April 22, 2024 Special School Board Meeting

001so we will call the special board meeting of the ISD 181 Board of Education to order starting with roll call please Kelly Kevin Bo here Michelle bre here djer herey here Sarah here John here thank you and we'll do the Pledge of Allegiance please I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under godible with liberty and justice for all Justice for thank you right so this meeting of the uh brard School Board is being conducted in accordance with Minnesota statute 13 d02 this meeting is being recorded and access to the recording will be made available on the school district's website at some point in the near future uh we'll move along to the approval of this agenda as presented please so

002moved I'll second so we have a motion from director Spear and a second from director Breen any discussion hearing none roll call vote please Michelle bre yes D yes Randy Hyman yes Sarah spear yes John Ward yes kin Bo yes great thank you uh since this is a special school board meeting there is no public input uh at at this particular meeting we'll have it again on May 13th at our regular uh regularly scheduled Schoolboard meeting um next up we have Barb who's been gracious enough to join us virtually today to walk us through first the review of the search timeline and process so take it away Barb great thank you very much nice to see everyone again I appreciate the opportunity to join you to talk about next steps in the superintendent search process

003um there's going to be a couple of um housekeeping items today as well as some bigger items that we're going to be going through so the first thing I wanted to touch on was the timeline and I'm not going to review it in detail because I know that you have all seen this it's also on the district website just want to remind all of your stakeholders they can find it on the website if you go to the brainer Public Schools website in the upper right hand corner of the homepage you could click on superintendent search and you'll find all of this information in there as well so uh today's meeting is a special meeting we're going to talk about uh the stakeholder report that's going to be the first item I am going to cover

004and then we're going to talk about the options for additional stakeholder involvement beyond the stakeholder report we're also going to talk through interview training it's very important that you're comfortable with the process and how it's going to unfold in both round one and round two want to answer any questions you have about the interview process as well and then we're going to wrap up with uh those housekeeping items as well as um some proposed interview questions for you to use at least in round one so so that's the overview of what I'd like to cover I think the timeline the real applicable dates are uh yesterday at midnight was the deadline for applications so April 21st at midnight you did end up with nine applications in the pool which for this time of year is

005quite good and uh we have not had a chance to begin our vetting process yet uh however I know that you've received an email or all of you should have received an email about Rellis that's the secure location up in the cloud where you're going to be able to start looking at these tomorrow so I would ask that you follow those instructions to get um a username and a password created just for yourself you're the only person that can use that when you start looking at these applications please remember they contain private data so you must be very careful where you are viewing the applications I just be real cognizant of the fact that you if you are in public or in your office kitchen table coffee shop Anyone Who Walks Behind you might glimp

006a resume or a cover letter or something like that so please be aware of the fact that you need to watch these when or look at these when no one else could be watching what you're looking at on your screen if there is anyone who would prefer to look at these in hard copy just let me know and I will work with the HR team in brainer public schools to make sure you have one set of hard copies available in the district office you need to make an appointment to go in and review those with them they have to stay there when you leave you can't take copies with you or screenshots or anything like that but hard copies of the applications are an option for anyone who's not comfortable looking at everything up in

007the cloud and then the next thing on the timeline that we'll be getting ready for is the meeting on April 30th at 1 o'clock that is the meeting where I'll be bringing to you our recommendations of who we feel best align with your leadership profile and the stakeholder summary report which we're going to be going over here in just a moment at the conclusion of that meeting depending upon what the board chooses to do you do not have to take our recommendations you've seen the applications yourself so you may choose to interview folks we are not recommending or choose um not to interview folks that we're recomending that'll be entirely up to the board so that uh conclusion of that meeting is when those names go public and everyone else's names that did apply for

008this position need to remain private forever so please remember that again board members and we'll talk about that a little bit more in interview training those are really the highlights of the upcoming timeline in process um are there any questions on that before I start with the biggest item on the agenda which is the stakeholder report all right Randy has a question yeah are we going to be talking today about questions uh and this meeting is being recorded correct correct um we're not going to be discussing specific questions or questions in general uh I mean cuz I um you know if this is going to be placed on the on the board's website um before we get involved with some of the interviews and Etc uh the folks will have a idea of what the

009questions are going to be so what's the right what's the time frame as far as making this uh recorded uh meeting public it will go uh public as soon as you typically might do however I'm glad you asked that thank you very much because um there are 30 six questions that I've drafted that reflect your leadership profile and the stakeholder summary report so Kelly has hard copies of those I also emailed them to DJ at the end of this meeting I'm going to ask you each individually to go through and circle maybe two in each category that you as individuals prefer and then I'm just going to do a quick tally how many liked question one how many liked question two how many liked question three and then when we're done we'll see how many

010questions We've Ended up with and we can talk about the questions but only from the perspective of what number are they because you're absolutely right we don't want to have some candidates be more prepared than others so we're going to try to keep questions under wraps and discuss them by number only at least to the best of our ability thanks does that answer your question you bet you it does thank you any other questions for any other questions nothing on this end shoot great well interrupt me at any point please um what's going to happen now when I start screen sharing is that I can't see any of of you anymore all I can see is my screen so please uh don't feel like you're being rude if you want to shout out and say

011hey Barb stop talking I have a question for you I'm not going to be able to see arms being raised so the first thing I want to um share is the stakeholder survey so let's see here we practiced this I'm going to screen share a window stakeholder survey report there we go can you see this a yes or a no great and we practice this seems to be large enough for folks in the room to be able to see and I'm going to be scrolling down throughout the entirety of this report here so U one thing you'll notice here is that it was open from the 3 until the 14th so it's only open 11 days and during those 11 days I want to congratulate and thank everyone in the district you had 1,128 people

012complete this survey that's phenomenal for a district of your size we would have expected to see about 730 735 so the fact that you had over 1100 people shows a tremendous amount of interest in this survey um process so thank you very much for that to anyone who filled us out that's a terrific response here's an outline of the results we ask folks to identify what hat they were wearing when they filled out this survey and you'll see here that just over half 52% identified themselves as a parent or Guardian eight 18% as a community member and almost 177% as a staff member the rest were divided among business owners agriculture um other or student and I sometimes get asked who's an other well people do identify in different ways so sometimes it would be

013um a grandparent or a former staff member or former board member and Community member lots of different ways to identify something as sort of other than these other five categories this is typic what we see it is not unusual to see about half of the responses coming from parents and Guardians in the community and then the next largest categories are either community members or staff members and the fact that they're very close to one another almost 17% and 18% is typical so these are the uh percentages of people that did take this survey sometimes there was someone who filled it out twice because they had different lenses and the most common one would be a staff member and a parent so they were able to take it twice if they took it from different email

014addresses and if they took it from their work email as a staff person they may have answered the questions differently than when they got home and used a personal email address to take it instead so occasionally there's some overlap but for the most part uh people tend to take the survey only once here is the areas of expertise these are the top six identified by the aggregate of your stakeholders we do have these broken out by respondent category in a moment but in terms terms of areas of expertise these are the top six that Rose to the top out of 17 so budget and finance by far was number one curriculum development and evaluation followed by collaborative leadership then personnel management School Reform which tends to be strategic planning or such and then student testing

015results and achievement so out of 17 these are the ones that did rise to the top now specialized skills this is one that we have in another chart as well because it's an Apples to Apples comparison with the uh chart that the excuse me the survey that the board members took before we created that leadership profile with you when you look at this list of specialized skills what's really interesting to me is these six rose up for stakeholders out of 27 there were 27 choices it's a lot superintendent's job is a lot and so winwing them down to top six can be difficult but these are the ones that rose up for your stakeholders now interestingly enough when you look at this list and I compared it directly to the school board results you are

016very much aligned with your stakeholders for example of these top six four of them the top four in fact are in the school board's top 10 you identify those same ones acts with honesty in an ethical manner developing directing an effective leadership team being visible and accessible and serving as a people person and a good communicator those are in your top 10 now the um experience in implementing educational priorities which is number six for stakeholders that wasn't in your top 10 however you had some that were very very close to that you had ones that talked about curriculum um student achievement student test scores and also the school board's educational philosophy that reflects the community's priorities so I think those three that are in the board's top 10 actually are in many ways the same

017or similar to what are considered educational priorities very often by stakeholders the delegates of and accountability was not in the top 10 but again out of 27 it would have been extremely unusual to align with every single one but this is good news very good news for the district that what the board based your leadership profile upon does reflect what your stakeholders told us as well Mr chair uh director question Barb um what I did at at the packet that I received earlier was I just went through and counted the number both in the top six areas Vector teas and the top six personal characteristics I counted how many each of those categories showed up no matter where they were no matter if they were number one or number six or whatever does that have

018any uh impact on uh you know the number of times showed up versus where they were if you could clarify what do you mean by the number of times they showed up versus where they were so for example budget and finance and the top six areas of expertise showed up six times within that whole graph um okay collaborative leadership showed up five times you're talking about where it breaks down by by type of person that answered like on page I'm just talking about the number of times it was recognized or um you understand I'm s Barb I do I do thank you for asking so on this list this is remember this is in the aggregate so 1,128 people more of them said budget and finance and most of them said that and then they

019said CC so it is in order of the entire respondent category it's not broken out in this case it's in totality so yes budget and finance was the most recognized by your stakeholders out of those 1100 people the second place one was curriculum development the third place was collaborative leadership Etc yep okay thank you you bet thank you in terms of previous experience this is also good news in terms of um is previous superintendent experience important just over 60 % said no the school board if you look right at the next one 67% of you also said no and so that is great to see that kind of alignment as well and then obviously for yes it was 39% versus 3 33% so you are in touch with what your stakeholders thought as far as

020previous superintendent experience being important clearly it is important because we don't have a 100% of the people saying no however it does align with what you told us when as board members the six of you took this same survey uh here's the outline on personal characteristics and this is a little more difficult to measure because there are so many things that are important in terms of someone's character but these are the things that in the same way Rose to the top for those 1100 people they felt the most important in order were being honest and ethical and effective Communicator Problem Solver transparent personable and consistent that was also very important to your stakeholders now this is where it gets interesting because we start to slice and dice the data by category so tables on the

021following pages will summarize the quantitative data the ones that said choose your top six there are the numbers of responses we did C uh percentages earlier but you can see here how many people for instance identified as parents or Guardians how many were community members Etc uh so I'm going to go right into this because this is where it gets really interesting and I'm going to talk first about the areas of expertise so you recognize these and this is where budget and finance did bubble to the top overall but when you look at the categories there were some real clear Trends budget and finance shows up in every single one of the different six stakeholder groups so we're talking about the most parents heading down here to the smallest Group which was students and yet

022for all six of those categories budget and finance is in there also curriculum development and evaluation is also in there for all six that's unusual unusual because very often um people with their life experiences see that list differently there are 17 choices so to have budget and finance and CC and Development Across the board in each of these categories is quite unique then the rest collaborative leadership is in five of the six School Reform or strategic planning is also in five out of six and personnel management is in five out of six I have not seen personnel management rise to the top so clearly before and consistently across stakeholder groups and then student testing and results and achievement uh that was in three groups it was in the a parent group it was in community

023group and it was in the business owner group here the other thing that's really interesting when you look at this is over here at the students now it was the smallest sampling there were 15 students filled this out they aligned with the other groups on these top three and then the students identified diversity equity and inclusion support services and cultural competence and that is extremely um common in student groups because even though the representative sample was fairly small what we've seen it's I think it's a generational difference what we've seen with other student groups in other surveys those three very commonly regardless of if it's 15 or 1500 students those three feeling like you are supported and there are services available to you as a student Dei and what that means to students and cultural

024competence are almost always at uh the top six for your students as well I'm going to go to personal characteristics and again I can't see you so please do interrupt me but here are the characteristics across the board and there's similarities too the top three if you look over here at the largest group parents and Guardians be an honest ethical effective communicator and Problem Solver are across the board in every sing single one of the six that's half of them are in all six that's unusual as well transparent is in five of the six personable is in four and consistent is in two consistency is important to the two largest groups your parents and Guardians and your staff members so a lot of people are looking for consistency here resourceful also had three we don't

025see that word very often pop up out of 17 here again resourceful is and three and then over here with the students again they're mirroring what we see in other districts from the voices of students they're looking for a sense of humor confident and creative so those are things that do Rise Up from the student perspective irregardless of what district they are in all right I'm going to keep going but interrupt me if you need me to here's how it was broken out for previous experience now you remember that it averaged to be about 60% overall and in this case you can see that previous experience is um more important to staff members and people who identified as other than it is to other groups and that's not surprising at all staff members see the

026day in and day out of a superintendent's work and so having some experience tends to matter more to staff than it does to the rest of the groups uh parents and Guardians and the other no business business owners and parents and Guardians between 65 66% said no and your students really truly believe it's not as necessary but on average you had just over 60% say no now here's when we really get into the apples and apples all right so out of 27 these are the top 10 that the board had identified and these are the ones that around which we then built that leadership profile that you did some word smithing on and came up with a vacancy brochure information so when you look at these top 10 they are very close in fact to

027your stakeholder groups which is good news for this search it really is here we are again right up at top the honesty and ethics and I know I've said before that that tends to be sort of the well duh of course they need to be honest and ethical it still is something to important to highlight and to raise so candidates know it's something you're seeking but that was important to all six groups the visibility and accessibility not as much it rose up to the top because you had so many uh parents and Guardians that think that that's important only two groups did identify that it was the parents and Guardians and then over here the group that identified as other but otherwise two groups promoted visibility and accessibility but keep in mind that there were

02827 choices so a lot of consistency as unusual and we never have a th% and then the develops and directs and effective leadership team you had five of the groups identify that everyone except for your students said leadership team uh capabilities and Leadership is important four four groups talked about human human relations Communications and being a people person as well as for group saying delegates Authority while maintaining accountability and for groups also set experience in implementing educational priorities I think the educational priorities again is reflected in the board's choices it's just it gets to the heart of it I think when you're talking about well what are our priorities and they're very often based on our Community Values which was mentioned by the board also the curriculum choices which was selected and mentioned by the

029board and then also the test scores and student achievement which was mentioned by the board now School Finance um is really important and the board identified it as extremely important it is here in three groups it is in the staff member the Community member and the business owner so experience in school finance and you talked about funding mechanisms is important it's not surprising that that shows up in these but not necessarily in the top six for parents it is in the top 10 for parents without question but generally speaking uh staff members will identify Finance as a higher priority than parents because it is part of the day-to-day reality that the school districts are facing also of Interest I think in this knowledge of and experience with special education needs was um important to staff

030and over here to students so being in the buildings every day day in and day out the students and the staff are identifying special ed as an area of prioritization for the next superintendent and then also not surprising I'd say here the um promoting business and Community involvement was most important in your community member group as well as your business member group so those two groups promoted uh felt that was really important and the last thing I'll point out is over in your students there was some prioritization of um people skills mediation collaboration right here the idea of accommodating and working with different perspectives and teamwork being important and developing trust and working collaborative collaboratively with different groups your students saw that as being important as well so I won't spent any longer on this

031chart I know the board has had time to look at it but overall when you look at what the board told us about a month ago it aligns real closely with what we now have learned from your stakeholders and that again is very good news that's it for the quantitative data the things that we kind of crunched and collated for you are there any questions on quantitative or can I move to the qualitative observations any questions for Barb we don't see any here Barb you're good to go thank you so then the second half of the survey was the open-ended questions and that's the qualitative um I want to stress that it was really important to us that people knew that this survey was one Anonymous that there were no character limits and so if

032they answered this in hard copy or on the computer there were no limits to what they could tell us and they also were not required to fill out every single answer in order to be heard so you'll notice here that 725 on on average people did answer at least one open-ended question if not all four of them that is also phenomenal if we see more than half of the people who took the survey take the time to fill out the open-ended questions that's really really good so I want to thank the people that took the extra time to identify what's important to them qualitatively here are the four questions and all I'm going to do in this case is hit the themes because you have seen this I'm going to ask the board to place

033this on the website after tonight's meeting but the first question is what are some of the good things taking place in brainer Public Schools today so I'm just going to read the highlights the representative comments you can imagine if you have four comments and 1100 no 700 people we have almost 3,000 comments and we didn't want to give you all of those because it' be too difficult to sort through but we do feel that the comments below these themes are representative of what people tended to say so first of all congrats on the great things um you're thriving due to a dedicated and highly praised staff that includes passionate caring and hardworking teachers and support Personnel who are deeply committed to Student Success and quality of education and over here on the right side you

034can see how many related responses there were so almost 250 people pointed to your your staff and support personnel and teachers in your District don't get dizzy as I do this because we're zoomed in kind of close but a lot of wonderful comments about staff the second theme that arose from the question about what's going on that's well there is that your schools are providing a diverse and enriching experience for your students that there's a broad array of extracurricular activities including strong Sports programs music and arts and various clubs all of those are aimed at fostering leadership citizenship and personal growth 143 people mentioned that and the third theme that arose in terms of what's going well in your district is that your stakeholders feel the school district excels by offering an impressively diverse and

035comprehensive curriculum and your curriculum includes a wide range of electives special education programs career Readiness paths and opportunities for college credit which are all designed to prepare students effectively for Life Beyond High School also a very good thing and then if I get past the comments in that regards we got into the second question which was about challenges what challenges do you see for our district over the next five years the first one that was identified by nearly 200 people is that you will need to adapt your curriculum to meet modern educational standards and technological advancements there's also some concern about how to address diverse student needs while maintaining a balance between teaching fundamental academic skills and equity and inclusion initiatives This Is Not Unusual we see this as a challenge for a lot of

036districts in the state right now um so don't don't feel as though this is unique to Brainard we are seeing that difficult um conversation around academic St uh standings test scores curriculum all of that along with the social emotional learning needs of uh all students in the district another challenge was I'll get to it there we go people who responded to the survey did identify challenges related to financial management including your budget constraints managing over spending and securing adequate funding to meet the district's evolving needs and so there's a lot of that um a lot of that concern out there and knowing that you just completed a strategic planning process I don't think the board is going to be surprised by any of the information that I'm sharing with you here another challenge is that

037you uh stakeholders feel you must manage the increasing behavioral and mental health issues among students you need to ensure effective discipl iine and safety and address concerns related to bullying and the influence of negative behaviors on the school environment about 175 people pointed to that yet another challenge that your stakeholders saw is that they have some concern about your ongoing decline in student enrollment which will continue of course to impact your school funding and your resources and on this one you'll note that we had 168 responses in this area and honestly um 160 times they mentioned the word enrollment so obviously that is top of mind for your stakeholders and there's another challenge that your stakeholders feel the district needs to address um issues relating to teacher burnout staff turnout and the struggle to attack

038attract and retain high quality Educators um you're also not alone in that regards we're hearing a lot about about recruiting and retaining staff across the state as I'm sure that you are well aware and then the last challenge that was identified through the survey is people feel the district will continue to face challenges related to ideological and political divisions within the community with tensions rising over cultural values and the impact of political ideology on educational content in school policies I'm sure that's also not a surprise to the school board Bridging the trust Gap there's an acknowledgement of a divide in the community and um a concern long term that it's going to affect the district and then the third area that we asked about was what does the next superintendent need to know about the

039history of both the district and the community in order to succeed and a few themes emerged here about 150 people said that the next superintendent should know that while the district has a strong tradition of educational success and Community Pride it also faces challenges in regards to socioeconomic inequality the need for inclusivity and balancing growth while maintaining its small tone character and then there was also um in terms of what the person should know that the next superintendent needs to be a deeply engaged and transparent leader who communicates effectively actively listens to diverse community and staff opinions and is committed to making informed tough decisions to Foster trust among stakeholders and drive the school district forward so there's quite a bit of mention of that and then I believe this is the last area of

040what should they know in order to be successful the next superintendent needs to understand the community's history of divided opinions on cultural and educational priorities recognize the challenges in integrating diverse perspectives and navigate these complexities with a focus on inclusion and the fundamental educational needs of all students that was the last thing that your stakeholders felt um they should be aware of and in the last area we call it the bucket which is tell us what else we need to know additional comments in this case um almost a 100 people chose to continue to answer this one and there was one themee that again Rose to the top that uh your stakeholders are looking for a superintendent who embodies their values and prioritizes education transparency and long-term commitment while also effectively managing and integrating diverse

041stakeholder opinions and so that was the most common thing as far as what else should we know um the thing with long-term commitment I want to address real quickly just to ensure to remind people the board knows this but want to remind anyone watching this that superintendent contracts in Minnesota by Statute cannot be longer than three years very often they're one or two years but three is the absolute Max and so it's difficult these days to ensure longevity with your superintendence but it is possible it is something though that was really important to your stakeholders when we asked for what else should you tell us so if it's okay with the board I'm going to stop screen sharing and answer any questions you might have on this report okay thank you for sitting through that

042rather long review but I know you have this in front of you and it is um also electronic there so are there any questions I can answer for you in terms of the stakeholder report director spear just one quick question bar this will be part of what's put out on the website correct so if people want to look at it it'll be available there that is that is for the board to decide I'm so glad you asked that is we always recommend putting it on the website however we want the board to make that decision not going to assume that for you so when do we do that when do you do that yeah do we do it now or is it a vote thing or what I would say it go up by tomorrow

043at the latest do you have um candidates that are interested in seeing it and your stakeholders always want to ensure that their voices were heard so I would recommend it goes up if not tonight tomorrow I think the question was deciding on whether to put it out there or not when we do the decision- making process oh so today and you um you can decide that now generally it's a consensus it doesn't necessarily have to be a formal motion most boards say do we feel like we want it out there and people say yes or no but whatever formula you want to use in brainer it's up to you anybody object to having it out there I can't imagine anybody on this board not wanting all of this stuff out there but we open to

044different ideas but no I would say we have consensus I think we should do a mo make a motion and have a vote on it I matter of fact I'll move it I'll move that we I'll move that we uh publish that the stakeholder report on the website immediately after the meeting I'll second okay great so we have a motion from director Ward and a second from director Breet to Breen to formally uh approve posting the results of the stakeholder survey on the district website is there any other discussion hearing none roll call vote please Kell Dinger yesy yes spear yes yes yes yes motion carries thank you okay Barb continue are there any questions on that uh report in general again you had a tremendous participation rate and I want to thank everyone that

045took the time to do that I always want to do sort of a a temperature check of the board I know that all of you hear from different constituencies and people have um have your ear they have your email do you feel like the voices of the folks who contact you about school board issues are included in there or do you feel that we missed out on um some realities of what's going on there in Briner public schools on M Mr chair in my opinion Barb I think uh I in my own personal opinion I think you hit the nail on the head I think everything that our stakeholders said and the school board has said and uh all groups all stakeholder groups uh is included in this report and I think it's very very

046uh valuable and worthwhile thank you skip director Don anything to add no I think it's just the I think it's I like to give them a chance to get in it's kind of hard to jump in sometimes I know you're a let's make one thing clear I'm not as Pink as I look in this picture I don't know what the deal is here but I'm not that sunburnt I just want to set the record straight on that and no I think the survey did a great job and I think it's cool that that uh we had a high turnout on it and I think it's important so no I think it's just great from my own perspective there were no surprises in it I I think it was looked a lot like what we did

047two years ago looked a lot like what we heard through the strategic planning process I think it exemplifies that um what I what I like about the value of it is that it shows to for lack of a better way to put it kind of Divergent views of different things that are should be important to the district kind of brought together in one report and I think that's important because I think we have people of a certain persuasion philosophically in town and we have people of another philosophical persuasion in town and it's nice to see both reflected in here to show that it's it's similar and equal and it's not you know we tend to all think everybody thinks like we do but they don't and thank God nobody thinks like I do but um

048I think it was neat to see that that to see things like the small town values and some of the the core values that you would identify with this town coming forward but also remembering that safety inclusion diversity all of those things are still important too so I kind of like seeing that reinforced through that feels like everybody's represented to me wonderful well thank you for those comments and for uh agreeing to put it on the website I know that people will appreciate that transparency if you remember from the top six was really important to f so the more transparent you can be with the information the better so as a result this is the point in the process where I say okay now that you've seen the stakeholder summmer report this is when I

049ask you about uh what would you like to do moving forward and so I'm going to screen share something else as well but the board should have a copy of it in terms of what's next and that was one of the questions if you haven't had a chance to watch the Q&A session yet uh please do because one of the questions that was asked by a couple different people was Will stakeholders be involved in the interview process and I know the last time you had a search I believe there were interview committees that did interview candidates in addition to the school board interviewing uh them themselves and we've learned a lot in the last couple of years partly due to the pandemic and partly due to the use of Technology um how that has shifted

050so do want to screen share the three options and then ask the board to make a decision tonight about uh the round one or round two interviews so this will be the document that says uh three options stakeholders survey three options okay I will zoom in on this as well but just real briefly you can see that it says one 2 3 so I believe the 200% is what people said was the best for them okay so at this point the fork in the road you get to decide what you would like to do and there's three options for including stakeholders in the finalist interviews uh option number one is to rely on that summary report that we just walked through to represent the stakeholder voices throughout the interview process you are also going to

051be using this stakeholder summary report when you review applications and we'll talk through tonight how to review applications because some of it is a lot of data but have that next to you we want you to have the stakeholder summary report available when you are um choosing your finalists when you are deciding who to move on to round to and who ultimately to hire so it's real important that that be done I've already used this report to help craft my suggested interview questions for you um and I will do so again for round two but that's your first option the second option is to create interview committees and these groups uh would interview the finalists separately on the same day probably round two as the school board and then we'll need to find a way

052to coales their uh experience and someone will have to report it back to board members so you know how they felt about the interviews that they conducted with your finalists it's really important we never call them hiring committees because you as the school board are the only hiring Authority and sometimes giving the impression that these these groups do get to help you decide who to hire is unfair to them the expectations are not accurate you may end up hiring someone that they do not recommend and you will have your reasons for perhaps doing so but they uh they will be very upset if they felt that they had a voice in the hiring and you moved on as the board and chose someone else but you could do interview committees and we could talk more

053about who gets to be on those groups if you choose that option and then the third option is to invite groups um that represent stakeholders to send one person to watch the board interview obviously these interviews are open to the public so it could be a packed house and yet there would be people identified within the group that watch the board interviews and then electronically provide feedback to the board through us we have a form that could fill out on strengths and weaknesses of each of your finalists whether it's two or three people and then I would provide that to you prior to your deliberations so those are the three options we see most commonly and I was just going to say briefly over the last three years the most common has become the stakeholder

054summary report if you feel it's thorough enough and represents stakeholder voices well enough that's most common uh we have had at this point now including the last two years two or three boards have chosen to do external interview committees outside of the board and the rest probably about uh 20 20 or 25 boards have chosen uh the third option this audience input but I'd say about six 50 to 60 have chosen this one that that doesn't mean that's what you do in brainer you need to do do what is best for your District it is different every time because every District's different so I'm going to stop talking and I'm gonna turn it back over to uh the chair to facilitate a conversation over what you might want to do with the interviews okay thanks

055Barb a quick question on option three um we're not very familiar with that one we um just for the board's edification two years ago we did number two basically okay we had the individual St groups the candidate came in for a full day and went through the ringer they started with student group then they did teacher group then they did an administrator group then they met with Business Leaders then they met with Community leaders then they had dinner with us and then they got to come interview with us I think we all decided we weren't going to do that so my question on number three which seems like kind of an interesting tweener thing is when one individual is sent to observe um what's the time timeline from when they observe do they commiserate with

056their the rest of their stakeholders group or are they wholly represented at that group and fill it out like real time correct the second they are watching the interview groups and the interviews they only have 15 minutes after each interview to type up one to three strengths and one to three weaknesses for That interview so it's Bas solely on that individual's perception not on any any corre ability to reconvene with the rest of their stakeholders okay thank you all right um discussion I have a question for you Barb I have a question um what in your opinion what is the rationale for most districts going with option number one I will share with you what I think and this is just from observing the changes over the last five years I think the interview committees

057have been a very traditional methodology of doing superintendent searches and they are still done and we're not the only search firm in Minnesota and it's very possible search firms require that step as a part of their process the reason I think we've seen school boards Edge away from that is because what I've heard board say is this is our only employee and we were elected to make this decision so I've heard board members say I'm a member of the community I'm a parent whatever the the relationship might be I was elected to make this decision and I'm comfortable owning it I feel like our stakeholders had a voice by sharing their thoughts and it's a very accurate representation of their thoughts in the stakeholder summary report and now I as a board member would like

058to take that Authority and do with it what I think I was elected to do that's just what I have heard the rationale from boards that have chosen to go that route I think other boards have had bad experiences sometimes with giving over a lot of um sense of ownership to stakeholders and then trying to rest that back from stakeholders and make make a decision as a board it is particularly painful when the interview committees say we interviewed these three people without question John Doe is the strongest and then maybe Jane Doe and then Bob do and for whatever reason the board chooses to hire Bob do that resentment lasts a very long time and people tend to say well if you aren't going to listen to me why did you make me give up

059four hours of my day to listen to these people so there becomes some push pull over what the expectations were of those interview committees but with the right expectations set it can work very well if you've got guard rails up toensure that people don't feel like it's their decision to tell the board what to do but they're providing input that will help inform the board's decision and the board is clear that it's our decision then it can work well but I think some boards have seen it kind of run off the rails in previous searches that they've done and they don't want to repeat that again because it was uncomfortable for a lot of people kind of a long answer but that's just what I've observed board's deciding thank you Sarah sure um Barb I'm

060wondering in that second scenario when you have those interview committees if the expectation is that they aren't actually discussing the candidates that they're taking their own notes you know of the questions that they asked and that's kind of the end of it nobody in the room knows where any anybody else landed on their preferences um I know that's how we did it the last time around is nobody necessarily knew where where any of the the people in the room landed on their favorites or or non-f favorites and I think that worked well because you weren't setting people up for failure that they weren't going to get the candidate that the majority in the room wanted because nobody knew what the majority was okay so as individual input to the board it wasn't the collective we

061as a group preferred this person or this person correct yes okay okay yeah if we were to go that route I would recommend that because I think we would be setting ourselves up for for failure if we were asking for the temperature in a room when as I understand it like each stakeholder group had a number of Representatives right that were allowed to come and do an evaluation but they everybody got a form so there were student people in there there were you know and then they would or based on their interview with them anybody could turn one in so we got a packet because they done it earlier in the day than when we would get here in the evening so the only thing I would say that I didn't like about that process

062was I had to come back and interview the candidate with this dossier of all this information that was collected throughout the day and now I'm just getting it at 6:30 or 8 o'clock at night and and now I have to interview the candidate so that would be the only the only problem I had with it I do I do agree with you that it was kind of blind in the that it people weren't comparing notes yeah yeah you know I think um I love that we did this stakeholder um engagement survey and I wasn't completely sold on it just knowing we we felt like we knew what we knew but I love how many people turned up for it and it just kind of reinforces in my mind even that people want to be a

063part of this process we want them to be bought in as much as we can include people I think we should other comments or questions for Barb all right who is the school board I don't know you people all right then I guess we're we're at that fork where we've got to we've got to decide on one of these three options is that correct corre there's only one option correct I mean we can Nuance them we're not locked into like like Sarah was saying we can we can tweak and and you know put some meat on bones for one one or more of these or like I guess you know so what would be the downside to having uh I'm just going to throw it out one and three well we have one no matter

064what we've already done the yeah we've already done the stakeholder report um yeah I mean what we're really debating is to add option two or add option three or nothing okay right that's option one we already own it it's already here we paid for it and like right I I think to Sarah's point it was a really I also was not how you know when you when you guys brought it up last time I was like well if you want to do it fine but now I'm glad we have it because it gives us some flexibility here for me it does well it showed how engaged the community was I mean with having that many responded yeah so the thing I like about option two is that it gives that interview committee a chance to

065meet that person you know on their own terms and within their own group and ask the questions rather than viewing us doing that so is they they can see the Nuance to the questions that are being asked I I just has a different feel to me of them getting to interview rather than them watching us interview and I just like the idea of them being involved in the process process because we ultimately need all of their buyin you know to make this successful Mr chair John Barb um not the timeline makes a difference because we want to make sure that we have the best person on board that we can have on board so these different options do they do they how do they align with timeline and I'm not not saying that we um

066we need to I'm not saying we need to rush things we've talked about that as a board as well but I do know this uh the longer the longer it takes to make a decision the pool of candidates become in my opinion become less quality in my opinion so tell me about timeline and the options great thank you so it is currently April 22nd your second round of interviews is May 8th so two weeks and two days so the biggest challenge for districts that select either option two or option three because whether it's interview committees or representative stakeholders watching your interviews it's the same process and that you need to identify people who can speak for those groups and so um we need to do that this week in order to get folks lined up

067and organized and ready to roll and then next week I would ask for their help in terms of developing question questions because we would want to uh help them craft those questions so they're not asking any questions that are illegal um we'll talk a little bit more about that when we go through the interview training packet so who gets to participate whether it's option two or three is a decision you need to make tonight as well about Maybe not maybe not inviting people you as a board shouldn't invite people but you should identify the groups that do get to send someone to speak on their behalf that gets most challenging when it is community members or parents because that's a lot of people and we don't want these interview groups larger than maybe 12 people

068um even 15 is really high so when you think about the breadth and the depth of your stakeholders can you find a few groups maybe each bargaining group sends one you know within the district is not as difficult do you want a student or two on there how do you choose which parents get to participate that can bog it down so considering that we need this wrapped up with nice bow on it within two weeks does mean we have to start right away tomorrow but you would need to decide tonight which groups get to be invited to send someone and then that person needs to contact someone within the district that keeps track of all of this and gets the email addresses so that I can then reach out to them next week with next

069steps about either crafting interview questions for that day I'm assuming we're going to do these round two if you do them or how to use that strengths and weaknesses form if they're doing as far as option three so that's a timeline consideration it is a little bit tighter uh we don't have a month to prepare for this we have a a week week and a half to get stakeholders lined up to help interview these folks in the second round Mr chair let me ask let me ask it differently Barb let me ask it differently can no matter what option we pick are we still on the timeline that you have laid out tonight that we as a board have okayed over the whole process here and that you laid out tonight no matter what option

070yes okay yes I apologize if I didn't quite gather that I would not recommend you put your interviews out Beyond March May 8th sorry May 8th to make your decision correct Dr BS I have another question Barb I'm I'm wondering if we were to choose to do option one is is there is a way to get feedback from people who have some strong feelings if they're watching the interviews and not have it be so formalized as two or three yes yes so so an example of that would be anyone who's watching the interviews could have access to what we call the EMD form which is what board members are going to use so for every question question us board members individually will decide if that exceeded your expectations met them or if you were disappointed

071EMD exceeds meets disappoints you could make a link to that evaluation tool available to anyone who's watching the interviews that day the challenge would be those guard rails we have seen that tool not used in terms of its um it was well in ended in that we trusted people to uh fill it out listen to the answers evaluate people truly on what they said did it really exceed my expectations or was I just disappointed that's the way it's intended to be used when it doesn't work is when people try to promote or black ball a candidate because they don't like them or they really like them and so the results become skewed because someone puts in nothing but D's I'm disappointed in every answer I don't care what they said so that candidate it appears

072one person or two people actually could probably tank their candidacy by giving them nothing but the worst marks similarly if they really like someone they give them nothing but ease even if the an answers weren't that good so you think that people would just email us anyways when they email us or call us I mean they're going to watch if they're concerned about these interviews why wouldn't they just send us an email I you think that's going to happen I mean Kevin and Sarah have been through this before I mean did that happen last time or how how' it work to some extent oh I got lots of phone calls yeah yep and and some emails yep for sure um last time was a little unique because we had kind of a Nuance to the

073situation where we had a last minute accusation leveled against one of the finalists that kind of muddied the waters even more um kind of it's one of the scenarios that's outlined in one of Barb's exercises that she has here so it it um there was definitely what Barb was talking about on both sides of the equation there were definitely people that were Pro one finalist and pro the other finalist definitely lobbying um and I mean we get lobbied on everything by our constituents which is our job to listen to that so um yeah I mean we got plenty of I did I got lots of calls and not just when we were at the finalist stage either as as we were doing the we did six interviews the first round we interviewed six candidates and

074I started hearing from people right away on the six even though we kind of decided right after [Applause] that Barb I talked to you I don't know week or two ago and I think you told me that of the last 54 of these searches that you guys have done only three schools picked something other than number one is that right uh two or three schools yeah we did 55 searches the last two years we've added another 24 this year so I'm trying to keep up with it but of the 55 two districts had interview committees and about 14 had stakeholder groups watching the board interviews on and then saying strengths and weaknesses and then whatever the difference is 35 maybe said the stakeholder report was sufficient for them to base their decisions upon when they

075saw the interviews for the board to make their decision upon correct I feel comfortable with number one one I think we spent the money for the stakeholder input and the other two don't make any sense to me in the world that I live in and you know of hiring and Leadership and trying to find people to run things I can't imagine having these things we gotta we got elected I I kind of feel like it's our responsibility to get this done and make sure we do the best job we can Sarah I'm dispensing the director for the special meeting by the way I I don't disagree with that I feel like this is our job and I think we should use every tool that we have and I think one of those tools is feedback

076from the folks that have to work under this leadership every day I would never go into an interview and hire someone for a leadership position without having someone that is going to work for them in the room to get their feedback because I know it's not going to work it's you're at you're now making a decision for somebody that they had no input on and it's an uphill climb to get that buy in I if it's I mean if all things are equal I don't know that this hurts to invite feedback and I I love the idea if our community and our stakeholders are engaged why wouldn't we honor that and invite them into the conversation I do I do firmly believe this is our decision um and this is our only one you know

077person that we employ but I'm not arrogant enough to think that I'm qualified in evaluating curriculum and all of these things that we're asking this person to be good at I'd love to have the eyeballs of people in the room giving feedback on some of those things that we're not going to see uh I'll get you in a second John what I would say is anybody Pro three yes okay so you're Pro three so go ahead I want to hear the case for number three I was just going to say that um thank you for asking that because I think number three aligns with both concerns with both I understand what DJ is saying I understand what Sarah saying and I think number three does it takes care of it for and Randy was the

078one that said let's look at one and together I just think number three absolutely uh takes the stakeholder into uh survey into a into effect uh into consideration but it also allows for input from other groups the way I read it anyhow and I think that I agree sure that the input from other groups is valuable and important um but in my opinion number three is the one that I believe would best suit both uh both questions both concerns or whatever okay thank you so who picks who the stakeholders are John well that's so we got 580 parents that fill this out so who gets to pick which parent gets to be the one yeah we gon to flip a coin we play a straw game what are we gonna do I don't understand it

079like who picks them we're not supposed to advise them so who picks out the people we don't know who we're getting um I don't know I don't know if any other industry other than and I'm not that familiar with government uh that would ever even consider this would we ask the fans to pick out the new head coach for the Vikings because the fans are a big part they buy all the tickets I would you know what I mean it's like I don't know what what what business I just don't it's just makes no sense to me now if you had someone that was an expert like Barb to take their advice or the Schoolboard Association I understand that because they do this all the time I don't mind getting an outside set of eyes

080on things but I don't know who these people are going to be and I don't think it's very prudent on the positions that we're in personally just B bad okay you know I think to Barb's Point these people self- select we don't I don't think we pick them I think the the bargaining units pick their folks uh students can what bargaining units what are it's there you go and that's that's what I'm talking about bargaining units what's that bargaining units Sarah explain to me because I'm just a so like the certified group um you know the educational assistance all they we have a number of different bargaining units that report into this structure and work under this leadership well should we have like an Accounting Group should we try to get some CPAs from town

081uh that maybe have some ideas on this Finance side of things I'm not I don't understand I'm not opposed to for example if we wanted to reach out to the chamber and ask them you know would you not Nate two people or invite two people to be part of this just so we've got representation you know maybe it's two parents from the district advisory committee which is our parent group and two people from the business two people from you know each bargaining Group whatever that looks like or maybe it's one that probably gets to be too many people go ahead DJ I understand what you're saying too um you know with uh who who decides who who decides who and who decides what quite frankly in my what I was thinking is we have the

082six C we have six categories here those are the categories those are the categories of the representative uh parent Guardian Community member staff member business owner agriculture student and I the other to me I would I would suggest that we put clergy clergy um that that just be my recommendation um and that kind of encompasses the whole um field of of uh possible people that I think are you know represented this community um so I think the six groups are here now to se to select the one and I would agree Sarah that I think two from each group is too much to select the one who does that that's that's a million dollar question in my opinion but uh so that's what I would suggest my question would be would that one person represent

083that whole stakeholder group probably not yeah exactly and so I think I I if if we were to go with number one I don't want the optic to be that we are not that we don't care about what the stakeholders want but it just feels so heavy to do two or three to me yeah um yeah I think DJ and I we are agreeing on something man Barb's got something Barb Barb start well if I may I'm going to screen share one more thing because this conversation does come up it's like well we want to do two or we want to do three then it's like okay who chooses those folks I'm going to screen share something that um might help the conversation I don't know if it'll bring Clarity or if it will not

084bring Clarity it it is a decision that you want to be as inclusive as possible and sometimes if you don't include the right people then you're excluding others and people don't like that either so here's some options oh that's not it that's what I just did sorry you want to be on the group no no no all right here we go this is I believe what I want to do there we go so I'm GNA zoom in on this so you can read it but this is what we put together for the audience input which is the strengths and weaknesses live form so for example we'll go to 200 what we would say is you want to consider those groups you would typically reach out to to support an operating Levy or a referendum also

085any subgroups of your community parent staff and students some people are in more than one box a better choice is to request that they select someone from their membership themselves than inviting the leadership only and bargaining units should be represented so here's a possible list of who you could invite to send someone so for instance you could have one principal four teachers with the different age groups so one for high school one for elementary one for middle one for Early Childhood someone from Administration possibly the executive assistant and then people from these groups now these also depending upon your marketing units and how you do have those structured up parents student whether you have them on the board or not but maybe student representative district Partnerships business higher educ ation there's Chamber of Commerce you

086also might have foundations donors or funders in the community any Grassroots organization is also really important the challenge with this is that we would say an ideal group is seven to 10 people and more than 15 it starts to become just cumbersome very cumbersome and there is an occasional challenge where someone says well why is she speaking for me I don't agree with her or I don't agree with him why would he pick so you just you need to navigate this because it can be very successful it can also create some hurt feelings and some frustration so I could just leave this up for a moment and turn it back over to the chair to facilitate the additional conversation around what would you want to do I hope this helps if it doesn't I'll just

087stop screen sharing Randy you're up um I'll just go on the record to say that I am not at all in favor of option number two creating an interview committee uh I kind of fall um employees are going to choose their executive officer I just I I just don't believe that that is something that is going to be well received uh we were elected we all ran on certain things and uh if people want to reelect us the next time they reelect this if not so be it but I just I just don't believe in these committees and U you know how are they going to be set up who's going to choose them uh I just I mean what did you guys do this last time did yeah how'd that work well actually to

088give a little more context so here we walking into a community in a district that the last time we did this two years ago everyone had access anyone could come and interview the superintendent candidates to then lock down and say the only one that has access or input is this board is not going to be well received I don't want to be a part of how that's going to be received so I I think there's some Middle Ground here and how we get there but to go from that two years ago that very accessible you know let's take input they're not hiring and they're not deciding but they got to give input on how they felt which meant they were heard and you know we we read over what they they shared with us not

089that that's how we voted or that that's what we did but I think it's important and they're telling us they're invested in this by how they responded to you know that last um go round of survey that I don't I don't want to lock them out of the process I mean what about a process where when I mean so let's say we get to somewhere between four and six semi-finalist slf finalist depending on the statute right they come in last time we did those interviews virtually um the first round of inters were virtual I I don't remember are we doing those virtual or are we bringing all of our semi-finalists in bringing them in in person so you know I think there is some Middle Ground there I think if you had some sort of

090evaluation process that once that first round of interviews where people anybody that wants to could score any of the semi-finalists that we do um I I feel like that's the middle ground now I will say this if I'm going to use DJ's football team analogy I mean I agree to an extent but I also agree that when you're bringing in a head coach candidate you know let's say you're the Vikings Justin Jefferson's going to be in that room they're going to be in there they may not have any say about it the owner is going to decide who they do but you know key players sometimes are in the room um Aaron Rogers demands to be in the room because he's Aaron Rogers we all hate him um but anyway I digress where I'm at

091on this is I think what we should do first is straw poll where all six of us are one two or three and then I think from there we can eliminate things and then we can tighten the discussion does that make sense it it does does make sense I guess um I I agree Sarah I don't want to deny anybody to have input in this process I'm just wondering if there's a cleaner easier way to do that rather than setting up all these interview committees and and having other people speak for their stakeholder group and when they might not be speaking for each of those people so is there a way to have people and Barb but kind of add address that evaluation uh summary or that um document where somebody could if they had

092strong feelings they could make that known to us and we can review that rather than having you know a [Music] variety 15 people trying to give trying to speak for everybody else have you ever had a district that's done something like that that kind of hybrid it Barb yes and you can create something that works for Brainard um there's also a difference between input and interaction so an option for you to consider is you know input these are input you keep the stakeholder summary next to you and you look at that when you're making your decisions or there's interview committees that have a a way of getting you feedback or people providing input on strengths and weaknesses of your interview so those are input interaction could mean that the candidates come earlier in the day

093on May 8th and they should get a district tour and I'll talk to your staff about that about getting a tour around the district but you also could set up a very informal meet and greet with the candidates throughout the day on May 8th you could set up I call it open mic night it's really risky to do that and have people ask the candidates any questions that they want to ask but you could do sort of open mic night or Open Mic lunch or something like that and people could ask them anything sometimes if they want to do that we would moderate that and take the questions in advance on cards to make sure that none of the questions are illegal again um but that's interaction the interaction with stakeholders is sometimes enough for

094some communities to feel involved versus the input is when people get to actually share their thoughts with the board and you could also make it that hybrid much larger going back to that EMD form you could have people fill it out on a fivepoint scale how much you like this candidate overall instead of each question EMD the only challenge I would caution you to remember is that people will stuff The Ballot Box for and against people and you have to be careful as board members to rise above any of the information that may have the uh Integrity of the information is challenged because there might have been a um a collaborated or a coordinated effort to stuff the box for or against some of your finalists I've seen that happen in the interest of being

095inclusive so I just want the board to be cautioned that if you don't have parameters around input it does run the risk of being skewed so you could do whatever fits we'll make sure to make it work if you want it in Brainard but there's definitely opportunities and pitfalls to all of these choices so the ripples just want to make sure you know about what those might be thanks Barb okay I'm GNA do a STW P one two or three DJ one Michelle um three John one Randy one Sarah is there such thing as a 2A there's such thing as more dialogue cuz I like what bar propos yeah I mean I think there's more dialogue to come I'm just trying to eliminate an option if we can a me and great um I will

096go with three then and I'm a one but I'm open to some discussion about how to gather some additional information but I I again like I said while I feel that the Committees and having those stakeholders interview the candidates here are my two issues with it number one I did not have time to review all of that information not as effectively as I could have subset underneath that number two two principles found me the night we came back to interview the final candidate and let me know their their feelings about it regardless anyway so I think people do have access to us to tell us what they think about things number three I am worried about what Barb's talking about where people um when there's a data point that they can leverage will use it

097to stuff the ballot box so I have those concerns um it's not about trying to not include stakeholder groups and then I would say underneath that I also have the concern that that DJ has spoused as well which is when you get to some these groups how do you choose who's who um I realize some of them will self-d self- select and nominate their own person to bring forward that nobody is picking him out of a hat necessarily but you know I think it creates some interesting situations so I think if we had a way to cre to collect evaluatory data earlier in the process is my thought before we've honed in on finalists because people don't you know maybe that's the way to go I don't know maybe it doesn't make sense go ahead

098John well I'm gonna explain why I went from 3 to one because I I agree with Sarah that we you know we have to have feedback but then I as Barb put up that list you know with 14 different groups and you know whomever whatever I'm going I'm thinking to myself um that's not going to work I mean I just that's my own opinion that's my own opinion and and I am also concerned about um the Bell box being stuffed no matter which side which way or whatever um I read every comment in that survey every comment I've read all of the stuff that we've been sent and I think that's great input I think that Fe and and just from the survey when when we read the comments in the survey there's a there's

099a significant split in this community I don't know how you bring together that whole Community to try to find somebody that's going to appease every person in this District you're not you are not no matter what we decide board members there's going to be somebody that's not going to be happy with us and I get that too and if they don't want to reelect us that's fine too that I we we've all been there okay but DJ's point about um you know we've been elected to make a tough decision here to do a tough deed and a and a good de and a good deed and and try to find the best and trying to beinging the whole Community together um that survey to me was just it was remarkable Barb and you guys did

100a great job and it really gave a great example of what we are facing here as a board and I think that we have as a board have the responsibility to listen and we have and we did and um I don't know that going out there more and trying to listen more is going to help anything that's that's my opinion I mean so I'm swaying more to let's get it done B let's get it done and do the best job we can and and I we will you all of us will I know that I'm not questioning it that all I again I just think there's been a lot of feedback given already and it's and has been remarkable and I I applaud our community that 1,128 people that filled that survey in and that's

101remarkable and I think it's a very very good um example of the Briner School District as survey is in my opinion it was one thing we didn't do last time we didn't do a survey like this last time so since then we've got the strategic planning data that we have and then we have this and in this every staff member had an opportunity to fill this out so in my mind the staff macro priorities are sort of already pre-identified if we're talking about staff the community is a little more nebulous and hard to kind of get your arms around and then if I'm a candidate if I'm being honest those candidates by the time we got them in those evenings they'd had a long long long day I mean they're doing these town halls with

102all these different groups and that's the interaction stuff and I don't know that we were seeing any of those people at their best because they've been running since 7 o'clock this that morning and we had them here till 8:30 9:00 that night so it's it's another piece to keep in mind I mean I I'm I'm all for engagement and participation don't get me wrong but I think we've allowed for that in in the end it's our decision anyway that's kind of where I'm at with it Randy well and going back I mean I can understand why there may be some board members that want to maybe have a little bit more input and I I get it and I go back to what John said we've we've already identified groups of people in this survey

103uh to be honest with you I wouldn't have a problem with uh uh a hybrid uh number three and let let the group choose who they want to send I mean that's that's between them that's you know all we're looking for is maybe some additional input I could care less what parent or Guardian uh comes although how you how are we going to identify all the parents and the Guardians that that would be the problem there but uh uh with these groups of people I mean I know uh well I I know of I would like to think yeah probably two or three groups would probably pick a pretty good representative um so I wouldn't be opposed to that additional input not to slow the process down but for additional input and uh and if

104it doesn't come to that bearing I mean I'm totally totally satisfied with number one Randy Randy number one Randy did you look at the list that barb put up did you see that list that barb put up did you look at it um what I'm referring to DJ 16 there's like 16 16 things on there and it's like 13 of them work at the school this a representation DJ I'm not talking about is well what groups are you talking about talking about the six groups that this is what her suggestion is for three this suggestion for I understand but but John brought up an interesting point we've already done a survey and we have six groups of people right well we have six characteristics oh yeah we have six groups of people right we have

105other so there'd be you know if you had one from each group you have six people giving us additional input I mean I think I can be sede to that I mean I'm not saying I'm you know I'm I'm number one solid this this um stakeholders report is valuable information valuable information it doesn't address the specific candidates though it it it just addresses generally what our community is looking for I if somehow we could communicate if anybody who's watching these interviews has any feelings strong feelings either way feel free to reach out to either anyone of us if you want to provide some feedback yep and I think that channel is always there they will and I don't want to undermine what you said um what I would say is you know Barb went through

106these and show show that you know six out of six groups picked certain things right so to me my takeaway is I'm I'm an elected individual with some working knowledge of how a superintendent's job is done right by being a school board member I have a little more information than a lot of people a little less than some people so for me to go acts with honesty and ethical manner I don't need a committee group of people from the community to tell me if that person appears ethical or not I mean I'm going to make my own judgment on that they've already told me what's important to them now I've got to watch for that characteristic that's kind of how the filter that I that's what allows me to get to number one I'm wondering

107you know if we're hung up on the input part if it's just an opportunity and Barbie you had mentioned this like a meet and greet that they get to come and shake hands with candidates and I would propose just the three finalists I wouldn't say you know the the whole group for sure I like that idea that they have access to them and get to make you know have have an impression of something we did do the open mic thing last time too we did and it and it never it never went poorly it was good but that was two years ago it was a different world yeah um but i' I'd love for people to have access at least to the candidates so just to um make a couple of points that just went

108can you still see me I see color bars oh there we go okay so a couple of key points um I think this is great this is a really healthy conversation and and do keep in mind that the difference between input and interaction exists we were talking about input to the board maybe you don't need the input maybe you want to provide opportunities for interaction and that we can design any way that you want also remember that you as board members once you are in Rellis and you see these application materials you're going to see about this much more information than your stakeholders would see in a one-h hour interview so your data points will be far greater than any stakeholders who are watching these interviews you're going to see resumés transcripts licenses letters of

109recommendation answers to those questions you asked about Brainard you're going to see so much more than your stakeholders so your stress we're not allowed to talk about any of it outside of correct correct but you'll see more so when you make your decision there might be people who say why in the world did they move him forward you saw things potentially in that application material that really told you this is a solid candidate maybe they didn't interview very well you've seen more though so just remember you as board members have a much larger sphere of information upon which to make your decisions two keep in mind that this stakeholder summary report with 1100 people aligned very closely with what the school board has already decided I would be really concerned if you were not on

110the same page if the stakeholders or even an individual stakeholder group here or there did not reflect what the board has already decided then I'd be concerned that you might need to tap in a little bit more to stakeholders so do keep in mind that alignment was a really good thing the other thing to keep in mind is as of now and you can change this the second round of interviews on May 8 8th is slated to start at noon so you would be asking stakeholders if you have representative stakeholders giving you input you're going to ask them to give up most of their day from noon until about 5:00 pm to provide input so people who have day job jobs would have a little more challenges coming in and doing that also I would

111anticipate right now if we start at noon that the tours are occurring in the morning where candidates are going through your buildings your administrators usually host them and tour them through the buildings they have a chance to ask ask questions so on and so forth so if you want some interaction with people meet and greet Open Mic whatever it might be you'd have to look at moving your interviews to later in the day or doing something the night before on Tuesday or on uh May 7th so just some logistical considerations from a timing perspective if you are involving stakeholders in round two interviews right now noon you got to move them back if you want to do a lot more of this [Music] beforehand ready Barb you just hit on a point that just kind

112of rattled my cage and that is hey uh the survey kind of aligns pretty well with what's going on I like I said I I can be convinced to just option one I mean I maybe we don't need any more input uh maybe it's just going to muddy the water uh I don't know the only thing I would tack on there is that we all have email addresses and we all have phones we're always wide open baskets to receive input at any phase of the process folks aren't shy about finding me when there's a school bus issue they can call me about [Laughter] this that's my take on it as well all right did anybody move off I have four ones and two threes as of our our straw pole has anybody moved from where

113they were I've moved to number one I was in between anyway so yeah I was I mean you made some good points uh but I think Barb like I said she she just kind of solidified it for me when she said everything kind of aligns you know got Mr chair uh John I'll move that we as a board select op number one to pursue uh going forward with the process second all right so we have a a motion from director Ward with a second from director Hyman I'm using director for the official stuff uh to advance uh using option one which is using the stakeholder summary report any further discussion hearing none we'll do a roll call vote please Kelly Randy hman yes there no yes yes okay motion carries all right one item knocked

114down back to you Barb all right thank you very much and it's really great that you can talk about all of this because there's a lot of reasons too and reasons not to and I appreciate the um cander that you all used in talking about your options and remember again the doors are open to these interviews and we would love people to come and watch the board conduct the interviews and you will be lobbied when these names go public on the 30th you will be lobed so I will plan to work with your um District team to start thinking about interview tours excuse me candidate tours the morning of the 8th and we'll still go with the 8 o'clock excuse me noon start for the interviews on the 8th with your round two finalists and

115you'll make these decisions for sure on the 30th but for right now that's what we're planning on if you have a chance to kind of mull over your options and you are interested in the idea of an open coffee and conversation or cookies and coffee with your candidates on May 8th let me know and we can leave that into the tour people would simply need to take time off during the morning then and come in and have a chance to maybe shake the hand candidate but if 40 people show up they're not all going to have a chance to visit but that interaction piece is still to be determined and you can certainly do that as well if you want to on the eth okay thank you very much that was really helpful so now

116we're going to move into interview training and I believe you have some information there in front of you I'm going to screen share the packet this is going to be uh to keep you on the straight and narrow in terms of Statute and things that you can and cannot do there we go and once again please interrupt me with questions I can't see you now that I'm screen sharing so this is what the packet looks like I'm just going to stop start talking but please do uh stop me when you need to know more okay here's your vacancy brochure this is what has been published and what Peak the interest uh for nine people to throw their hat in the ring there we go and there's the timeline that we were just talking about so

117when we were thinking about the 8th of May we're talking right here at noon with the interview starting probably with two or three people but we'll wait and see what the pool looks like we'll wait and see how the round one interviews go on May 2nd and third all right I'm going to jump right to relevant law let me get my packet out here now okay so I always remind people that the position of superintendent of schools is paid for with taxpayer dollars it's a public position and so you do need to have some things in mind when you are conducting this process and there are laws uh the biggest ones tend to be around these protected categories so it's the don't ask questions some people say protected class but all of these things in

118this blue box right here are protected which means you cannot ask people directly about any of these things here although there are ways to get to the heart of the issue if it's important to you the ones we see most commonly and we'll talk about bias in terms of um this would be there tends to be age concerns and there tends to be uh gender concerns as well that people for some reason want to get deeper into the applicants qualifications and that is irrelevant to their ability to do the job so we don't want you asking questions about that there are indirect ways to ask about those I won't Dell on these because you have these and I'm not going to tell you um what you should or shouldn't ask but please don't ask things

119about how much longer until you retire do you own your own home all those sorts of things because these will get you in hot water with uh applicants because they are definitely not an equal employment opportunity way to interview when you ask interview questions and you'll notice the ones that I suggested to you do not touch on protected categories or classes at all I won't go over this but if for some reason you really wanted to know about someone's ancestry or national origin Etc there are ways to ask that I would not suggest asking them we're simply in here saying that there's some Nuance to ask asking questions about protected classes um but I don't know that it's necessary I just want to make you aware that it is a a possibility for you all

120right getting dizzy here as we're doing this almost done with the protected classes this is also common sense and I would say that um oops it's one of the things that if you allow msba to suggest things I would suggest on some of these things from leg perspective you do take our recommendations and try not to ask those questions and also then in terms of policy I made this smaller because I just wanted to show you a couple of key things here you've adopted policy 401 this is just the model policy which is that you're an equal employment opportunity employer so you do have to adhere to the laws therein and then also public and private Personnel data I'm going to jump ahead in the packet just for a moment because there's two things I've

121highlighted that I want to point out for you and this is the first one so on page 12 of this packet in terms of data privacy laws the names of applicants are private data except when I'm GNA Jump Ahead except when they become finalists for an employment position so what you're going to start looking at tomorrow morning the names of those applicants are private data except when they become finalists for an employment position so then I'm going to go backwards and tell you that a finalist means an individual who is selected to be interviewed by the school board for a position that is data Privacy Law in Minnesota so notice it doesn't say semi-finalist versus finalist we talked about this earlier your round one finalists will be called semifinalists it just makes sense semi-finalist in

122the first round finalists in the second but according to data privacy laws it is anyone who's going to be interviewed by the school board for a position so on the 30th the names of your semi-finalists will become public okay so that's all I want to say about the data privacy laws and then we're going to go to the policy about open meeting law a lot here I'm just going to give you one final reminder policy 205 is about open and close meetings the only time you can close a meeting relative to your superintendent is for an evaluation and when you conduct an evaluation of your superintendent they have the right to request it be done in an open session it is their prerogative if they ask to be evaluated in an open meeting you must

123do it everything else in policy 205 talk about when you can and cannot close meetings superintendent search does not fall anywhere in the closed meeting Provisions so all in the open session other search considerations on statute I'm going to zoom in on this one because this is something we added this year there's a couple of key things I'll go to 200 here no there we go all right so um here's the statutes now in terms of a couple of things with your superintendent the superintendent will be considered a teach teacher okay so in terms of employment when you're defining a teacher a superintendent is a teacher for purposes of subdivisions 3 and 19 and here's subdivision three this is the one I want you to let me know a teacher related by blood or marriage

124within the fourth degree computed by the civil law to a board member shall not be employed except by a unanimous vote of the full board when you name your semi-finalists let's say you have four people that you choose to interview they have the opportunity to become your superintendent if any of you six board members are related to one of those people you have to let me know because that will change the terms of the vote it will have to be unanimous it cannot just be a majority you do not recognize their names or you know you're not related and it does happen believe it or not it does happen in the world of Education that a board a board's Rel members related to a candidate you have to tell me that's on you folks it's

125not on me to know that thing and then also here's residency a teacher or a superintend shall not be required to reside within the employing district as a condition of their employment or continued employment so if someone lives 2 hours away but they can still complete the job in brainer you cannot consider whether or not they say they're going to move to your community that is illegal and then there's some Contra contractual stuff here obviously you're required to have a licensed superintendent uh the period is no longer than three years from the start of employment for a contract you do not have to renew the contract you can do whatever you like the conclusion of the contract and then in the last year some people say it's going really well we want to lock them

126in for another couple of years you can start 365 days prior to when it expires negotiating another contract and it will be a new contract they don't just roll over automatically it is considered a renegotiation of a new contract every three years or every two or every one whatever you settle on here's the special voting guidelines the only one I'm going to say that I want you to pay attention to is right here initial hire of a superintendent who's related to a board member it must be a unanimous vote of the full board so if for some reason in round two there's only five of you present and one of the candidates is related to one of you to the fourth degree you have to wait and take the vote when all six of you

127are present if that's the person that you want to hire so that's all I'm going to say on statute these aren't relevant so we're going to talk through common interview mistakes and remember to interrupt me if I'm going too fast you're not going to make any of these mistakes when interviews roll around we're going to make sure that you for example have very complete selection criteria and I would say between your leadership profile the hiring criteria survey you took to get us there and the stakeholder summary report your selection criteria is very very clear you need to make a good impression it is a two-way street people are interviewing you as much as you are interviewing them you're not going to ask any questions that are illegal for sure you're you're not going to ask

128vague questions I do want to say when it comes to the questions remember we talked about the application those questions you had three of them were quite broad think of it like a funnel round two is a little bit more specific when you get to excuse me round one is a little bit more specific round two is going to be your opportunity to ask very specific questions to really get a handle on does this person understand what we need and so it's going to become more specific as we go so the round one questions are sort of broad but not very they'll be more specific in the second round please keep the big picture in mind um probe motivation why do you want to work here try to ascertain from their answers to the questions

129what it is they want out of this opportunity and you'll you'll get that feeling and you'll have that EMD form to use to also score their answers it's not a one-way Street take good notes if you do interview four to six people it's a lot of interviews and you're going to forget by the third or fourth interview what the first two people said jot down notes during the interview to make sure that you're able to refer back to it during deliberations however your notes are subject to a data request so please be sure that everything you write down is professional and appropriate in other words don't write down anything about their age their gender their race any of those things because those are protected classes and you do not want your notes to include anything

130about those classes so jot down the things you need to write down to remember what you want to say about the candidates when you're making new decisions about who moves on take your time making a decision if you don't have a decision the first night or you want to get some more time you certainly have the option to do that you also have the option to suspend the search if you don't find the right person we will help you find an interim and then we'll do another search for you at no additional charge next year uh probably start in January or so with the second search so don't make a quick decision if it doesn't feel right to you here's the don't settle information and then we're going to talk a little bit bit here

131about the bias please do check your bias at the door because we all have them and there's some information here on what is bias I'm not going to read this by any means but it is something that you carry around with you without any conscious decisions I call it assumptions we make assumptions about people based on what we see I'm just going to give you a couple examples of bias that we have seen school boards actually have during the interview process for instance we had a um a board that had two very fine candidates uh in the last Road and so during deliberation we encourage people to focus on the positive to talk about the strengths of the candidates because they've done so in a public meeting and we don't want anyone's reputation being harmed

132by a board member being extraordinarily negative about their candidacy so try to keep it positive but in this case they were both very strong people and they're going around the room and they're asking board members to say what did you really like about John do and one person said you know what I thought he had a really strong personality he was very direct I think he'd fit in really well in this community I could see it being a fit and they nodded and agreed and they kept going around the circle well they got to the next candidate and the board chair said okay now let's talk about Jane do what do you think this exact same board member said you know she has a really strong personality she's very direct and I do not think

133that's going to be a good fit for our community verba the same thing for both candidates I have never seen a more clear example of gender bias in my life strong personality on the female candidate was a bad thing strong personality on the the male candidate was a good thing and so that board member did not even know that they were biased in that way that they thought of leaders as being different qualities depending upon if you were a man or a woman so then we added this section so we can talk about that that was a gender bias one um an age bias one was pretty clear a couple years ago because two School Board they made assumptions based upon the age of the two finalists one was probably in their late 50s the

134other was probably in their mid-30s to 40 and a board member said you know what I think Tim is probably going to be way more fluent in social media he's the younger he's the younger one I know that you know that generation really understands how to tweet and we want to up our profile on social media so I think Tim would have an advantage there I just can't see George being very good at that because you know he's a little older you know they didn't want to say that well they agreed that that's really important and social media was a priority for the board but they hadn't asked a question about it it didn't come up until during deliberations luckily they didn't make their decision based upon that because the older candidate was a fanatic

135Tweeter every day several times a day was tweeting the younger candidate avoided social media at all costs was not even on Linked In or something like that so it was an age bias assuming that technologically the younger candidate was going to to be better than the older and they couldn't have been more wrong the last bias we sometimes see is um familiarity bias it's hard to say that word if you're familiar with a candidate you will be biased either for or against them most common it's with an internal candidate and so when we have internal candidates they have to abide by the same data privacy laws as everybody else from outside the district sometimes an internal candidate has a leg up because they are a known Factor sometimes they have a leg down if that's

136such a thing as saying in that they're a known Factor so it's the good news bad news of you know a lot about this person maybe they're not already employed in the district but maybe they're in a neighboring district and you've heard of them or you have people whose family members work in that District being familiar with people can work against you during the surge process so you need to try to remove that bias and look at them as objectively as you possibly can especially when you're comparing them to other candidates that you are not familiar with the flip side of that is the Mystique that we sometimes assign to outof State candidates there may be people coming in from the East Coast or south or the West Coast wanting your job if that's the

137case you always get a bit of a rush that wow someone from pick a state wants this job and so you have this moment of thinking that they might be better than the Minnesota candidates and Minnesota candidates have the same thing when they apply for jobs out of state there's a bit of a thrill of someone that you know nothing about who is a fresh start that's coming in to want to lead your District um it's a blank canvas and that's a good thing sometimes and sometimes it's not so just try to Tamp down your assumptions about people um when you see these candidates not only on paper and you read about them but also when you are interviewing them so I won't go through this without you know explicit bias if you are for

138any reason someone who does understand stereotypes and you have them please acknowledge them that you have those because we all have them you can't be human and not have bias and and make assumptions about people I'm going to pause for just a second um Cher Bo is there any questions from anyone or should I just keep talking DJ anything I don't think so I'm keeping up so far I mean the dos and don'ts are are pretty important um you know and my real job I've real familiar with all this stuff and it's no different in the school than it is in anywhere else these aren't uh this isn't school specific you can't ask those questions to anybody so uh there you go so I don't think there's any problem with that and I think with

139our Bunch we're pretty capable people I don't think we'll be messing that up and uh there you go you just kind of gota you know it's pretty easy to me because I just think of what I want somebody asking me those questions you know and they're kind of unusual questions are you pregnant I mean what are you talking about like whoever asked that you have to be crazy uh so I think we'll be I think we'll get through that just fine yeah I have a question Barb um what if you have a personal relationship with a candidate or you worked with them or under them is are there any restrictions with regard to that thank you for asking that question no there are not there are not um restrictions it's something you should be aware

140of in terms of your own bias for or against that person you can't however really be in the educational sphere without bumping up against some people all the time um other districts your own District your own jobs you're going to have people you know or know of no matter what so it's not a problem you don't need to disclose it you don't need to excuse yourself or recuse yourself from a vote the one thing is if there is you know people toss the sort of conflict of interest statement around kind of loosely oh there's conflict of interest because you know they used to work together or a conflict of interest because their son works with his daughter you just all these kind of relationships or a a web that's kind of woven around some candidates

141none of that is a concern unless it's financial and I'm sure you know this from your work as school board members if it's a conflict of interest that implies a financial implication that there is something in it for you financially if they get the job then there's a conflict of interest but if not all these other circumstances are just circumstances people are people people know each other people engage in Bowling leagues or you know basketball you never know who you're going to bump up against and you'll probably know some of the folks but there's no problem with it unless it's about money then you need to let me know okay any other questions for Barb all right Sally for okay thank you much I appreciate it so here's some scenarios I'm not going to go

142through all of them and we're not going to ask you to sort of turn to your shoulder partner and try and ask and answer what's going to happen I'm just going to let you know that these things do happen sometimes you get down to two finalists and with a six member board it might be a three- three tie and what happens is the sides start to dig in because you both want what you want in terms of sides it can happen so what we need to do do then is kind of revisit okay why do you feel that this person is the best candidate why do you feel this person is the best candidate sometimes there's assumptions being made about their age you'll notice right here about visibility energy etc etc when I say how

143would your board manage that discussion I'm just going to suggest that you do this Whenever there is sort of a deadlock is you go back to that leadership profile returning to the front page of that vacancy brochure with all of the things that you said you wanted sometimes can help break a Log Jam okay so look at the criteria you've identified in your leadership profile the second thing I would say you do is go to this stakeholder summary report take a look at was what was most important to the people in your community if you need to you can take a look at it in terms of which hat were they wearing when they took it so between that leadership profile and the stakeholder summary report you should start to see some movement if you

144have your heels dug in on two people this is also the only time that I would say if you just can't move off the dime maybe you go to the opportunities for growth so if you have two candidates that are both strong and you are just split on which one to hire you could suggest that well this person's Financial experience is just not as strong as this person's so you aren't criticizing this person for not being as strong financially but it is a deficit compared to the other person so we'll talk about this when we go through the interview script and the deliberation script but if you have to go to a tiebreaker after those other attempts s you could talk about opportunities for growth or weaknesses in order to try to get some movement

145otherwise you compromise um if there's three finalists maybe the two that have you know dug in their heels on a side could find common ground and the third candidate and so that's an option too thinking collaboration and compromise without sacrificing your own values as an individual board member and who you represent is important uh the next one is when things get personal this doesn't happen very often but if there is old baggage amongst the board about past hurts and there hasn't been a resolution to those hurts sometimes comments from board member to board member get personal and that's unacceptable so in this case if it does start to devolve into negativity and I do not think that's going to happen I've watched this board work together thus far and I've been really impressed if it

146does the chair has a gavel for a reason so the chair can simply dabble to a recess take a break and let cooler heads prevail go for a walk come back in 10 minutes and sometimes that's all it takes we do not want it to become personal about board members or about your or about your candidates because again remember that you're doing this in a public session and we want to be super super careful and then the last one is I think uh chair Bo's alluded to this during deliberations on your final to one board member says well I have some information from someone who's in the null about one of these candidates can I share that information if that happens please don't surprise us at the board table with that if you have information

147from credible sources that you are concerned about this candidate call me and talk it through with me first what we want you to do is base your deliberation on facts and rumors misinformation runs rampant because the closer you get to naming your superintendent the higher people's level of anxiety go and I'm sure you experienced this a couple years ago but the closer you get to making a decision the heavier the lobbying is for and against people and I'll bet you at least 50% of the time there is no truth to what you are being told about these candidates so you have to be very very careful not to believe everything that you are told not to believe everything that you hear or you find on social media there are lots of explanations for lots of

148different things so please be careful you're not sharing rumors or innuendos it's not fair to the candidates it's not fair to your fellow board members but do call me if you hear things that are concerning if you hear it from one or two people people have opinions if you hear a pattern of concerns that's when I really would appreciate you calling me so we can talk it through one-on-one and you can call me anytime by the way as one-on-one you individual board members you can't call each other and talk about candidates you can't discuss strategy or who you're going to vote for that's completely outside of the the open meeting law you can call me individually so I'm happy to be someone you bounce off concerns if any of these situations start to arise okay

149move on forward we're gonna have I have a I have a question go ahead DJ y so we can't talk between each other not not a group but like oneon-one about these candidates I would say you could share information you could share information oneon-one however you cannot talk about strategy or decide how you're going to vote or if you will or won't support somebody those deliberations need to be at the board table but you can talk to one another to share information and real often for instance the board chair I might send something to the board chair he disseminates it one way to all the board members via email but you do not reply all obviously the serial meeting is a bad idea but you are human beings and you do live in the community

150and you are sometimes acquaintances or friends so you could talk oneon-one but just be very careful that you're not planning what's going to happen at the board meeting that would be when you cross I see got it thanks for clarifying that yep and then for my part based on what we went through last time around what I would say is this April 30th whoever whether it's four candidates or six or whatever that we choose from the pool of nine that we will now see tomorrow they'll obviously those people will only be known to us until we announce who the finalists the six five four whatever finalists are once those people are publicly available I would hope that any member of the community that has information these people would come forward then instead of an hour

151before we pick a finalist or pick a pick a superintendent I have some PTSD and some bitter feelings about how that went down last time and I'm not going to lie about it um it was it was a driveby there's no other way I'm not sure that we that doesn't mean that what we ended up deciding was the wrong decision by any means it was just it was a it was a a flawed process now I will say I have the utmost confidence in Barb um where the firm that we hired last time did not handle that situation well at all so I I'm not deeply concerned about it but you know depending on who these candidates end up being you might be surprised at what people start calling you and telling you Barbara you

152guys are going to pick out the candidates that you think best fit our survey and the survey that you gave us and kind of direct and kind of narrow it down for us a little bit not say you wouldn't have strong feelings about somebody else but but it that's kind of what your job is do I understand that properly yes we will look at the list of nine for example and then we have a team of vets that are former superintendents or Schoolboard members and they individually go through and give each person um a one through five rating one is no five is yes three is maybe and then we end up having a meeting a few days later where everyone's results are coated and we're like okay these appear to be the strongest candidates

153here's some that didn't score as well why or why not so we spent about hour or two hours talking about these people we end up with a top list and sometimes it's a top four might be a top eight you never know then what we do is we will have um our former superintendant will vet them further so they call and arrange a pre- interiew with each of the people we're going to recommend so we do a pre- interview with the candidate on the phone we do a social media sweep we also talk to their references and once we've done that we put together presentation forms on those we feel are the strongest between your leadership profile and the stakeholder report and those are the ones I'll present at the meeting on the 30th candidate

154ABC we're recommending B and C and I'll read something that tells you a little bit about why we're recommending B and C um the challenge for us can be that we are limited by data Privacy Law to only contacting the references that they list on their application materials so people who are listed as references or have written letters of recommendation that's who we can call we cannot go outside of that and call people that hey do you know this person because I'm interested in thinking if you you know would you think they'd be a good superintendent anyone who can figure out msba search season this search can figure out that that person has applied for your job and we just violated data Privacy Law by outing their name so we are really truly limited to

155calling people who've offered to be a reference or know this person well enough to be a reference so every once in a while the references are telling tremendous things about a person not very often but if we had been able to go off the beaten path at that point we might not have recommended them that's that catch 22 of data privacy laws here in Minnesota but we will do our absolute level best to bring you the strongest candidates with what we are provided and then you'll decide whether you want to take our list go off our list and select other people or not include people that we're recommending long answer sorry I hope that was okay good answer no good answer yeah yeah I think so too okay so should I keep going or is

156there more questions keep going all right I'm not going to spend time on these Pages Pages 33 through 39 those are possible interview questions now I've created some that are custom design for brainer that we're going to talk about here at the end of the evening but if you liked questions in this packet you can let me know by number which ones you want to add to the list and so that's the conversation we're going to have here before we're all done so I'm going to skip right past those I am gonna talk about the candidates turn oops that's not what I meant to do there we go make it bigger I thought we all right so candidates are getting more and more Savvy about asking you questions and hopefully there's time at the end

157of their interview these are interviews hopefully there's five or 10 minutes remaining when they're done that they can ask you questions that they are curious about so a couple of things when they're asking you questions please um speak up don't uh have one or two board members do all of the speaking for the rest of you and I'm not worried about that with this board either but candidates want to see how you build off of one another's ideas so if they ask you a question like uh what are the strengths of the school district these are just some possibilities the chair would facilitate the question say hey great question does anyone want to answer that and maybe start and then someone else says I'd like to add to that so try to answer the questions

158not that all six of you have to answer both or all three questions we'll run out of time if you do that but if you have a passionate area of the district that you are more familiar with and that you really feel qualified to answer please do because they want to get to know you and sometimes their chance to ask you questions these are just some possibilities is a really good chance for them to get to know you it helps them make a good decision for themselves as well now when I say they're getting more Savvy I'll give you one example of um a candidate I was really impressed they asked a question that was very specific to a management issue I don't remember what it was I think it was something about Finance very

159in the weeds question and the board kind of looked at each other and said does anyone want to answer that and they all sort of said no and so the board chair then said well I'll tell you what we're we're a governing board we are not um we're not a management board so we don't know the answer to that question we would delegate that to our superintendent and our business manager they definitely could know the answer for that so please reach out to them tomorrow if you want an answer the candidate was trying to ascertain whether or not this board was going to micromanage them so by asking a very specific very technical question the board handled it authentically they didn't try to Fumble their way through it but they honestly said we don't know

160because that is a function of our business business business manager and so that's something that we trust them to do and do well so they're getting really Savvy with the questions they ask so please do answer honestly and if you would have had an answer to that micromanaging question answer it because you want the right person in there and if they want to work hand inand with a management board great they need to know that as do you if there's someone looking for a board that stays at a know 30,000 foot level if they ask something like that if that's who you are please confirm that as well all right I'm going to keep going because we're almost done with the interview training reference checks this is something we advise a board member or two

161to do between round one and round two so between May 2nd and May 8th I would like to see at least one board member volunteer to do some reference checking these are some questions you can ask if you want to call some board members or some District employees or some citizens now people used to be able to do they had more time when searches took five or six months they had time to go do site visits and board members would go to the community and walk up and down Main Street and they'd wander in the cafe and they just ask people hey what do you think about your high school principal you know they've applied for our job and we're interviewing them tomorrow it's gotten so quick now that very few people do site visits

162anymore but they do make phone calls you are not bound by that same list of references in their packet and sometimes people will share things with a school board member that they will not tell the search firm they're just more comfortable being completely honest with you 99% of the time what happens is if a school board member from Brainard makes a couple of reference check calls on this candidate in a couple on that candidate it confirms what you already know about this person there are not going to be any surprises 1% of the time you might find someone that says well I gotta tell you what the truth is we want to get rid of them so everyone's giving them glowing references but you should know they never do any follow through they don't do

163what they say and so that's wow kind of good know right so we do ask a board member or two to be willing to do this between round one and round two you don't have to commit tonight but please think about if any of you six would like to make a couple of phone calls and then you report back to the board after round two with this is what I learned and it's very high level it's like two minutes long but a couple of calls in your due diligence I think would be a really good idea so if you want to do that let me know and I can work with one or two of you after round one to do so we'll talk more about this on on the 30th as well and then

164lastly deliberating in public these folks want your job you've interviewed them they were probably nervous you might have audience members watching making them even more nervous so when you talk about them in public we again just say try to focus on the positive because there's a lot that's gone into this their name has gone public it might not have gone over very well in their own District that they are looking at the opportunity and brainer so please be respectful and think about how you would like to be discussed in terms of your interview um let's see just the dos and don'ts everyone's going to have strengths that you talk to in an interview no one is going to be perfect because no one is perfect that's why we've asked your stakeholders to prioritize so many

165of the things that we did because you'll find people who are really good at this and not as good at that they still might be a really great superintendent for you if the thing that they're great at is really important to you as a board and to your stakeholders so don't look for Perfection but to focus on the do focus on the things that are strong about their candidacy and see if it fits and if it's not in alignment with you and your community don't settle we'll do that we'll do that interum search for you and that won't take very long and then we'll redo this whole thing next year so here's some dos and don'ts again common sense um Golden Rule how would you like to be treated how would you like to be

166discussed in an open meeting when you just went through an interview process and that's all I have other than the contract which I know you all have the model contract that I emailed to you after our last meeting so I will stop that concludes our interview training but you do have the information to refer back to and you do have my email and my phone number if there are things that you want to follow up with me about any questions any questions specif training the training that we just went through then we'll transition into what we put on the agenda as an item which is to discuss the interview questions that barb has so keep that separate about the training that we just went through going once going twice all right then we'll move on

167to uh considering interview questions uh interview schedule and interview procedures all right great thank you so much so uh Kelly has a copy of the questions there are 36 I'm going to ask her to hand those out I also did email them to DJ earlier right before the meeting meeting so I'll wait till you have them and then I'll tell you what I want you to do this is going to be like homework five minutes maybe 10 minutes because I want you all to have a pen she's going to collect these after the meeting and she's going to shred them so for now you can write anything on here that you want on this list there's an opening question and a closing question that are sort of typical we usually assume that those are a

168part of the process but if you don't like them we can change them the rest of these Cate atories are your leadership profile so what I'm going to suggest is you individually each pick two favorite questions in each category so between questions two and six if each of you would Circle two of those and then do the same thing for 7 to 11 12 to 16 17 to 22 23 to 28 I'm going to talk more about that when we get to it because that's really a detailed High criteria and we're going to talk a lot more about that I think in round two and then between questions 29 and 35 also pick two so I'm going to mute myself and let you do that and then we're going to reconvene and I'm going to

169do a tally and just say how many like question two how many like question three question four and then we're going to go back and talk about them but we're going to try not to read the questions out loud any questions before we start all right thank you I'll be here in back in a five minutes maybe 10 if you need [Applause] it e for e excuse me thank you it's the quietest this for we only get to choose one right two per oh two per category y damn I should have been listening or you can just copy off Sarah's paper yeah you me that hand you mine for for for F they just examples from other situation she's been in is that from the Q&A session that's what I was wondering specifically yeah maybe

170it is oh yeah what do we do at the end nothing I think they're just there 36 those last two questions I should have said that sorry those last two questions when we asked for questions in advance for the Q&A and we asked for questions about the superintendent search process we did get some questions for the candidates so during the Q&A if you've watched it I just acknowledg that hey we received some questions that I can't answer today but I'll be sure the board sees them okay okay so just want to fulfill my prise to stakeholders that did submit questions for your candidates I mean I love them I think they're great I think they're pointed yes so I circled them both I think for the technology question we should just make each one of

171the applicants read one of John's iPad emails see how they do so I'm going to wait and have you tell me when you're ready for for me to start taking the tally hands being raised so we don't have to do anything at the end right nope no what questions questions okay it looks like pending DJ everything good on your head I'm good okay it looks like we're ready sounds good thank you so the first go around is just to raise your hand if you feel you like that question if it's in your top two in each of those categories we're looking eventually for about 12 to 15 questions for a one-h hour interview that's plenty um some districts only do eight to 10 maybe more in round two though but 18 20 questions is too

172many so we're going to try and window this list way down once we've gone through it and got an initial sense of where the the board landed on these then we're going to go through and try to find at least two in each category maybe three if it's an area that the board wants to emphasize and can you word Smith yes you can I just prefer not to do it in this open meeting so if there's someone on the board that has experience in hiring or firing or does a lot of interviewing and has questions that they prefer that are similar I'll work with them one onone and send those questions in an email to the board tomorrow and you can let me know if you like them better so you're not stuck with what

173I'm recommending but you do have some opportunities to create or craft your own um if we can do it in a way without them going public so number one um is a typical question is everyone comfortable with that or is anyone oppose asking question one okay we're GNA keep question one then all right so between two and six you each got to choose four raise your hand please if you like question two where are we at uh two two question what John did anyone like question one of your top two no no choose two which she's just now asking you pick two then you put your hand up if you if you Circle two she wants you to put up your hand now got you okay all right if you Circle question two raise your

174hand zero question three zero question four five plus whatever DJ did six all right six great question five one two three four I can't see the left um I'm sorry is it Michelle over here there okay there you go thank you so was that six also it five five question five five people question question six one okay terrific all right for questions 7 through 11 how many liked seven two question eight five question nine uh nine five question 10 zero question 11 zero okay that's great because the consensus is really helpful all right next page 12 through 16 how many liked 12 one question 13 three I 13 I have 13 sorry four okay four for question 13 uh question 14 four four for question 14 question 15 three question zero all right 17 to

17522 who likes 17 18 2 19 1 20 1 21 one 22 six winner winner chicken dinner all right let's go on to the none of these are bad I don't feel bad being the one right they AR that's the thing question uh this category is very specific so this remember we'll keep it a little bit Broad in round one it's very possible that we ask much more specific questions about some of those areas in round two unless you wanted to get that specific in round two so this is just for starters how many on 23 to 28 how many like 23 2 24 2 25 oh we lost DJ should we wait a second it says he left the meeting okay maybe accidentally logged off I'm just going to pause mean they're all good

176he's back I'm back all right thank you so I'm going to be sure again I didn't lose track 23 if you like 23 please raise your hand I had two people yep 24 I also had two for 24 just one okay 24 is one 25 1 26 1 27 two for 27 and 28 four okay next section goes on to the this page as well as the next so between 29 and 35 how many preferred 29 zero 30 three okay 31 3 32 zero all right uh 33 1 34 2 and 35 three could I ask if you had 34 if you'd raise your hand again I saw two but it might have been one more 34 it is just two okay sounds good and then is the last question okay that's usually standard as

177well but okay does anyone want anything that's in the bullet points to be talked discussed I didn't number them but all right so I'm going to go through and what I like to look for is anything that has a majority of the board so if it had four or more votes I'm going to circle it as one of the questions so question one four five eight and nine on the front page 1 four five8 and nine on the next page 13 and 14 uh the bottom of the page 22 there wasn't enough in that group other than 22 um and we didn't have any home runs in uh 29 to 35 there were a couple that had so like uh 30 31 and 35 each had three votes so if you could just indulge me

178for a minute and look at question 30 31 and 35 I'm G to ask you to vote again to kind of break this Log Jam 30 31 and 35 okay so we're still picking two out of those three yes you can pick two out of three so it's 30 31 and 35 can we have all three because we can only ask two in that category well because we have that we can't we have a category prior to that where we only have one well we'll get to that one she's just trying to bust out the low hanging fruit gotcha okay okay so uh you have three questions if you had to pick two how many like to question 30 one two three people liked 30 how many liked question wait a minute are is this

179the second round now yeah yeah second round oh so that's four on 30 four on 30 okay got it thank you how about 31 I can do four okay I see four how about 35 I'm a 35 four okay wow that didn't really help us I'm gonna be honest they're all three fine I don't really have a okay now keep in mind that um the stakeholders had some pretty clear things to say about some of these categories so I'm wondering about and they are similar some of these are similar in vain and 30 and 31 are very similar could you support 35 I've I've seen questions 30 and 31 sometimes sort of a generic answer sounds really good 35 does ask more specific things about that category that might be more useful can I choose

18035 for now okay none of them are bad to your point earlier so I'm G start with that so of those I selected which had four or more votes plus the tiebreaker we have one two 3 four five six 7 8 9 10 11 you have 11 questions as is so now if we go back and take a look you do have two in your first category and they're different enough sometimes if the questions are similar we can strike one you have two in the next category eight and nine do you feel like eight and nine are similar enough where you only want to ask one of those would a candidate give you the same answer to both question eight and question nine first question nine is different enough I think they're different one's asking

181about previous the other's asking about prospectively okay so we're keeping eight and nine yeah um how about 13 and 14 yep those are pretty different I'm going to tell you one thing that is interesting um between 17 and 22 uh question 21 in a district as polarized as your stakeholder survey indicates to me that has proven to be actually a very helpful question for the board to determine where they stand in the first round I'm only saying that because I've had districts that are very divided and people's initial reaction to it is no I'm not going to ask it and then when I say would it be helpful in helping you understand where they stand in terms of moving them on to round two people have said yes so you don't have to ask it

182but it's proven um successful in other very divided communities so it's up to you I'd need at least three or four of you four of you to say that it's okay to ask 21 to add it in I'm not gonna talk you into anything I'm just saying it has I'm on board with that given that all the other ones are kind of like 17 through 20 they were all kind of I just kind of picked one because it was the least I don't know exciting to me and I like your logic Barb yeah I like it no it doesn't bother me yeah I like it if you're okay with asking question 21 you do have room please raise your hand so I know it's at least four of you that are okay with asking it

183okay there's enough okay so we're gonna ask 21 and I think it's it's a window into some of the issues you have in your District that you really need to know where your new le leader with that so is helped elsewhere that is true um on the next one there's only one that Rose to the top for 23 to 28 the next closest were 23 and 27 does anyone want to advocate for any of those 23 to 27 or are you okay with just the one in terms of that area which one are you talking about 22 uh no 23 to 27 each got one or two votes and we only have one in that category but that's okay that's okay to have one in that category what is the one that we have 28

184well I was a DAT go ahead DJ I like the data stuff I mean I like 25 I like 26 I mean how else do you pick the curriculum how you feel that day or I mean I think that this is really important that student achievement outcomes in 25 and 26 I could live that I would I think 23 also says data it doesn't use the word data it says information instead but it's the same thing yeah I had 23 as a I think an important question as well yeah I just like it's got a little more depth than the other two I like it too 23 I didn't vote for it originally but yeah 23 I think has a little more meat on it it gets to DJ's point and then I think it

185kind of incorporates the other two should I change the word information to data if I change that word does that help 23 to become stronger information swapped out with data yes yeah yeah I like that so we have 23 25 or 26 how many if you had to choose one 23 25 or 26 they are similar how many would say you'd prefer 23 with me changing that word information today with 23 how many would support that one you could live with it okay so we're going to go with 23 with that word changed all right the next category we have one selected 35 that gives you how many total one two three four five six seven 8 nine 10 11 12 13 that gets you to 13 Did anyone have anything from the interview training

186packet that you were absolutely Blown Away by and want to include because we got to go back to that if you want to look at Pages 33 to 39 it's up to you or you could also take a deeper look at those for round two questions because I'm going to come to May 2nd round one with another list of suggested questions including some scenario questions that get at the heart particularly I think of someone stakeholder survey information but if you see ones in here you could email me the numbers you want me to add for the board's consideration you could do that or you can could look through them tonight and add to the list right now for round one in the uh biographical and self assessment uh area on the sample interview questions Barb

187that you had sent as part of the packet they're numbered I had chose number 13 I did too and actually a lot of those I went through and just what Randy did as well and highlighted the questions that I thought were very important impertinent um and 13 was one that I felt also strong about and I like that one and I like number 15 as well I number number 15 yeah what has been the most 15 try not to read them out loud I wonder I wonder is there a way that we could combine 13 and 15 because I think I I like I mean 15's a very good one too I mean yeah soon for a while clean what are we trying to accomplish we've got we all 35 is a winner right we're

188trying to find one more question yes that we're doing and I going back to all the 150 questions to try to find one 1 so far add one or two I wouldn't add more than two more to round I like I like if we're going to pick between those two I like 15 because it's asking for a specific recounting of something that the candidate actually did versus a philosophical question about something years from now that's kind of my take on it yes gives us direct insight into something that's happened kind of dealing with adversity or with yeah that's I mean I think they're both very good yeah they are really good questions yeah they are and remember some of this can be woven in for the finalist rounds too yeah or or derivatives of this

189Stu this is just for the for the first field of candidates what about 33 you 33 I had 33 Circle I didn't on the first round but it's I think it's important that's a fairly common one in round two for that exact reason it's that more specific question one of the things that I as I looked at the whole packet that you sent though Barb 178 right RJ and and again um when I read through those if I'm interviewing for something I'm going to bring up everything I've done in my life so if I so if a question pertained to what kind of experience or what did you do I kind of didn't even select that because I I I expect to hear that you understand what I'm saying so I wanted I wanted some

190other kind of information other than that I maybe that doesn't make any sense to anybody else but it makes sense to me I feel like I'm ordering Donuts how many do we have how many we have left I want the long can John have the one of sprinkles on it yeah want the long John with the sprinkles had a Baker's Dozen so we looking for one in the last category is that what we're doing a Baker's Dozen yeah 35 already in yeah you can stop with the 13 you have right now I just wanted to make sure I gave you a chance to go back to this if you feel feel there's some gaps in the first 13 you chose um I wrote down question 13 question 15 question 33 you could choose one of

191those for round one or all of them or put them all on round two but if you feel okay so what kind of questions what what kind of questions Barb would we we be asking then in round two I mean um more specific related questions or yes yes go leave on maybe 13 more specific by by now we've got your report so we could go more specifically into the areas that you're your stakeholders want some more information on student achievement curriculum student Behavior those sorts of things so we can ask some scenario questions this is a scenario what would you do or what have you done with this um parental involvement we've got some round two questions that do go deeper but you can do whatever you would like I like the idea of just

192having a question that kind of gets to a more personal sort of response to a challenge they had just gives us a little bit more of a window into who they are makes them think on their feet a little bit I would agree with you yeah yeah first round the first one just one you know one where it's just a little bit more a good um personal and and then I think I would I would say that for 33 um that was the one Barb said is typically deployed in the final round yeah so it's probably between 13 and 15 then if we want one of those think on your feet type of things and I like 15 I don't want to take over Barb's I don't want to usurp her hand raising all right

193people for 13 I 13 me so DJ said 13 okay anybody else for 13 and I think 15 I think 15's better than 13 oh okay then I think everybody do yeah yeah so I think we want to mix I think it's got of a question it's kind of I don't know why we're asking that question but that's just meic deal what are you gonna do both the fic plan I'm implement it I'm gonna just kick right ass on that deal I mean it's gonna be great gonna get that you you got go to the sample interview questions for 13 and 15 oh he's going to be oh I'm talking about 15 on the sheet no no no on the sample ones the 178 list 178 list oh yeah I like 15 a lot I

194like 15 a lot 6 on thaty okay that puts you at 14 questions for round one are you okay with those that should be more are you yeah I mean it's what what's your experience it's a good number it's a good number because you don't want someone to run out of time and I will be there holding up signs to let them know they have 30 minutes left and 15 minutes and five minutes if they're really long winded and can't get through 14 questions in an hour then shows you some time management skills on behalf of that candidate if they get done in 30 minutes with 14 questions then you know that they're very succinct brevity is important to them so 14's a good number I'm okay with it but honestly it's your search you

195tell me what you want me to do you're not interviewing us 14 sounds hurt Kevin John Randy DJ all eliminated ground history so I am gonna ask uh Kelly to come back and collect those from the five of you in the room thank you so much Kelly if you sh those after the meeting and then DJ if you just delet them from your computer that' be great I have a couple of very very loose ends that I need to just confirm some things with the board and then I'm going to let you go I know it's been a long meeting here so in looking at my notes I wanted to talk through um how to review applications very briefly because you're going to have access to them tomorrow it's going to be a lot of

196stuff and I I don't want you to start trying to read every word on every page of everything that's in there because you get to the second third fourth person you just don't have room in your mind anymore what most people will do not telling you you have to do it but this is a sort of a trick of the trade when you open up each of these applications I would look at their cover letter look at their resume read their answers to those three questions you asked them that are specific to brainer and if you need to then read their um letters of recommendation those are the the big four okay cover letter resume answers to your questions and letters of recommendation then I would start to put people in piles you know it's

197electronic you don't have actual piles in front of you but put them in yes no and maybe there's G to be some people that you're probably instantly interested in because they're in your yes category there's also going to be ones you're going to think no just no then I would revisit your maybe pile and try try to put the maybe people into a yes or a no pile and if you can't do it that's fine and then just put it away for a couple of days and then go back and look at it one more time before the 30th and then come prepared to that meeting with your own list that because you'll have a list that said candidate a is Jane do B is John do c is Jim Smith you'll have that list

198so when we talk on the 30th it'll be AB BC and D but do try to differentiate based on those four big things yes no and maybe if you want to dive into transcripts and licenses and work history and educational history go ahead it's just a lot of data for you on top of everything else that you're responsible for so I would suggest that but do what you want any questions on that when you start looking through the applications call me if you have questions when you do but you're good to go okay I have a question and then oh we have a question Barb uh okay we we're not able to print any of this off our printers this is all correct So when you say your piles you're talking about handwritten piles gotcha

199right okay yep and there'll be a disclaimer when you get the information uh Shelby will get it to you from rll there'll be all kinds of disclaimers that says remember this is private data do not print do not download don't take screenshots don't look at them in a coffee shop just try to protect the data as best you can one of the things that's different for us is you get to see all these applications and the reason you get to see all these applications is because board members to this point in time have been very careful with private data if we have boards that start mishandling it and applicant names are released before their Nam to finalist then we have to start pulling back in the Reign and not allowing board members to see them

200so I thank you in advance for helping us continue to do this because we do trust you with it and one other question Barb um when we're looking at these on the uh Rellis uh do you identify candidates as candidate A B C D and E and F or you how how are they identified by name by name you'll see their name okay yep the ABC is just a later sort of almost a and it's not in alphabetical order it's not ABC by last name or ABC by first name it's literally random so that anyone who hears us talking about candidate A and B when we announce them later they can't figure out that person whose name starts with z was candidate a because we flipped them there's no Rhyme or Reason to the ABC

201Okay so do it by name okay we do it by name now yeah yeah you'll see there do it all by name by name at house then when you come in they'll just can't say their name right I'll send you in all right so I think that satisfies what the discussion to this point satisfies action item one on the agenda which was to consider first round interview questions interview schedule and interview procedures is that fair could I yes um uh motion to move us forward to the next part so I'll second thank you so we have a h a motion from director Hyo with a second from director Breen to uh approve the first round interview questions and other items as previously discussed any further discussion on this piece hearing none roll call vote please

202yes yes yes yes yeah yes motion carries next up then is to discuss de side and schedule next steps necessary for the hiring process they're pretty well laid out but we could probably have Barb just go back over them to reinforce them for us so it starts with tomorrow morning and goes through a week from tomorrow is that about right yeah until April 30th yes yeah those are kind of the so tomorrow you'll have access please do set up username and password so you can look at these if you don't want to look at them electronically let me know and I'll make sure that there's one set of hard copies available for you at the district office and then you take turns coming in we cannot have two board members in the same room looking

203at these applications together it needs to be individual also um let's see you'll have access until the 30th at one o'clock I'll be joining you virtually for that meeting the day or two before I will send you a list you'll already have the list that says John do is a Jim do is B Jane do is C which is after you've got your piles mental piles or on your notes yes no maybe just go put a and C by their names once you have that list in front of you but I'm going to send you a list that tells you who we're recommending I didn't used to do this but now I send it to you at least a day before so that you can look at this list of people and say oh msba

204is recommending these four people that's my same for or wow I'm on a completely different page than msba I want you to know that a day ahead of time so you can go back into those um applications or you can call me and say why in the world are you recommending candidate D I don't get it I can share a little bit more information with you one onone because I don't violate data privacy by talking about it oneon-one with you but if I'm in the open meeting I'm not GNA be able to say very much so you'll have a list of our recommendations on the 29th at the latest to compare to your own lists and then on that night you'll decide how many to interview so at that point we'll know whether are interviewing

205on the second alone or if you're doing the second and the third of May the days for interviews totally depends on how many folks you want to bring in for the first round so that'll be decided on the 30th my other question is about live streaming and recording because tonight's meeting is uh live streamed and recorded I believe also 30th we didn't live stream it it's just recorded okay same same thing for the meeting of the 30th is just recorded is that correct I think we preed on that yeah how about the interviews um will they be recorded I know they're not being live streamed you did discuss that right you're not live streaming round one or round two are you recording round one or round two and there's pros and cons the pro for

206recording round one is that you could put those interviews online for community members that didn't come to the live meeting to watch so they could watch those candidates sometimes districts choose only to put um the finalists so if you interview five and you move two forward they only put those two up on the website so that's a pro um other districts choose to record them but not release them the con then is that you've created a data point and those are subject to a data request so the more data you create it's more data you have to manage and then if there's a data request for any of those I'll make up the number five if there's a record a request for any of those five someone can watch the same interview on the recording

207so they go through the data processes part or data request part so I just want to make sure that I know exactly what your expectations are and I think your it team would appreciate knowing are you going to record those I want you to understand why you're recording them if you are and do you want to do it for one and two just one just two or neither floor is open John are we um are we interviewing all potential candidates on the same day in other words if we have there's nine that's whatever nine so are we going to do nine on one day we'll never interview nine they'll bring for we yeah all right so my question is this will will uh if we record it and it's put on nobody would get a

208I don't know how to do this technology wise but would somebody get an advantage by picking up something that's recorded another candidate so yeah we talked about that so um the first round assuming more than three our semi-finalists yeah that'll be spread out over two days May 2nd May 3rd yep those will be recorded they would uh I I I personally don't see why we would live stream any of the interviews it's really to me about posting the recordings versus making people request them and what we would do is we would wait until May 4th until both rounds of the first round of interviews are done to post any recording so no candidate would have an advantage over another candidate so let me that's okay so if a candidate and then I make to the

209finals are we going to post are we going to post any candidates prior to the final interview because they don't have to pick up on questions or anything but they could pick up on a lot of other things facial expressions or emotions or that's my point so if we put something on prior to final interviews can a candidate pick stuff up from that recording no matter I'm not talking about just questions you I totally get what you're saying totally get what you're saying um I would say I would be fine with postponing posting the recordings till May 8th but also I mean what do you think about this go ahead DJ yep why do we just uh let's just uh let's just do the second interviews because then we'll probably only have two or three

210people and it's less stuff for the school to have to keep track of I think I read they have to keep the recordings for three years and uh we'll just do the second round of interviews then it's not like we're trying to hide anything Y and you mentioned that at the beginning right Barb that a lot of districts do that because I mean who's going to really come information request or maybe one offici a that really wants to hear those other interviews but yeah I I I think that's a good middle thing that I like that What DJ said too yep and then since Y and then those are the same day so we're okay yeah yeah from an access standpoint do you the only thing I worry about is if people can't make it

211those nights they have no way of being able to see the candidates at all does it matter if they don't see the semifinalists and they see the well they don't see the finalist in action the only way you see the finalist in action is see them as part of the whole pool right that's the only fly in that ointment yeah okay well there'll be an action again is we're going to reinie them with new questions so people but we make that decision that night and so if people wanted to reach out to us they kind of lose that opportunity unless they're in the room yeah well I mean so do we so does anybody I me if it's a priority make it a priority I guess it is what it is well and maybe my

212points aren't valid I like it you know I I mean so we're talking about two different things we have round one of interviews right which we're all saying we're not going to live stream those obviously that would make no sense so they will be recorded and they will be available for those that file an information request that's what's sort of on the table then for the second second round the final list do we want to live stream those well if we like I'm talking about first round we don't record I think we're what you said no you're not required to record them ever no as long as your doors are open you're open you want to see them you come sit listen to them just like we have to and and we don't want to

213live stream the second round because then the oh the first candidate would see the yeah yeah yep so we don't have that choice available yeah so then we want we probably should record I think I'm that's where I'm leaning but that doesn't address Sarah's issue about access yeah I mean it's a sensitive enough sit sensitive enough situation in terms of not accidentally giving people upper hands or information that like I said if you have if you're a Community member and you're engaged enough in this process that you want to observe the whole thing the dates are out there they're a couple weeks away just like we had to make time to do it y I mean it's not ideal but it's we're making some lemonade with I mean I I guess I'm okay with it

214somebody argue with me I'm not I I think people should have access to it but I'm not a I'm going to die on well then that makes the argument for recording yes I think I mean last time we live streamed them you'd have to live stream them Sarah because if you record them to do a data request I mean they're not going to get them for three days we're already GNA made our choice you know I'm not I'm not worried about the data request I'm worried about making them public for people to see that are interested in seeing the candidates and how they interviewed once they've interviewed so that they can give us feedback is there a solution to this that emerges more often than not Barb with other districts yes uh this was not

215an issue before the pandemic because interviews were not recorded and we're not live streamed for the most part pandemic changed everything because everyone started they were required to go to electronic meetings by electronic means and so everyone started recording and live streaming everything to meet the requirements of the open meeting law now that we've normalized back to pre pandemic where people can come in and watch you do your work there's this expectation that you're supposed to be live streaming and recording When in fact it's not required by law we are seeing a trend of more boards going back to saying if you want to see the interviews please come and watch them but the hassle of creating the data point with a recording has swayed some boards away from even recording them and the vast

216majority are no longer live streaming unless they may be live stream the second round where it's not it's probably not going to happen where the second candidate watches the first one that it's just too close together so um the trend is back toward hey if you want to come watch it the doors are open please watch us do the business but the reasons to not live stream or reasons not to record have started to become more common doesn't mean you have to do that then the other thing I was going to ask you about is what about your deliberations the interviews are one thing what about the board deliberations when you're talking about these candidates and deciding who to bring back or deciding who to hire do you want to live stream or record those

217and it's the same reasons to or not to your deliberations one of the things I always want to caution you about is if you live stream your deliberation be aware that the candidates are watching you and so if you do say things during deliberations that are um negative about a candidacy sometimes they will not accept an offer um not always but you do need to be careful if you live stream because they're probably watching to see what you're deciding um otherwise recording same thing you create a data point that people could make a request for to watch the deliberations as well so those are different from interviews but it's always for the most part one or the other the interviews and deliberations go together we live stream all of it or we record all of

218it or we don't live stream or record all of it but if you want to you could split them up long answer so if we recorded it and made them available say like on the fourth we've created it ATA point but we've also made them public at that point because we would release the recording so it's our exposure is no then you're just back to John's concern that people study them yeah I mean for my part um I'm just going to I it to me I would kick at old school I would we live streamed the deliberation last time and I really really really wish we hadn't um but again I'm open to anybody else's ideas but I mean it's just like our Retreats it's just like tonight I mean the door is open you

219can come in and watch it's an open meeting you can come in and watch it and I think to Barb's point we we've accidentally set this expectation that everything's available to everybody all the time and and we have and so to not put it out there yep I understand but it's a unique circumstance with weird data that's got timing elements to it unlike most of the other stuff that we talk about right so anyway I'm can can we live stream part of it and you can you can chop it up however you want so like if you wanted to not live stream the interviews but live stream the deliberations you could do that you could do the opposite true we don't want to do that I was I was talking about what we could do

220not what we should do but now he's saying no I like I'm I'm a kin I don't think we ran has some thoughts on what we can stream what we can't you can you can stream anything but you can't start stop a stream once you set it up inside of YouTube it's like you start it and you stop it you can't restart it again I have to create a new one so we'd have to have like a window in between where I can create a new one yeah which is doable yes the same thing you just shut it off if we decided to stream the interviews but not the deliberations yes and then if and and if the opposite is true you would just start at the deliberations it wouldn't be difficult yep if we

221did both you'd need a break in between the stop one you could break them into two pieces or do we care at that point if it's all just one what do we think the expectation of the community is going to be I think they're going to expect to see it that's all of a sudden we say h no recording no live stream for this but yeah we we'll record in live stream board meetings but damn it when it comes to the superint we're not going to do that I I that's the only thing that concerns me yeah is the push back from that all right so can we take it in chunks let's talk about round one of interviews How concerned are we about that that that people don't have real-time access to that we

222definitely don't want to live stream those I agree I agree no I agree yeah so then the question I say we don't record up I'mma vote for no recording on round one let's just vote not vote vote for real but let's just Kevin said you'd go old school yeah so who who who Who's who's who's who's against recording round one interviews who's It DJ oh first round stuff that I could care less I mean I mean I'm not like violently opposed to it but I think it's unnecessary is my point I think yeah because we create that data point and then sir to your point we've created a data point and we've been transparent but we've been transparent with data that by the time they can get it is useless to them anyway because we've

223already moved on from those people but they won't get to see the finalist interviews so at least they will have well we haven't talked about the finalist interviews I'm just talking about that round right and maybe there is a dependency there but I'm saying what's what's the benefit of a Community member because they're spread out over two days we can't live stream them if we record them and post them the next day then like John said candidates can study the thing and and look at how the board reacts to what other people say um you know there's there's different public can come to the interviews and the show up it has be okay I just don't want to create that expectation when we haven't done that in the past people expect to have access to

224it because they have access to all of our board meetings and you know you've got parents that have kids stuff and people that work L I don't I don't pretend to be above that people have lives just because we've said we're committed to this and they want to commit to it in some way I don't think we should put up barriers yeah that expectation again yeah kind of bothers me maybe we should be open and transparent I don't all right so we got two people that want full transparency and I hate using that word because it sounds like we're not trying to be transparent when the door is wide open and people can come in here anytime they want I'm in favor of all meetings in this regard to be live streamed and recorded John

225where you at you can't live stream him Randy you can't let the people on the second day watch the interviews from the first day because they're all going to get the same questions yeah like absolutely can't live stream not in favor of live streaming the first round yeah no I'm not either no okay so we have a plurality against live streaming round one so we're making progress right so write that one down Barb now do we record round one and play it later or play it we can post it to the district website after the superintendent selection process is over I'm okay with that because we can still get feedback from the community even after we've narrowed it down some of their feedback could be very helpful to us well that's now you're talking about

226the posting it between the two rounds of interviews right right yeah so what John had a concern oh John you talk about your concern I don't have to talk for you yeah I I just I well I said it before I think that people can pick up on things so easily and use it um to their to their advantage I mean did you say it' be difficult to do all you got you have one of these little things in a room that you're waiting to to you know whatever favor recording it and putting it on the website after but I know that doesn't have to be already hired everybody yeah exactly DJ but then at least we eliminate the data point issue where we're creating data requests that are on you know like it would

227it would avoid we' avoid that Pitfall but it doesn't address Sarah's issue yeah and I I think we're working with professionals and it doesn't create an unfair Advantage for any of them I'm fine having it out in the public if they want to review every second of it and see how we respond I think that's their prerogative and might be helpful for them okay well we know where Randy's at and you so recording round one and posting it before the finalist interviews you're okay with that John's vo of concern DJ where are you at here's my here's here's what I think is I think that it's I I can go either way I'll do whatever you guys want on this deal but the deal is is I think it's kind of weird so we're not

228going to take these candidates but then we're going to go post their job interviews like what difference does it make we've already made our decision so if you wanted to be there to watch the deal but now we got these poor people that didn't get picked so that doesn't feel real great and then we're going to go stick a video of them out there so everybody can see why they didn't get picked you know it's I I don't understand the purpose of it well that's the other thing does is it puts tape out there on the candidate that then people from other districts go watch and stuff like that right exactly so I mean you kind of if someone had a bad day A bad interview just you know I mean yeah I don't care

229LeBron James has a bad Tiger Woods has a bad day so now that's out there for years we have to keep that information for three years from what I read in one of the um policies that barb sent out um I just think that first round I think we can skip it and the second round if you got to live stream it and record it I think that's just fine I don't think we should live stream or record our deliberations because nothing good is going to come out of that whoever we hire Someone's Not Gonna probably been right on board right off the bat so all you're going to do is kind of make the ability for someone to have a little chip on their shoulder that you didn't want me in the first place

230or you know what I'm saying it's like I don't see what the benefit is to the public it's over we already hired them for our deliberations that's just between us um I mean you can be there in public I take it Barb and watch that yeah they have to be open oh yeah yeah so I mean Kevin you the one last time you wished it wasn't on um out there I'm all about public comment all the different things I I the whole time I've been on here I've always been I think I've meant to be promoting that this should all the open stuff but now we're starting talking about other people's lives not just ours and um yeah I don't know what the benefit is to take people that we're not g to interview a

231second time and put their interview online that's all Barb go ahead sorry Michelle I'll come back to you that's a very valid point and there are districts that choose let's say you interview six and you move three forward they only put those three online the next day and they actually only lead them up for a week and take them down right before round two so they don't live in INF me forever that's what we did yeah they chopped out the people we didn't move forward that's right you can edit it out right similarly after round two if you record all three let's just say there's three people in round two if you record all three I don't know why you'd put all three up after you've made a decision because if you do that you're

232going to be second guest all the way till Sundown because of those three one of them interviewed far better and yet you as the board have seen it so much more information and done reference check calls that you hire someone who didn't interview that well in round two so some districts will say we'll put up the loan finalist after their interview because that's the one we're moving forward with and then that also doesn't stay up forever maybe it only stays up for a week or two um lots of considerations I know candidates deeply appreciate it when you don't put them in the spotlight forever especially if they didn't interview well because it is the career as you're talking about of some people that have put themselves out there publicly so they appreciate not being out

233there forever for those ex from a data request perspective because we record it all and then we edit out the ones we didn't select because of the way Ryan has to do it that's all still a data point though like any anybody could still request the whole tape right okay absolutely correct I don't know what you would do with that but okay Michelle you had a question I think I was just going to say that I that that if we were to choose not to record slash Liv stream it's not that we don't want to be transparent is that we it's that we want to be respectful of the process of our interviewing which is so different than a general board meeting that's kind of where I'm coming down this is a specific circumstance and

234like DJ said other people's Liv lives are um a part of this I don't disagree but I want to come back to you okay because just right I mean I think what you're after I'm going to put words in your mouth and you take them out if they don't fit okay you would like these to be available because we're looking for a broader audience of people to review these interviews because we've sort of limited what we're doing with what we did with the option one on the stakeholder survey to open the door for more people to review these people and provide feedback to us in between the interviews I yes that is exactly what I'm saying because I think the last time we did that you know your inbox was full my inbox was full

235it was valuable for people to be able to have access and feel like they waited so I think Barb solved it for us yeah I think she solved it by us recording and not live streaming round one then editing round one down to just the the candidates that are Advanced to the finalists and then posting those interviews I love that I can do that yep I then we have to talk about round two so we're we're we're talking about the April 30th meeting we're talking about May 2nd May 3rd there will be two days where we interview half the candidates one day half the candidates the next day those will all be recorded they will not be live streamed they're open meetings anybody can come attend them but at the end when we get done

236Ryan will go back and once we identify who the two three finalists are that are going forward he will he will post those as individual or however we need to do it to get them out there so people can go review the interviews that we did with the people that are going to be interviewed again with me how about and then if if those if to John's concern if the if if they want to take time out of their schedule to review how you know how DJ shifts his position in his chair based on a question right I mean let them have at it they all have access to the same information at least so it's a Level Playing Field they can all study the same game film it's not like Bill bich with a

237camcorder well maybe I'm okay with that but I would prefer that the deliberations were not okay now we're on round one now we're on to round two okay all right we're good on Round DJ we good we we deliberate after yeah I'm good that I'm good with that like I said deliberations in round round when we round one so I would like that not to be recorded I agree bran shuts it off at the the end of the interviews right it's just the three that get published yep that we're moving on because we're going to do theoretically so let's just say six interviews over two days and then we don't deliberate till we're done with all five or six or whatever right and we don't want to record or live stream those deliberations Ryan was

238gonna say something clarify no that's fine you guys so we're going to record on round one which is May 2nd and third or whatever however many candidates there are you're going to get it down to however many there are will'll edit out the ones that didn't make it just post the ones that made it okay and then at the end of the interview we'll stop it for the deliberation correct correct okay okay yep I can do a PowerPoint too if we need to flowchart okay there we go okay everybody on board with that DJ we good y we can't see your face because the way the screen's lined up here you good with that DJ maybe you got his consent okay I'm good with it okay now let's move on question ever had Barb just

239yeah I just have a what are we doing for the April 30th meeting is that being live streamed and recorded just record just recorded just recorded no live stream right okay like what we're doing today okay that's cool okay now we're on to May May 8th May where we bring in finalists they come in there will be two or three probably and they come in one after the other so the question is do you want to live stream those interviews or Sarah is it good enough that they got to see them in round one I think that's how we did it last time I can't remember because we didn't want candidate three well they were spread out over different days oh that's right so there were three there was carsten there was Eric and there

240was Heidi and then the one came one day the one came the next day and then one came the next day oh really so we didn't live stream for obvious reasons there because the other people would had you know like whoever the third one was I I don't remember who it was doesn't matter had two days would had two days to study the other interviews so the question is Barb walk us through the timeline real quick for what that day would look like like what's the first time the board would sit down with candidate a on May 8th yes okay well you'll know their name because you'll know their names after the 30th you're using names not letters anymore yep but I'm just noon noon then the next one's at two and the next one

241interview at noon if you go an hour we'd have noon 1:15 2:30 at if you had three at 3:30 you'd be done so noon to 3:30 there'd be three interviews in that window okay and then you start deliberations around four o'clock acced to four so the concern becomes do we worry about the 2:30 person being able to watch a live stream of the 12:00 person yep I do so that's the argument against live streaming those same thing we did last time it was easier last time because it was spread out over different days so are we on consensus we are not going to live stream round do yep I'm yes that's fine okay now we're down to what we record and what we post I have no problems with um recording those interviews and posting

242those interviews the next day um and it's just a Barb question same thing um let's say we're three finalists only one gets hired then we only post that that that individual's interview and not the two other finalists right that's what I'd recommend okay because if you had I mean some of the three two of them might interview better than the one that you same methodology round one same concept so Ryan same same exact concept and then it's just do we want to live stream the round two deliberations or not record excuse me do we want to do that before contract settled that's what I was going ask don't huh yeah what yeah what happens if what happens if our finalist doesn't accept well I'm that's why I'm a big believer in yeah well you we

243delay the posting there's no statutory requirement that we post that recording 24 hours later but the world's going to know I mean it's going to be in the newspaper the next day so oh it'll be on Facebook that night oh that's true I mean I'm again I'm in favor of of I mean are we going to allow dumb question are we going to allow cell phones in here where people could actually record what's going on you can't restrict that why not public meeting right we don't have a policy around it we can't just make up an ad hoc policy this isn't a Dave Chappelle [Laughter] concert okay let's make a decision let's get this done with let's go my my my suggestion would be to follow recommendation which as I understand it Barb you walk

244us through it for round two so you would record round two if you had three people in round two you record all three but not live stream and then the next day you would post the one video the one interview of who you are going to be negotiating with and by then there's a press release that has gone out people know who you're negotiating with on a very rare chance that it falls through you just take their video down but that's the other reason we don't record or live stream the deliberations because stuff will get said in the deliberations that we would prefer those other two candidates don't hear right yeah does everybody sound pretty much on board with that good I'm on board okay I'll see if I can get this I can frame

245a motion that somebody needs to make well you make sure you do your power PL for Ryan too so I would entertain a motion for the following that for round one of the semi-finalists that we record the interviews but not the deliberations and that we edit out the candidates that are not Advanced after after round two and only post the interviews for the finalists that were moved forward and then for round two that we record same as we did in round one when we advance the candidate whoever we offer the job to that's the only that gets posted from being recorded and in neither case do we record our deliberations or live stream them so Mo motion second all right so I have a a a motion from director Ward for everything I just said

246seconded by director doninger any further discussion hearing none roll call vote please Kelly John Ward yes Kevin Bo yes Michelle re yes DJ Dinger yes Andy Hyman yes Sarah spear yes motion carries and honestly this is why I actually enjoy these meetings I love how we get where we get to I it's it's like an emotional jigsaw puzzle all right I would entertain a motion to in this meeting that moves second all right we have a me uh a a motion from director spear with a second from director Hyman to adjourn any discussion roll call vote please Kelly Kevin Bo yes Michelle bre yes yes yes yes motion carries wej Barb Hazard Pace somehow through msba