001thank you everyone for being here tonight Mary Joe and Barb nice to see you and um so we will do approval of today's agenda as it's written I'll look for a motion for that so move to got a motion from Kim second from Neil any discussion on the agenda seeing none all those in favor signify by saying I I oppose the same sign all right agenda's approved and uh number four on there is a review this superintendent search timeline and process and Barb I get to turn it over to you Barb Dorn from msba people thank you thank you very much I it's good to see everybody again I am glad to be here to continue to assist school board with the search for your next superintendent there in albertly area we do have a
002lot uh to cover tonight so I think what I'm going to do first if it's okay is tell you what we're going to cover and see if there are any questions and I'll let you know know sort of in what order all of this is going to happen tonight um so the first thing I always like to do is to talk about the public input survey and so I'm going to be screen sharing that summary report I know that the board members should all have that as well and then I want to encourage questions uh throughout or after the survey report because you're going to have some decisions to make uh relative to next steps specifically the interview process and I know the board has already talked about and is very interested in the option
003to include interview committees in the interview process so we're going to want to iron out some of those details I always ask school boards to wait to make a final decision on that however until after you have seen the public input report just to give you some context around how people felt what different constituency groups felt about some things relative to leadership and so that is on the table to talk about in depth tonight and you will need to make some decisions about that so we can prepare for your first and second round interviews so that's the first piece we're going to cover tonight the second will be talking about interview training and you should have a packet of information on that I will also screen share the interview training uh packet there's always things
004we want to make sure board members are aware of um relative to interviewing for this position a public position paid for with taxpayer dollars there are some things that you need to be aware of from a statute perspective so we'll be going through all of that and I want to make sure again I'm answering your questions as we do so the third and last part of the meeting will be reviewing some draft schedules for both round one and round two there in albertly area and then once we've sort of had a chance to talk those through I am going to ask Norma to distribute some suggested interview questions for the board that is there in Albert Lee Mary Joe I'll email those to you because I want you to take maybe 10 minutes and individually
005really make a note of what questions jump out at you that you think you'd really like to ask in the first round of interviews then we're going to gather back together and talk about them but we'll talk about them very carefully it's important that those questions remain confidential so as not to create an unlevel playing field for your candidates so for that reason after we've talked about question three and question five and question eight we'll try to be careful not to share the questions out loud I do know that there are people listening so of course we want to make sure that we don't give an advantage to anyone who might Beed interested in the position over someone who is not there in the meeting tonight but then Norma is going to collect those back
006once we've narrowed it down to perhaps 10 to 16 questions and then she'll shred them right after the meeting as well so those are the big three things the public summary report the interview training and the draft one and two schedules and questions for round one does anyone have questions about what we're going to cover tonight and the decisions you're going to be asked to make quick question question for you Barb when we talk about uh the board interview questions I understand that process when we look at the two Community teachers groups are those questions that they bring that they ask the same to each candidate or do we also give some suggestions to them or does msba give those suggestions that's a great question thank you for asking it can operate um in any
007of those three ways uh the most typical would be once the people who are going to be on those inter view committees are identified um we give them a deadline to send their suggested questions directly to me at my email here at msba so I gather all of those perhaps we could create a form that they could click on the link and submit their suggestions right there in the form that's probably easier and we'll just email it to everybody but once we have all the questions that they want to ask um then I'll look for some commonalities and some overlap or duplication and come up with a list that I'll work with that group Direct IR ly to finalize the questions I'll also run them by the board for your okay and I'll have to
008make sure that none of them are illegal we can't have your committees asking questions that you're not allowed to ask for example per statute so it could be a combination of practices the most typical is usually for the group themselves to just organically tell me what they want to ask and then I route it through what's legal and also by the board and make sure there's no duplications between the groups did that that answer your question okay go ahead great thank you so much so I'm going to screen share I practiced this right before uh five o'clock so I'm hoping that it works when I screen share I just want to make sure everyone knows that I'm looking at it on my entire screen I can't minimize it so I can keep an eye on
009the boardroom or on Mary Joe so if you have questions as we go through all of the things I'm going to screen share here tonight you just have to interrupt me I'll try to pause and ask about questions if there are any but I can't see you if you're just waving your arms wanting my attention I won't be able to see you at all so do interrupt me and I will give screen sharing here a shot so I'm to screen share a window there we go and I'm going to ask if somebody could let me know when you are looking at the Albert Lee area school superintendent search public engagement superintendent search survey is that what you're seeing yes okay I know that it's not very large for people so I'm going to zoom way
010in as I work through this report and I'm going to review it verbally with everyone um but again questions are welcome so let me zoom in much larger how is that on your end does everyone be able to see that okay yes thank you very much all right so in terms of public engagement you'll see that a total of 420 people completed this survey that is phenomenal I want to thank everybody who took the time to fill this out it is really important and deeply deeply appreciated by both msba and your school board so one of the things we always do is sort of look for an average and based upon the number of students in your District we have a certain percentage of the student body enrollment number that fills out the survey uh
011with the student body at 3,220 we would have expected about 386 U people to fill this out so the fact that you have 420 is above average and I think it indicates a great deal of interest in the search process and I want to thank everyone for doing that you'll notice that almost all of them were filled out in English there was one filled out in Spanish however what I always want to tell folks is that does not indicate that people who um have Spanish as their first language didn't fill this out very often and sometimes surprisingly many people who speak Spanish as their first language choose to fill out the survey in English so it doesn't mean they're not represented in this information very often people who are taking this survey do it in
012English with the assistance of um one of their kids or someone within the district or a neighbor or acquaintance or something like that so I don't want people to assume that you're Spanish speaking population did not complete the survey they very well might have but simply chose to do it in English all right here we go we feel there was a good cross-section of people who took this survey um sometimes it's a heavily tilted toward one of the self-identified groups or another but in this case as you can see right down here under self-identifiers you have a nice balance um the top two groups the highest percentages that filled out the survey were staff members and parents and Guardians that is not unusual for every survey that we have done in the last couple of
013years those are the two largest groups in terms of number of respondents what's a little different about Albert Lee area is you had more staff members fill this out than parents and Guardians typically that's flipped you might see about maybe 35 to 40% parents and Guardians and maybe 25 to 30% staff members but in your case you have a heightened interest on behalf of your staff members to fill this out but again it's distributed where we might expect with the largest two groups being those two and I also want to give a shout out to your students in albertly area it's really great to see them uh being interested in the search and you had over 14% of all the respondents were students and you're going to see that information broken out in more detail
014here in just a little bit so thank you to your students for having their voice heard as a a part of this process this is the first quantitative question that was asked is uh what are the most important areas of expertise that you think the next superintendent should have uh these are the top six it was out of a list of about 17 choices and I just want to let you know that we're going to circle back to this but these are the things with collaborative leadership and finances and budget being the top things that your public uh groups were interested in the leader possessing so you can see all six of those and again we will return and talk about them in more detail here in just a minute previous experience should they have
015previous experience as a superintendent it was asked of the school board and it was asked here of your survey respondence you can see that it is even basically a 5050 split between those 420 people I don't think it could be a whole lot closer than 49.87 to 5013 it's very very close um and that almost mirrors what the board said but I'll show you a direct comparison here in just a minute with the school board the specialized skills report when it shows those top six this is one that we really like to see filled out by people so thanks to everyone who took time to go through that list there were 27 choices and asking people to choose six out of 27 is challenging because all 27 are very important every single thing mattered but
016we needed the community communities and the staff and the parents help and the students to prioritize those things so this is what Rose to the top for all of them across the board and in a moment here I'm going to break it out by respondent category but these were the top six and this is an Apples to Apples comparison with the school board because Schoolboard members you might recognize some of these phrases this was the hiring criteria survey that you took individually before the search even started we used the school board is responses to these categories to create the leadership profile that's in your vacancy brochure so it's really important for the apples to Apple's comparison to see if you are or are not aligned between the school board and the stakeholders so we're going
017to get to that in just a moment could I interrupt thank you um are are these listed in in any particular order uh is number one that they are yes they are these are as were the bullet points on the first page they are listed in in order thank you for asking that okay any other questions yet okay uh personal characteristics again we're looking at the entirety of the 420 people that took the survey these are the top six personal characteristics and we're going to be able to break that out by respondent category as well and here you can now see the numbers of how many people make up those percentages so you can see for example you had 153 staff members fill this out 12 22 parents or Guardians 63 community members 59 students
0189ine who identified as business owner District partner or Agriculture and nine who chose other in the other category we ask them to expand on that and it's usually something such as a grandparent or um a taxpayer in the district or staff member and parent or something like that so um generally speaking everyone ident ifies a little bit differently and seven people did choose the other category because they didn't feel the other five captured who they were so this is where we broken things out by the category and I'm going to start here with previous experience required you'll note here interestingly enough your staff about 55% said yes they should have been a superintendent previously and about 45% said no and it's almost a direct flip with your parents and Guardians they had 45 say yes
019and about 55 say no so when you look at these numbers crosswise from parents and Guardians to staff members they really do mirror each other but just flipped around a little bit uh community members about 60% said yes to that question and about 59% of your students said yes and then interestingly enough your business owners District partners and agriculture folks said no um 87 to 88% said no sometimes that's due to the fact that those folks do tend to be more entrepreneurial or uh looking for different skill sets as far as leadership so they pretty resoundingly said that it was not necessary for them to have previously been a superintendent and then the people who were in The Other category said yes um by 75% so over here I think the largest groups staff and
020parents you can see generally again we're going to be right there at about 5050 and that does align with the school board a little bit but I'll show you that in a second here are the top six areas of expertise that I said we would Circle back to so I'm going to tell you some trends that I saw and you can look at this later in much more detail I don't want to walk through all of it with you but collaborative leadership showed up in all six of your respondent categories here it is in staff it was top for parents and Guardians it was top for community members it was second for your students and it was third for business owners Etc and second for others so collaborative leadership obviously matters very much to your
021respondents as did budget and finance budget and finance showed up in all six of the categories and this was really interesting it was number one for your students we don't see that very often but your students must be very be very tuned in to the financial circumstances in the district because they did rate that as the number one area of expertise that they would would be looking for here's personnel management and that showed up in five of the six categories the only one it did not show up in terms of the top six it did not show up in your student category for personnel management and that makes sense they're probably a little bit more removed from that in terms of areas of expertise your staff members had special education in their top six they
022are the only respondent category that chose that now remember this was out of about 7 choices um but it pretty resoundingly came through that your staff members are looking for someone who understands special education um and that was the largest group of people that filled out the survey this was interesting curriculum development evaluation was in the top six for all six categories it was here it came in at fifth place for your staff second place for your parents fifth place here for community members and interestingly enough third for your students your students are paying attention to the curriculum that's being offered in the buildings and then this one for your business owners Etc it was in fifth place and in third for other so the collaborative leadership the budget and finance and curriculum development were
023in the top six for all six out of 17 that's that's a pretty strong Trend another thing that I thought was interesting was here social emotional support services it showed up for two of these six groups and this will tell you something your staff members brought social emotional support services to attent to your attention and your students brought social and emotional support services to your attention so the people who are in the buildings the most students and staff want to prioritize social emotional support services and then just a couple of other ones here for a moment um student testing results and achievement it is not unusual to see parents and Guardians prioritizing that okay they think that's extremely important as does let's see here we go over here District partnered um uh business owner Etc
024but the second largest group prioritize student testing results and achievement and three of your respondent categories chose public relations your parents your community members and the category of other so those are just some of the trends the only other thing that stood out to me is diversity equity and inclusion was fourth for your students and it was fifth for the other category and again by not including them in your top six for example they were that was not in the top six of either of the first two largest groups doesn't mean they they didn't think it was important by any means it does not mean that it simply means that they saw other priorities as being at least more immediate for the district District to address but your students I think loud and clear placed
025diversity Equity inclusion in their top six so are there any questions on this part of the report the top six areas of expertise I've got a lot more to go through but I want to make sure I pause for just a second anything I just have a quick question Barb um under the other do they identify what when when it says other do they identify what that other might look like or is it just other no no they do and we've seen things in there such as um former School Board member uh grandparent taxpayer or um sometimes they list all five or six of them because they are a Community member and a parent and a staff member you know and so they have uh many different ways of interpreting so we always want to
026have a category where they can list what they are but there's no consistency among those nine people they represented all kinds of different things they just didn't want to pick the other five any other questions okay interrupt me if you do here are the top six personal characteristics again broken out so I'm going to give you the trends here a lot of consistency this list also included about 17 choices so all six categories had honest and ethical right up there as number one that was across the board most important and then effective Communicator across the board number two this is unusual to see this much um consistency right here in terms of your number one and their number two was the same for all six respondent groups that's unusual so clear prioritization of those two
027things then you can see transparent that was in five of the six uh the only group that did not list transparent was a priority was a student group right here but every other group had that in their top six out of 17 as did problem solving so right here problem solving is in every group except for the other category so your students did identify Problem Solver community members did parents and Guardians did and staff members did so that is also real consistent and then the word consistent came across five times it's here for this one and this one and this one it is not in the student category uh but it is here in your business owners and in other so consistency in your next leader appears to be real important to everybody and then
028the only other thing I would say well two things one is here's personable staff members are looking for someone who's personable as are your parents and guardian and are your community members so when you look at the total number of responses those three groups the largest groups all three listed personable as being important the second thing I'd say in closing in terms of these personal characteristics your students are looking for someone in their top six at least that is confident oops I don't want to do that confident creative and resourceful I didn't see confident creative and resourceful in the top six of the other five groups so you're getting some direction from the student voice in your District to look outside the box a little bit for them they are looking for someone who's creative
029um Innovative Problem Solver resourceful of course and also confident so that was a an interesting thing I thought to point out for the students that took the survey so one thing I do want to say is um the next couple of pages directly compare the school board responses to the uh survey responses and there's a lot of alignment I mentioned earlier that we look for whether or not there is alignment with the school board and the community and staff Etc so on the top of this page in the report this is your leadership profile so those five bullet points are in your vacancy brochure that is one of the tools that we will use to evaluate your application once the deadline passes to see who matches up with these things that the school board said
030you're looking for we created this leadership profile from your hiring criteria survey which is right down here so the hiring criteria survey over here for the board these were your top five things from which we built this leadership profile with you the exact same survey when I said apples to apples are over here with the public input these are their top five so when you notice this I see tremendous alignment with the exact same survey out of 27 choices you align on four of your top five that's really really great so you both chose this one the bright green honesty and ethics the works cooperatively showed up over here for the school board and over here with the public input survey being a strong Communicator is in both and developing directing and leadership team is
031in both and then even the fifth that the school board had which was um experience in school finance that didn't show up in the top five verbatim by your public but it did show up in those areas of expertise it was the number two Choice out of those choice of 17 responses was budget and finance so when I look at this list I see a lot of commonality between the school board and the public now of course there's going to be some differences but this to me shows uh School Board you're very in tune with what your staff and parents and Guardians and community members and business partners Etc are looking for so that's very good news I'm going to pause for a moment and see if people have questions or comments on this page
032in your report okay the only thing at the very bottom of this page that I said I would visit with you about is oops I got to make that bigger the previous superintendent experience so if you remember on the survey your public said 5050 the school board said 71 yes 29% no so the school board is leaning more heavily towards someone who has served as a superintendent and yet you were not 100% on that and you um you had the language in your vacancy brochure to reflect that you did not require it because you wanted to keep your options open and look for leadership you actually said uh previous superintendent experience preferred but not required so that does align here with what your public told us as well now the next page might be sideways
033oh it's not good when I printed it it was sideways so this is and I'm G to have to make it a little smaller so that all of them show up there you go the top six specialized skills this is that Apples to Apples so it's broken out now by respondent category not by the whole big number when you look at it here it is the acts with honesty and having ethics that's in all six respondent categories the strong Communicator is in four it's not in let me see students and business owners Etc the strong Communicator um but it did really rise to the top because of the size of the parent and staff member groups that had that in their top five the developing and directing a leadership team here that was in all
034six that even showed up in your students develops and directs and effective leadership team so every respondent category had that in their top six effectively mediating and accommodating different perspectives is in three of them um but it is in the largest group your staff and then right here the visible and accessible being visible and access accessible is in three groups um staff parents and the other category however because your um parents and Guardians and staff are the biggest groups being visible and accessible really did rise to the top and then develops trust and works collaboratively that was in five of the six the only one it wasn't was Community member um however again there were 27 choices so it doesn't mean it was important to those groups the only other thing I noticed when I
035looked at this long list is the only group here that shows Visionary creative thinker is your students so that goes back to them looking for someone that is uh the resourceful creative and here they chose the word Visionary so that Rose to the top for them as well so I think you have pretty a pretty clear indication of what you need to look for in the next leader we certainly feel it's very clear as we go through the applications to try and come up with those that we're going to vet more deeply and recommend to the board so i' encourage you board members when you're looking at the applications to keep this information front and center uh not just the leadership profile but the information you got from people in this survey so I'll pause
036for a second and see is there anything in the Apples to Apples comparison here that you have questions about okay then I'm going to move on to the qualitative these are the open-ended questions and the themes and patterns that emerged from those comments so I'm trying to keep this big hopefully I won't make anybody dizzy as I'm going through here but uh this was also really great out of 420 people 255 took the time to put something in these open-ended questions which was great there were no um no limitations on characters they could type as much as they want or as little sometimes we got a single word sometimes we got a novel but uh this is what they answered these four questions and I'm just going to go through and I'm going to read
037out loud the themes that we identified and then there's representative comments under each of the themes but I'm not going to read those because you can certainly look at them yourself and I would encourage the board one of the questions I'm going to ask when we're done is would you like to put this on the website I'd really encourage you to do that so that all of your stakeholders can read this report as can your candidates who are interested in this opportunity so the first question is what are some of the good things taking place in your District today so I'll just read this aloud for people who might not be able to see it on the screen um survey respondents feel the district is filled with dedicated caring and hardworking teachers and staff who
038are committed to supporting students both academically and personally it's believed they consistently go above and beyond to create a positive learning environment build strong relationships and adapt to meet the needs of the districts increasingly diverse student body and over here you can see that 144 people out of 255 mentioned something along those lines so it was by far and a way the number one good thing happening are your teachers and staff in albertly area schools the comments are here for you to peruse at a later time there are quite a few we try to pick ones that are representative and different enough to give you a feel for what people said about that pattern or that theme the next thing that people noted was the wide range of academic extracurricular and career focused opportunities that
039support student growth and success from college level courses and Technical education to a thriving music Athletics and after school programs students in albertly area schools can access a multitude of Pathways that help prepare them for their Futures that was the second thing recognized by 97 people in the open-ended question about what's going well in albertly area schools and there's a lot of great comments here as well and the third theme that emerged is that it's also believed the school district Fosters an inclusive student focused environment that prioritizes social emotional development mental health support and positive School experiences efforts to build a strong sense of community celebrate diversity and provide resources for students contribute to a wel coming and supportive atmosphere and that was the third theme that really arose to the top in that question
040so a lot of things to be very very proud of in albertly area we however want to make sure we include a realistic look and so we ask about challenges and there are some that Rose to the top here in terms of challenges for the next five years uh the first challenge that people notified us of and that was about 120 people pointed this out people that took the survey feel that the district will face significant challenges in recruiting and retaining qualified teachers substitutes and staff with high turnover and shortages affecting multiple positions that was clearly the number one concern You are not alone in that that is one of the top things in every survey we've done so far this year it is simply um a challenge that education is facing across the board
041board and you are not immune from that there in Albert Lee so that is the number one theme and some comments here about that the second area that was a concern for folks over the next five years is that additional challenges may also lie ahead in addressing student Behavior concerns were shared about inconsistent enforcement of discipline policies student disengagement and the need for stronger behavioral and mental Health supports 96 people pointed to that as a challenge that lies ahead if not something you're already dealing with that might simply increase in frequency your comments uh the third theme in terms of challenges that are ahead is it's believed that albertly area schools might also face challenges with declining student enrollment this will also raise concerns about the district's long-term stability and sustainability you'll see that the
042phrase declining enrollment was used 33 times verbatim declining enrollment so lots of people pointed to that and I'm certain that none of these challenges come as a surprise to anyone sitting on the school board you are already aware of these things but I think it's important to acknowledge them uh not just to show that you heard people who took the survey but that your candidates who are looking at this position know about it as well another challenge um was the survey respondents said is related to your school district finances including budget constraints and Rising costs which of course ties directly to declining enrollment that will thereby Place pressure on maintaining your quality programs and Staffing a lot of interconnectedness when it comes to the challenges also not unusual there was also a theme in this
043category around academic achievement uh this was raised by respondents as a concern citing the potential for declining test scores gaps in foundational skills and the need for a stronger curriculum in core subjects like reading math and science and that I think hearkens back to the curriculum and the test scores that were identified in the quantitative part of the survey and here is another challenge identified by the survey and this is the last one in this category survey respondents also feel that restoring trust and transparency could pose a major hurdle in the coming years staff community members and parents all Express concerns about communication accountability and how leadership decisions are made comments emphasize the need to build stronger relationships and create a more open approach to District governance that was the last theme in in the
044challenges category and some of the representative comments in regards to that are there any questions before I move on to the third question here that was open-ended board members anything else Barb as we um and we'll decide that in a little bit to make this available what you suggested we should and I hope we do um will all of the comments that were made be listed or were just these summary comments that uh has been put together just these summ comments and the reason for that is the raw data potentially contains comments that should be protected by data Privacy Law and or could incude include um comments that might open you up to liability if someone States something as opinion that they say is fact so we have to be very careful with that raw
045data and we can talk about that again in a moment but the the report that I would suggest go on the website would be this report here and these represent comments for each of the categories okay yeah we we'll Circle back to that thank you for asking about it okay the third open-end question in the survey was what does the next superintendent need to know about the history of the school district and the community in order to be successful so the number one thing that rose up here was that survey respondents feel the new superintendent will need to address mistrust between District level Administration and staff parents and the community to succeed albertly area's next leader must prioritize open communication and genuine engagement with staff students parents and the community so that uh came through
046loud and clear in response to that question there was a second theme here in that the next superintendent communication style may also affect the degree of their first year success highly sought after skills will include someone who utilizes a collaborative approach Fosters open dialogue and focuses on supporting those working directly with students so here again this report is going to be another yard stick that we use to choose of all the applicants who really aligns with what the report is looking for from your stakeholders and the leadership profile that the the school board developed earlier so this was also important and there's a lot of comments here so Excuse me while I go through them all there we go and then there was another theme uh here in the history that we want to know
047about is that uh relative the new superintendent should know something relative to the breakdown in trust that was tied to ineffective communication and a perceived lack of transparency which often left staff parents in the broader Community feeling unheard and excluded from decision making we also see this fairly commonly in these reports um one thing I do want to acknowledge is the school board is sometimes in a really tough spot because the word transparency is what I call a squishy word it can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people you as board members are bound by confidentiality laws data privacy laws so sometimes the lack of transparency is deserved because you're not sharing information and sometimes it is not deserved because you cannot share information so I do want to acknowledge
048that um you know perception is reality of course however there are times where a school board cannot be as transparent as you might want to Simply due to the law but it is one that comes up a lot and the word transparency surfaced quite often here in the albertly area survey and then the last uh theme in this category is that survey respondents also feel it will be important for the new superintendent to recognize that albertly is a close-knit small town community with strong Traditions a deep sense of Pride and a desire to maintain its unique identity the community is also experiencing increasing diversity with a significant immigrant population High poverty rates and a growing need for inclusive and Equitable educational opportunities so that is something that your survey respondents also felt the new leader
049needs to be very very aware of the last category or question here the only category under additional comments or what else do you need to tell us uh we had one theme that was um far away the winner here is that overall those who took the survey are seeking a strong experienced leader who Fosters transparency consistency and meaningful collaboration with st St students and the community It is believed they should prioritize teacher and student support Embrace Innovation to sustain enrollment and cultivate a forward thinking and inclusive culture for staff and students alike that is the last theme and I think it captures the need that we're seeing increasingly across the board for superintendents with soft skills you know hard skills are things that you can teach and sometimes training will help address that but soft
050skills very often are just an inherent part of the personality and more and more people in school districts are looking for people who possess those leadership skills collaboration listening empathy all of those things and they did of course emerge for us here in albertly area as well that is the conclusion of the report so I'm going to try and stop screen sharing for a moment I'm hoping it's going to work again when I go back and do it doesn't always happen that way but we we do our best so can someone tell me if I've stopped screen sharing now yes great thank you uh my question for the board first and foremost is that's kind of a lengthy report it's 21 pages and the font is pretty small but um do you feel like you
051heard the voices of your constituents in this report we purposefully do not include only all the roses in the sunshine we want to make it realistic so that people do feel heard and we want to make sure that candidates also understand so do you hear the voices of people that you talk to or hear from on a regular basis or are we missing a group in this report i' just like to say I think it's very powerful I mean the consistency across these groups of people I just really I think we need to focus on the fact that there's there's themes here that are very substantial the other question I have for maybe it's for the board or maybe it's bar but this last additional comment section you know if we have a 5050 tie
052on experience versus experience maybe not being as important as important is this the tiebreaker when you see 10% of the survey respondents say we need an experienced leader here to address the challenges that they are telling us I mean that's I that question's on the table I don't for the not for me so and I don't it's not an answer is is important okay could you repeat that Dave I knew you were saying something but I didn't hear anything sorry did you say something in response no I didn't okay thanks did you did you hear Gary's comments so the first ones I did before I answered him but if there was something after that I didn't okay sorry no it should be it I think the summary was very well done and I do feel
053that it reflects what I'm hearing in the community I guess the main thing I'm so impressed with how many people took the time to do this what shows the importance of what we are doing now and um how much I mean again when you you change you change face is in a position um now we're finding out you know what what not only the community needs but the staff does too and I I really like seeing like you said the consistencies amongst what we're thinking comparative you know to what they are so y thank you any other comments on that if not I'll move on to sort of what happens next from the okay um so my first question is can this report be placed on your District website it's yes raise your hand terrific
054I think that is extremely wise that way again candidates and stakeholders alike can read this so um Norma can you make a note uh that it should go on the website and then Dary or whomever can make sure it gets on there so I think that's great some districts even go a step further and send this out in a Communications piece via email to parents to the distribution list for staff rather than putting on the website and waiting for people to come find it you also could choose and this is totally the district's call the communications team um to send it out actively as well you could certainly do that um I did want to come back uh to the question about raw data just for a moment because I think someone asked about that
055this report is um we think pretty representative of what everybody said but of course it is not what everybody said because there is I think I ended up with 57 57 or 58 pages of comments and it's only eight point font um we recommend not publishing that information because it could cause some real challenges for the district um down the road because when a survey is anonymous as this is is you can imagine people felt very comfortable saying whatever they wanted to and that was important for them to do that we had to choose comments that did not position The District in a way that could create some liability for you and obviously we're not sharing any private data in the report um but there is a lot of data we pulled this from and
056we used a combination of um Ai and staff time to pull together the report so we always recommend the raw data not be released even to the board members um it is subject to data request if you look at it but I'm going to leave that up to the board and let you think about what you'd like to do with it if you feel the report adequately addresses the concerns you're hearing in the community and from staff then I might recommend leaving the raw data housed and msba but if you feel differently I certainly can share it with you as well Dave I you know Sarah's not here with the Tribune but would we or are we considering a press release of of these results minus the the public comment section but I I would
057think the the appropriate for the newspaper if we do a press release is to put a link in there to this because otherwise I mean 27 Pages or whatever that takes up a little bit of press but but you know and and along with this barbon I don't know if you send something but a nice thank you for taking the time I mean we know we've got it in the survey but again it's just impressive that enough people decided to take the time to sit down and say yeah this is what we're thinking so but yeah I mean some way to get it to the newspaper I mean uh would be good too with a link probably yeah back to your question about the raw data I'm I'm not a fan of and I don't
058think we should um because um I think this for me is very let's move the district forward let's keep our windshield um bigger than our River mirror and I think sometimes some of the raw data might go against that thought and so um I think staying positive as we move forward and I think this report does that even with the the um opportunities and um areas that we need to focus on that maybe were concerns I think um shows that there there was the way that they're stated seems very um like solution driven to me so I I would like to not see the raw data um personally I think um I agree with Kim on that too and I don't think we're not being transparent without the raw data because if this is all
059that we've seen this is all that we've seen you know so I mean as far as other comments on that if they're buried in the system somewhere not that they're not not important but this is is a summary like you said experienced staff I don't want to say the term AI because I'm not a fan but the bottom line is it does compile a lot of things and concise them up so again like I said I don't think anyone's hiding anything because we haven't seen anything other than this report so as that's what I would say as this goes forward I think we are telling everything my opinion only okay I I can tell you that we read every single comment several staff persons have read this entire report it does take a tremendous amount
060of time to read all of them and then we do use the tool to count do word counts of how many times people said things and how often it popped up um but we read everything and it's really important to us that the report be an accurate reflection of where the district is and I appreciate how honest people were and how vulnerable they were with their comments and and we heard you and we put your voice in here and I hope that you feel heard um again this whole report is going to be used as we go through the candidates applications and we will also use it as we craft some interview questions for the board to react to um so what I'm hearing is we'll keep the raw data hous at msba this report
061will be placed on the district website I'll shoot an email maybe so I don't put it all on Norma's plate but I'll shoot an email to Darcy and Copy Dave on it and Norma to get the report out Beyond perhaps the website Maybe an email blast to distribution lists um maybe in a press release um those tools could be used to make sure people have a chance to read this so that okay with everybody is that what we're going to do just let let let me make sure I ask is that what does everyone think I don't want to think one or two of us said hey this is it what do we think about it um I'm fine with that I had uh emailed Barb and Dave earlier wondering if I could see the
062raw data just because people have asked me if I would look through that and you know I am interested in looking at that um in 2022 when we were going through this process I had read through the raw data and I thought it was valuable to do that um but I also thought that msba had done a very good job of summarizing it there weren't any surprises in there and so I do if the rest of the board wants to leave it I am you know fine trusting the the summary that we have I I also think if there was about three or four comments to each question we'd be thinking oh what there had to be more comments you know so fairly extensive lists of uh of things that were made like the one
063you said 140 times or whatever was said and so I feel comfortable as Angie said too that you guys have compiled it correctly so thanks yeah I agree as well that the raw data I don't need to see um I I think we got a pretty clear message and I am like surprised pleased of the alignment with all the different groups how close everything was so I think we got a pretty good picture of what we need to do and what you know the talents we're looking for and I agree I would like to be proactive and send it the survey to the all staff distribution list and then parents this can go on all the school newsletters Etc just you know as we work on transparency just getting it out there as much as
064we can all right are we ready to move on thank you everyone I appreciate the conversation okay the next thing we're going to talk about this is the point where there's a fork in the road you get to decide what to do in terms of next steps with public involvement in the interview process so in your packet you should have something called um public input during the interview process as I just said so I'm going to try to screen share that and I know you've already had this conversation and from what I understand the board is leaning toward interview committees which is great so let me just screen share this and see if I can find the right document and it's not the survey I want it to be these three options all right does
065this say public input during the interview process yes thank you okay so this is typically what we offer to school boards is as far as next steps uh the three options would be to rely on the summary report as the voice of stakeholders in the interview process the second option is to create interview committees who interview the finalists separately in addition to the school board and the third option is to invite representative groups to have one person obviously your interviews are open to the public so you're going to have people watching this but there would be designated people to provide feedback to the board through electronic form where we collect strengths and weaknesses from each individual who's representing these groups and we share that raw data with the school board before your UH deliberations of
066who to move on or who to hire in the end so those are the three options I always mention here there's pros and cons to each option we have seen a lot of Trends in the last couple of years toward using the stakeholder summary report as the voice of the stakeholders only because I think of the challenge that sometimes exists when you decide who gets to participate in option two or three but I do know you've talked about this at a former or a previous school board meeting so I'm going to assume you were looking at two or three and I think what I'd like to do is turn it back over to Dave to facilitate a conversation by the board to arrive at a final conclusion about what you'd like to do next and
067then I've got some other documents to screen share based upon that decision okay thanks Barb uh we have talked about about I think option two um any comments and thoughts about that or we didn't have the other two options written out that eloquently before so um but to and and you know we we've looked at we've had a number of people that have uh expressed an interest in uh being part of an interview committee and it looks like we've got about probably about uh a dozen plus people so that would actually make up two nice committees uh you know from a school and a community standpoint so but anyway just my thought what are you guys [Music] thinking a yeah I think I did make some comment relative to involving more people in The Selective
068process but my vision was not a bunch of different committees to of to which we would subject all of our candidates I was thinking rather in terms of maybe expanding School Board to include some uh individual and that would be the tricky part determining who gets joined in the Schoolboard at this table that may not be a real good idea but that was kind of my vision the uhu I was involved in a lot of of committees uh when I was teaching that involved higher reading of English teachers or Math teachers or coaches or whatever uh and was just kind of an an an addition to those those groups of principles and um and occasionally board members that made those decisions so maybe that's not a real good idea but that was that was kind
069of the intent of my coming not to create a whole bunch of different committees that are in place that would have to be organized and that the candidates would have to meet with that seems to me to be a rather C cumbersome arrangement any other um I oh sorry I can't see if somebody's talking am I okay um I am for the having a couple committees because I think especially when I look at the the top two specialized skills that all the survey said was with honest and ethical and the strong communication Etc is it's just another group to give their feedback on their thoughts in in interview process with an individual and we've done this before in the district where we have created different committees it is a long day for the candidates but
070they know it's a long day and I think especially as we see transparency as one of our issues it also helps get another voice out there just they're they're not a committee they're not a hiring committee but that they just give us input their thoughts and um but I think it's just another listing board for us to get feedback from thanks I would be of the opinion first of all with the robust report we just reviewed on public input I mean it's pretty strong to me that I would lean more towards perhaps number three and that we had if we had Representatives attend because our interviews with candidates are open to the public if we were to have people come that represent different constituencies and then give them an opportunity to give us feedback on
071strengths and weaknesses of candidates we could accomplish the same thing in my mind as we would with number two but again I'm basing my opinion solely on the fact that this is so strong if this was wishy-washy then I would I think there'd be no choice but to use option two but to me this is a great resource for us and I think we can augment it by by using option three yeah I was the only thing that I was going to say around that is sometimes with option two compared to option three is it it it um representing a group grp is an identity of of of the way that group feels where sometimes maybe when you have committees it's more of a personal feel well however they a lot of that aligned in
072the report right so um I I I too am a little bit like Gary that I was leaning towards these these individual committees but I might be more inclined to the representing groups and getting feedback that way um so it doesn't cross over to individuals because we align in the pre-work the different groups aligned in the pre-work so it um I I really would go with what the the board decides but um I also like Mary Joe's comments about um you know feeling that everybody had a voice and um I'm just concerned about how we vet that those voices in number two so couple things about um first of all I mean number three uh I mean as it mentioned we'd get input I am I reading that barb that they don't set at the
073interview table they just give information is that correct and number three correct correct okay and I mean we do I'll tell you the hardest thing is you get 15 20 people that want to do it you pick them we're just pissed off 14 of them oh excuse me I shouldn't have said it that way but that's just me we just made 14 of them mad because we picked one of them and uh that was the other thing I thought about you know getting a little bit more input now if you use the group you get the questions that they have as Mary Joe said it's a long day I think Barb addressed that earlier when I was thinking three groups we got to two maybe we go to one I mean I'm I'm it it
074it's fully what the majority wants to do I just want to make sure that we include as many as we can but one or two could work too are for number three the the individual feedback form or the what's it called the online audience input form so they're they're just filling that out as the interview is going through and then do they turn it into the board speak speak at a board meeting how do what would that look like so maybe what it would be helpful for me to do is um talk through some of the opportunities and pitfalls of both two and three um because one of the things is exactly what you just asked about if you have interview committees who gets to be on that committee and I know that you said
075you have people who are volunteering the challenge with that is there will be people who didn't volunteer that would have loved to be a part of it so we need to find a way to um systematically invite people to submit their interest in being on that committee but we also have to be super clear about expectations because it's going to take the whole day if you have three finalists on March 31st because this is done in round two round one might be six people and that ends up being like 10 hours and so most people cannot dedicate 10 hours voluntarily to the search in round two the board has wintered it down to two or three people so it's more like a 4-Hour commit maybe four and a half so it's round two um so
076who gets to be on that and then creating the questions as I mentioned earlier they could send me those questions we need to vet them make sure that they are uh legal and that people understand why they can and cannot ask certain things this interview could not be sort of a free-for-all um because there's things that statutorily you cannot ask including if you're on the interview Committee of these candidates for example about their intentions to move to Albert Lee residency cannot be asked about at all uh nor considered as part of the that's just a statute there so um that's one thing but then the other thing that ties to what your question was is how are they going to report out so if there's an interview if there's two interview groups and there's eight
077people on each that's 16 people two different groups are they Broken Out by identity do you have one group of Staff people and one group of parents or do you mix and match parents staff community members um uh funders students in one group in the same thing and the other so it's like a mixed group and then do they provide the board with one overall sort of evaluation of hey we really liked the interview with all three of these people we saw this was great about Jane do and this was great about John Doe so is it a group decision and how do they arrive at that report there needs to be sort of a spokesperson for each interview to report out to the board or do you want individual reports from everybody on those
078two groups so it might be 16 people and what what um format would those reports be in what would be most useful to the board and then option three and I just apologize for talking so much but there's a lot of things to consider here option three the way they report out is it's Anonymous um you do know who the let's say 10 people 10 or 12 people are and I work with them ahead of time to uh practice filling out the audience input form it's an online form that says here's the leadership profile please list up to three strengths for each candidate and up to three areas of growth or weaknesses for each candidate and then they do that after the interview so they're listening to the interview of the board so they're hearing
079the same information the board is hearing and then they fill out a form within 15 minutes after that interview concludes listing what they saw as strengths and weaknesses and then the next interview starts and after that one they take 15 minutes to fill out the same form again we provide that to the board anonymously and in hard copy before you start deliberating so you see what the audience members thought in addition to what you as individual board members thought so the thing that might be helpful that's the report out piece but I'm going to switch for just a minute to the conversation of who gets to be on these groups because that has been the number one reason that most school boards go with the public summary report one because of the alignment which is
080great and also in your case you had what 420 people 420 voices in your head you would use it for that if you want people involved though this is where you have to think real carefully of how do you invite them and who gets to be a part of it and that's why most boards don't do it but we want to do it here in Albert Lee I understand that so these groups did it switch to District groups to consider yes no yes it did okay thank you sorry I just I can't see you guys so if you're nodding your heads I can't see you all right so for either of option two or three and this is something I believe uh Norma you have copies of this right could you hand out a copy
081of this to each board member to kind of read through thank you while you're doing that I'm going to to sort of walk through so considering who gets to be a part of the interview process here's some suggestions for you you want to think about what groups would you typically ask to support you in terms of um a referendum that might be coming up um what subgroups are out there um you might consider asking the leadership of those groups for example if you want someone from the business Community to give you feedback you might consider the chamber president or something like that um the best idea in our opinion is to invite the groups and then ask them to select someone on their behalf because whoever said earlier one person cannot represent the entire group
082that is absolutely correct however if the membership of that group has a chance to say hey I think our um bargaining unit leadership should represent peras or whatever it might be they've had a voice in kind of nominating someone versus the Board choosing whatever you do please board members do not choose who gets to provide input that's a slippery slope and there's all kinds of things that will be misinterpreted if you're handpicking people to give input but we would say please let each bargaining unit be represented in some way so here are some suggestions principles Association we always say selected by the membership just so you're not doing it so principales Association teachers from different grade levels Administration from the membership you might want to consider um executive assistant or someone who works very closely
083with the superintendent here are other areas that might want to send someone I think in your community involving someone who is potentially a cultural liaison or elll teacher or something would be wise parents love to be included so if you have a PTO or some way of choosing a parent to represent or two parents to represent um not just their opinion but sort of a broader group of parents students sometimes are included on these groups and here District Partnerships are real important Andor possibly higher education institutions uh the chamber I mentioned a business person perhaps and then if you have major foundations funders or donors you might want to give them a seat at the table to provide feedback and then if you have any substitute Grassroots Community organizations this is just a list to
084think about and we say any more than 15 because if you have 15 people and everybody lists three strengths and three weaknesses what's 15 time six close to 100 you're going to be reading a lot of stuff before you begin your deliberations so we'd like to keep it at 15 or fewer but this is where a lot of boards run into well who gets to be on this committee or committees or provide input so I'm going to stop talking I know you have this in front of you now if Norma handed it out and just Dave I'll let you facilitate a conversation about how you might have people invited to participate in either option two or three and see where the board lands with your conversation I'll be here to answer questions but I'm going
085to stop talking all right Neil you look like you're ready yeah I'm going to contradict everything I said pre previously um when I was a teacher and was asked to be a part of hiring other teachers or coaches I was asked because I was the head of the English Department or I was a coach so it made sense and it didn't and it didn't complicate things and when we hired an English teacher the social studies teachers weren't upset because they weren't on the committee I can see that this is a can of worms if we're going to select people who are going to be on committees and logistically it's going to be a a difficult process because uh Barb and her staff have done a wonderful job of educating us on all the fine points
086of being on an interview team and involved in that process now they'd have to do it again for the these additional groups uh it just complicates things and U the bottom line I guess is we were elected by the people in this school district to make decisions like this we have sub we have uh G given the community an opportunity to provide input which is the report that we've just examined and I'm certainly willing to listen to anybody who comes up to me and wants to uh you know give me their uh input as personally as to what we should be looking for but I'm pretty I'm pretty certain that that decision should be left to us so I I would St for number one um my I would prefer two or three my uh
087the main thing that I'm concerned about is I would like to get feedback from people especially with this feedback from the survey saying that people are hungry for collaboration and transparency I think um even though it could be tricky I agree and maybe cumbers if we do number two for the candidates I think it would be very appreciated by our staff and our parents and those who have the opportunity and I would be very interested to get feedback on the specific candidates once we have them um which we wouldn't get if we just go with option one um so my the one that stood out the most to me was option two because I think it would be interesting to see to let groups come up with their own questions that are important to them
088um but I would be comfortable with three also Mary Joe any thoughts well I like what Barb just shared that that makes more sense to me now of understanding kind of the options and I think having the different groups a representative from the groups and they pick um would be valuable information um so I I'm okay with actually I'm okay with one two or three I now that I know more of what each are and what it looks like um I'm probably leaning towards one chairman clot this may contradict what I said also but after hearing the feedback and that's our job i' like to make a motion that we adopt option one concerning public input during the interview process I will second that motion we have a motion on the table uh is there
089discussion and I'll start at Barb could you bring option one up again so we can see the comments on that then we can go from like that so can I just say so so sorry no so if if we had not had the response we'd have I read the bottom no other public input will be gathered as part of the interview process I would struggle right with that but we had um above average and significant responses to the so many times when people do surveys they just check but we had significant written response and for me I don't feel like uh public input wasn't gathered and so um I'm also I also know that when we start to look at two or three there are going to be people that are upset with how that
090went potentially I shouldn't say there will be there is we open ourselves up for that potential when we have the data that show was that we received public input um cuz I was really leaning towards three I actually had 12 different positions but as we discuss I'm I'm I am more leaning towards one only because I feel like we got significant public input to move forward so just my thought um this gon be funny but I'm going back I I'm reading on the Chromebook and it's really small what I'm trying to read here so Barb when you showed us the list of people I thought that went with one so I sorry I am sorry I'm going back to three and I guess when I think about it is the survey was people answering what
091are we looking for in a superintendent now we have the candidates who do you think me meets that so I do still like I I guess I really do want to hear from um other people such as a principal represent representative because they're gonna there may be things that we wouldn't think of that they're in it every day and hearing things that maybe we wouldn't think of as a board and I think getting their input would be valuable as well as teachers uh Community member um I know when I sat when we hired a superintendent we and we did the actual committee the different group groups and I was on the staff group uh the people on the business Community the business Community um interview um advisory they gave way different input than the teachers
092and it really made us Ponder of oh okay we hadn't thought of some of those things so I still think I would be for number three to still get that voice out there of you told us what you're looking for in the superintendent now now we have people in front of you who do you think who in your in your um opinion would meet that criteria that it has been set for Davey she beat me to it that's exactly what I was going to say I'm I what I see with number two is I see that there's additional training and coaching and teaching on how to interview um I like three I like having a representative there from each group being able to give full detail and and their opinion um right after each interview
093knowing after the candidates they've had um they're able to listen and then give that feedback uh I'd like one would be an option but I like three more because I like to keep the community involved as much as and being transparent and having them involved as much as possible without having to I don't want to with without them going through the training and coaching of asking the additional questions um so my my choice would be number three um no I just wanted to Echo what Mary Joe was saying I was going to say the same thing that I think we've gotten a lot of really good feedback but it isn't about the specific candidates and once we have them out in public I really would like to get more feedback from especially I would say
094the staff I think are very hungry for collaboration and to be listen to and share their feedback I would really be interested to hear their feedback on which candidate they feel will be the best fit did I interject something here in a moment I'm sorry I can't see you so I'm just raising my hand is that okay yeah well go Neil's got a question I might add something too but if you got something you'd like to say go ahead so that made me think of something so I got two things that you should think about because I really appreciate this conversation it's a very healthy dialogue so that you each have a chance to Think Through the implications of everything on number one um there's a word that I need to start inserting in here
095if you rely on the public survey summary report and that word is formally no other public input is formally gathered as part of the interview process trust me you will have informal feedback from the minute you announce the candidates names us board members will get emails phone calls text messages about every person you're interviewing and again after round one and perhaps even during or after round two so the formal process is not uh to collect feedback during the interview process but informally you will hear quite a bit and then there was just one thing that someone said I want to be sure we want to be real careful about expectations if you choose option two or three um we'll go back to that list because you it's a long list you do need to decide
096who gets and doesn't get to be on the committee and there will be people who will feel excluded because they weren't invited or part of a group that was invited um but you need to be real careful that you don't ask them to tell you who they prefer or who they might want to work for or who they feel would be the best superintendent because you might not hire that person and sometimes the downside of asking for that kind of feedback or if you if people say I really liked John Doe the others were great but John Doe was it and nothing but stars for John do if you then as a board because you've seen more material you've redmore all of that if you hire Jane do those people will feel betrayed they may
097say well why did you ask me for my opinion if you didn't listen to me so you gota be real careful how you set up the reporting format so that you're not giving them the impression that they're going to help you hire the superintendent because they're not so as long as that's clear I think you're in you're you're good all right I'm done thanks Dave go ahead all right thank you Barb that that your your thoughts were exactly mine relative to that last sentence I I it looks like there was a word in there that perhaps we didn't see the word formal and that's exactly what I would like to see in that statement uh because I I it would be ridiculous to to exclude listening to anybody in the community or in the staff
098and uh the the employees of the district about you know what they consider important in the hiring of a superintendent so that's that's a good that's a good addition or a good editing of that sentence secondly uh as I understand it once we have interviewed the finalists pretty much all of those things or many of those things that are that are referenced in uh the third choice would be available to us as I recall once we have interviewed the candidates uh typically the chair reaches out to various parties to get input relative to each of the candidates that that we have as finalists so I'm there's opportunity for all those people that we're talking about to provide INF it to do that with option one torn on this one there's been a lot of thought
099going on um last time I don't mean good b or IND different when we didn't have we would have basically used option one I I can say that and and Neil you would know better than me did you have any comments after the hiring process did I have any comments from home I guess did you have anyone say boy we should have done something else and we you know we should add another group another group interview or anything did you ever hear any of that no I didn't hear any any uh issues that uh that we neglected or any processes that were neglected Ed um but but I did call a lot of people talk to people who knew the C the finalists um very well and so and I I didn't uh you know
100call up the uh principal of the high school I I I I guess I I I don't know I I I couldn't could have been done and we could do I mean that third option offers a lot of opportunities but I think we can do that within the framework of of the first option yep that was a first thought I mean it didn't it it seemed to have worked um I I do like the uh option two for the reason that it does give us a a diverse set of additional questions for another group to be able to ask however as Davey and a few said we're touchy on those we have to run them through msba and somebody may feel slighted if we pull a question because it's not something that we can ask
101um so I I've worried about that an option too um and finally since it was there's a lot of alignment in this survey that uh I think people are feeling like uh you know and we can see that we've got similar thoughts um and that's why I asked I mean obviously they not at the board table we're paid to make that decision but um you know I I want to make sure that you know we don't feel like we're not including people but but we've included a nice group of people um I do like the option again of having extra questions but um you know I I don't think last time we had any complaints about the way the uh uh the the system went so that's why again I I like the opportunity for
102more people but last time it didn't seem like anyone complained about it so chairman Claud I'd like to call the question questions and call Gary would you uh restate your motion to make sure that we adopt option one concerning uh public input during the interiew process all right with that read um let's uh take a vote on that all those in favor of the motion to adopt option one signify by saying I I and those opposed with the same sign I chairman Cloud I want a division of the house I'm sorry I'd ask for a division of the house there is a division but we do have a four to three oh sorry Dave we have to do roll call when we have um a remote remote board member I believe Y and we can
103sure do the roll call vote too so let's yeah let's go ahead and start with Davey option one okay I nay Neil I Kim hi hi it just reminds me of the co meeting when I sat back and I just kind of smiled that everyone and we didn't run the meeting till we got our mask on um what's that Jo Mary Jo yeah oh I'm sorry Mary Joel name thanks for this opportunity to everyone um nay so uh motion fails uh 4 to three so I will look for another motion chairman Cloud I make a motion to adopt option three concerning public input during the interview process okay is there a second to that motion I will second that okay uh any discussion option three um mine's just more of a point of reference I
104think we need to be very intentional about who's invited to par participate um what groups are invited but those groups decide who they're sending and then how many spots those groups have and so um I think that's the second part of the discussion um because I think we want to be like Barb has pointed out we want to be careful that we're not excluding Voice by including voice and I'd like to seek msba guidance on a process that's followed uh to achieve option three yeah and I think well I think we've got that somewhat in front of us I mean but as far as there's I think what we would need to do is figure out which groups because as Barb said there's a a large number of groups there's more in this group than
105uh we probably need so we would want to look at that and I think one person from each group regardless of sizes of respondents or anything else like that would be a appropriate so we wouldn't feel like we had an over uh overum any one group whatever that group was Transportation so I I would I would agree before you take the vote on option three I would suggest you take some time to go through this list and we may have forgotten some on this list but the board has to decide tonight which groups will be invited to send a representative to the round two interviews and then once you've decided on the groups however many groups there are and one per group is a great idea then I would early next week send out a
106Communications to Darcy that is a sample kind of invitation that says your group is being invited to send a representative to the round two interviews on March 31st this is the commitment we're asking from someone from your group by we'll give them a deadline you must let Darcy know who is representing your group and when she collects all of those email addresses and names then I would reach out to to those 10 or 15 people with an email um sort of reframing the expectations and giving them a practice audience input link so they could go in and practice typing in strengths and weaknesses and then I would reach out to them again um just a couple of days before round two to let them know again what's expected of them as a part of the
107process so the hardest part is still for the board to decide which groups get to have someone provide input in a formalized way the room will be full there'll probably be a lot of people but who do you want input from and who gets to be invited so either this list or other lists I'll turn it back over to the board because we need the decision made tonight about which groups will be invited Dave uh Neil go ahead um question to Barb I guess uh would would uh the decision to uh go with option three require an adjustment to our timeline because it seems to me that there's an offer lot of things that are going to have to be done to facilitate that process nope we can do it your second round interviews aren't
108until March 31st so we do have time but it will require some quick turnaround on behalf of these groups also they'll have to be given maybe a week to 10 days to return a name to Darcy to represent them and maybe they do it by who wants to volunteer and then they draw a name out of a hat since more than one person might be interested that'll be up to that group to decide whose name and email address they send back to Darcy to then share with me but we have time thanks for asking about that but we're we're good Mar I'm reading um the list and for teachers are we're looking at four separate teacher Representatives representing each segment there or is it one teacher representative are you asking me yeah yes okay sorry
109I sorry I can't see you um generally it's a good idea to have someone representing early childhood and someone from elementary and someone from middle and someone from high school that's a lot though depending upon how many other groups you need to include and some of it that comes into play is how many bargaining units do you have and which employees are in which bargaining units and is one person from those groups enough or is it too much if you have 15 bargaining units for example that leaves you no room for community parents business Partnerships chamber of Etc so it largely depends on your structure internally as far as any formalized groups that you want input from so nine what do we have yeah seven nine seven probably yeah I think seven of more than
110one or two members so I what I heard you say Barb is one from each but I had kind of um disseminated a little bit just based on responses and the the the the voices we heard in responses and maybe that's how we regulate how many we have from each group so I have um one from principals and uh Association the the administrator one I have two from teachers one from District administration one executive assistant one par professional one elll director or cultural liaison which could be our also our SRO depending on how we wanted to go with that two parents and two Representatives any District Partnerships and then um that that's kind of how I divvied it out but it doesn't have to go that way I thought it would be good just to
111start with discussion because I was basing it off of how we had respondents from our survey 10 was it I think right a 10 you which I would like to keep in that number somewhere but uh um yeah I was looking through there too and I and I know we've had some people that have already expressed an interest and uh they look like they were kind of somewhat those groups but um yeah again I don't want to be overweighted anyone's specific group but I want to make sure we get good representation so maybe let's just let's go through the list I'll just read through them quick and we'll at least make first cut and then second cut and if we decide like I said two one two whatever maybe we'll see what we come up
112with so principles what do you think I mean that's obviously principles teachers how about District administration I mean someone from that you know okay executive assistant that would only be really one person but works pretty directly pretty so what do you think any opposition there okay um the next big group I see is a pair of professionals I don't want to skip over building and grounds um nutrition Transportation building grounds is kind of anyway any thoughts on that building grounds just say if you think yes say yes nutrition Transportation par professional yep secretarial maybe that's yeah could fall under the executive assistant but I'll cut them for put them in eel I like the comment with the SRO too that's a pretty direct uh eel for sure obviously parent reps I would think okay student
113reps respon okay uh District Partnerships business Community highered institutions that would be obviously Riverland here or anyone in the community I mean Chamber of Commerce rep follow those put uh I guess District fund donors foundations uh Grassroots anything we think about there what did we they're all part of District Partnerships what's that sorry they I would consider that to be part of Under the Umbrella part the bus yeah we're just saying that would maybe be considered under District Partnerships parb so we got I'm just looking at four five six seven eight nine 10 in there but that's not giving any like Kim had mentioned to with you know do we have a you know maybe a an elementary in a high school you know we split it to give them two in the teachers so
114um any any thoughts on to multiples in any of those areas if we did multiples I would just say teachers and parents would be the only two spots I agree that one teachers and pars you mentioned parents okay I would add Community reps just because if you get someone from the business Community or an agency that's a different hat but I'd be open to one that was the only one other one I had to in yeah I think secretarial and and uh executive assistant could probably go together just one there um now before I go any further and I'm so sorry Mary Joe I don't look at you I'm sorry I see you on screen do you have any specific thoughts nope I I can hear what you're all saying and and agree so sounds
115great okay so if we're looking at we had one from the principles and uh let's just do the ones to start with District admin executive assistant I'm just going to put one for per to start with uh eel Liaisons and I'm going to throw SRO on there just since I deal with kids all the time um skip over parent reps is a possible multiple student reps one probably and then if we get something someone from the community as a maybe a a one shot that that gives me seven that I've got which leaves some multiples in here like I said with teachers what Neil go ahead um I I we're making an awful lot of plans here but I don't recall voting on option three Barbed mentioned that we need to put this list together
116before we vote on option three okay that's the reason otherwise I agree with you but tonight since we have to move forward with it so sorry sometimes conversation actually affects the vote because you're voting on option three but you really don't have an informed vote until you know who you're going to be inviting to participate so this is during the discussion we will questions been the questions been called let's do a uh roll call vote uh under there was a motion first and second yep for this option for option three okay let's uh we'll start Kim I Neil Angie I Gary I Davey I mayor Joe I and I will say I also now let's make sure we get some kind of a representation here um what are your thoughts I mean I do we
117have what group should we have more than one and maybe just go to two because again I don't want to overweigh I that's just my opinion but I want to get a representation cross-section so with what we said there's 11 I would entertain the idea that just going to 12 and putting two under that representative of a district partnership business community and or hire Ed just because it's such an over encompassing category and if you're at 11 I don't see Y2 would be a problem but okay just a logistic question now to whom are we going to go that would be defined as whatever you just said District partnership I what group are we going to approach and ask them to select a member of this committee Kim any thought on that well I think
118you could um you could we could uh talk with either City officials or the chamber and or the president at Riverland I don't know what whatever we think is important to this this this this piece I just think that if you just say business Community then you're just representing one sector of those Partnerships that's why I said that so think of the three partnership sectors that we have which is business commun Comm um agency or nonprofit and then higher ed so and and I mean kind these are all going to get together and then select some representation you could just do one and go to the chamber and say who would you repres if you want yeah that's that might be easier yeah that way they and there might be someone there that be interested
119okay um so um back on let's let's talk about the teacher should we think think a couple in the teachers maybe a high school and an elementary as a split okay so we did two and we had talked about uh so that's one I think your parent representation should be similar which one the parent representation so yes and that was I say that would be the so if we do that would give us that 11 then so just just as I'm reading it now and I'll just bring it I read what I've got uh principales Association one two from the teachers preferably element one from elementary one from high school one from the district Administration staff the executive assistant PA professional staff uh the el director cultural AA on SRO one from there two from
120parents one from one student rep uh one District partnership uh Chamber of Commerce that was that would that would only give us 10 then that would so if we come back with again that's 11 is that but if we add chamber but I said if if chamber falls into there you know District partnership business Community hire Ed there's one from there that would give us 11 then right 11 total that's okay one from that group okay so one from either the chamber the district or the higher ed right that would be 11 yep okay all right now let's dis any discussion on that yeah once once again I'm you know I'm rather concerned about the particulars that who is going to approach these groups that we have now defined and uh ask them to from
121their their uh constituents a representative for this committee how's that going to work Barb do you do that or do we send out I mean 80 85 to 90% of these are here within the school district um as I'm looking on here other than the chamber that so do we send out something do you send it or how does that work this is coordinated internally by the district so I do have a blurb that I would send to Darcy and Copy Dave and then it's up to perhaps the two of you to email or send a letter to the did you say 11 you end ended up with yeah I have a that she could share but I'll always Copy Dave on it on behalf of the board a letter or an email that she
122could share that gives them expectations what it's going to require for them on March 31st and what the deadline is to let her know who is representing them and then it's responsible those people are responsible for getting back to her they can use whatever ction process they want but ultimately before a deadline then I'll put that in the blur that I share with Darcy and Dave we need to know who they are so I can start working with them to prepare them for doing this on March 31st so it is done by the district but I've got a template you can use to send out to invite these groups to participate okay all right Kim so I think the less structured ones or is what Neil's concerned about so the bargaining units is not an
123issue but your student group your partnership and your um your parent groups um I think could we look at those people that have volunteered and if anybody Falls in that they've showed interest already I just don't know how else you bet them by by them you know um because I think of parent groups so I'm thinking all of the four elementaries have a PTO there might be someone that so how do you coordinate that and that's kind of what Neil's getting at and then you know if there was someone from you know if there were multiple people in the partnership piece you know how do you how do you coordinate that so you know as is my thought before was everybody that calls you get a number and someone draws a number out of a
124hat and says it's number four got it that's the one on yeah I mean that way it's totally sub subjective it should be anyway um if there's only one I know they've got a list of a number of people that showed some and I don't know if they fit into these groups or not but um but that's what I thought is if you did that just drew a number out and that's who got the not and as Barb said too when they see the expectations of it's going to be a few hours and this time there may be some that say I can't do that so you know with the guidelines we put out and part of the guidelines is you know it's it's total informational feedback just like the survey it doesn't make the
125decision you know no votes in included so all right um any other thoughts does that sound all right on the 11 GE here you look like you got a no I would my only and that's not even a concern but that initial ask to me needs to be the same to every individual or group we reach out to I I don't I would not want to and I maybe would' never do this but a phone call isn't going to work for me I mean I think the the the fir the first ask needs to be formally done everyone gets the same request in the same language I just think continuity of process is really important yeah everything just like the questions all need to be the same so yes a pretty quick deadline too because
126I'm sure they've got a lot of work to do to get them prepared all right are we done with yes got it thank you very much that was a really robust discussion I think it's important everybody had a chance to say say what you've said and we'll get to work on creating some audience input Forum people to participate on the second round interviews watching your interview and giving you strengths and weaknesses anonymously their names will not be attached to their comments you'll just have 11 people providing you input and you'll see it all and the raw data sound okay great yes so do anyone want a quick break or do you have some other business to conduct we still need to do interview training and schedules and questions so does anyone want a f minute
127break or are we good what do you think you let's take a five minute break because I have a baseball meeting in 10 minutes so yes five minute break no that's fine so go ahead Barb all right welcome back thank you very much we are now going to go into the interview training process and that is a packet that looks like this I will screen share the entire document it's a lot I think you might have in your packets an abbreviated version that's like 13 Pages um just to save some paper but we will now begin on this and I'm going to screen share but again I can't see you so please interrupt me um throughout if you have questions but we want to make sure you're very comfortable with the legalities of the interview
128process so if someone could please let me know if you are now looking at the interview training and preparation packet we are thank you I'm going to zoom in on it um are there still people in the audience that I should be zooming in for to make sure they can see all of this or are we okay with just Page by Page since you have hard copies yeah yep should I zoom in or leave it like this fill in what I can't even catch it zoom in yeah you don't need to zoom in no you're fine do not need to zoom in okay no correct great thank you let me know if I need to at any point however so in this packet there's a couple of things um one we always want to revisit
129your vacancy brochure I do want to let you know that there is interest in your position and I'm fing phone calls with people who have questions I can't tell you how many applications there are are because people will come in and out of the pool over the course of the entire application period so I don't want to set your expectations too high or too low but once the deadline passes you will know how many people applied so I think they see this as a great opportunity and this is one of the things that is driving that interest there's your leadership profile and we'll revisit this again and again throughout the um getting process your timeline is in here I also want to give a shout out to whoever in your district is working on your
130web page I don't want to name names because I'll probably miss someone but it is a terrific web page so many thanks to whoever is making sure that the information is current and accessible they're really doing a great job so many thanks to those folks and that does include the timeline within the timeline they also have a link for instance right here where it says public input survey open they will on the website have a link that basically says click here to read the report because they already have a link in this section where it says click here watch the Q&A session so thank you very very much to those folks okay I'm going to start talking about relevant law first and foremost um there are such things as protected classes and you are bound
131to abide by every single one of them what this means is these are categories of things you cannot ask about and you cannot consider a lot of it is common sense and yet we just want to make sure that you know you cannot ask about or consider these things here are all the protected categories so because you are an equal employment opportunity District you have to abide by this so we cannot ask about age we cannot ask about marital status etc etc however if you go to the next page and I'm going to go through this kind of quickly because I know you have this stuff and you'll look at it later and if you want to look at the electronic version you've got that from me as well but interview questions in terms of
132non-discrimination laws these are the protected classes over on the left you cannot ask things in this middle category if for whatever reason you want to ask about some of these things you could so for instance um if it was important to you to ask about their religion I guess you could ask are you available to work Sundays I would highly recommend you not ask that but from a purely legal standpoint there is a way to ask about some of these categories however considering everything else that's going on in education right now you have a lot more important things to ask about other than these protected classes but please know that you cannot and should not consider these things when you hire someone okay here's one on disability all kinds of things you could not ask
133but you do have some things that are permissible for instance in job descriptions sometimes it does say you're required to be able to lift 50 pounds that's totally okay if there are parameters that are required to do this job that's okay to ask about but again you have a lot of other really great questions to ask I don't think it'll be necessary but I need to tell you about it now this model policy is not in your abbreviated version the only thing I'm going to say here in terms of model policy this is uh 401 the EEOC stuff so there again you cannot ask anything that is illegal and I know you have a great HR team to make sure that you don't but please do not um ask about that I do sometimes get
134asked about Veterans Preference Veterans Preference does not apply to the position of superintendent as it does to some other positions model policy 406 is your public and private Personnel data I'm going to zip ahead in here to this page now I am going to zoom in on this because we we talk a lot about this as you might have noticed in this model policy and I'm sure you have it adopted in your District the names of applicants are private data except I'm going skip the middle part except when applicants are considered by the school board to be finalists for public employment this is the data privacy part names of applicants are private data except when applicants are considered by the school board to be finalists for public employment so then I'm going to go back
135to the first part and go right here a finalist means an individual who is selected to be interviewed by the school board for a position so on the evening that you choose your finalists technically they're going to be semi finalists because of you know round one six people or whatever are semi-finalists but when you do that their names go public that night because you the school board will interview them those names go public you're going to be talking about candidates a b and c that whole night you have to be very careful not to use identifying information I'll recommend candidate a b and c Etc but that night you have to be super careful because those are private data you'll make a motion to interview candidate a b and c after after that motion passes
136at the end of that meeting I'll read the names out loud of who you're going to interview every other name forever and always our private data okay any questions on that this policy is kind of an important one because of the interviewing in a public meeting um but talking about private data okay moving on that's policy 406 policy 205 is the open meeting and close meeting law the only reason we include this is is to remind you that every step of the process must be done in an open meeting you may not close a meeting for purposes of the superintendent search you may close a a meeting to discuss and evaluate your superintendent but that's it other than evaluating your superintendent relative to their position the only thing you can do is for evaluation everything
137else is in the open including everything we're going to be doing in terms of the search Okay other considerations based upon statute we include these in here because sometimes they actually apply for example in statute uh 122 a.4 under employment contracts and termination it defines a superintendent as a quote teacher only for subdivisions 3 and 19 okay so right here subdivision three is on hiring and dismissing a teacher superintendent we'll say superintendent a superintendent related by blood or marriage within the fourth degree comp imputed by civil law to a board member shall not be employed except by a unanimous vote of the full board the reason I have this in here is if when you see the applications because you're going to see them if you know you're related to one of your applicants please
138let me know as soon as possible okay because there is a different voting circumstance for someone who's related to you within the fourth decree um and that I'll talk to you about that in a minute but if you see someone who's related and believe me it happens um in-laws cousins all of that has come into play several times in the last few years so let me know if you're related to someone please also a teacher or a superintendent shall not be required to reside within the employing district as a condition to their employment or continued employment so that's the one where people want to ask are you going to live here you know are you going to be a part of our community you cannot ask that and sometimes people volunteer it during their interview
139just because they know it's important to people you know it is if they volunteer that you still can't consider it if they could do their job as superintendent as based upon the contract and the job description they do not have to live within your District boundaries and you cannot ask it so I always want people to know it's a statutory requirement it's not that you don't care about it it's just a statutory requirement and then this one just talks about when you can employ or take uh you know within the last 365 days of the contract you can sign a new contract but that's less relevant the search here are the special board um voting guidelines the only one that applies at least as far as the search goes is this first one the initial
140hire of a superintendent related to a board member requires a unanimous vote of the full board so if your first cousin applies for this job and you let me know that it will require the entire board to vote unanimously to hire that person not to interview them and not to bring them back for round two the hiring decision must be unanimous and if you're the one related to them you cannot abstain you must vote so even if it's a 61 vote they don't get hired if even one person doesn't want them as your superintendent so the um relationship one is really important again it does happen but not very often any questions on that okay comment