RPS School Board Study Session - 07/21/20

001this study session of independent school district 535 school board is called to order at 401 pm on tuesday january 21st 2020 in room 137 of the edison building and elsewhere president is mr michael munoz superintendent of schools and a non-voting ex official official member of the board also present is ms wendy edgar the assistant board clerk ms edgar would you please call the role miss amundsen here mr barlow miss marvin here here mr schlesner here here miss workman miss workman here i think you called my name it's hard to hear mr barlow one more time mr barlow thank you 2.01 approval of the agenda superintendent there are no changes to the agenda move approval marvin second workman miss edgar miss amundsen i carlo miss marvin hi miss nathan aye mr schlessner hi sarah selinger aye

002ms workman aye mr barlow thank you thank you thank you um item 5.01 equity superintendent this is your item if you want to set set the stage for us before you jump in that's fine or i can do that as well in terms of what you're going to present to us and what you're sort of looking for yes i just want to give the board an update just a reminder for those who may be joining the meeting outside of the board the board allocated an additional almost two hundred thousand dollars to be added to next or this coming school year's budget so tonight we are this afternoon we're here to give the board an update on where we're at on that so at this time i'm going to share my screen so hopefully you can

003all see my screen yes yes okay perfect so uh just wanting the first section here these these are the different uh individuals or groups that we uh sought feedback from our equity specialists our american indian liaison the employees of color resource group bilinguals and other employees of color we met with a group of students from of color uh the individuals that have been doing the organizing the protest in our community and our coordinator of equities so those are the different individuals or groups that we did have a conversation with the common themes that we saw across all the groups was that their recommended representation in the curriculum and anti-racism anti-racist curriculum should be something that we need to focus on they also talked about direct support for students and families uh there was some recommendation

004to add additional equity specialists to to provide that direct support to students and families of color uh recruitment and retainment of staff of color was a common theme a cabinet position was a common theme and then professional development in cultural competency and anti-racism was another common theme we heard and discipline achievement data someone to focus on this uh was the last one so i would say it's pretty consistent across all the different groups in these different areas different groups had them prioritized a little bit differently so when we looked at our plan to [Music] use additional equity funding we also realized in order to try to address all the themes that we were going to have to take a multi-year approach so what you're seeing here the first one year one for the 2021 school

005year we are going to have the current coordinator of equity have a strict focus on district professional development student voice and development of our equity teacher leaders we want to add another coordinator of equity which we would have that individual focus on curriculum and human resources also we want to add an additional equity specialist with that person focusing on gap areas uh specifically with our hispanic students our lb lgbtq group and ability students or students in special ed and then we want to take that year also planning and recruitment of a cabinet level position for the following year we also want to explore ways to provide loans for tuition for our pair to teacher program you know one of the things that we're realizing is that we aren't getting as many of our pairs of

006color in that program and we believe that uh you know we've made changes in their in the para contract allowing them to get paid during their student teaching time uh we've worked with the winona state university to provide classes in the evenings or weekends but we realize that there's also a financial barrier to cover the tuition costs for that so we want to explore uh options to try to address that in year one so year two for the 21 22 school year we are looking at adding an associate superintendent of equity and accountability or opportunity this would be a cabinet level position and then we also want to add an anti-racist curriculum specialist uh year two and then year three we want to add an additional coordinator of equity and have that individual focus on

007the opportunity gap and discipline disparities and then um these other thing we want to do is add to me we're calling them community liaisons with families of color uh focusing first in our somali uh families and uh latino latina latino families uh for those board members who attended that uh training we went up in the cities minneapolis public schools had parents who held focus groups in this different cultures that they have within their district and then they reported that information back to the district so we would have we're thinking about trying to start with just two different cultural groups and then eventually expand to many other cultural groups that we have across our district but starting off with just two two of those positions and then with the hope of expanding those in future future

008years so this is um we believe that we want to honor all of the uh feedback that we receive but understanding that when you have just under 200 000 you cannot do all of it at once so we looked at a three-year plan to try to address all of the areas that we heard during with our conversations with the different groups that i mentioned earlier okay thank you superintendent um just we decided to bring this forward to the board haven't seen this plan uh before but trying to give board members a sort of uh taste of what the work has been done and the recommendation the district is working towards for the the good of the viewing public you know the board really kind of says the what and the district takes care of the

009how and so i really appreciate um superintendent and others who've reached out to the other individuals and groups getting feedback i think that's really important i really appreciate also the the working on building on the work that we've already done mike especially in terms of having our coordinator of equity i think is great um and also you know identifying those challenges you've certainly seen um you know we've discussed in numerous places um recruiting staff of color and the barriers they face in getting teacher training or things like that so just looking for some initial comments from board members and it looks like we have several hands up i think i think i will go julie jean and kathy and me julie go ahead my i don't know why my hand is up it's not okay

010gene it says raise your hand but okay sorry someone's down yeah thank you um three things first of all i i understand this is just a draft at this point this may may or may not be the final um decision but mike i'm wondering if we could get a copy if you could post a copy of this i think that there are a lot of really good ideas on there and i'm just wondering if you get a copy of the document that you have there um secondly question where are english as a second language students where is who would be sort of the expert or the administrator who gives that group a voice in this in this plan well we would see it falling in the under here the ability i just mentioned special ed

011but i would also put el in that category as well and then we do have a district person already that i guess leads our el program but this would be an equity specialist that that would be one of the groups that they would focus on as well okay and so my assumption is that as as this thing is rolled out and grows that they could sort of determine what kind of um personnel how much time and focus and the kind of people that need to be working in each of these areas i mean that this is going to be sort of a plan that would be would continue to evolve i'm assuming and then my last question is whether it's exactly this plan or something that's slightly different are you going to run this by

012some of the same groups that you initially talked with in terms of getting their feedback about this these ideas i guess we weren't planning to get additional feedback that we were going to share with them i guess we would ask them if we don't want them to say no i think you should move this one to year two year one but we would ask them did we capture the feedback i mean uh obviously we didn't capture all of it year one but our goal was to within a three-year time period to try to capture everything that we heard uh with the various groups excellent thank you okay thanks board members i'm now on the i've got the right thing up so i can see uh hands so i'm gonna go kathy and then i see

013uh looks like mr barlow has joined us i know there's a few other hands past that go ahead kathy um deborah would you mind if i defer to melissa because i think her hand was up very first i don't mind go ahead melissa that's very nice of you director nathan um so i see a three-year plan i think this is is a wonderful uh enhancement that came from just the initial recommendation to add the cabinet level position and this is this is beyond you know my my wildest dreams sort of um i'm wondering though knowing that we are going into a period of budget reductions i understand having it over three years because it would be a lot to add to the budget at once but it seems to me that all of these things

014could be useful right away and either way we're going to have you know some some money issues but should the board decide that this is one of our priorities um is there are would there be any barriers to accelerating and and not spreading it over three years i don't know if i'm making myself clear um i didn't have time to think about it because we hadn't seen this before the meaning but um i would love to see your three accelerated okay yeah i just um we didn't total cost this out you know the total three years that's something we'd have to do but i'd be a little uh hesitant to add addition um add even more to the budget that was already approved um and some of these we are hoping that we may be

015able to look at some current positions and maybe restructuring to capture some of these new positions as well it's not strictly all going to be new money and would we be able to look into any grant opportunities to fund some of these areas yeah i mean we can look for that i don't my experience has been that a lot of the the federal funds that are available for things like this for example in my previous district we were able to get a really nice federal grant to do our uh their version of our pair to teacher program where they paid tuition and every for every year that we paid the tuition of payers in that district they had to commit to work for a year in the district or have to repay that so unfortunately

016a lot of the federal grants usually you have to be at 50 or higher for any reduced population in order to qualify for for those but we can we can look to see if there's anything out there that we may be eligible for um thanks melissa and just to to summarize melissa's points just information on budgeting i think is is not a bad idea even though it's going to be ballpark and i know that's asking a lot from especially john and then thinking about how this might might work going forward in terms of setting priorities for the budget but i'm just reiterating what i've heard i'm not making any direction we're going to go to kathy and then don so first of all mike thank you for this and thank you for your in-depth um

017uh conversations with the various communities that have have given us their voices but doing it in an intentional way um you know when i first spoke about this i was talking about a road trip scenario where i was looking for a road map and i was looking for someone to steer for someone to put their foot on the gas and you've given us that and traveling companions so i think that um i'm really i'm really pleased to see the components that are represented here because i think it sends a message to our community and it gives us a good a good way to structure our work around identifiable people the one question i have on the associate superintendent of equity and accountability opportunity is that you've identified areas of focus for the assist additional coordinators

018of equity and the equity specialists do you have a sense of the area of focus aside from the job title of that associate superintendent yeah i would say first of all i don't want to say that that title may change slightly i don't want to say it it's carved in stone and that's exactly what it's going to be but obviously our plan is that that individual would supervise all of the coordinators of equity and also um we've had conversation about possibly moving the equity specialists under that individual as well but we see this individual overseeing all of the work that's that's on this slide so we have that one individual at the cabinet level that's focusing primarily on inequity and do you anticipate anything moving from um where it's housed now to also fall under

019this job description i'm not for sure when you say house now maybe if it's a um another cabinet member's responsibility or in another department yes yeah that's that's kind of what i uh was trying to i didn't do a very good job explaining then that right now we have a cabinet member supervising the one uh coordinator of equity and and um our initial conversations then the new one that we add for this coming school year would also be under that supervision just for one year until we can uh have the associate superintendent brought on board and then that individual would take over supervision of of those positions and then the other new ones that would be added in year two and year three okay thanks okay director barlow hello hello and thank you and here

020um happy you're here i did have a question uh regarding uh the student voice which uh i had opportunity along with um to my fellow board members to here and i'm sure superintendent munoz the curriculum emphasis and i'm glad to see that uh for year two there is space for the development of a position anti-racist curriculum specialist my question then is uh will there be any work done in the area of curriculum prior to the establishment of the position yeah if you up in uh your year one where it says add a coordinator of equity and their areas of focus will be curriculum and human resources so they'll start that work and then when we bring the second position on in year two they'll have an individual that's just focusing on curriculum whereas the coordinator

021is doing curriculum and hr okay thank you thanks don um i i'm sorry folks i don't know who came first so so mark than julie then kathy looks like thanks okay thanks uh this is a really nice start and i've i've got a few questions here is you know one of the things that i think would be very helpful for our community is well we know the district is doing a lot of work in this area you know maybe it's out there but i've personally got a hard time finding it on our website and this should be more prominent on our virtual face to our community then it currently is again it may be there but it's hard to find i guess that's more of a comment you know some of the other things like

022the the community liaisons which is a great start perhaps there's a chance for collaboration with the city of rochester or even olmstead county to help fund something like this at the end of the day this is a a community thing that should be worked on together and i think looking outside our own walls may be beneficial to our entire community as well and the last thing is from a budgetary point of view is when we have our classic annual budget discussions is it'd be nice to start to see all of the dollars being spent on equity in the space to actually be broken out or at least highlighted in itself so again we can see it's like melissa said if we decide as a board that we want to put a financial focus on this

023it's a little easier for us to see what the total dollars being focused on this are if adjustments need to be made because as we all know over the next couple years there's adjustments are going to have to be made yeah i would say i think if you remember john did add uh at i think that's a great slide but again unless i go digging through board docks i don't know where it is and it it'd be awesome for the community to be able to see that as well okay got it so we've heard mike sorry mike mark we've heard mark make a recommendation on if if we're going to prioritize some equity work that perhaps there's a more prominent place on the website where things could go together community liaisons mark just for your

024information superintendent um kathy julie melissa and i saw the presentation uh by the minneapolis school district where they used as mike said community members who were offered a stipend to kind of work in their community getting some particular feedback we all really responded to that that format and also i know uh kind of on the other side and kathy can maybe speak to this we've had some there's been some conversations about cradle to career maybe being part of um some of that funding if it's stipend based for some community work so i think um again i'm loving the the themes of what i would say our collaboration uh within our community collaboration within our district um so thanks for your comments mark great thanks for the info um i think julie and then kathy i

025have two questions um so the first one is um this associate superintendent of equity and accountability slash opportunity um it sounds to me like that person would have to have a superintendent's license in order to hold that title and if that is the case um are we limiting ourselves as to who we might hire for that position uh and my second okay go ahead yes you are correct uh any title that has uh a superintendent you do have a have to have a superintendent license um not for sure how to answer your i mean it does limit if you don't have a superintendent license then um i guess you wouldn't be eligible we could potentially consider somebody who's working on their superintendent license i i don't i don't think legally we can have that title

026called superintendent if you don't have your license that's something i'd have to uh check into i don't know if working towards one would qualify or not i realize i'm going a little bit deep into the weeds here and i'm not asking you to define exactly what the position would entail specifically but it wouldn't be necessary for that person to have a superintendent's license in order to do that work well i i guess that's that's kind of where i'm going with that you know i don't i guess i don't know if i would have to have a superintendent license i do would say it would be very important that they have some really good uh district level leadership experience i think also having it be a associate superintendent or assistant superintendent um i know there was

027concern by the board that that the desire to send a message to the community that you want a cabinet level position this is the next in charge cabinet level position in the district so i think it sends even a stronger message to the community that the person second in charge of the district is overseeing the equity work of your district okay that makes that makes a lot of sense and then my second question is um how often do we have curriculum review what's the length of the cycle for curriculum review do you know about how many years i'll have to have brenda jump in and answer that question but um i we don't see this having the weight on a certain cycle i mean i think it can be done when we do that cycle

028but i think these individuals are going to be working on it in all content areas every year not just saying well this is the year for example of math so we're going to focus on that i think they can work with the you know when we get those 80 to 90 to 100 teachers together to do that these individuals can work with that group but also they could be looking at other content areas besides just the one that happens to be you know on cycle this year okay that was my concern i don't want the public to think that well if it's you know if we review i'm making up a number here if we review the math curriculum or the english curriculum every five years and we just finished reviewing it then we really

029have to wait another five years to look at it for you know for these racial inequities um so i i appreciate knowing and i'm sure the public who whoever's tuned in would also appreciate knowing that this is something that is immediate and it's intentional and we don't have to wait in order to act so thank you mike yeah and that's a perfect you know perfect example uh if you remember a few board meetings ago we came to you and said that we wanted to add uh phonics to their reading curriculum you know that that wasn't on cycle but as we look at what we've been doing and and programming and stuff that we've been using has not uh got us the outcomes that we wanted we need to make adjustments so you know we can

030you know it doesn't have to always be on cycle in order for us to look at making changes to that particular content area okay and i appreciate that that example that you just gave as well thank you i'm through thanks julie um [Music] wendy's wendy's keeping track of the hands for me it looks like kathy is next great thank you um so uh i'm sorry if i missed this but um i know that recruiting teachers of color have has been a priority and is already part of our achievement and integration plan um but it's primarily been the responsibility of human resources is that um still the plan or is is this a joint effort with any of these positions yes the coordinator of equity would work with hr on the recruitment and payment of staff

031of color uh they wouldn't do it by themselves they would work in conjunction with the hr department okay great um and another hr question and i i don't know if this is a legal question or a practice question but what are our capacities to identify candidates of color are preferred for any of these positions um i know for sure illegally you can't post a position say i'm only only candidates of color can apply uh that would line yourself up in court write it rather quickly um but um we'd have to look and work with ligo on what we can do uh specifically you know just the same thing when we started the imperative teacher program even though the intent of the program was to get more pairs of color into the teaching field working with

032legal they said you can't just exclude or have that type of program just for pairs of color it had to be open to all paris um and the position of an anti-racist curriculum specialist that seems sort of specialized do we have a do we have a notion about um is that a is an up-and-coming classification is it is there a a certain background that we that we think there is a pool of people out there for that uh i don't think there's any specific certification or anything like that but you know i can go to college and get that type of degree or whatever but basically we're saying we want an individual that has some experience in that area that could lead that work i don't think there would be any specific certification that that

033individual would have but we do think that they would have maybe training in certain areas for example when winona state university is offering a program that um helps in the area of equity and you know so i think somebody that has uh either experienced doing this work already or has uh specific training that we can tie to that work and one more you know that one of my commonly commented on components of our equity work is data and evaluation of our efforts and i just want to confirm that that that data collection and evaluating our our outcomes and performance would be part of that associate superintendent's role yes but i think uh as i think actually you might have been the one who brought it up at the last meeting i think the board needs

034to decide what measurements are they going to use to determine uh how effective our equity work in so once that's established by the board that individual would have that uh to understand that's how his or her work is going to be measured but i think that's something the board is going to have to really you know is it strictly going to be the achievement gap and discipline disparities or is going to be additional data points so that's something that we would ask the board to come to consensus on which would be very helpful uh for us great thank you okay melissa and then mark thank you um i thought that director workman brought up a really good point about needing a superintendent's license and um i i'm feeling conflicted about the importance of making sure

035that we have a very strong applicant pool versus um being able to post the position as a associate superintendent position so i was just wondering is it um the type of thing that would be if we didn't get a good applicant pool that it could be reposted or if it's better to do it the other way around to make sure that the applicant pool is as wide as possible because quite frankly um part of the whole issue that we're trying to address is systemic racism and lack of equal opportunity types of issues and so it would be logical to think that there are some great candidates out there who have not yet had the opportunity to progress to the point of possessing a superintendent's license that's true but there are a lot when you look

036across the country there's a lot of districts looking for these exact types of positions at associate or assistant superintendent level so there are individuals out there but that's something that if you um run through the process and you're not happy with the candidates that you've interviewed and gone through the process you can readjust and repost so we've actually done that in other areas in the past but um i i really believe there's there's a lot of good candidates out there that and we looked at several current postings across the country that are looking for very similar type positions and looked at their job descriptions and also in the state of minnesota looking looked at um their cabinet level positions and their job descriptions that they they have for different positions so that's what we use

037to make that determination and as i said earlier i think uh as it seemed like it was important to send a community to the community that we have a top level cabinet position focusing specifically on that work and as i said earlier this is this would be a second in charge type of position that's focusing on the district's equity award that sounds great thank you looks like we have mark then gene uh building a little bit on what julia said earlier in the area of the anti-racist curriculum is having helped on curriculum committees in the past from a public member point of view is you know i think this is a good place where the community does a great job of helping us understand the areas that we need to change we know we sometimes

038have difficulties getting community members to actually participate on our committees to give direct input at the time of need so so kind of back on my original point of if we had a more visible place in this space as well i.e we need people to help us from a community member point of view i think that would be great and a bit of attention on that is perhaps there's an opportunity for our school board student school board members there as well no i agree mark and i think i i think we need to go back to those individuals who have reached out to either me or or the board and say you know we heard you now it's time for you to roll up your sleeves and partner with us and help us do this

039work completely agree thank you mark gene yes um first of all i just i deeply respect mike the process that you've gone through to come up with this plan i think it's so important it's so powerful it's so timely and i would simply echo what melissa said that as important as superintendent's licensure is i would much rather my understanding is that once the plan is finalized it's going to come to the board for approval and i would bring it up at that point but i would much rather change the title of that position of um associate superintendent to something else so that we don't eliminate really good candidates who may not have that licensure i know that's going to be a discussion for down the road but i think that's really important that we have

040a broad net up for people who are uh qualified for the position even if they don't have the licensure thank you yeah i i hear you i guess i our plan was not to bring it back for formal approval based on a conversation we had at other board meetings it was more to bring it here and if we saw some consensus on a major red flag then we would go back as a cabinet level and revisit either our plan or a specific position so if um if there's consensus at the board that they do not would not prefer that it be in a supe associated assistant superintendent position um we can revisit that um i will tell you something that i would find a lot of difficulty breaking away from is that you need to

041have an individual is going to have to have some really good district level leadership experience in order to be a cabinet level position or at least some extensive building level leadership in order to to do the work as a cabinet member if if this were to be a department of equity um could the person who was the head of that department still have that kind of administrative authority um maybe not the same level as cabinet but would they still be able to administer or help make decisions about budget and personnel and that type of thing as cabinet members do i just my main concern is that we've got a lot of people who just haven't had the opportunity to get a superintendent's license but who do have the experience and do have the um education

042not the licensure necessarily to do a great job and i just want to make sure that we're not making it difficult for really qualified people to either rise in our district or come to our district and have that kind of that kind of position so i'm i'm going to step in folks we have we've been discussing this for about 40 minutes and i'm not going to cut us off but i'm just i'm just kind of giving everybody a time frame the way i have looked at this is that this is a plan and that this plan is in development i think superintendent has certainly heard from some board members about concerns about the title of a position and possible credentials to that that position the the reason that i uh respond positively to the three-year

043plan is that this gives us gives the administration an opportunity to kind of do some research look at what other job descriptions are out there in the state and across the nation see what resonates with our district see what works for our district and then have some flexibility i'm all about some flexibility and i certainly am not looking at this plan and this is my opinion that as this is chiseled in stone and that this is what's going to happen in year two but that we have some some time to reflect and make good decisions for us again i'm not stopping discussion just kind of putting a little um comma right here um so if it's a superintendent if you want to respond to that otherwise i'd like to go on to it looks like

044we have three more folks with hands raised at the moment yeah i don't have much more to say than what i've already done great thank you don and kathy and julie thank you certainly i don't want to state what's already been commented on i will however respond to i suppose my initial reaction to the use of the term good applicant pool not your word superintendent fellow board member i just think it's important that we um words matter intent matters as well my point uh however is this that there are anyone who would apply more than likely would be uh someone who's qualified the issue is potentially do they possess the requisite licensure and then final observation is uh the superintendent said well if there's consensus you know if the board we have the board if

045we're not caught up in the title uh assistant superintendent and we are willing to land for cabinet member uh he's not opposed to that and i guess it's just important that we say what we mean and as we say mean what we say so that's all i wanted to share just as a point of observation and reflection thank you don kathy julie um i just want to be be clear on the timing and the budget so when i look at the year one recommendations are those um able except for the loans for tuition because i know we need to explore that but are the additional positions able to be added to the budget with the additional amount that we authorized to add to the budget yes okay um and then we would just for future

046years that would be something we'd cost out and and consider as part of the annual budget process yeah yeah okay thanks board members just an interjection here too one of the reasons we didn't want to wait to bring this to the next board meeting and we thought we'd take this opportunity was because if this if this plan looked good and as mike said no big red flags that they could start working on posting those jobs right away instead of waiting until the fourth so that was a great question kathy thank you for that um julie okay i think um for me the most important or one of the important things is is just to keep us surprised of changes i mean major changes that are happening and i think mike you said you were already

047planning on doing doing so um will this come so this this was initiated by a school board member so the fact that we said that we are were you know appropriating monies for this position or to for you to outline it then i'm just wondering wondering if my fellow board members feel that there that we don't need to take a separate vote on it at some point and i'd really like to know something because sometimes we leave these discussions and somebody has said well i think that blah blah blah whatever it is and then we never get back to it and we don't know what you know where it's been left so i don't know if now is the appropriate time to do that or if that should go on a future agenda item so

048just throwing that out there julie i'm not i'm not sure i understand you can you say more about that please um which part something something about a vote i guess i wasn't quite sure where oh okay okay uh i think somebody earlier had asked us if we needed to vote on this you know if it needed to be if if this needed to have an official vote the initial one didn't have an initial vote it was a consensus okay and i said in as much as this was at the recommendation of a school board member initially should that be followed up with with a um with a vote and then the second piece was just not leaving loose ends hanging when we've had these discussions it's somebody will say something like well i think that's

049a good idea and then it just it drifts away never to be seen again so um yeah two things i'll comment on that one i think where we finally landed after the discussion about whose role is it to determine personnel the vote that was taken by the board was to allocate additional funding towards equity not towards certain positions but to allocate a dollar amount to be added to this coming school year's budget to work on uh equity okay i just wanted to make sure everybody was on the same page with that that's all thank you julie anything else board members okay great um thank you so much superintendent um excited about this work excited to move forward great okay 7.01 uh community engagement give me a minute to juggle some things wendy has offered to

050run my powerpoint for me so i don't have to figure that out [Applause] one thing at a time i'm already figuring out hands and okay are you ready wendy to share your screen great okay so um so i put this on the agenda a while ago um most of you know will will know that community engagement is a passion of mine and i thought this is a really great time to sort of dig in and think about how um how we can have a mutual understanding and um build a system uh on best practices and kind of solidify some procedures and protocols so i did this did go out late today apologies for that um but sometimes that's how it goes so um here is what we will be focusing on today i'm gonna i

051need a i'm gonna need a sign so our objectives today are to discuss why it's important to engage with the community explore best practices on how to engage and then create a shared understanding of procedures and protocols for engagement so uh put a ring on it um the reason i titled this is um you know kathy and i have worked on a family engagement program for a number of years and we had a student i think she was a somali student one year come to our class and she said my friends are wondering why i'm coming to this class because it's about engagement and i'm already married so i kind of ran with the wedding theme and if you were all here in person i you would smile and chuckle and at least laugh at

052my dorky jokes so i called it put a ring on it so why do we need to talk about engagement and what is it so when we think about engagement we know it's continuous it's gold focused we're seeking some feedback owner not customer focused which we'll get into in a little bit it's building relationships culturally responsive and supports what's best for children and families individually and collectively and weight choices and trade-offs successful practice does not give special interest a chance to take over critical conversations we are the quarterback we keep the ball to move forward if we're stuck on defense we will be reacting to conversations we neither start or contribute in a meaningful way when we seek when we only seek input for decisions we do a disservice to our community and i think

053most importantly when i think about community engagement i think this is really hard work so i hope that um that of everything that comes out of this we realize that this this is not something that we should take lightly any comments on that i guess i'm going to go screen by screen this is this is for discussion purposes i'm not here to you know give a lecture so please be interactive as possible sorry i had to go out okay go ahead wendy okay so what do our vows include we know that our community wants they want legitimacy they want to be heard and valued they want some tangible changes but i think when we do community engagement we want things too we want respect about their knowledge we want the benefit of the doubt and

054we want people to know how difficult decision making can be i think this is sort of a we've talked about this before that we are the ones who tell people uh what our job entails and so um you know this is hard work and we don't take any decision um lightly especially when we're making a decision for seven okay so why are we doing this um many reasons of course i call it the age of input everyone has a story an opinion and a device so we are kind of bombarded with opinions pieces of information rumor innuendo you name it we're doing this to help our district work through conflicting views identify options and create supportive atmosphere and understanding of decisions our role is to listen broadly and balance story and fact we should be

055aimed at educational results we shouldn't engage just for a feel-good process a board in touch with community-wide concerns will serve the broad public good rather than being overly influenced by special interests and the people we need to hear from are the ones we don't agree with which i think is a challenge personally for me um so all the things that um when i think about why we're doing this i think you know the board is really sort of a conduit between the community and the district engaging with our stakeholders really helps us do better governance you know we we talk about asking our teachers to build relationships with their students and in this way i think we need to build relationships where we can with our public director barlow yes thank you last bullet point

056the people we need to hear from are the ones we don't agree with i think i know what you mean by that but i i think it potentially creates us and them automatically and what we're not trying to do is suggest uh or give the impression or begin the conversation with i really don't agree with you but go ahead because that's what we have agreed we're going to do how do we know we don't agree with them until we actually hear from them and and so can you kind of help me with why the language was constructed in the way that it is with this last bullet point under the y yeah i think it's um i think sometimes in our in our public life we know that there are groups or beliefs that don't

057resonate with us personally i see this play out actually more in other districts than i've seen play out in ours but there are a lot of you know hot button topics that you know people are pretty come out on either side of you know last year there was some work at the legislature about um changing kathy you might have to help me with this changing the health curriculum um and especially in terms of sexuality education and there are some people who were very very opposed to some of those changes now i personally might feel differently or as a board i might sense we feel differently but i think it's helpful instead of just dismissing people like you have values that don't match mine to let's have a discussion about why you feel that way and

058is there something that we can learn from each other so that was sort of um that was where i was going with that bullet point does that help don yeah yes thank you okay do anybody else have any of those bullet points resonate with them in any particular way or or the one that don mentioned about meeting with people that we don't agree with um i i would add and i know that you've already referenced it um it's also the people we need to hear from are the people that we don't hear from um and i know that you cover that later in your presentation but um i thought of that too when i read that book okay great thanks okay okay uh amy oh amy i've got a i've got a i've got some

059i've got a board a cabinet member um audience we do have our cabinet here with us um and we are very happy about that we um i i wanted them here and was happy they were here and encouraged them to be part of our discussion with us tonight because our cabinet members also have to engage with the community in their respective roles so amy i just had two thoughts on the bullet that don referenced um one is that i read it to mean people with different life experiences from our own that it's valuable for us to hear from people whose life experience has been different so that we continue our learning and our empathy and then it also made me think of a meeting norm that our equity specialist has her equity coordinator has shared

060with us that feedback should be considered a gift and i think about if you expose yourself to people with different views you can often get that gift of feedback that allows you to check your own understanding of a situation and hopefully learn something new from it thanks amy i appreciate that and um i especially appreciate um uh the notion of hearing of using it as a gift um because a lot of times feedback does not feel like a gift to us or not a gift that we want so i think that's a great perspective indeed anybody else have anything on the y slide okay um so the next one words matter so i'm um this is where i'm trying to uh to move us a little bit in terms of our language feedback and input

061to engagement there's nothing wrong with feedback and input we need those things they're really important to us but sometimes this they create this expectation and the expectation is that we we ask each person what they want we try to get as many people get as many speakers as we want we think if we add them up we'll we'll know what people believe and then we focus on what people think sometimes that's absolutely appropriate we we need that quick survey we need we need to do the best we can getting some information and that's great what i'm really focused on more today in our conversation is the engagement piece and so when we talk to people about wanting to engage them seeking out people with different perspectives and points of view which is already john and

062kathy and amy have referenced producing our public knowledge about values aspirations and purpose there's some give and take among people and assume we each hold self-interest but have the capacity and desire to act as citizens when we met with the students the community engagement committee met with the students recently i complimented one of them in particular because you know she was really articulate about we are bringing these issues forward because we want you to hear them but we know that change probably will not come while we are still students in rochester public schools but we want these changes to come because they will impact our younger siblings or the students who come after us and i thought that was pretty dang impressive from a young person to really understand that what they were advocating for

063came from self-interest but the outcome was really um the desire was for for more than for the greater good i guess we could say so i think that's just one of the the reasons that um um i'd like to think about the getting to the engagement piece um and you know those of you who know me um know that i'm well i think probably because i've been hanging around with you guys so long about using examples so um you know i always have my coke and pepsi right and mike talks about this too when we do the survey about should we offer coke or pepsi in our machines we get a lot of response we get a lot of feedback which is pretty customer based right so that's feedback but if we wanted to engage

064with our staff about what's in our vending machines for drinks you know maybe there would be coke versus pepsi but maybe there's another brand or maybe there's another product or maybe we wouldn't offer those because our value is health and wellness and we think that you know drinking soda even diet soda isn't good for us and so even though it's kind of a cheesy example to me it's kind of the difference between getting feedback and getting your opinion but if you want to push through and learn more about people's values and create something together that's when we move towards engagement anything on that people are responding to i don't see any hands so we can move them great so i tried to stick with my my wedding uh theme so i call this the macy's

065registry right um so this is a concept that was introduced to me oh quite a number of years ago from the harwood institute and it moves us from thinking about our stakeholders as customers to cus to citizen owners so when we think about folks as customers they start with their self-interest everyone is a customer and that can often lead to customer demands it puts can put us in a position to be reluctant to challenge to think beyond themselves because because of the the nature of being a customer and then it focuses on the question what can we do for you and so i think that um you know a customer when i think of a customer i think of um you know a stakeholder bringing us a customer complaint might be a teacher or a

066textbook or something really specific like that and that's and that's fine that there's there's certainly a place for that but i want to move us to the concept of citizen owner ready so hyvee is owner operated right so everyone has an interest in the success of the business if we if we ask our stakeholders to be citizen owners we're asking them to hold their self-interest but also care about the world around them or the district in whole we look at our different perspectives and choices and talk about the trade-offs and then we challenge and maybe this is to to amy's point right take on the challenge and enjoy the tension of the possibilities i think that for me is really a difficult concept because by nature i don't like any sort of conflict and so

067coming having a discussion with someone that i might not agree with or don't understand can be uh really intimidating and then finally that we're asking the question what what do we need to do together i think again back to those the student groups we've met with and also that mike referenced you know they they really wanted to be part of the work going forward and i think that's that can be really empowering for them and it's it's i think it's very healthy for us as a district to be able to include them about how they can be participatory in the in their education and in their district any thoughts about customer versus citizen owner okay go ahead go ahead wendy the guest list um discover voices not simply demographics we often seek to find people

068to engage and use a demographic lens make sure we get all the groups assume each group has an opinion analyze the results by demographic group those in the know those that know the system can often be the vocal minority and access and knowledge to engagement sorry access and knowledge to engagement does not make a voice more valuable um so really what i was my thought about this slide was you know in the work that melissa brant does in our district with family engagement uh the working that kathy and i have been able to do uh at head start with jalane um you know they they are helping us uh be the representative voice for their communities they are being they are building the relationships and bringing that voice forward and you know without them we

069really would not have as much information going forward and i think that um kind of having them be the proxy is okay in some cases knowing that eventually you know hoping through time building trust and relationship that the people who you know melissa is speaking with for melissa brandt is speaking with for example would be willing to come and offer us uh engage in us engage with the board in a more uh systemized way um and that melissa can give us sort of some credibility to to do that and work with them don so how does one get their name added to the guest list that's a great question don what do you think well it probably begins with um making individuals aware that there's an opportunity for well some of the things are very

070identified that there is a place their space there is a need to hear one's voice without necessarily being put on the defensive because one is dared uh to respond because one has rsvp'd us if you will and to not limit one's voice i guess to that end then i would say or suggest that there's a precautionary element that should be considered when we perhaps host an event and then limit of the event by time because not everyone is used to uh having access or or knowledge to engage and can state what it is they are concerned with or about in four or five bullet points or statements some have not had a been in power to even be aware that uh there's an opportunity for them to participate or engage and so there may be

071a lot to unpack and unload and and so while it's not really a question meant to [Music] force an answer tonight but more so designed to just probably state what is known that we have to [Music] be intentional in in our efforts which i'm sure uh uh there is a element of intentionality but if they're still as we may look around and say well who's absent from the table and and we still see voices faces ethnic groups and or we know how many languages we have represented within our district so there may be opportunities even there in terms of uh trying to make uh respective voices uh heard and maybe even identified thanks don i think that's um i think this slide i i struggle with in particular because i feel like there's not there's

072not that definitive answer i really appreciate your comments about um being intentional and um you know i i have um you know in the the the the work that i do kind of outside the board work um you know we kind of meet the we know we know the criteria that we always kind of start with you know if we have an event if we have a something we offer food child care transportation um you know laying in translators um you know all those things right but i think beyond that we need to we need to get people um we need to help people understand um why we really want them there right and it's the what's in it for me sort of mentality of asking people to come in and engage with us right

073any other board member thoughts in terms of this topic i think this is um i think this is a good one especially as we move forward we don't want it to be um you know we never want it to feel disingenuous that we're engaging with a community kathy well deborah has heard my um phrase asset map many times as we've planned things and it was actually the very first task we had to do a number of years ago when we got the urban family engagement network grant to do our parent network training was to survey the community resources populations cultural groups um to really find out where the where the parents and families are in our geographic area and who they are so that we could make sure that our parent network workshops were addressing

074who they are and what they needed so you're right deborah i struggled with this slide a little bit um because that i i like to have a list to start out with and to make sure that no one's being left out but i do understand the intent it's that you're not done when you check all your demographics off a list if you haven't had intentional and authentic conversations with them and you're not representing them as the category that uh you first sought them out for so i appreciate the nuance in the in the slide thanks kathy don did you have something else your hand is still up so i'm not sure if it was still there or new sorry my hands now down put your hands down great thank you uh kathy and don for

075uh weighing in on that that's um i i really appreciate the in intentionality and the authenticity i just think we we need to keep we need to keep that in mind and keep challenging ourselves to make sure that when we're engaging we have those in mind so thank you okay wendy okay go on one more slide please okay we'll see how this slide goes the this slide is my um i did my own slide of the slide before this because i thought the type was too small in the this slide before so um this is called the iap2 spectrum some of you have seen this before if you've hung around with me long enough because i have this up on my wall at home and this is sort of one of the things that i

076think about a lot it really resonates with me because of the public partition the public partition participation goal and the promise to the public i won't read all of these to you because that would be kind of a drag but the the reason that i like it is um when i think about how we might engage with a group uh we'll just use group easier than an individual um you know where do they fall in this category and i think um i think we're seeing this you know definitely play out in the last few months um you know the inform category you know the district certainly has has been on their toes right since march informing our stakeholders what is going on what's going on with district learning what's going on with summer school you

077know that's i mean that's just what it is and our promise is that we're going to keep you informed and i think that is absolutely appropriate um consulting um i feel like we're doing this in a few places now again this is a little bit more district based than board-based but i think it helps us understand you know looking at our fall school options um our goal is getting feedback but um you know looking at uh the options but then what's our promise we're going to keep folks uh informed about the feedback and it's we're just going to kind of keep working working through it that way when we get to involve this is a little bit more on i think about the work that we've done through our facilities we've got some folks who

078are involved in that work very closely and and then our student groups i think uh back to my earlier comment about they want to work with us so this is where they could get involved when we talk about alternatives you know what were the concerns that break that they brought forward that they kind of come in the involved category collaboration again the facilities task force our bell time group the equity money i'd say all have been very you know touching into our collaboration we're going to look for advice and information and innovation and then come up with recommendations that have uh that are informed by that engagement and then finally the empowerment this i feel like is is pretty rare for a board to abdicate responsibility but occasionally happens i guess you know ultimately we

079empower our stakeholders to vote right they get to decide who sits at the board or not um but it's just to me this graphic really represents um where when we do engagement where it should fall or where it could fall and then being really again using the word intentional about when we do this with the public what can they expect from us and what are we promising when we do this so if we are simply informing them about um you know uh calling a snow day we are not asking for them to make the decision on whether we call the snow day right so we really try to keep in those categories kathy thanks for that example deborah because that that was the thought i had when i was looking at the chart was the

080all of those words that are along that spectrum we have used interchangeably in the past and i really like that when we're engaging with the community to be able to identify sort of the category of the conversation um it doesn't negate the feedback that they are not in the decision-making authority because the feedback can still impact the final product but um the the the role of the feedback in in affecting the final product i think it's important because i think it makes the feedback of a higher quality when everybody's on the same page of where it's going to go and how it's going to be used thanks kathy i think we see this we see the mismatch of this graph play out a lot when we do seek feedback which you know is absolutely appropriate

081but when we're you know whether it's bell time or whatever just because we're asking about folks ideas about bell time doesn't mean that they are somehow voting and we're going to do what the majority of them decide gene yeah and i think that's the key thing is that i think we need to be really intentional when we interact and engage with the community that we make it clear we want to hear what you think but we also make it very clear who ultimately is responsible for making the decision because there are some decisions which our community legally you know by statute cannot make so i think we have to make sure that we're clear why we want feedback and who has the ultimate responsibility for making the decision thanks gene kathy did you have something

082else okay and just for our viewers at home i can see hands going up and up and down on my uh my scroll to my left side so that's what i'm watching okay let's move on okay details details this is where we're kind of shifting gears a little bit um so i could call on each of you board members to fill in this sentence board members need and want to be seen as what gene what do you want to be seen as i can pick on jean because she's my she's the vice chair well my my children see me as she who must be obeyed um but that that apparently doesn't work with school board so i have no answer for that but thanks for picking up me [Music] come on anybody don't make me

083do a ferris bueller um so when i think about this question board members oh here's kathy and julie thank you ladies i couldn't click fast enough okay okay so i thought um well informed and responsive and thoughtful decision makers that's good julie um well i don't know how other board members doesn't need and want to be seen so that's plural and i'll say i'm just speaking to myself from myself and i would say i like to be seen as a bridge builder which means that you have to be able to listen and consider multiple points of view figure out how to sort it out and then how to engage people on either side of the the chasm where where we're trying to build a bridge to be able to help to build that bridge so

084that somehow we can meet in the middle so that at least we have an understanding of where the other party is coming from not necessarily as you said that okay you know this is a vote you know um i think mike has said this on many occasions it's like people will tell you that you weren't listening when they didn't like the answer so i think we have to keep that in mind but i would say bridge building is really important i like that and john would simply say reflective and responsive i like it so some of the examples um that i uh came with were efficient driven by student achievement transparent anti-racist a good financial steward right so so this is just pushing us to think a little bit about how we want to be

085seen in the public um and we're all going to have a different answer and i really appreciate um my colleagues at shared i appreciate my one colleagues who didn't share as well but just think about that because i think we i keep circling back to um we tell people what we do for a job no one no one knows this job better than you know the seven of us right here and those who are still in the community mark what do you got you know it's kind of a random thought as you're talking here and i agree with a lot of what you're saying is while the the school district has its own mission statement perhaps the school board should have one as well you know what is our mission as a school board for

086the school district it's a thought i think we should ponder i like to ponder your thoughts mark um and actually you know we are going to be talking about um board goals next month and so that might be something we want to explore if we wanted to have some sort of overarching mission statement or something for the board um but you know what what do we want to reflect to the community i think that's that's a great idea thank you for that um mark probably wants to be known as the tech master or something like that or no the the the i don't know about that the soup soup chef right the one in front of many buildings jean jean's going to be cat mom no i know i have a slightly less snarky answer

087you know i i think part of the challenge in this is that we we need to be seen as the district's representatives to the community but also as the community's representatives to the school district so it's it's a complicated relationship and i think we have responsibilities absolutely both ways so is that kind of like we need to be all things to all people we do and clearly we can't be and we make mistakes and we have our own issues as well but it's interesting because i i think sometimes the community sees us as just defending everything the school district is doing and and we need to be good accurate give a good accurate representation of what the school district's decisions are but still be very open to what communities uh the community's opinions are and

088their needs are so it's it's kind of a two-way street but my stuff my children still do think i need to be obeyed that's not the school board thing just making that clear okay great i'll stop now mark did you have anything else your hands still up okay jean your hands still up um i think also on the slide you know people assume we know everything that's going on and we we've discussed this as a board um so i you know that's one of the reasons i put this quote in here you know if we don't know something you know don't express shock or dismay which sometimes is difficult agree to take the information the superintendent reserve judgment until you've heard all the facts so just i i guess i i i put that in

089there just to remind us all that it's it's okay you know we we don't have to know down to the littlest detail um what's going on in our district we can certainly find out but again people have to understand that um you know that we we don't know that there's you know something going on at a particular building um you know the swings the swings fell off the swing set at whatever building we we probably won't know that but we can find out about it gene did you have anything else or put your hand down and then okay uh jeans no sorry okay uh amy ike i was just gonna share that um a term that i recently came across in dr kennedy's book on stamp from the beginning and he talks about resource hoarding

090and i think that the board is often facing this as we are as district leaders that sometimes the bandwidth of someone who holds power to a justice system is hoarded by those with the most privilege and i think that's something we have to keep on the forefront as and i we care about every kid clearly and we want every kid to be successful but sometimes so much of our time and energy is taken up with issues that really are resulting from privilege or the the perception that my privilege warrants that i have special dispensation on a decision or something like that that we don't have time and energy left sometimes to really hear the voices of people who perhaps need our help the most to make the system equitable so amy when you talk about

091when when he's um i'm sorry i don't i didn't catch who you said this was from but the the resource hoarding do you are you is that being used as as if um you know the district leaders or people in power board are hoarding or hoarding resources because we feel what we have to share is proprietary no it's about the people who um contact you as a board okay and ask for you to look into something it's talking about how those with privilege can often monopolize the time of say board members district administrators folks like that when and then we don't have time necessarily remaining to uh get to all the other issues of the folks who didn't pick up the phone who maybe don't have the time during the day to call us or

092you know those kind of things so it's more about the community hoarding the resource of power that makes sense yes that makes sense that's really fascinating um anybody want to react to that thought um julie so yeah i think it's an interesting idea but how do we get the message to the people who aren't as privileged who don't have the resources who don't know how to contact us or you know anybody in the district i think that's what i see as a a big hurdle on in terms of engaging um specific groups of people who have not been engaged you know how do we reach how do we reach out to them so that they can be included because you know if you sit by the phone waiting for it to ring with a group

093that's been marginalized i think the phone's going to be silent for a long time so how do we how do we make the call from our end to the other side is that does that make sense yep that's a great wondering question um i'm gonna go to kathy and then back to amy and we'll circle back to you too julie um and i really appreciate um amy's terminology because i think it ties back to what you said earlier deborah about the students that was able to see past their own benefit of their advocacy to how it would benefit others because i think a lot of that resource hoarding happens um because of a narrow lens and understandably we're all advocates for our kids we've all advocated for our kids at one point or another but

094i think it's part of our responsibility as a board and as a district to educate everybody about the variety of students and needs that are in our district to maybe help people put things into perspective in that situation yeah amy do you have more to share well i was just going to respond to julie's wondering question which i thought was excellent and i think the way that we do it is by carving out time periods and effort periods where we are going out into the community building relationships really understanding the life experience of our constituents who aren't necessarily going to pick up the phone or send us an email because they have lots of other things that they're trying to get done but to really protect that opportunity time for them and make sure it

095can't be hoarded away from them i like that mike yeah thanks amy that's kind of where i was going to go to but just a perfect example is that um earlier w reference melissa and the work that the family engagement group has done they go out into the communities and and instead of waiting for them they go to those neighborhoods and have those types of conversations so i'm just going to reaffirm what amy just said about we have to change the way that we normally do things and go to them instead of waiting for them to come to us thanks mike julie i have one additional question and maybe it's not so pertinent to this particular discussion but maybe when we said our board goals can be so are we talking about board members on

096an individual level are we talking about board members as we meet as a full board i think i think both i think yes and um so you know we're the you know at the end of the presentation or in a slide or two we're going to get to the community engagement committee of the board right but we all um you know we all have the opportunity to engage with the community in different ways and sometimes it's an individual you know grocery store right though not as much anymore but i think it's i just really wanted um you know to bring this forward as think about these are things that we need to i believe anyway you know think about as we interact with our community in the district um i really appreciate your question julie

097about how you know how do we get how do we get folks who may not have those resources who came you know who come from privilege and i think you know i think back to like i said melissa brant working with um communities that maybe they will get comfortable to to come to say a listening session or a world cafe should we have one or they will be more comfortable um coming to a facilities discussion when we have them right just it's kind of that building relationship piece um you know when again you know keep ref i keep referencing the work that kathy and i do at head start but you know we we really believe in our program that it's it's setting those foundational things that parents parents have a right to certain things

098in their children's education um you know and you can ask for them you could i mean you can ask your teacher from for more information you can ask your principal if you're not getting enough information and you you go up that chain right so that's a real individual um way of looking at engagement advocacy right um but this so this slide in particular was a little bit more individual but really the concepts i think could work um anyway that's fine so mike had mentioned melissa brandt and she was the person i was exactly thinking of before he responded to whatever the question was um so if we're looking at from a board level then we need to know who those people are or perhaps what their concerns are which would mean maybe not us directly

099getting it from those folks themselves but having it sent to us or otherwise communicated to us by you know melissa brant or others in the building but once again that that that starts to step on what our protocols are as a board in terms of how we handle information communication which is i think a different discussion that i don't want to get into this at this point which you should appreciate because i usually like to go down rabbit holes um but just a thought out there okay thank you do you have anything else mike your hand's still up so okay all right great all right thanks let's let's move on see where i've gotten to okay um words matter okay so this is this is a little bit more still on on some individual stuff

100right but feeling heard is a basic human need to listen just some tips quiet your mind read body language listen below the words identify feelings validate here's what i'm hearing some common themes seem to be what seems really important can you give me an example i'm working i'm working well i'm working hard on this whole list but sometimes i think as a speaker i definitely do i talk a lot and people are not with me all the time and so i like the give me an example because that makes things concrete and then of course now we're playing hockey we're not on d we shouldn't be on defense so you know some of this is pretty you probably all have heard this along the way but um this is this is where i um you

101know i've thought about a couple things you know sometimes we've all had this this interaction with say a individual that you know they just want to vent they just want to get stuff off their their chest they just want to tell somebody their thing and then we say well have you talked to the teacher about that oh no i don't want to bother them okay so that's okay i mean that that can be that can be our job sometimes what i really was hoping to to develop that i didn't get around to despite my best efforts was what really needs to to be on this slide is i credit to gene it's the mythical creature whose name is the yabbit because how many times are we in a conversation with someone in our community and

102they say something and immediately we want to say yeah but that's not true yeah but that's not really how it works yeah but right and so we just that is such a knee-jerk reaction i think especially um well i'll speak personally as a board member because i i have a lot of information and so when people come and say something that i know is inaccurate i immediately want to correct them so so this is just really about let's think about how we can hear people and not not immediately jump to a response or a correction or you know trying to trying to get off track i guess mike did you have something your hand is up no i don't okay um and if anybody well maybe um you know i'll call on melissa but maybe

103mariah could make us uh we're not sorry micah could make us a uh a yeah but uh whatever creature that might be but um i just keep envisioning this little creature that's that keeps jumping up every time sorry to put you on there for you and your family on the spot you could offer a commission you'd have to pay for it work first without a different job got to pay for the art time okay okay so anybody um anybody uh else reacting to this i just feel like we pret we pretend to listen a lot a lot of the time so okay let's move on thanks wendy um let's see oh i don't have my slides number that's part of my problem so where have you been so when people don't know something we often

104see them as uninformed and so this is kind of a follow-up to the last slide we rush to give them a ton of information um we you know i feel like our job is to fully inform them um we kind of treat them as passive like we're gonna just you know brain dump everything we know um and so again i think just think about that um you know people people have some knowledge too and so um this is sort of where i i think of my i think of my grandma here um who who lived with us when i was growing up and then um moved into a nursing home and we'd go to visit grandma and she'd say what do you know and she'd always kind of run her words together because that's how

105she talked and of course you know when i was 12 years old i knew nothing i didn't want to go to the nursing home and visit grandma it was hot and so but but i thought of her in this like maybe we we have these conversations with individuals or groups and start with well what do you know instead of assuming they don't know anything and so just sort of changing um changing the thought a little bit or changing the inter changing the interaction um i also have um have a colleague who i won't name who i often think about um you know the the giving the fish and the fishing rod right and so um again we tell people we are the ones who tell people what we do as a job but again it's

106not required of us to do the job for them and so um you know sometimes we've we've all of us i think have done this when people have a question about the district we say you know things are located in bourne docks here's where you can find our policies things like that i'm just sort of supporting that you know we don't have to necessarily track down a policy for a stakeholder we we can lead them to where the policies live because then if they have a question they can read other policies so that was sort of the the intention of this slide any feedback on this one kathy so deborah when you were doing your research for this um and and i i don't know that i've been part of many workshops or conferences where

107this happened so i'd love to hear if anybody else is experiencing it you know the don't assume what people know right before you start i think i mean in so much of what we do we put together a powerpoint or we put together a presentation or a package of information that we're going to share with the community and we don't really know how much they know so you're right we might overwhelm them with information and etc so is that is that a practice that we're seeing you know now with these online polls and these mentees and things like that where you can get a sense of what people know about things before you start has anybody seen any of that is that a common practice that is not that is a really great question kathy

108and no i have not i have not seen i have not seen any evidence of that julie there i mean i'm sorry i've seen evidence of it i don't know any uh like what to do with it sorry go ahead julie excuse me so so i think that's i think that's really good in terms of finding out what people know and don't know and i'll just give you an example from my own experience as a teacher my very first year teaching in the district i had fourth graders who were learning how to play the instrument and it was really hard for me to understand how could they how they why were they struggling why was this so hard for them so i went home and instead of playing the violin this way i reversed everything

109and let me tell you it was pretty awful but i found i could empathize with them a whole lot more once i had that experience so i think it's important i mean we can't do that in every instance but to to try and put ourselves in another person's shoes which we can't totally do and then ask for clarifying information about where they are so that we can be the ones who are saying i need to understand i need to be informed as opposed to like you said here here it is we're going to just dump all this information at you so i think that really helps in building relationships as well which is i think is really important we talk about it all the time with our with our teachers and students and staff members

110so it's equally important maybe even more so to be able to build those kinds of relationships with our community members right i think this is a place too where um two things that have just popped into my head sitting here um you know where some cultural competency we could really be much better right um that we make a lot of assumptions about um especially people who who don't look like me that maybe they didn't go to school in the united states or maybe their school experience was different and we we don't know that until we ask we don't know what you know what just because they didn't experience school in the same way i might have doesn't mean they don't know anything about school for sure um it also sort of reminds me of the

111you know the little um the thing about you know asking where babies come from and the kid just wants to know what hospital he was born born in and you know pretty soon their parents have given him the whole um speech so um so just kind of it's that it's almost like engaging before you even engage make sure you are kind of setting the table to have a good interaction so okay go ahead okay um we need a photographer a baker and a florist at this wedding that i don't know why we're having a wedding but um and now i'm kind of turning over to jean so i hope she's ready and the point of this was to you know i've kind of done some presented some high level stuff and appreciate comments and conversation

112but we really wanted to get to what we're actually doing now and where we might want to go so i've asked gene to take over the next slide or two lead the next slide or two about what the community the school board community engagement committee does is maybe wants to do gene thank you and um that particular committee you know was created not too many years ago and i think it's still evolving um the board wanted to make sure that we were providing opportunities for community members to give the board information and they can do that at board meetings they can write letters they can contact individual members but we decided that having a committee who would meet with community groups might be another alternative and our goals and our processes have sort of changed

113within the last year or so we have determined that maybe the best means for doing this is to meet with community groups and the priority has been given to student groups who have either concerns about the district and specifically about student learning in the district or have particular messages that they want want to give us about their perspective we still don't really have a very good um rubric for determining which groups we meet with and that's something that we need to hone going forward um make our goals in our that rubric clear but basically what we've been doing is uh we meet with a group at a place that is comfortable for that particular group our goal is to listen to understand we ask questions only to help us understand better the purpose has not

114been to educate to provide information unless there's some misinformation and if clearing up that specific fact or piece of misinformation will help the conversation and then most importantly i think we take notes copious notes about what people are saying after the meeting we rewrite the notes into themes these are the the ideas that were recurring or these are some really significant messages we got from your group we send those notes back to the group to ask for editing for confirmation that we got it right and then we forward those to the superintendent and share them with the board um so the idea there again is not to tell people what we think they need to know but to hear what they believe we need to hear um i i think the next steps on this

115are not just assuring that community that we heard them but also determining so what next what are the next steps how can we work together to make the kind of changes that we both agree need to be made how do we empower people in any community to become leaders who will help our school district not just our board but our school district better serve that particular community okay thanks gene um gene has done um has really been a champion of this committee um and i appreciate her so much when we started the reason i have these questions on there when we started you know many years ago we kind of had these questions to start with and i think we've sort of moved away from that in recent years kind of you know letting the

116the group decide what we're asking but but i wanted to share those as an example of um of what we did what we did previously go ahead wendy so um so this is a little uh gene a little bit more you can say a little bit more on this but my intention was um you know the things that we talked about was um just kind of a re recapping you know setting the intention and objective of the group um you know are they do they want to just go you know they they want to say what they have to say or are they looking for some information um setting ground rules i think is really important we did this with the students um i think it should be done with every group what you say

117here is confidential we're not going back to a teacher or a you know a building administrator to say you know so and so said this about you i think being very clear about that is extremely important and then the format as gene said finding a time and a place that's comfortable for for a group i think you know is just is just really it becomes more and more important to me um and so um these were just and gene please please jump in because i kind of you know did this after we talked but um kind of came up with some recommendations for the community engagement committee um that it does represent the most structured engagement with the community but um really that i think it needs to look at their charge statement i mean

118i think all our committees do which is going to lead us into our next item but we'll stay here for a moment um to to kind of re-up the charge statement and see what they're really doing and what they want to do that committee wants to do and then thinking about a rubric or procedure as gene said we focused on more marginalized groups or students but there is a little bit of tension between that's come up recently as you all know between um groups that meet we as a as a committee or board might want to solicit uh an engagement piece from versus those coming to us and so i think maybe having a discussion at the committee level and coming up with a recommendation would be a really good idea gene anything else you

119want to share about the committee it's just as you said i think it's good for all of us to interact with people from the community and so my thinking right now is exactly as you said the community engagement committee i think needs to come up with a recommendation for a rubric about how we would decide which groups to meet with and secondly i think it's also a good idea to have a regular listening schedule sessions which could be theme focused could be just open-ended where other board members would meet on a regular basis you know once a quarter once a month whatever just to listen to folks who want to come in and um let us know what they want us to know it wouldn't be focused on groups so much so i think personally

120i think we need both yep so jean asked me to put in a whole slide for that so that is the slide that she jumped ahead i do want to before we and i see kathy's got her hand up but i do want to mention something else on on the engagement piece in terms of more formal thing i also think the evaluation piece is really important you know the formative and summative you know making sure when we're in a group that you know we're hearing from everybody or we're hearing from most people and making sure that they have those opportunities um and you guys all know this right you know that one person isn't dominating et cetera and then i think we've we've been good as a committee about um you know spending some time

121afterwards and saying how did it go did that go like we wanted it to what were any issues that we ran into so gene i'm gonna pull you back though because now that i've put up this asked wendy to put up the listening session slide what jean and i talked about was that um one that this had been a topic but also really you know every board member wants to be engaged somehow in the engagement and so this was sort of our thought so gene and then i'm going to get you kathy but just hang on just a sec please go ahead gene i think your slide says it perfectly um and again yeah so yeah um well and thanks for the thanks gene for helping with the powerpoint um the last bullet point there

122um scribe listener reporter um so this is something that we have done at times when we have met with groups and taking this from the um oh what do you call it the home visitor program right so we know that the home visitor program when you when they go meet with the family um you know they don't bring a pen and pencil and so we struggle we we have struggled with that a little bit and so there have been times when perhaps one of us has taken notes and you guys know i take notes all the time i take you know i probably take notes in church if i went to church um so it's hard for me not to take notes but i also think that if possible just having someone be attentive and

123listening and looking people in the eye and not being distracted is can be really important so that's why i just wanted to bring up a scribe a listener and a reporter so that was that point um kathy and then melissa i just want to drop back to the previous line about the components of the rubric and procedure because i while it's important for us to look at the groups that we could intentionally reach out to i also think that timing of the outreach that might be ahead of a board decision that's being made i mean our biggest one is budget right so if we could be intentional as to the timing of um specific community engagement committee outreach that might be related to that topic um then we're we're not um we're not two ships

124passing in the night getting the feedback here when we're actually the decision has been made or isn't going to be made for a long time um the other question i had under that community the second paragraph that says a balance plan with room we all want to hear could you just re-maybe save that for me yeah well i did i did realize that those were kind of my holding notes that they really didn't belong there but um the point was i what i think i was going towards what no you have to go back wendy because okay thank you um so that we would that we would kind of come up with a balanced community engagement plan with room so knowing that we have student school board um where we get student voice we have

125now we've had some other conversations that have gotten a student voice um and then as you see that you know we're proposing recommending whatever you want to call it that you know there's the community engagement committee that's really focused more on groups but that we we take the notion that was raised by melissa about scheduling listening posts listening sessions whatever we want to call them and that all of that can kind of work together because we all are um we all want to hear that was that was my note so that's what those are from um so why don't you go one more wendy and then melissa go ahead um so here's some of the things i'm i'm thinking about as i'm listening about um the proposed structure of listening sessions whether it be general

126or specific topics and the idea of board members rotating through so that you know everyone gets a chance to to participate in that two things come to mind there uh first of all that would it be possible to record the listening session so that board members who weren't present would be able to hear that for themselves if they felt and if that's not possible you know especially i think if it's on a specific topic of something we're seeking input for rather than just open hey come and tell us what you guys are thinking um i would put forward that rather than limiting the number of board members who can be there it would be preferable to just post it as an open meeting so that more than three board members can be there depending on

127the topic i'm not saying that has to be routinely the practice but i would just put it out there so that we aren't feeling limited by something that quite frankly doesn't need to limit us unless we want it okay thanks kathy i think is giving a thumbs up i'm not sure if he's giving a thumbs up to that but there's a thumbs up in the chat um gene yeah and um the idea melissa about recording the sessions would certainly make it easier and make it possible for everybody to listen issue with this this this whole idea about the note taking and the feedback is based on a research area called phenomenology the deal with recording is that there is data privacy issues involved uh and they sort of um it's almost involves an irb kind

128of thing so note taking is about as close i think as we can get having one person taking notes and then getting the feedback from the community is this what you said because then everybody can be anonymous and you don't have to have people sign disclaimers or get you know any of that kind of written approval ahead of time so just just a clarifying question i see your hand at melissa but um melissa were you talking more specifically about the listening sessions versus we have to call them something else versus the community engagement um meetings i i think probably well what used to be listening posts um if if the board has a has a a topic that they know that is coming at them on a future agenda and it's decided by the board

129or the community engagement committee or whatever that maybe in advance of this decision we should collect some feedback in that kind of of sense i don't have a problem with there being a team of people who will collect the feedback and then bring that back to the board in written format i'm thinking more the idea of the community being able to come to the board to express their concerns over or more general topics or individual topics to to those topics that are unique to the individual um and and one of the things that i've been struggling with being that i've been on the board now for a year and a half and we haven't had any listening sessions is the idea of representation so our our communication protocols state that when we get feedback or

130concerns by email or personally that we should refer those on to the proper department i personally have not felt like i have checked my own mental box of i'm being a good representative because i haven't had a chance to publicly say to all the people who i'm representing if you have a concern come talk to me um similar to how our our representatives or our mayor or whomever posts a time you know once a month sometimes where if you have something you want to talk to me about let me know and come and talk to me so um those things are at odds in my mind that we as a board because we're a seven person board we tend to collect um feedback and input as a group and and share it with the group

131and use it as the group which is great but but at odds to that is i feel somewhat limited by our own protocols and agreements in being able to say hey guys if you've got an issue come talk to me so i'm not entirely sure that knowing that there is a listening post that other people are going to attend and report back to me fulfills my personal need to interface with the community to be you know accessible and to have the community know that i want to interface and i want to listen and i want to represent them so that's that's kind of what i'm thinking about when i'm contemplating these um coordinated listening sessions i personally may feel like i'd like to be at all of the general listening sessions and if so there

132should be a way that we should be able to go about that either that or if you know i i don't feel like i need the permission of the rest of the board to post a thing that says hey i'm going to be at you know xyz coffee shop at 10 a.m feel free to come and talk to me but that is not something that we are discussing doing right now i think it's up to each individual if they want to do it but these are just i'm sharing the thoughts that are going through my head and my frustration with having not had a formal way established up until now to do that okay julie then mark okay i had a question on on the one two three the fourth bullet point on this slide

133hosted by two to three board members not on the committee community engagement committee does that mean that one of those three members is not supposed to be like taking the lead at that meeting or does that mean that i'm sorry you're on this you're on the community engagement committee you can't even show up i i guess i'm asking what does post mean in your mind host yeah so so this is what i was trying to to get at and this is only a you know this is this is trying to interpret um comments from the board over the last however long right so they could be accurate or i could have missed the target um so i was feeling like the community engagement committee as designated by the board um does you know depending does

134the engagement with stakeholders for the most part i was feeling the uh tension of their if you're not as if you're not on the community engagement committee you have no opportunity to engage with stakeholders so my thought was that the the committee deals with the much more structured groups of people but if we started listening sessions again i'm going to call them listening posts i'm going to call them listing posts and engagement sessions if we started listening posts that would give the the board members who are not on the committee opportunity to uh be in front of the public speak with the public things like that and so that was that was the intention of i mean it's just an idea if you guys hate the idea that's fine it's you know i was just

135trying to i was trying to be all things to all people is what i was trying to do does that happen the other thing i'd yeah a little bit um the other thing i'd like to mention um from my role as a teacher performer retired 10 years already i can't believe it but time plays when you're having fun um is that i really appreciated when there would be maybe two or three times a year there would be a couple of school board members who would make themselves available during lunch period times for staff if they wanted to just come in and chat um oftentimes the superintendent did the same kind of thing and i have felt that that's really sort of been um off-limits for school board members to to do that and i think

136maybe now is not the best time to have that discussion but i think it's i think it's important because the people who work in our buildings vote they are also our constituents i suppose we could say well here's when i'm here's where i'm going to be on such and such a day but we've also emphasized that when we are engaging communities that we go to where they are and not always expect them to come to us so i'm just throwing that out there for um some considerations thank you um mark you know building a little bit upon what melissa was saying is you know if these are scheduled to have time i i guess i failed to see why we couldn't just advertise them couldn't just meet the open meeting laws just couldn't have whomever

137from the school board wanted to be there to be able to be there within the rules that we have to abide by i do think it would be beneficial for the whole board because even when we have the best intentions of sharing what we've heard we're all going to hear different voices and different stories at the end of the day okay thanks mark don uh yes and you made it quite easy i appreciate the differentiation between listening post and engagement sessions this is simply a offering if you will [Music] to formally communicate it seems like uh the existing structure of engagement sessions as they've been known in the past as well as the creation of listening posts as they may relate to the future and i support both and whether it is a matter of

138fulfilling the public meeting notice and simply allowing listening posts to be able to be attended by all board members who are able or not certainly there should be structure still nonetheless but then also in listening to some of the comments of my fellow board members it seems like there was a question regarding the role of board members as it may relate to attending or engaging [Music] staff personnel which again under the auspices of listening post engagement sessions those are more so geared to the public not to suggest that staff is not public as well there probably is a role for board members to be accessible available to um much like when we were doing uh the uh referendum guess what board members were able to be a part of that process so i i think

139that's a good point to consider and then finally the role and this what you presented was not intended to necessarily address the efforts of individual board members uh to engage uh be it in virtual meetings uh slash surveys and or um uh speaking opportunities before uh groups or groups or the like and i i think it's important that we kind of uh you know stay focused on what is before us and then maybe park these other items to be addressed at some future or fully incorporated into what you're presenting tonight thanks don mark did you have something else no i'm sorry okay then melissa and kathy i just wanted to reinforce what i heard director rickman say about reincarnating our past practices and by us i mean the school board even though maybe none of

140the seven of us was on that school board but um of of being more accessible to staff um i think we maybe need to ask whether or not we were wanted rather than just you know show up at their buildings but i guess they wouldn't have to to come to the to the session if they weren't interested but um i i personally from those days was on the other side of the fence i was the constituent not the board member and i really greatly appreciated the effort that past school boards put into things like those listening posts i remember one being held at uh one of the meeting rooms in the public library i mean there's just a great variety of you know one was in a cafeteria style area but i really appreciated the

141variety of opportunities there were to have a personal conversation not just send an email or stand in front of the board in front of a public comments but um i think that it would be helpful for us to have some parameters on what we should and shouldn't engage in similar to how we have protocols for our email communications we should probably put some effort into developing you know what to do with different kinds of in-person interactions but anyway i just wanted to give a second to the idea of doing some more formal interfacing with staff and perhaps that is more the job of the community engagement committee except that as a board member that's something i'd like to personally be able to be involved with as well i wouldn't want the impression to get out

142there that there were only certain board members that were interested in taking input kathy um not to make this a um a reinforcement of other board members statements but i've heard a few board members say that they've been reluctant to participate in individually organized engagements with the public similar to what we see other elected officials and other positions doing in the city and the county um so and i agree with don while it might not be a topic for us to to reconcile tonight and i know deborah a lot of your research focused on what a board does sort of together on list on on this kind of engagement but is there is there anything that we know from other boards where there is a protocol or a procedure or policy or practice that says

143you know because a board because the school board works in this way those kinds of individual engagements are you know not helpful or it's oh sure other school board members and other districts do this all the time um but what i do like is that we're having this conversation after we've had that whole previous piece of this powerpoint because you know if we're all approaching our community engagement the same way whether we're doing it individually or whether we're doing it as a intentional work of a community engagement committee or whether we're doing it at a listening post i think it's going to be more comfortable for for ourselves and it'll be more comfortable for our constituents so i guess my first question is you know we have an impression of what we can and can't

144do is that is that right and um and how can we use this common um sensibility of how to do community engagement that you presented us tonight to sort of weave through whatever we do melissa did you have something sorry i'm distracted nope that's me forgetting to put my hand down got it i just noticed it so um so i don't i don't know that i can answer both of your questions kathy i would say um i i would say that in my experience um and my uh you know so experience meaning talking to other districts looking at other districts and some of the professional development that i've done on community engagement things like staff meeting with staff individual engagement engagement coffee hour type things um really are not common not um i won't go

145as far as say not best practice but i personally would have some reservations about that although and we're not going to talk about them tonight they are on my little side list here don also brought up speaking opportunities we know that those uh come up from time to time and although um by protocol you know that the chair speaks for the board but you know don has been asked to speak at things and and you know lets me know i think others of you have as well just in my term and i think that's that's fine um so so no i don't i don't see a lot of the things that have been mentioned here in terms of how we weave this going forward i don't i don't know that i have a direct answer

146other than um i just wanted you know i felt like because the need for what i would call authentic community engagement i think is becoming more and more important in our district in our city society et cetera i felt like we should have good conversation about what that means and some of the best practices and as it sort of you know it falls under the charge statement of the community engagement committee i thought this was a good time to do that and so that's sort of that was sort of the impetus what we do with it now i don't really know but um i guess we will we will see how it manifests going forward so i've got about 622 this is the end of my powerpoint i did not include my bibliography because that's

147in a word document it didn't make it over to the powerpoint so i will definitely send that out or send it to wendy to post but what else any other thoughts final thoughts other ideas things to continue or consider going forward to put on my little list here um julie and then i think yes to put this to put this on on your list i think it's really important that we have a discussion of the role of social media in our interactions with the public i've tried to make it clear to people on facebook that i'm not going to engage in a conversation real specifically about stuff but will provide information or source to that information um even when you even if a person says i'm not speaking for the whole board that sometimes comes

148across as yes indeed you are so that's a conversation for another day and i'd like to have it in the parking lot or some other place where it won't die yep thanks julie it is it is on one of my um is that my protocol list but thanks for bringing it up kathy um okay so two things i don't want to forget either um the first is when i was reading um the powerpoint i was i was thinking about um sort of laying the groundwork for our community in terms of the resources that they have to understand our communication pathways vehicles and you know we do have that school board page on the website and i was thinking about things like adding the communication there or adding a link to the district organizational chart there

149might help them to ask their question of the right person from the beginning so maybe as we're working through this process of engagement we can think about the kind of information that we want to be accessible to people when they're looking for our email address there might be some other resources that might help facilitate it and then um the next piece was um a note i know you just said i don't know where we go from here but maybe before we leave the conversation we could agree on some like next three steps so that we have a sense of for me it's time frame obviously we have so many um uh study sessions coming up with so many things i want i just want to know where it fits into the the whole plan um

150for our our own work plan um i will i will try to answer your question and help me if i don't and thank you for asking it so just reiterating what you were talking about was kind of uh continuing to create resources and uh localizing our resources in one place in terms of communicating with the board or how we communicate again um back to my i'm gonna get a t-shirt that says we're the only ones who explain how we do our work um in terms of moving forward specifically with the committee that's kind of an easy one because when we move on to committee assignments i think um you know my recommendation is going to be that every committee not every committee but that the committees the other committees of the board also kind of

151look at their charge statement and we sort of you know kind of re-up those all at the same time in terms of the listening sessions um didn't really think much farther than bringing forward the concept um i and of course not really knowing how the you know how the world is what what are going to be our opportunities you know it's going to be not more difficult but we're just going to have to get kind of savvy i would be i think it would be i think we could put those two things hand in hand and they're appropriate so that if we say in our next item for example we'd like to have renewed charge statements by this date maybe the first meeting in september or something like that and then at that at that

152time we will also have um uh you know put out a schedule for uh listing posts for the school year or something like that and then maybe just get some of those feedback um feedback from board members um you know via email like this would be a good time or this would be a good place or something like that so my my thought was that those would get scheduled in september and then they're on the calendar for the year wendy can put them on there they're out there um and then barring a snowstorm you know we've got a plan and i think um that makes uh that makes us feel more comfortable and that makes us more um accountable to the public kathy and thank you for that because um i think that i love

153the scheduling ahead of time but you know given that we have all these virtual tools now especially microsoft teams i assume that if we wanted to schedule something virtually we could probably access the technology the district has too right yep okay great i imagine so yeah yeah um [Music] okay julie yes um i was really impressed with all the information that was on slide six you don't need to go back to it but it had to do with input and feedback and i was thinking you know a lot of the things that were mentioned there especially the first section with four bullet points is really good too for how we actually conduct our meetings so it's something to something to think about moving forward can you say that you like yeah well yeah cause i

154can't okay um it's the words matter slide and it says um we will ask each person to quickly give their individual view set up the goal to get as many speakers as possible except that except that when we accept that when we add up everyone's response we know what people believe and focus on what people think um and then um you know way to you know considering different points of view and weighing choices and trade-offs and and those kinds of things so i mean i think we do a certain amount of that in our board meetings already but um just another perspective so i really thank you for those i thought they were really good thanks um yeah i i i i again let's let's tell people how let's tell people about our job it

155is difficult that we do our work in public and whether the topic is something as routine as milk bids or as complicated as budget right we we um i often feel like um i will speak for myself that i'm trying to listen to listen and respect what my colleagues are saying but i'm also formulating my own thoughts or questions and get a little distracted and focused on that and so it's not exactly what this slide is about but it does remind me of um i i appreciate that you're bringing this up and and how um how that this can inform our board work as well that we we um you know we need to we need to listen to each other more carefully and you know listen first to understand and all of that stuff

156and then make sure we're we're truly engaging with each other julie yep one more comment and then a request so my comment is that um you know i think it it's important for board members to let the public know that we aren't seeing materials for the very first time in a meeting that we do an awful lot of homework on our own which can vary depending on what the subject matter is so and then my request is if we could take a five-minute break before we begin the next discussion i'm sure you you would appreciate that deb i would appreciate that yes yes anything else board members thanks to wendy for running the screen so i didn't have to learn how to do that as well because there's just so many things thank you for

157cabinet members who have hung in there with us and participated uh either verbally or through chat that is much appreciated um and as i said uh i said to you in an email that you know we this is part of this is part of our teamwork so um appreciate that um if nothing else i am going to uh what's my language i'm going to recess the meeting at 6 31 and we will reconvene at 6 40. yes go ahead sorry um can i request ten minutes yes so six five six forty two okay thank you okay we will recess for ten minutes thank you good thing i wasn't muttering or anything all right right now okay hey mike and here i am again sorry i'm you're good all me at 6 43 p.m um okay

158we are on to committee assignments again apologies for my paper rustling that goes on here so the way i see it we have three three items before us and i'm taking these sort of out of order so i sent everybody late today the updated committee descriptions thanks to folks who who looked at these and submitted and got you know some updated language that's much appreciated i don't feel that we need to look at this together my suggestion is we have this in our in our hands that everybody look this over and then when we come back whenever to talk about committee committee assignment stuff like i mentioned in our previous thing um you know then we can maybe say yep we're good with that and it can be uh filed in the library of the

159board docs so um everybody look at every committee if there's things that you that stand out you don't understand please let me know if there's things that you disagree with please let me know this is not this is you know a pretty internal document just that we're this is kind of what we do so any questions about that there is one new committee on here and i think that if we we can't vote today but i think if we decide to um add a legislative committee we'll need to vote on that at the next meeting i don't think that should affect this discussion yeah yep um good point um and actually the um see jean's throwing me off track already um but totally teasing gene um committees of the board by policy are supposed to

160come before us in resolution so my suggestion is the policy committee the community engagement committee long-range planning and potentially legislative committee come back as a group resolution resolution that we can support as at the board level and vote on melissa thanks um another committee that has been floated in the past during various mostly study sessions has been the idea of a board governance committee this came up at least i remember specifically when we were doing the book study and there were times that we were looking at other districts policies and there are some districts that have their own self-governance policies but there's a lot of a lot of things that are are board work things that the board does for itself such as it's self-evaluation and those types of things that i think the board

161might benefit from having a subcommittee specifically designated to keep those things going rather than leaving them on the chairs plate so any any of the protocol types of discussions and documents that need maintaining any policies that we might or you know other other types of protocols that apply only to ourselves that aren't things that we necessarily get from mcgt my brain is blanking again but but i think that having a group of people uh internally to the board whose job it is to keep their attention on those types of tasks um i think it could facilitate us keeping our own work rolling maybe somebody else can jump in and remind me some of the other times that that concept has come up should have written it down gene sorry i forgot to lower my hand

162okay julie okay i i really i really like melissa's idea and it is something that we have talked about tangentially um during previous study sessions i think including maybe the one that we had with the um the gal who came from msba a year and a half or so ago um and if melissa would be interested in having some help in fleshing that out i would be more than willing to work on it with her if somebody else wants to jump in that's fine too but i think it's something we should at least seriously consider once we have a more specific description of it or maybe melissa you might even have that now my brain is not pulling things to the forefront as quickly as it should have i did not write it down which

163is just thought for sure i'd remember it done i'm just seeking clarification you weren't necessarily looking for ideas for new committees and or looking for the establishment of or working group of board members at this point were you i guess i asked i mean if director atmonson and and workmen want to work independent uh to come up with something to later present to the board i believe they could probably do that but uh um i support what is presently before us and asks you originally suggested take time to view it and uh what was your expected um your expectation of last when you suggested take time to review it what were you wanting us to do at some point in the future maybe identifying that point in the future you want us to review some

164if there are something in omissions or clarifications you want us to respond how uh directly to you or the exec committee how what would you like us to do yep thanks don um so uh pulling out a couple things from your statement so the um the updated committee descriptions that i sent out today um are a culmination of work um by a variety of board members over the last uh month since our june second meeting month and a half so just asking that everybody kind of look those over and make sure that they you know if there's if there's any concerns or questions yes funnel them back to me but they will you know i guess come back to the board in terms of consensus like yep this is this is how we understand committee

165x to work and that's fine um your second question i think is is more to um melissa's point about a new committee we did have discussion at the june meeting about forming new committees i guess i you know we can we can always talk about adding new committees i don't have an issue with that i am not fully understanding uh what julia melissa are envisioning so whether that is something um that gets discussed and fleshed out more tonight versus a proposal that gets worked on and comes back before the board i don't have a strong feeling of um don does that kind of answer your questions before i move on to someone else yes thank you okay um julie then kathy yes i'd like to say i'm really happy to see that this legislative committee

166is finally on a list of something that we might actually do i think i have been talking about this for at least the last five or six years and i can't tell you how delighted i am to see other school board members who are supportive of this committee so uh thank you all for for that i i really appreciate it because i think it's really necessary and we've got some excellent models from other school districts in terms of what their legislative committees do and i suspect that we could also find some models listen i could find some models of other school districts for a governance kind of policy or committee that they have as well kathy and then jean oh okay someone um i don't know if i'm missing something but where where do you

167see the legislative committee listed except on the chart of our potential committee assignment it's only on the chart kathy because there's no garbage all right good just wanted to make sure i wasn't missing something and um i think on the issue of the board governance committee i would agree that i don't think it's something we can hash out tonight but i do know it was a it was a notion and a conversation that came up in the policy governance book study and um i think if we all search through our notes we could probably find a list of things that we thought might be appropriate for that committee so i would i would be in favor of um i guess empowering um uh whoever was interested and and looking and seeing um what the best

168practices are for that for that option and revisiting it later gene exactly what kathy just said i think that's a great idea and julie and melissa thank you for volunteering to get that together and bring it back to the board okay oh okay um all right so um so here is our is our beginning task list right so every every board member is going to read the list of updated committee descriptions to make sure they can give that a thumbs up uh thumbs up is we'll use that instead of consensus at our meeting right because everybody can do that then the as i talked about earlier the board committees so community engagement policy and long-range planning my recommendation is to look at their charge statements um which are from march of 2015 i have them

169if you you can access them yourself there's the fishing rod or i probably have them all on one piece of paper and can send them to you but i can send those out as well and then the third thing on this piece would be proposal uh on some sort of i'm just going to call it a government's governance committee and a proposal for a legislative committee um and so holler if i haven't captured something melissa go ahead i noticed that rpsf remains on the committee assignments was that with an intention of it just being a liaison position or with the school board member remaining a full-fledged voting board member of rpsf and if not um was there going to be a letter as we discussed previously that would go to rpsf and ask for a

170bylaws change to remove the school board from the board of rpsf um yeah so i think i was unclear about i i remember talking about uh sending a letter asking to be removed from the bylaws i didn't remember if we which way we decided if we wanted someone um permanently assigned or not permanently assigned but assigned do you remember i think it would i mean my opinion that i expressed at the time was that it would be beneficial to have a board member with a relationship with the foundation you know on an annual basis but um i i did mention it at the last rpsf board meeting that there may be a request for the bylaws change so i just wanted to make sure that was something that was um still being intended of course

171at any time any school board members is welcome to be a full-fledged rpsf board member as not an assignment as a personal commitment right so so um so let's come to consensus on do we want to leave rpsf as an assigned committee i guess we're not voting so thumbs up thumbs down thumbs sideways [Laughter] julie's making a different shape with her hand so go ahead julie and we i'm mute though julie everybody deborah are you do you keep hitting my microphone now um okay you didn't miss anything um so i remember it as that we would send a letter to the rochester public school foundation to ask that we school board members be removed from the bylaws as a regular voting member but i absolutely agree with melissa i think it's really important for the

172board to maintain a um a relationship with the group because this foundation does amazing things for our students and um i fully i fully support the work that they do so i think it's it's also a good way for um for rpf to have a voice to report back to the board what they are doing or not doing in the case of this next year um for all of the grants and everything else that are going on so i think i think it's a real vital connection kathy i was going to support um what melissa and julie said and i think if we have an ongoing relationship with the rochester public school foundation in that they're providing the gift cards to recognize our above and beyond that you know having having a board member be

173able to commit to attending those meetings i think is is the least we can do um but i i i would defer to rochester public school foundation to make the case as to why they would need us to stay on the board so unless i hear otherwise about that i'm okay with asking them to take us out of the bylaws but um i don't know maybe just reiterating to board members that it's a good idea if we all take a turn making a connection with the organization through our participation thanks okay so what i'm hearing is that we we have consensus um and i would agree to to leave this as a committee assignment as a designated assignment um with the intention to ask to be removed from the actual voting body uh melissa is

174that um yep anything else that's good um i did have another question if we're moving on um hang up yeah go ahead um on the spreadsheet of tentative assignments i don't see area counsel yeah area council we took off um as um [Music] kathy do you wanna do you wanna i don't know if it's do you wanna speak to that it's on there it's not on the um assignment sheet oh right sorry i'm sorry um we're talking about the spreadsheet yes so the decision we made is as opposed to assigning one uh board member to cover it for the year is that we would send the board um area council but me would send the board a list of meetings uh that we have scheduled for the year and uh topics so that they know

175if there's something we're specifically going to talk about and give board members the opportunity um encouraged by the chair to attend at least one meeting a year and that the chair would um make sure we don't have more than four board members at a meeting and that the superintendent should he be so gracious to continue um attending our meetings to give the district update okay thanks okay so anything else on the committee uh the updated committee descriptions anything else melissa your hands up so thank you i just can't manage that hand thing we need somebody assigned to well um wendy does it sometimes but i i don't know we always catch them okay so we've discussed that piece the committee descriptions for lack of a better term future committee proposals bylaws change um and uh

176okay so we're going to set that aside and move on to the purpose statement now again apologies that this didn't come much earlier but this was this is pretty similar to what we looked at last month in terms of um what was brought forward then and i i tried to i didn't hear specifically any changes i just tried to incorporate anything that folks said so um this is more the uh purpose procedure piece of committee assignments um and oh so i was i was describing it to julie today because i was wearing well i wasn't wearing a pta hat i was wearing my school board hat all day but in pta world we talk about every pta unit has bylaws and most of you probably know what bylaws are like they're wordy legally kind of

177fussy statements but pta has moved to having in addition to bylaws having standing rules and standing rules are more flexible in terms of when you can change them so my analogy was that we have policy and we have policy that might oversee committee assignments or committees but we could have purpose or procedure documents that are a little bit more flexible and easy to change versus having to do the more formal thing of a policy so that's sort of where this came from so so this this document just goes over why we think it's important to attend a committee and then this was the proposed language we talked about last time that was my proposal um certainly open to whatever uh other board members um suggestion um that in january the newly elected chair chair and

178vice chair immediately assume assume particular committees the newly elected board members fill the seats fill the committees of those seats that they are filling you guys understand what i'm saying there if they're unable to fulfill that they talk with the chair then in may we do the committee list much as we've done this year with the survey in june we discussed the relevance any addition subtractions chair assigns committee assignments based on preferences time limitations balance of assignments other criteria um let's see uh then just the additional things i put on here suggestions if board members aren't able to send attend a single meeting they may ask any or all colleagues to attend in their place board members who have difficulty attending their assigned committee should discuss alternatives with the chair so um feedback on the

179purpose policy piece not sorry purpose purpose procedure any other p words we need to put in this uh melissa go ahead um i think it's uh excellent um started a structure um i'm a little bit confused in the very first section um this is the first section the committee assignment purpose by attending a committee the board members should be clear that they are bringing information to the organization that would maybe make more sense if we were talking about external committees because that's not what we're doing in internal committees but i'm i'm still not really clear with that sentence or part of the sentence i'm wondering i don't have a suggestion for improving it i'm hoping somebody else might understand my confusion with it i think that i don't remember if i um if i wrote

180this or if it was a pardon me my phone is ringing a lot today um now it's worse excuse me put it over here i don't know if i wrote this or if i pulled it from somewhere doesn't matter i agree it's a little confusing i think what i was i was i think the the intention behind that piece was that um was probably about the authority that it's it's an informational and yes it does look much more directed to external committees that you attend but you're not making uh promises or agreements on behalf of the board and then the second piece of that is the receiving information that directly supports board governance especially in terms of policy community engagement or long-range plans for the district um was um just so that when we if

181if an external committee comes and asks us to be to serve on their uh to join them let's say we need to know that it's appropriate to the work that we do but we definitely can clean up that language so thanks yeah i'm thinking that maybe i mean when i when i'm working with other um committees like i'm on youth commission i i don't think i'm expected to bring information to them um i think i'm there to be a liaison i wonder if we can even make that wording a little bit more general because it seems like the responsibility to bring information to the organization is not always the expectation of the organization right i think and and um i think it's um in terms of bringing i guess maybe my my thinking was maybe

182it's not the purpose when you go to youth commission that you're bringing information but you may be asked to provide information right so an informational role serving in an informational capacity yeah i i would just i would just recommend making that a little bit more of a catch-all statement okay julie i'm gonna let julie um jump in yeah okay so it says by attending a committee is that by attending a committee meeting or is that by serving on a committee i'm i'm the words are not making a whole lot of sense to me as to which way you intended that or both because you can't just attend a committee i i suppose i meant committee meeting or by serving on a committee and then the board should um and then uh bringing information to the

183organization and are receiving information that directly supports board governance especially in terms of policy so that means that when we report back to the board we shouldn't report anything unless it directly supports board governance because that that will probably wipe out most of our committee reports right there so i'm feeling like you're uncomfortable with this language and we've had this language for a while so um well i apologize because i looked for it i asked you a couple days ago if you could send that to me again and i didn't get it so um you're right i haven't looked at it recently until you know it came out this afternoon so if um if you would uh like to propose some new work on proposing some new language i'm fine with that i don't i

184don't even necessarily think that we need a purpose my intention was that looking at information from other districts that they were just their purpose was was why why committee work is important was more what i was going towards versus getting bogged down in the weeds of the particular okay sure i'm happy to take on that task and you might just get it back exactly the way it looks now so don't be surprised with anything any other feedback on the first paragraph purpose statement okay all right procedurally so this was a procedure that we started talking about last time i tried to incorporate anything that got brought up there's still some things that i i have on my copy that hi that were highlighted that didn't really get discussed but any feedback here gene yeah i

185like the idea that um a number of committees will be for two years and that there will be and i i think this is indicated by your chart that you come up with later when there are two or three members on a particular committee that one will roll off is others stay on so that there won't be complete upheaval in any committee with all new um members i think that's really smart and that people could be on the same committee for two years anyway um i guess the question is you know it says here that when there are new board members who come on they will assume the membership of the following committees but my question is will most committees then change membership in january or in the fall like august or september the chart

186looks as if it's going to be the turnover is going to happen in january am i reading that wrong i won't say you're reading it wrong i think i just looked at i didn't think so much about january versus june i looked i was trying to in the chart which i don't want to move too much into the chart before we finish this piece of paper and i know you're not pushing us there but um that i tried to to chunk things into half years knowing that um that we you know we get if we get new board members they're coming in january we get a new chair vice chair in january so if that seems to be the more logical time that's fine we know we've had you know discussion back and forth about

187you know feeling strongly about committees that run school year versus calendar year um i i don't know um i i think there's cases to be made either way so i've sort of um well honestly i kind of just sort of ignored that whole piece how's that for an answer my really long answer okay truly yeah i i like i basically like the format um that i see here but when i first looked at it i thought oh my gosh she just planned out like five years worth and then i realized it was in in the half-year segment so um that was actually rather a relief um so i like i like the format i like the way you did it i really like the color that you assigned to me that was awesome and okay

188don't get too far on the chart though julie because we're not quite there yet okay okay sorry sorry no okay you would ask i think there was something on the on the um document about when newly elected board members which is why i was actually looking at the chart so i think yeah we've been round on round and round on this before i think that we should keep it the way it is in terms of actually reviewing our committee assignments in august or july in this case before the new school year starts and then it'll just make it easier to um if there are new board members to assign them to the board seat that they are in um so example i'm in seat four so if somebody were to win my seat they will

189eventually um then they would take over my assignments um rather than um doing everything all at once because this would also this would give continuity for the year and it would also um give new board members the opportunity to have a little bit better idea about what all the committees do um rather than having to say well i you know i don't like this committee that you've assigned to me can i have a different one because they won't have experienced it so i like like what you had to say about newly elected board members um thanks kathy i agree um everything that's here looks really good um the only piece um that i'm wondering if we want to add and we might know this better once we've done it but is the handoff of um

190committee um responsibilities documentation uh knowledge from one board member to the next um you know like for the policy committee i know there's the binders that we have to hand off but maybe if there's just a step in this process especially if it's a mid-year mid-school year where the old board member and the new board member who's assigned to the committee can you know somehow collaborate on like a mind nose or something okay so how about this um kathy how about if we just add under additional procedures something about [Music] and i'm going to ask you to write it because you brought it up you don't have to write it now but you know something about when committee when committee change happens um board members should work together to make sure that information is shared

191or something like that is that is that fair okay great i like that um yeah the other the other thing that got um you know to gene's point about the um you know when we change and things like that um i was really trying to capture a couple different things so that that doesn't always fit into one we're not looking at the chart yet but um you know we talked about um longer term limits you know do we do them for two years versus one year some districts have um two years out um and then the other the other idea which um which we've talked about and i i is reflected in the chart when we get there but it's kind of that staggering or stair step so our committees are board committees that have

192three people on them and student school board that has two that we would always re retain somebody um to kind of be the overlap as new people came on and to me in some ways that kind of felt more more important than you know worrying about the date that things change so that's that's what i tried to go to um in the chart however having said that and ruminating on this today and i'm still not talking about the chart folks but um is you know by policy the chair is supposed to assign the committees so if we're assigning them for two years you know really only one chair every two years gets to do that but you know we can we can suss that out a little bit later when we get there i don't

193think it's a hill to die on by any means um the other things on my list and i i don't want to have a protracted discussion um i i would prefer that we kind of start with a you know high level general uh purpose procedure statement but other things that have come up are um you know philosophically do do we want all board members to rotate through all committees you know do board members only serve on committees they're interested in um so those are some things that we may have we may have a difference of opinion about we may have to address we may not um and then also um as uh well okay two sorry two things um when we did talk about the the possibility of two-year assignments even one-year assignments you know

194do we have for lack of a better word uh term limits right um like yes you can re-up you know once or twice whatever i don't know i don't have strong feelings i'm just bringing forward issues that have come up um and then the other thing that um has come up a little bit just as chair and those of you have been there have you know maybe had this when we're doing committee assignment work is you know what what do you do when you have um you know you have one committee and you have three people express interest in serving on it and then how do you um you know it's kind of at the discretion of the chair and so um i think just that recognition that um and we've all done work like

195this sometimes it just gets a little uh futsy trying to um be all things to all people i will leave it with that um so just wanted to point that out kathy you have your hand up that was a no sorry okay kathy's in a new room of her house that i've never seen before so i'm kind of wondering where she's at um it's a it's a it's a provided microsoft teams background oh that's totally funny because i just thought you were somewhere else in your house okay um okay anything else on procedures julie oh on procedures no well maybe um the only the only committee that's going to get messy is going to be the policy committee depending on who is vice chair that could affect the membership right um so just like would

196like to throw that out there yeah yeah i'm done thank you okay so um so this is my proposal then looking at the purpose i'm calling it the purpose procedure document um julie melissa are going to work on the first part kathy's going to work on adding a sentence about the handoff other than that it's i'm not hearing anything major but of course if you go home and well i guess you are all home if you look at this later and say well i this doesn't jibe jive for me or or i don't understand this um please reach out and then again we will put this on our list of things to come back to the board and sign off on um along with everything else um with the committee descriptions okay all right anything

197else going once going twice got it okay all right now everybody can look at the colorful one if they so desire and i will try to explain how i tried to pull everything all the thoughts in my head together so um what what i was you guys know that i'm kind of i'm i'm visual i'm a visual person and so i i was trying to make all these different iterations written down on pieces of paper trying to figure out um who had which committees and which committees needed who which people and how many people and how long people should be on them and how to do the stair stepping thing and so finally i just put it this way i realized that there were i think what did i figure like 19 spots for lack

198of a better word that that we need to fill each each whatever portion of time um i cut i originally started cutting these in half years because of um because of this is an election year so um i actually started uh mark and don and i since we're up for election we were the only ones that were colored in and then then i decided that it would just be easier to represent everybody in a color and then i kind of tried to fill things in as best i could and then sort of double check and make sure um you know looked at how many committees everybody had and was it equitable does it need to be equitable what did that look like so um so what you see before you is sort of my brain

199dump based on the survey results i got back um when people expressed interest in committees um and then you'll also see there's some shaded committees one that has don or melissa just as a suggestion but it sounds like what we've talked about with legislative no i take that back i don't know if legislative committee needs two people or if it should be three i don't have an opinion but since the other ones had three i put three in that one other shaded things are just suggestions of perhaps who could take that committee knowing that uh you know certainly um uh don mark and i are you know for not re-elected it would be that third it would be the replacement seat um so um kind of apologies for how i did this but um just

200looking for some feedback pro con yes no hate it love it doesn't make any sense um let's dig in okay it's either so perfect that everybody's like yeah i love it or it's so terrible and everybody's like i don't want to start it looks like kathy and then melissa um i i had to put my glasses on because it's very small on the front of the cage so um nope um no i i i like the um i was i i like the transition and the um the blocking together of the work um i haven't really taken a look at whether you know like i'm looking at the community uh curriculum committee and it looks like there's a transition there at the end of the end of a school year um so i think once

201we've established a pattern um you know it's we can't say now that it's that it's right or wrong you're absolutely right but i think once we establish a pattern we'll know whether we can transition a committee in the middle of a school year or not effectively um and i haven't gone through each committee to see you know whether or not that's happened but for example i don't know much about the long-range planning committee to see can you serve on that from january or can you serve on that from uh january to june and come in on it halfway in the school year i don't i don't know much about that right right and some of those committees i would say are um i guess i would say are less important in terms of transition because

202there's other board members on them and so that was where i was trying to get the stair step right versus the the community committees honestly if if i you know i probably looked at those more in terms of school year um but again it was just sort of my playing around with it looks like melissa and then julie um i i think it's great to have it um laid out visually i i agree with you um to have the visual for those of us who understand it better um if i were at some point going to be putting it together myself i would find it helpful to also have the chair assignments the things that chairs always are assigned to just because it would help a little bit with the idea of balancing it so

203the chair doesn't get too much responsibility i agree i i agree i took i didn't put them on here because i thought it gets confusing and then when i started adding things up then i was like oh but i already have a chair i have two additional commit committees so thanks because it's a beautiful piece of work and i expect it to be used for decades to come maybe having a key at the bottom because i don't know what p slash f is what's p slash f oh parent family engagement or parent family i don't know if it's p p p the abbreviation so it doesn't get out of hand but it just might be nice to have a key otherwise i think it's beautiful and i also wanted to just jump in here i

204mean i'm i'm honestly and truly okay with anything that i'm assigned to my first year i was like oh please don't give me the insurance committee because i don't know anything about that but you know honestly i'm good with it i'm good with anything and i just wanted to reach out to my fellow board members i had mentioned to deborah that i wouldn't mind a heavier load of committee meetings because i i feel like as a new board member i really learn a lot from my participation on them and the rotation through them so um i would reach out to my fellow board members to say that if they find themselves in a position where they're overwhelmed with committees i'd be happy to take on an extra committee or two and that i would really

205love the opportunity to substitute in when somebody isn't able to go for scheduling conflict reasons that i would see this as an awesome opportunity to learn about some of the committees just to be able to attend even once so thanks melissa um i'm i'm coming to you julie but i just want to share a couple other things um that i was also trying to balance um when i looked at the board committee so policy long-range planning community engagement legislative i was also trying to kind of balance those between us right so that somebody's not on all four of them or the same people aren't on this you know two of them or things like that and so that just became an additional not a challenge but just something i was trying to to look at

206in terms of balance and then um you know there were a few committees um that board members uh you know gave me feedback that they can't attend either from time or interest so you know that is factored in here as well and um you know we are uh we are fortunate that um the board members that we we have have spent um consider a considerable amount of time on some of these committees outside their boardwork so for example melissa spent a lot of years working for gateway i don't know that you really need to be the board i was trying not to put you as a board rep because you're already involved in the organization or have been so well it would be very difficult for some people i think to wear two hats i

207i when i participate on some of these i prefer to be free to be the advocate and not the board members so i mean the board school board representative so i really appreciate that that type of input as well perhaps that's something that could be added to our procedures document as a consideration okay say that again please um the procedures document because it just occurred to me um if if a school board member has a problem being the school board liaison because they would like to be free to work for the organization in a different role perhaps that's input that could be taken okay so kind of like a almost like a conflict of interest or conflict of exactly i mean it's not really a conflict of interest because i think all these organizations work

208for uh the same purpose we're all on the same team but right but it just a blending of roles that would be difficult to balance yep thanks okay julie sorry i'm getting too i don't know if you were your hand was like it felt like your hand like you were raising it like you were so excited and i wanted to get you in here but i wanted to get those two things in so no no that's fine that's fine i'm i mean i'm actually remembering what i was going to say so two things first of all um and i think this would really really be helpful um either the chair can assign who's going to be the chair of each of these committees or the committee itself can work it out i mean according to

209policy the chair is supposed to do that um because i think there needs to be a point person for each committee so that if somebody's going to be absent everybody knows about it um and for the committees that have two or three people already they probably don't need somebody to sub in for them um just in terms of making sure it's covered but for there are a couple committees i think where there's only one person on the committee so um you know those would be the more um i don't want to say more important but yeah you know they would need to be covered they would need to be covered so kind of an if um if this then sort of right you know so if so if yeah right i'll leave it at that

210thank you thanks melissa i just wanted to echo that i i think that's a great idea if it's um because sometimes you need a person to take the lead i know uh on student school board this year i mean gene was was clearly um an amazing uh organizer and administrator and if i had to take the lead on that i wouldn't have known what to do so i think i think some of them would benefit from having a person designated as the chair or the lead board member or especially for things like sending out materials getting meetings scheduled i think that would be uh really useful and going back to a question you had asked before i think the the legislative committee would benefit from having three people on it i think there's a lot

211of research to be done a lot of homework to be done and there's just a lot of work to go around when when um when the legislature is in session or when issues come up okay thanks melissa um oh and i i have full confidence that you can handle the insurance trust committee i think your brain works that way i just i think you you handle those big concepts it is really exciting i think i get overwhelmed when i was a newborn member i got overwhelmed with new concepts and that was one of them but i i feel really good moving forward on it so thanks i actually really like it just don't make me the clerk because i'm going to forget to push the button okay still have nightmares about that so i live

212the nightmares um okay so um let me see okay i'm gonna step back and do some um summarizing because you know i like to do that um so i've heard adding to the chart the chair positions a key um or the chair committees um [Music] some you got to see where my notes go i have written down subbing what the heck was i where are we talking about what was there something about elsa about subbing that wasn't in procedures that that was me just that um i i think what i it wasn't for procedures i think i just made the note that i would appreciate the opportunity okay um somebody can't go was it when i was talking that you wrote that no tone it possible yeah just just that that i think it's a

213good opportunity for other board members yep so um yep so we'll put that in there so just as a as a note to everyone if you can't make your committee you're the only one going please don't just skip it please put it out for asking someone to um to take it for you don't feel like that's a intrusion or asking too much right i think that's what we were going for with that so i've heard melissa and i saw julie shaker had interest in having three people on the legislative committee so as you as you can see in the chart i don't know that we need to you know make a decision tonight necessarily my suggestion was don or melissa just kind of looking at the overall number of committees and i'm also if either

214one of you wants to speak strongly being for or against on that committee that's fine or we could wait until we see the sort of charge statement of that committee so you kind of know what you might be getting into before you weigh into it that's fine as well and yes sir i would actually be interested in that one as well since i'm actually very involved in that aspect of a different non-profit organization okay and and a side note the july 21 through december 21 he gave me a vacation for that whole six months which okay which one is it hang on it's the center row oh look at that hang on mark you don't want to vacation yeah one one apparently oh man hang on because i i swear i had everybody written down

215on okay pardon my paper ruffling i'm going to try and ruffle quietly i know it's here somewhere it's in a pile of paper i swear the audience must just think i'm a ding-a-ling okay so i assure the audience yes you're right mark i have you two i have you i think i kind of just um i think i ran out of steam holy what happened so yes we will plug you back in there mark somewhere um probably not right this minute oh okay i don't know i lost you i think i took you off something and then i probably sunsetted you somewhere and then didn't get you back on something so i wouldn't mind bumping down out of the the first long planning or long-range planning spot okay i really like that committee i know

216you do mark but but it never met when i was on it so i might fight you for it i'd like to go to at least one meeting actually um i don't know if i should well see i said that now i have to say it aloud but um we did discuss um very briefly nobody chiseled chisel it in stone but that perhaps the long-range planning um committee could work on some budget reduction thoughts not not the thoughts themselves processes budget reduction processes okay so now everybody's going to go oh i want to be on that committee right um julie go ahead okay um yeah i was going to say the long-range planning committee and it's one of its earlier iterations deborah i'm not sure if you were on the board then but i think

217you were it was um also included a budget piece um right which is why i don't think that we thought that would would be a good place for something like that to live um long-range planning pretty much got eaten up by the um facilities task force work which you know right it's fine but um right and i was going to say and i was going to say um if if you're talking about process for for budget uh reduction i would absolutely recommend that melissa be on that because she's had a lot of experiences with that already and has we've chatted a little bit and has some really great ideas about what we need to do and when we need to do it and just setting up ethical structure so you've gone we'll learn i'm wondering

218if that wouldn't be a good ad hoc committee actually [Music] yeah no yeah i hear what you're saying but i think because they haven't done much other work that it's it i would i would absolutely agree if i thought that that committee was really engaged otherwise and that's something i mean we can revisit i can't hear anybody is it just me i was just thinking the same thing anybody talking i heard deborah say we can revisit and then it cut off debra are you still with us i can hear melissa wendy is deborah still with us something went wrong for debra for deborah and she's trying to get back into the meeting awesome be patient please well i'm glad it's not just me ellen in the absence of the chair i wonder if this is

219an okay time to discuss a relatively unimportant issue about having a point person for each committee should that be board appointed or committee decided are you thinking um neither one because in policy it says that the point person should be or the chair of the committee would be i suppose the same thing as the point person so the chair can either appoint that person or i suggested that about 10 minutes ago maybe that perhaps the committee might want to decide who its point person or chair committee would be for the policy committee it's always the vice chair so right all right okay but for this group you know what our recommendation be i mean i just as a discussion what would we feel more comfortable with you hear that okay in the situations where um

220there's a senior member and a junior back intentionally maybe it makes sense to have the senior member automatically be that person but i again i would say an internal decision would probably choose the senior member as the point person so maybe having it internally selected is a good way to go okay okay thanks um i just realized when as i heard you saying that that was my other thing that um assigned chair was that what you were discussing um yeah for each committee okay okay you somebody write that up and tell me what you said okay yeah the discussion was yeah one where the other um got it there's a few people you know an internal decision might be easier um more effective efficient okay um okay then the other things i wanted to point

221out a thing or things um on this chart is um as you can see amsd just has julie there for the next um two periods um amsd is is i i don't feel super comfortable assigning much further out than that because it is such a very specific time frame committee i mean unless somebody really says yeah i'll take it next year i'm willing to get up at the crack of dawn and drive to the cities um i did not want to assume that that was a committee that just anybody could make so that is why that committee is left off there so any other questions yes melissa you're huge on my screen so you go i'm the only one leaving my camera and i think um so amsd which i've never had the pleasure of

222serving in that capacity is just attending a meeting yes so is there any reason that couldn't be two people no um so it kind of varies between districts um some districts the the designee is the chair and then you know it's the chair and another person attend um amsd is really i think it's open to all of us and obviously you came to the the one um conference or day of thing um i don't i don't know how many of us were on the online conference this year so it kind of varies between districts and you know julie can attest to this when i stopped talking and let her talk that you know some districts have a few people there some have one it just really depends go ahead julie yeah i think for i

223i did i still do it a couple different ways um because i'm not a crack-a-dawn person and so i end up going third up thursday night which ends up costing the district something is i always look at the agenda ahead of time to see is there anything that really is pertinent to rochester that i'd like to be able to attend and ask questions if necessary or chat briefly with scott afterwards um about so i honestly i love the virtual meetings because i mean it's perfect you don't have to get up early as early and you don't have to go anywhere and it's and it's it's you know it's cost free for for the district so um yeah and i would say you know the the amsd also taught also really ties in with the legislative

224committee for the legislative piece because we do get does every is everybody on their email list do you does everybody get those updates from msc if not i'm happy to send them out um as to what's you know what's on the table for any particular time i mean a lot of issues are the same as they are for generally for msba there's a lot of overlap and i think probably um also for the superintendent organization as well we we share a lot of the same issues moving forward and recommendations to the legislature and that kind of thing they also have some very interesting speakers too so so other than the expense of the travel and the overnight if the person chooses to do that there isn't a per meeting attendance fee so that if somebody

225wanted to come along with you just for fun assuming they're not going to charge the expense account on it they could do that but i'm also thinking new school board members as you know now having a year and a half under my belt um i think it would be awesome for the any new school board members in the future to have it a turn attending one just to learn what it is right oh and school board members are welcome at any time it's not limited to just one i mean we pay dues to amsd um and that includes all of the meetings except i don't know if there's a fee for the conference the happy conference or i think there is but um otherwise it does it's no additional cost to the district for that

226and um you know i'm i'm always happy i think i've asked wendy any any number of times wendy is anybody else going up on friday morning for this it's the first friday of the month and if somebody else is going it's kind of like okay i'll go up early so i don't have to drive because you do not want me on the road at 5 30 in the morning behind the wheel of a car thank you thank you for the benefit of public safety you died um [Music] that answers my questions about asd thank you thanks um okay anything else um that somebody's seen on this chart other than again i'm trying to recap um i lost mark somewhere in there sorry mark mark has expressed interest in a couple other spots so i'll i'll

227take a look at that and see where i can get him back in any other land what let's just work on that maybe tomorrow yes yes absolutely yep i'm just asking if there's anything else that i need to add to this or any anything else people want to express melissa just me and my hand okay all right okay so is it okay with everybody advise consensus that this is this is an okay format i should go ahead and update it a little bit and send it back out and then this we can just kind of move forward with this plan until we hate this plan and somebody wants to change it that's good enough for this evening sounds good okay thank you very good i think it's a good format and good organization and thank

228you deborah for waiting through i'm sure some very confusing responses including mine i did figure yours out after a while kathy but you know i did a little brain melding and i got it together so but um and thanks to all of you um so we i believe we have some assignments going forward i think that's a good thing um so we know it is uh the end of july we have two meetings in august and a study session in august already and a meeting the first of september um kathy your hand is up do you have something else i do as you speak of our study sessions coming up um i know that we've gotten some indication of what topics or what in some of the updates but is it possible for you to

229send us a comprehensive list even if it's potential topics just so we know it is um gene your friend jean has taken that on this week i just need to um i think just wendy mike and i just need to to confirm that that's what was talked about and then they'll have that should be out later this week so um thanks for bringing that up and much thanks regine to solidifying what was on scraps of pieces of paper all over my desk well just it was a group effort and everything in the parking lot has been unparked or re-parked or anyway it's all on there we're on the we're on the parkway instead of the parking lot now oh that was good that was a very good yeah that that's impressive thanks okay okay all

230right um so i think i'm gonna let us go for the evening thanks um for the hard work that you've done in preparation of this meeting thanks for the hard work you're going to do after this meeting thanks to i see john and superintendent for hanging there in there with us and wendy of course she doesn't have much of choice but john does hi john thanks for being here john i'm i i will i will extend i'm taking my point of purple personal privilege and i see two more hands but um you know i i miss everyone i got to see a few cabinet members today because i came in as they were kind of leaving the building and you know we talk about relationships with our kids and teachers and kids and i sure

231miss the times we have to chat with cabinet before and after our meetings and of course you all as well so um just sending that appreciation uh julie and then kathy yeah yeah i would just really like to express my appreciation to you deborah for putting all this together i mean it's kind of like herding squirrels with all these assignments and trying to keep everybody happy and all of that i know it was a tremendous amount of work at times it was probably a huge headache for you so um i know you put in hours and hours and hours with your board chair work and it's very much appreciated and i'm fine with my committee assignments and um so you don't have to worry about hearing anything from me thank you you will see all

232my hair is still intact um kathy is it more gray you have gray in it i mean not too bad um i i will i will second what um director workman said i am also happy with my committee assignments and um since you said that the superintendent was still here i'm wondering my email buzzed during the meeting about the information that was sent out to the world about our plans for the fall and i'm wondering if he wants to take the opportunity to announce the event on thursday night sure we are going to host the town hall meeting to take any questions or feedback on the plans that was sent out today to parents and then later this week we have a little bit different version that will be going out to staffs but thursday

233i do believe it's scheduled for 5 30 to 6 30 and we will be putting out the link for that here sometime tomorrow i do believe um thursday and two days thursday and two days okay thanks um so thanks for uh bringing that to our attention thanks for setting that up mike and um and because i'm just that punchy at the end of the evening now think about what we talked about earlier what kind of event is this are we informing are we engaging what is our promise to the public so let's let's put what we've i asked us to put what we've learned tonight into practice and appreciate getting our stakeholders involved in our planning this is as i said to to mike recently there was no uh book there was no chapter in

234the superintendent's handbook about how to handle a pandemic and distance learning so appreciation for all the work that you've done in conjunction with cabinet and every staff in the district so thanks so much all right all right well i'm going to say goodnight folks and see you soon stay safe stay masked up and i will call this meeting adjourned at 7 thanks