in person these days you can't do it as a zoom unfortunately they don't make an exception so we're just you know let's let's just hope that we can get things cleared out but we're going to play that one by ear very good final board comments [Applause] dan i forgot

238about it's okay would you go first please absolutely so so dan is going to share um a document that he wrote today and i want everyone to know that dan talked to me the other day and said he would like to go over to the high school this morning observe the process and and see what that's like and he has wrote a summary and i've asked him to read it so please okay thank you tom and i know tonight was scheduled for interviews and i didn't really want to jump in the middle of that so i appreciate the time but i think it's important that this be said last thursday morning a suspended student entered our high school as a board member my first reaction jumped directly past the rational stage to being very upset

239upset that three days after our staff student body and an entire community had an expectation that this board would provide a safe environment to return to a building we so desired to bring everyone back to only to hear otherwise was needless to say upsetting to quote william shakespeare in henry iv heavy is the head who wears the crown and let me be clear i by no means or anybody up here feels as though we're royalty but the responsibility of these decisions are that which we should be accountable for to put it simply as a board member i own the approval of the return to school plan and i'm upset that it wasn't flawless i cannot express properly how sorry i am sorry that our teachers students their families and this community relived one of the

240most painful days of their lives that level of anxiety stress and fear should never be experienced by anyone let alone let alone young men and women who should be thinking about who they are today and where they hope to be in the future instead we did not meet the standard we need to upheld and be responsible to a standard to be met at any cost if you asked me on thursday how a suspended student walked into a high school our high school after he was afforded due process discipline was handed down and the district given guidelines which he could which would allow him to return to his education and make clear to all parties involved i would not have been able to give you an answer many people including myself made assumptions about thursday's event

241plain and simple my assumptions and many of yours were just not factual it is important for you to know as well our internal candidates were spot on thursday if they weren't i and i believe my fellow board members would have asked them to withdraw their name from our list of potential candidates for superintendent however as a leader who accepts ownership and i am resolved to provide our team with as many tools they need to make this district as safe as possible i want everyone to know we will continue to look at all options and listen to all reasonable requests as we move forward this morning while at the high school to witness the revised plan and at the revised plan and it witnessed it in person this morning i am pleased to say it was

242smooth and it moved quickly and if my son and daughter were still in the building and they said well i was tardy because of this that would not be a fact i am proud that everyone i am proud of everyone's resiliency and i'm glad to report our staff did a great job i hope everyone realizes just how state and federal laws narrow the margin for error some of those requirements make the difference between the right and wrong decision razor thin it's not lost on me that the desire of all stakeholders know our schools are safe it's a safe environment and that we deliver a world-class education the best education we possibly can with your help and our commitment to use our compass and have it be focused on identifying the situations not letting the outside

243noise shift our focus making decisions known knowing that our heart is pure and by everyone being committed including the community to do their job we can we can achieve any outcome we desire tom i appreciate the opportunity and i look forward to tomorrow thank you dan any of the board members uh final board comments mary thank you i just want to say thank you to our board candidates for showing up for having conversations with us um putting everything out there that they have i look forward to the um to the other interviews and thanks to the community folks for showing up and giving us their comments um yeah i appreciate you thank you mary anyone else all right seeing none uh there is nothing under other um just a reminder again that we will be

244meeting uh tomorrow wednesday and hopefully thursday uh 6 30. angela all meetings are here in this room very good what's that tuesday wednesday and thursday yes all right so um it is uh 9 52 and uh this meeting is adjourned and it's a great day to be a wildcat thank you you