BOE Special Meeting 2021-07-31

001[Music] e [Music] for that's a one page I try to get it all on one page that number call his that I know Carol I'm get I'm trying to get it bigger I was trying to print it out I'm not no you're right because we don't I didn't bring my stuff I didn't bring my eyelasses so he's just partici tin and it wouldn't for like real meetings too great I will make sure every give it it's a hand up give it thank you brain fart yeah you're right we'll make sure morning James hey James good okay everyone um I guess I have my gavel again I'll call us to order order officially so we are on uh day two of our Retreat um and I don't think we have a new agenda there's not a

002new agenda it's the same agenda that we had yesterday so we're going to continue our conversation with AJ krael from the Council of great City Schools um but I still have to approve it because it's a separate yeah okay motion to approve the agenda for today's Retreat sorry yes we got so excited okay president president president deir present M beckerle present Mr Brown here Mr Cole on R Dr Pierce present Mr Raglin here vice president Reyes here and you have a quorum thank you um now is there a motion to approve our agenda this uh morning a motion to approve our agenda second thank you please call the rooll president Adair yes Miss beckerle yes Mr Brown yes Dr Pierce yes Mr Raglin yes vice president Reyes yes that motion carried thank you so we

003are going to go ahead and turn it back over to AJ welcome back AJ wonderful to be here yesterday we started the conversation by reflecting on two things one what does the board say two what does the board do and ask the board to evaluate the extent to which there was any alignment between the two uh it turns out the board found relatively little alignment potentially none uh to be precise on the June 15th agenda uh but plenty of opportunities to create alignment the work of today then becomes what does it actually look like uh to have what you say and what you do line up and secondarily what things will you have to change in order to create space for that to be the case those are the two issues that we address today

004the first is what would it look like to actually spend time um focusing on learning and discussing whether or not your students are actually learning um and engaging with your superintendent around her response to the data and then say secondarily today spending time talking about what are things that we have to change to make space for that conversation on a regular basis uh before we dive into all of that I promis uh before we left yesterday to give folks an opportunity to reflect on the work we did yesterday in particular we looked at the board's goals and Gils um and reaffirmed uh generally that those are the right topics though there are some tweaks that need to be made I'll be working with your Administration to craft those tweaks and resubmit those to you uh

005ideally for uh your uh [Music] reapprovals we looked at your agenda for June 15th to figure out to what extent are you all investing time into this the last step of that activity I invited you to do is homework which is where you decided are we going to keep delete or modify the items where there is uh not alignment with the board's goals and guard RS now some of the items you're certainly going to keep so ignore those for the sake of this conversation I'm curious what items as you were going through that activity last night what items would you delete or what items would you modify and what type of modific ation would you apply so before we dive into the rest I promise you that if you did some homework we' give you

006opportunity to share a little bit about that so if you did your homework and you identified an item on the June 15th agenda that you would delete then this is your opportunity to share or if you identified one that you would modify and this is your opportunity to share about that and to say a little bit about what that modification would be the floor is open delete or modify uh Dr Pierce and then Eric take it away so um I think one and um I want to start with the superintendent reports but this relates to all of our direct reports um so Dr Dixon please you know so items five six and seven yes but I think with five we all said that that's a yes that's a keep right but I think we need

007to modify how these reports are coming to us one I would love to see the reports earlier and in advance um now I know some of our direct reports are very good with that because literally every month or so they're just figures that are changing right Dr Dixon's reports are more involved um issues can come up within the 24hour of the board meeting so there's some changes that will be made to her direct reports and I understand that but I would like them to be modified so we're getting them well in advance even it's even if it's a presentation that's recorded or we're getting the script and the bullet points that go along with it so in many respects some of the questions that we have can be answered through not only the PowerPoint presentation

008but also the script that's going with it so I think that would be extremely helpful um I think some of the presentations um that we that we do receive and this is mostly again for Dr Dixon but it applies to all of our direct reports if there are ways that they can be recorded and shared sh with us in advance um you know you giv the reports you know um our Treasurer giving the report and we're watching that in advance right um just like when you run through with your staff if we have the opportunity to to see the thought process maybe to see that recording to see the exchanges that are going on with the staff and the team that might help to alleviate some of the questions that we have in advance so

009this is uh the type of behavior that I've worked with other districts um who have taken similar approaches where they said what we really want is for the board meeting to be the place for deep and thoughtful discussion around our priorities um and then around our legal obligations what we don't want is for board meetings to be the occasion for long and extended monologuing and presentations and endless Powerpoints and so on and so forth by anybody definitely not by the finance people definitely not by the auditing people definitely not by the academic people nobody and so their way of getting to that is other school systems have said you know what why don't we get all the presentations emailed to us in advance in some place like in my district it's largely PowerPoints for the

010board members receive two weeks before the board meeting like if there is any PowerPoint presentation that would have been presentent at the board meeting we get that two weeks before the board meeting and then we don't go through the PowerPoint at the board meeting we only go through questions you know uh Q&A at the board meeting where there's you actual dialogue um but I've seen other boards where they've even taken a Step Beyond that um and where the staff does a full presentation just like they do at the board meeting but they put it on YouTube and that gets emailed to the board two weeks in advance um and so there are ways to make the board space a Sacred Space for actual interaction and discussion among leaders as opposed to you all sitting around

011and watching presentations for hours out in um and so this is what I hear you know Dr Pierce's comment said if that's a direction you all are interested in I can certain have supported other boards in that direction I can support you but importantly I think doing it that way is absolutely a strategy for redefining your use of time together to maximize the effectiveness of the time you spend together so that it can be really invested into conversations about how our students are doing rather than listening to presentations that you could have listened to two weeks ago and asking basic questions that you could have gotten answers to two weeks ago and with our student component of those presentations I would like to see those recorded in advance because some of our students when they

012were coming on they were having technical difficulties you couldn't hear them if we have nice Studio spaces microphones let's take that equipment into their schools do the tapings with the superintendent ambassadors and then Loop it before our meeting starts maybe during our breaks um Loop those videos so people are seeing them continually during that meeting um the next changes uh relate to really our our board um announcements so if we're taking public comment and people only have four minutes to speak our board announcements we should only get four minutes to speak if that that should be like 4 to two minutes that's your comment don't extend it further than the time that you're giving the public to comment uh you were you were more generous than I ever was the moment I became board chair

013I permanently deleted that from our agenda the board announcement absolutely if board members wanted to share something put it in writing and we'll share it out it just invited monologuing uh but the idea of saying we will treat board members we will extend to board members the same dignity we expect extend to community members that has a certain logic to it uh any others Dr Pierce well I'll let my other colleagues weigh in before I appreciate so um Dr Pierce Tams putting fire today I'm hope there some other people some homework too uh Eric what you got um several um items uh the I I didn't see any just to throw throw out entirely um unless we did that with the executive sessions but uh ER got jokes I like it I like it uh

014I guess the first thing and I don't know whether it occurred on June 15th or not but uh the first 15 minutes today was just you know a waste um and and I think we can do better that is that is a cultural choice that you all have collectively made and reinforced over time I understand yeah what do you mean Eric I'm not following you we started late late we started 15 minutes late just say and that's that's actually abnormal it is yeah you start normally but we were eating we didn't start this all day Retreat I was giving some Grace we didn't start on time yesterday either we weren't okay the uh first uh item one um I believe that we can do that uh I would modify it to do that more quickly

015uh we don't necessarily need to have a formal call to order roll call or establishing of quum there are you know still doing it under the rules we can shortcut much of that uh adopting the agenda doesn't take any real time uh the public comment uh is an area where we can do much better uh what's the specific modification you recommended yeah and I like the idea of just eliminating that I don't think that this community would permit that and I'm not sure that it's a good thing but hold on just to be clear he didn't say public comment he said board comment board comment I never said anything about oh I'm sorry I was talking about public comment uh board announcements I agree they should they should go or be very limited we have

016paired it down substantially from P boards uh where the where are those on the agenda by the way at the end yeah the board announced 24 I see it 24 yeah I was speaking to number four public comment and I think that there's a few things that we can do or consider consider uh one would be that we establish uh a half hour say from 5: to 5:30 that we arrive early those of us that can to meet with and talk to public including about issues that they may want to talk to us about uh that would soften pairing down the public comment portion second we can determine in advance um which items are uh specific to agenda items those need to come first ahead of the agenda item but everything else can go at

017the end of the meeting uh to the extent that we do those this has actually become a very common practice U all across the country the districts have divided public comments into the ones that are specific about agenda items want they getting front loaded in the meeting and the ones that are just kind of kind of generic wind up getting tossed in the same bucket you know along with board announcements in this case and that's what we did just uh at the last meeting and then the final uh comment with respect to item four is that many of these um are truly administrative matters purely administrative matters and to the extent that we are able to screen those out and let them be handed administratively uh I think we should do that not everything you

018know I understand the you know that that somebody wants to come speak to the board regardless of nobody wants to speak to the board they feel like they have to yeah well then fine I to the extent we can handle those administratively we should um um so a pro tip on that one Eric um one of the things we we experimented with a bunch of different things um you know on my not my current board but my last board um on this topic um and what we found is that we could actually pull that off but in order to do so in order to actually render a higher quality of service to people we had to have people sign up further in advance when do people have to sign up in order to speak on

019your agenda uh they it's 1 o'clock this that day yeah so that's the way it used with ours in order to actually in order to actually accomplish what you said the way we got there was we had to require people to sign up 3 days before the board meetings and so the deadline to speak at the board meeting was three days before the board meeting and you had to give us what was the what is the topic that you want to discuss we do that and so by having people sign up three days in advance then you know our version of Misty would take that list drop it off the superintendent's desk and then she'd have okay this sounds like you this sounds like you people would call folks because now they had 3 days

020to work with try to S work things out by the time the meeting came around almost nobody was ever left to actually make public comments because their need had been met and that was actually a vastly better approach than people showing up to board meetings which you all know when you show up at the board meeting your need is not going to be met while you were sitting there at the board meeting like at best you're going to be told hey you should go talk to this person and then hopefully something will happen after that um and so when we switched so it was a little bit of a culture shift for folks because you had to sign up in advance U but when we switched that we were actually able to better serve people

021because then we didn't have to waste their time coming to a board meeting where they were never going to get service anyway um so that's possible but I don't think it's possible under your current practice so AJ we used to do that people still want to come just an FYI even if they wer answered sometimes just to say thank you sometimes to tell you that they didn't like the answer so um so we've we used to have three minutes board members wanted to extend it to four minutes then when we did that then we had to come back and say okay well we're only going to allow so many speak speakers because we were getting 10 15 speakers so we went down to a um a shorter amount of of speakers so it's what we've

022heard year after year is we've had our community come back and say you're trying to avoid Us by taking it so I just want to put in context trying to avoid Us by not allowing to us to speak so we have in the past uh sent out the agenda on a Thursday before the Tuesday um so that uh not only the public has it but the board would have it we would ask our questions Friday and Monday to the administration so that we spent less time on Tuesday so that also the public would reach out to the administration so the administration would answer um their their concerns so I just wanted to we've gone back and forth yeah and you're and my as I said before my experience is we had to experiment with it

023for a little bit to find something that worked for our community and so it doesn't surprise me that you'd have to experiment with a little to find something that works for your community but if what you want is people to be to actually get their needs met generally speaking the worst place for that to occur is at a board meeting like if you uh create opportunities for people to get their needs met that doesn't involve sitting through a board meeting they will be better served by that because much of what people want the board can't help with can I add one one thing I'm thinking about here is um I'm sorry I if something should hit the agenda uh last minute then I think we'll have to consider um giving the public an opportunity to

024still comment because they won't have have that 3 days because it might not have come up until Monday and then the board meeting is Tuesday so it's a rare occasion but at times that has happened when you said item hit the agenda last minute can y'all give me an example Transportation could hit yeah something being either taken from the agenda or something um that has been added because uh maybe there's just been a new development something along the lines of State legislation um that maybe got on the agenda because we we needed to address that at that moment um masks something to that alone yeah Mass um any number of things critical race Theory any number of things yeah uh so I honestly don't know what you're talking about U so maybe Ohio's just different

025uh we quickly found there were only last minute items for board meetings if we allowed there to be last minute items for board meetings realistically there are not lot of governance emergencies there are a lot of management emergencies there are a lot of management emergencies that need to be handled like that there are very few governance emergencies that require last minute items and so we just said we don't accept last minute items U Administration get organized have do your business and do it in a timely fashion and guess what they did um so yes if you open the door to there being last minute items then there will always be last minute items if you demand that management handle business um and then bring you stuff in a timely fashion U my experience is that

026is exactly what happens uh but in every single District in every single state I've worked in what the board has said we don't do last minute items so handle your business and serve children or explain to us why you can't handle your business guess what superintendent Nationwide have done they figure out how to handle their business U it's so again it's entirely possible could be different I heavily doubt it um so the question of do we do business last minute is always a in every situation I've been it has always been a board decision um the reason I push against that is because if what you're saying is we are about being transparent conducting business the last minute does not uh meet that threshold there are legitimate governance emergencies uh you know if s is

027submit resignation tomorrow it says Hey peace out I won't be here on Monday that presents a little bit of a governance emergency it's it's something you couldn't have predicted it's something that really requires immediate response um and the board actually has to do something about it Carolyn says you know look I'm disappearing on vacation and I'm I'm done with you I ain't coming back that creates a governance urgency it's something you need to do don't get ideas it creates something that you couldn't have planned that has to be handled immediately and that the board has to do something about there are very few circumstances that meet those three criteria and so I strongly urge you to consider that the idea of we used to call them walk-in items as we' be at the board meeting

028we'd have our full agenda and then some items would walk in that we ain't never seen before um and so we put a flat band on Walkin items and the LA and I still remember the very last attempted walking item that ever happened the superintendent is like hey AJ AJ check this out like this thing just came up and like we need the board to go ahead and act on this right now because if not children aren't going to be served well and you know we really need y'all to take care of this I said Mr superintendent I just hold on a second want to make sure I heard you correctly I heard you say you didn't do your job right and so children aren't going to be served well did I hear you correctly

029he said no sir what I said was we're going to bring this item to you next month and we're going to handle it for this month like oh okay good that's what I thought that's why I thought you said excellent excellent well then we'll see next month with that item and guess what for that month he handled it and then he brought us the item to the board next month that is that is a culture that's really interesting that is a culture and the board has to decide where do you want to land on that J James we we see you yeah so I think uh and then I think Eric right who had their hand up let me just give you bit more and then move on then James again on public participants um

030we can consider putting all of them at only one of the monthly meetings we do two meetings a month so you know we can limit that to only one uh and especially if we try out the you know com in a half hour early maybe only once a month we do that but let people know in advance uh and finally um duplicate comments when we have a group come in and there's 10 people all talking to the same thing uh with significant overlap if not just duplication uh I think we need to find a way to pair that down uh speak to them as a group ahead of time and uh you know allow them you know one or possibly two people only but i' I'd pair that down um there's lots more that I

031have throughout but why don't we move on for now look I love all this people doing homework you on a Friday night I I'm really feeling y'all right now like I'm feeling really special inside so no this is great it sounds like we've got a third board member James James man they over here spinning fire you got to bring it now bring it um I think the entire agenda is up for modification let's do the thing let's do the thing no but just I I would I would caution against um any decision that we make that minimizes access of the public to this body um I'm looking at this from a historical perspective from this board um we have far um more productive participation from the public in these days than we have um in

032in you know the the history of this board we don't have as many disruptors uh that come to board meetings and speak just for the sake of of disrupting however uh if we look at the district as a whole we do have a trust issue that we are um desirous to overcome with the public we do have a customer service issue that we have articulated uh needs to be addressed uh in dealing with the public and um many of us don't visit schools as board members many of us don't necessarily meet with the public um I.E parents and and you know community members grandparents do you have Rec changes for the agenda well um I warning us not to mess with the public comment section um I don't I don't agree that the public comment

033section should go to the end um look at who our customers are I mean do we really expect for single moms to if they need to speak to sit in a board meeting for two and a half hours with their children uh um I just I just think that it's a it's a customer service issue that we should be um that should be at the Forefront of our thinking uh as we make adjustments I I am willing to adjust everything I do believe that we should do the Pledge of Allegiance U I don't want to mess with that uh I think that that's a part of what I think that's a good part we should make sure that we keep it everything else uh I am open to modification including um how the reports are

034presented to us I like the idea of reports being given in advance to the board members and then the section on the agenda where we speak directly with the treasurer and the internal auditor may be for questions only um that may be a good modification that kind of satisfies uh some of the issues that that board members have raised um I I do not I do not support minimizing public access to this board because they don't have access to us anyway we only we only meet twice a month are there any other items uh besides public comment and uh superintendent internal AIT Treasurer reports that you recommend modifications on or deletion of um no I I think that the um when we do the first reading of policy I think that's statutory correct uh board

035member Brown uh B on our rules based on our policy almost certainly not statuto yeah it is not statutory it is based on our policy it uh it's it's good practice but I'd be surprised if it was statutory it's our it's our own written policy is what he's saying like we we wrote that as a role I think okay well I mean there there may there may be some some room for adjustment there as well um you know I I would hope that that we would get more participation um from the entire board on on you know the committee work that's going on too um that may help oh we're coming to committees to believe that conversation is on the agenda for today we're coming for committees we that too if I absolutely my my

036point is made so thank you yeah if I could just respond briefly um with the public participation what I learned during my first 15 years of service um constantly talked about the board meeting is an opportunity for the board to do its work in sight and in hearing of the public it is not a public meeting where we uh interact with the public um the law requires Sunshine Law open meetings requires that they can see and hear us but not you know for them to participate and and secondly um in terms of public access to us every one of us has a phone number listed every one of us has an email listed and the public can reach us in those ways or when they see us in the community or in a school but

037it doesn't all need to take place at our board made it well the the thing I would challenge you around on this topic uh because it sounds like there'll be various people land in various places on this and so it's just like I said something they have to iterate through experiment through and figure something out um um in this document this is the framework document it talks about the critical importance of the board having two-way engagement with the community on a regular basis your board meetings are not that um I would describe what happens as your board meetings as the worst form of so-called Community engagement explicitly because it's not actually a 2-way dialogue so if what you want to have is Meaningful engagement with your community don't be confused and think that what happens

038if your board meeting counts as that it is not two-way Community engagement um it is one way it is um unendingly frustrating for many people in fact my first experience with the school board was showing up to advocate for my kid uh asking really relevant questions about hey these things are happening my kid school what are you'all going to do about it and having nine people stare at me and like all right well cool thanks for sharing I'm like no no no no I I didn't come to share I came to get something soft for my child um most people are probably like me and that they they're not here to talk to you they're here to get a problem solved for their child and a one way in you know yelling at the board

039about it is not actually what they showed up for and people like me likely leave more frustrated feeling more disrespectful because their problem wasn't actually addressed by the leadership body just a bunch of people stared at them for a few minutes and they told them to buzz off we've got the next person for three or four minutes and so if what you are wanting to do is have authentic engage with your community just be clear what is currently happening to your board meetings does not come anywhere close to meeting that threshold and so if that's what you want you need to throw out what you're doing and redesigned if you like what you have then great but you just need to as a team be thoughtful about what are we actually trying to accomplish and

040then let's design something that actually helps you accomplish that and AJ I appreciate that because in this conversation um we are giving comments related to public engagement and the agenda item is public comment so it's not engagement comment and so the agenda is accurate in its description public comment if we as a board want to move to public engagement I think there are things that we can do structurally mhm um so and and I think that gets us into too much of the weeds as some of my board members may say because then I'm going to want to know okay Dr Dixon you know okay you know to our other direct reports how many um emails did you get from families related to Transportation or related to this issue how did your team respond who

041did you farm it out to we in some regards as board members do need to be kept aware of that information so when families come and say I've sent s emails and nobody's replied then yeah they're going to come to us and expect us to weigh in and advocate so they can get that reply do you see what I'm saying not the place for that I think we need to build that in and then structurally I think a modification to what will become public engagement needs to be a template in which not only are people just submitting their comments and submitting the topic that they're going to State on but submitting the after action that they want to happen after their comments let the Community member really think about what is the followup you want

042to see what is the action that you want to see and really lay that out that holds whoever the comments are related to accountable and that holds our board accountable that we can after quarter go through and say what outstanding public engagement action items do we have to attend to which ones have not been addressed in this quarter so as an example of the differentiation between public comment and public engagement um you know another board I've worked with uh they you know kept you know um very very thin minimal amount of public comment at their board meeting uh large because they that's not how they actually wanted to engage with the community they wanted people they wanted to actually have dialogue with people and so they left a thin amount of that at the board

043meeting just kind of for legacy sake but they actually started scheduling a separate meeting on a recurring basis that were Comm Comm engagement sessions and the way they structured them is all seven of them would be uh in a large room a room like this size or bigger uh and each of the seven of them is a public meeting publicly called meeting but each of the seven of them would be at a different table and community members can come in you could talk to any s and then toward the end of the meeting the board members would get up and say here are the things uh that were discussed by table this evening they report out on the conversations they have with community members um and so people actually got some authentic engagement um you

044know staff if there was a staff related issue which a lot of things tend to be it's like hey well you know staff persons over there let me go connect you with them um and it and it really became just kind of a place for clarifying what is the problem to be solved and you know how do we get you to it or if you just want to visit with your you know public representative for some reason then here's your opportunity to have a two-way conversation and by doing that the interest in showing up and talking at board meetings because people actually got what they really wanted which was to have a conversation that is almost certainly never going to happen at your board meetings for the reason that Eric described is because the board

045meetings need to be where you conduct the business of the institution but that doesn't mean you can't design an intentional space separate from that uh to actually have this type of Engagement that folks want have uh James actually can we go to Carol and then back to James sorry um a couple of quick things um I love that idea and it also um what I was going to suggest but this is probably even better or maybe both it seems to me we all really genuinely enjoyed those listening sessions that we did and that it the one way to maybe Tamp down on the public comment is to say to the organizations that we met with can we be quarterly on your meeting and then we go and so you're taking the pulse on a quarterly

046basis ongoing because the streets really good communication and then if we combine that with AJ's idea of this Open Session um and then while we're doing that and we kind of announced that open session thing we Tamp down on the public comment so it doesn't look like we're trying to shut the community off because the problem with the public comment is it's not the right place but if you narrow it down too much it looks like we're trying not to it's not a good look as opposed to a good idea and um the other thing is I think we need to either way treat public comment as purely listening session I mean you coached us so well that we weren't too engage during those listening sessions I think we're should not engage during our public

047comment we really it's about input coming into us and you know hopefully most of it we can pass off to administration because it's not board work to begin with but even if it is board work we'll take it up as an agenda item or something at another point in time and we don't engage at that moment even if it's just um pleasantries James James um I I I appreciate the idea around the uh the public engagement session I'm I mean we're talking about governance here and you know one of the first things I did as a board member was host a community engagement meeting at one of our schools and it was so well received by the community um but not welled by my colleagues and that that um you know I I am a

048direct person I want to hear from everybody that wants speak with me and I think that that that would be a good compromise um for me i' I'd be more willing to accept a change at the board meeting on public comment if we were to open ourselves up to a pure Community engagement public engagement session um be it monthly or if we were able to schedule them individually uh my preference would be that I had office hours where the public had access to me um you know based on what my SK uh I mean we're talking about government's governance issues here and and I think that that's something that we we should also address but um I I I would be more willing to accept any change on that issue if if we were allowed

049to do some of those things uh on our own uh so I would not recommend you do those things on your own absolutely um the the the idea is absolutely the right idea is how do we how do we intentionally create opportunities for engagement I will reiterate what I told this body before uh board members out in public on their own are campaigning board members out in public collectively with an with a shared intention are actually accre benefit back to the children in the school system and so the question is what is your engage who does your engagement benefit and what I assert to you every time you go out and you are doing engagement as a solo individual the that is articulated to for the benefit to appr to you as an individual elected

050representative it is a campaign activity in my mind if you want it to be a board activity where the board is doing the engagement the board is listening it has to actually be something designed by the board which at minimum means having two board members on the same script the same agenda uh with an intentional plan that is known by the entire board it's not hidden it's uh it's out in the open it's transparent it's publicly noticed so that anybody who wants to attend not just people happen to be on your personal mailing list I mean there there's intentionality around it it's so James the event that you hosted to me sounds like the right event to host if it's the board hosting it and not just the individual board member hosting it and so

051that's that's the only shift is I would not ever I would not encourage you all to you be out trying to be solo practitioners the temptation to be to freelance and be on your own agenda rather than on the children's agenda is simply too great U and so let's design it let's be thoughtful about what exactly do we want to create what do we want that engagement to look like what what would be an authentic interaction U and let's design it for the board Bo to go out and do in the same way to Carol's point that we intentionally designed the listening sessions uh but let's come up with what are the things we what is the exact work to be done and let's design a solution that is unique to Columbus City Schools board

052um so one uh I really love the fact that we're having this dialogue and I just want to uh give James props I think if I'm thinking about the same um engagement session Ramona and Jennifer did show up and I was there as a community member and it was it it had moments of good engagement so Props to to the three of you um I would like to caution us as we think about how we design this um to come from outside of our privileged realm um starting this engagement at 5:00 when many of our parents are at work uh when we have board members who have children and are coming and and getting ready for practices in schools and need to be fed um I'm tell you right now that that's just putting more

053um on my plate more pressure to get here at 5:00 to me with community members um I love meeting with community members but we need to meet them where they are so if it means that regions you know get together and the region chairs in Region Three and region four and we pick a school in that region and we rotate um at 8:00 in the night meeting that goes from 8 to 9: one that starts at 8:00 to 9: in the morning we rotate that schedule so we are truly meeting the needs of our community members and families and that we're inside of our schools I appreciate us going out to organizations but at the same time we have an organization that we're responsible for that has a number of great facilities facilities that do

054need some work but we need to start opening up those spaces and being in those spaces and our children and our community members need to see us engaging in those spaces in meaningful ways and I think as we do this I'm sorry and with all of that said um I would be more than happy to come together with a subgroup of my colleagues to help design and plan authentic and true public engagement um so we have a committee for that by the way that you're on careful uh so so I I want toe so I always believe you know you always want to catch people accidentally doing the right thing um and so as we will get to later on I would Crash and Burn pretty much everything you've developed as committees but there are

055really good reasons to have committees because sometimes there is a a chunk of work that needs to be digested before it's brought back to the board um and so as you'll see if you've done reading of any of the materials uh I want to just lift this up as an example for something to be a great use for a committee one it should be clear that there is board work to be done not staff work to be done and so what you know Dr Piers just mentioned is clearly board work if the board wants to do engagement and Outreach that's clearly board work so it meets criteria number one second there needs to be a crystal clear deliverable and she said the deliverable we need a specific plan for what our community engagement look like

056and then third what she didn't mention but if she you know kept going before I cut her off she probably would have gotten to was a specific deadline by when that plan is brought back to the board and then as soon as that deliverable is delivered guess what happens to that committee poof because the board work is pre it's really board pre-work to bring it to the board for the board to act on it so the board pre-work has been done not staff pre-work there was a specific deliverable a specific due date and when the due date came along is poof the one other thing that I add on to that is if you trust a member of this body to chair one of these ad hoc committees to deliver a deliverable by a specific

057date and they do not follow through they do not honor their word to get it done by when they say they would get it done the Comm the ad hoc committee should still go poof and if you choose to impanel a new ad hoc committee to complete it whoever was the chair should not be allowed to be on that committee they have dropped the ball they have proved they cannot be trusted with children's work so we set them on the curb and we get an adult to come in and finish the work now you you should be ruthless in your expectations that the people on this team will honor the work that children demand um and you should have absolutely no compassion for folks who are not going to do that um and so I

058just want to take that as a above that's a great example of the exact type of thing that a committee would be perfect for is here's a deliverable that is actually pre-work that is board work not staff work um and we should set a due date and let's get it done because the due date creates urgency we're not just out here hey you know baby January maybe March no like hey the due date we need to get on this we need to start this you know December one which means we have to have the plan complete by September 15th I mean like let's let's be crispy about these things and so I I appreciate that just want to lift that up as a perfect example because when we get to committees y' be like AJ

059just hates committees no I don't hate committees I hate wasted time I love boards who actually get the work of children dud you know with with Precision with efficiency and committees are great for that if they're used like that as opposed to used as everybody gets a fom like the the kind of the Oprah style of committee development you get a committee and you get a committee and you get a committee like that that serves adults that does not serve children like let's be precise what is the work that our children need us to do on their behalf that our community needs us to do and let's crank it out in a timely fashion the example just given was a great example of that other thoughts about delete or mod mod ify we've heard from

060uh a handful of topics that have really been lifted up by three board members so far so we've got four of the folks who haven't added stuff to the list you have stuff you want to delete or modify um so I have a a quick thing saying that um I don't think we can say that the staff has nothing to do with public engagement because we don't have keys to the buildings so just an FYI anytime we decide to make what what we consider board work we have to also understand that we're putting the staff to open the staff to put the chairs the tables all that stuff so I don't want I don't want to say that we're eliminating and I'm sure that Dixon would have want would love to have so this some

061so this meeting this is board work yes but you can't possibly have pulled this meeting off without without without the team staff I mean and so but that's different than saying we're having a committee to do staff work correct like that is not that is not that is one us to be cognitive as we make plans that we do impact our staff board work will almost always generate staff work yes staff work does not necessarily generate board work yes um so I'm also on board with having the agenda earlier um so that uh uh we can dissect that uh piece so and having uh the superintendent report being more information and data and specific um I've mentioned before you know having you know if it's it's a grading time is if it's report card time

062then we should be getting data on report cards shortly after the report card is released and then having action items and conversations and so forth um so I'm um I'm for for that piece where we're spending more time on what's happening with our kids what's happening in our buildings how are we progressing all these goals that we talked about I'm all about to spend as much time on that as possible I know some of these other items are necessary because that's the the way that uh we we run our business uh for the uh for the board comment uh that was something that was added a few years ago it uh initially was provide feedback on how the board was doing that's how it's kind of started and just metastas and then and then people

063like the president kept going well how do you think we're doing what did we spend time the question was did we spend time on board work that was what number 24 was used to be a board evaluation it was our own self- evaluation what did we do well what did we do wrong and then it somewhere in between 2009 and today it went to Let's do let's do announcements because people would go into those announcements so or they wouldn't say nothing so the president's like what do you guys want to do with that um time and people said well we want to make announce we want to make sure that people know what's going on so that's how that transitioned to what it is now um with no Rhyme or Reason or parameters as to

064uh to that to that time spent um yeah we could get rid of executive sessions but no just kidding uh so I'm I also we used to um have public comment on one of the two meetings so that the uh one one of the other meetings was really about the superintendent and so forth and like I said we also limited uh announcements the reason we moved it to the front was the same thing that uh James just mentioned we had children in the room still hadn't do done homework and the parents so it was a consideration of the parents' time I was the person that said i' want them to sit through the meeting because most times we answered their question in the meeting uh but I also understood we had little kids running around

065the the boardroom so um I'm also open for going out in the community I think that that's a great idea and um having more than one of us there I think is essential uh just because of um the issues that we that we have to take care of so again for me superintendent report should be bigger uh CFO or internal auditor if their reports are uh student centered which in some cases most cases should be um we have to figure out what um how those are presented got it anyone else things that you would delete things that you would modify Carol um I think that I would um I mean I kind of said this already but just to reiterate at a minimum public comment should just be a listening session for us there should

066not be any engagement um and it's really hard and it feels awful but I think think that's the only way to handle it you know you just say thank you and we appreciate your coming and um I think that's how we have to do that and I love the idea of all this other engagement stuff and sign me up for the committee um the superintendent reports I I hadn't really thought of it before about the idea of should be through the lens of the monitoring of the goals and guard rails and also is it a governance issue and then the rest of it is just more updates on what's Happening and and can be really superfici icial because I I hate how much time I know you all go into to generating those reports and

067refining what you're thinking that maybe we don't need to be reported on at all unless it's something you know like it seems odd in the time of covid to not say well this is what we're doing for the protocols but it might be a much more um higher level thing at least at the board meeting um which gets to the idea of getting the report ahead of time and having us comment on it and time to um certainly for responding to the questions but I've seen boards that have um done that all publicly AJ I think that that happens like the the agenda gets published ahead of time the reports themselves get published ahead of time the board members questions are also published the answers to the question are published so it's all done in

068the public just in ahead of the but ahead and and people who are interested in have to go find it so it's not but and that you could attach it to the board agenda right but I mean like you know they're not they're not seeing it at the meeting but it's all public and that really helps with the accountability thing and stops the and and forces us to be focused before the meeting um so that's something I'd like to think about why don't we be transparent about all of it um because it's all important information for the public like so for example if say I had a question about Transportation I asked it it got answered it's all part of the record even if somebody during public comment asks about it you can say oh

069go look at the website you know I mean there's that sort of a it's out there and it's it's available to everybody and I thought that's an in and and it's just an interesting way that it all should be transparent and um so one interesting you said I want to because that's all Missy slip back in um are you the one who handles board dos around here is that you all right this conversation is for you mis because unfortunately my experience is that the stand you know carollyn and Tas of the world cannot be relied on to do this thing that I'm about to say like they they they get excited about stuff and they want to put it on the agenda right and somebody around here has to be the the naysayer it says

070hold up hold up is this board work um and I I just watch Time and Time and Time where the superintendent will show up oh this is this really interesting thing let's put it on the board agenda um and she'll be super psyched about it and then she'll put staff work on the board agenda the board will look at be like oh this must be something we have to discuss and decide on and then all of a sudden we have a two-hour conversation on should the jello be red or green next month uh and everybody's like how did we get here the way we got here is somebody put something on the agenda that was not board work so the the thing I would challenge you with you know grounded in what you just heard

071is to constantly be the person in the organization who who's operating under the lens is this directly related to the goals that the board have said as a priority if so it definitely goes on the agenda if not it doesn't and when I say directly I mean directly not indirect everything indirectly relates to the goals so if it directly related to goals it definitely goes on the agenda because it's definitely board work if it's directly related to the guard rails it definitely goes on the agenda because it's definitely board work but I say directly not indirectly everything is indirectly related to guard rails only things are directly or if it's uh legally required of the board it should definitely go on the agenda but if you're looking at Agenda items that any of these three

072August public servants are bringing forward and you don't see that it meets one of those three criteria uh then I would challenge you to be the person of the organization be like hold up hold up hold up is there another way for this to you know be provided to the board uh because it doesn't feel like it's appropriate for the board meeting and that's the key thing y'all should get everything that y'all would if there's something about blue versus Green Jello y'all should get that too I'm just saying if it's not board work then where you get that simply shouldn't be a board meeting you should probably still get it email it home create a video an interpretive dance you know put it on YouTube all that but just don't do it at the board

073meeting uh use the board meeting for other things we have inspired State I do apologize for that uh but I'm just telling you bisti as much as I adore these three professionals they cannot be relied upon to consistently identify is this directly related to the goals directly related to the guard rails uh directly related to a legal requirement of the board if it's one if it meets one of those three criterias it should certainly be on the agenda but if it doesn't meet any of those three then you I would challenge you to have the conversation with him it's like does this really belong or is there another way we can get this in the board members hands can we do some examples of that because I think it's it's not it makes sense when

074you say it like that when you start parsing it like Transportation arguably that shouldn't have been a topic at the board meeting if we followed this criteria even though it's a huge issue for the district so how would that get to us through a prioritize a whole Focus so so it depends is there something that you legally have to vote on no I thought there was were asking leg we it the changeing plan had to be approved by June 30th I think M why didn't act on it we stayed with the existing plan so again so there are three criterias for should it be on a board meeting agenda uh board to tell you whether it's board work or not is it related to the your priorities goals of guard rails or is it legally

075required um and so it sounds like you all had a legal obligation to adopt something like that that means yeah it goes on the agenda because there's legal work for you to do um if it meets any of those three criterias but I think how it went on or what in that presentation I mean I think though it could be narrowed in terms of what is our legal obligation instead of just blowing the whole thing right I mean the truth is we never talked about it it got pulled at the end of the day at the but that's an example of something well and I'm thinking of Transportation that's come up over the months not just that I the the thing we vot on cuz we were we were monitoring you were keeping us surprised

076which makes sense on some level we have this trans dri we have this kids to school we can't get our kids to cool we got the the the we have to bust the voucher kids we can't get our kids like and she should still keep you apprised of that right right I think just but the how but is there is that is it been more beneficial to students for you to be appris of that as a board meeting versus to have that emailed to you that's what I'm trying and instead spend the time at the board meeting talking about are we actually educating children or not and I think too what James we see you you are on a giant TV in front of us so let Dr Dixon talk and stand did you have

077something yeah just okay and then we'll go to you James I was going to say one I think part of was just culture with in the pandemic so we were reacting and just trying to make sure the board and the community knew what was happening with the pandemic related things but I think moving forward one of the things that Ramona has been consistently saying is this whole calendar right so now when we move forward and Misty and I have been working with AJ on this calendar we know exactly what's going to be presented at what board meeting you would know when it's coming that will get back to you guys um um thing that Dr Pier stated and others that will allow us we know on September 1st we're going to talk about graduation rates

078for example we already know people have we're working on those presentations you have those presentations early because we already have the data and we have on that calendar when we receive the data so I think that whole that's going to allow us the organization to get prepared to get these um documents to you earlier have the conversations because we know when to expect them and not in our minds believing in the past okay graduation dat has come here we need to put it on the board this readings about you know this data needs to go on the board and we're not thoroughly um giv our eles I can say enough time to really um dissect it in a way and then come back and pres and present it I think we're feeling that we have

079to present it because it's close to release date you know um but this is going to be so helpful in these in what and even the um getting out early putting on timeline letting you see it having more discussions um this is good this this is good and we know that it's part it meets the criteria um that we've been talking about um and it shows to the public that we're having a deep discussion about these things that the board says are important and we all believe are important Stan um I was comment on AJ's point about what goes on the agenda and EV that evaluative criteria and at first it sounded to me as if it was for the three of us that there would be a gatekeeper that no that doesn't belong on

080the agenda and so we should do it in another form but I then thought well what about those items that are board items to make sure that we do bring them to the board oh like a check how does the how does that door swing the other way as well not that we're doing anything nefarious so we're not missing anything and that's what the purpose of the calendar the just describing is that with part of this work is we will build out a board calendar and it will have a column that describes here's when we're going to be monitor here's exactly which goal we'll be monitoring and which interim goal we'll be looking at in each month of the year throughout the year from now through 2026 um it'll have a calendar that says here's

081each guard rail and here's when which month will'll be monitoring it you know every month between now and 2026 and which specific inter goal we'll be looking at in that month have a column say here are the legally required things that we are legally obligated to adopt every year every year you I'm I'm assuming did you all have you all have tax Authority y so every year you have to you know say something about here's what the tax rat going to be um every year you all are required to adopt a budget budget yeah every year you know and there's a probably a Time statutory timeline associated with that yes I mean there are certain things that happen like clockwork that you are legally obligated to every single Year all of that should in fact

082be on that calendar so it's it's not a guess about what isn't is Happ you know another District I'm working with they were frustrated because the Staffing wasn't completed until June and there was a concern that um yeah so the superintendent brought okay here are all the uh Staffing you know because in that state the board is legally required to vote on um um on it's list it's not they're not actually allowed to do it individually but on a list of uh teacher hirings of certified uh personel hirings and that list came to him in June and the board was like but if we have any gaps like aren't we a little bit late in the game um and and so they were worried about that they said okay well then move it on your

083calendar and it's like wait a minute what and so they moved it from June on their calendar you know back to April on their the calendar well that means the administration instead of starting putting all that Staffing together in January now they're going to have to start putting that Staffing together in November but it's what it actually caused the administration to do is say wait a minute this means let's go to our top performers in November be like you are guaranteed a job next year don't look don't think about looking we got you you were part of the family you don't need to go anywhere and so they locked in their top performers earlier than they ever had and then started filling the gaps with everybody else and then they knew you know by March

084okay what are the positions we have and it just forced the administration to be more thoughtful and the and the only thing the board did was just change which month do we want to vote on this item and so by putting on a calendar it actually is a powerful governance tool for y'all as elected officials to say here's here's when we expect things similarly the statutory deadline that you have to adopt your budget by is is it July 1 January January January 1 budgets are adopted in January and Appropriations in June gotcha gotcha gotcha and so then that is the latest date my suspicion is in statute that's probably the latest date that is allowed yes sir but the board could actually do it earlier than that so the board could say we're going to

085do it in December and may instead um that would I'm not suggesting that I'm saying but if the board did that that would cause your Administration the administrative behavior that would cause is they'd start planning sooner if there was some Strategic Benefit to that then you contemplated I I don't see that there is but there's definitely Strategic Benefit to having Clarity around Staffing patterns sooner uh as early as you possibly can I mean so uh this the more that you calendarize these things the more it creates an opportunity for clarity about what are we doing and how are we making sure that it's being done strategically and thought but I'm sorry the calendars that we've been talking about is Dr Dixon working with M with uh bort Le on Miss Nichols on the calendar it's

086it doesn't include all of our other direct reports so if we really mean what we say and we're about kids and we're about these calendars then our treasur needs to have a calendar our internal auditor needs to have a calendar and they need to align with the goals and guard rails as well corre so for me to sit here and continually hear about Dr Dixon working on the calendar I'm like well what are the other two working on where's their calendar and how are they reporting no I'm saying all of those would be on one calendar all all of their what what I'm suggesting is all three of their items would there' be the board should just have one calendar it shouldn't have three different what I'm suggesting now is I'm not hearing how the

087other elements are on that calendar I'm always hearing about Dr Dixon's items that are on that calend so for example the budget I'm assuming you have some responsibility for the budget I am too uh a little bit and so that item definitely has to be on the calendar I'm assuming you adopt some type of annual um plan for U auditing yeah um if if I can just add um the office of internal audit does have a calendar but you are correct board member pierce it doesn't come to the board it goes to the audit committee but I think we can seamlessly look at those items that um need to come to the board and we can put those on the board um pretty seamlessly like you said yes we do have an annual work calendar

088um I also am the uh person who makes sure that the annual important information comes to the board and that you know we we we pretty much know when that's going to happen or the latest that that can happen so you are correct we can take that calendar and incorporate it into any type of um larger calendar and I appreciate that I don't want our our other two direct reports to just think I keep coming at them but I think that they should be included as part of the team they should be included and as we look at this agenda and pairing down we might find that yeah the treasurer and internal auditor only need to do a report once a quarter yeah they don't need to be on every meeting and and can I

089Ain most of my calendar items are statuto driven absolutely and the way I calendarize those is we put them on the board agendas in the I we just we can I can build out the calendar for the next 5 10 15 years yeah I could do that because it's statutorily driven but on a Rel topic because Dr Pierce reminds us that we talk about the superintendent you want to include the two of us often in policy we'll say the superintendent maybe we add or design but in policy it is generally accepted that when you say the superintendent that's the superintendent and anybody they point to and at least for me I don't know how Carolyn feels but when when you say we want the superintendent to do this we we know there's a part we

090know there's a part that we play play in that so I don't feel left out I know I'm a part of that um but I think why you referenced the super and that's why I was so so much in favor of your guard rails the way they were written because I'm a I'm a um be a specific identify a responsible party Empower that responsible that responsible person we work out the relationship we have of my statutory I have statutory obligations separate and apart from the superintendent and we work that out and I'm I will you know again uh make sure that you get what you statutorily need but I'm not offended or I don't feel slighted when you say well the superintendent because she's your CEO and while this is an interesting relationship with with

091three direct reports um and I appre appreciate the repeated references to the two of us um there's still only one CEO still one you're Tri and we have to learn to respect that and work within that um not that we don't but I mean I'm just that's that's what I that's just what I think so I appreciate that effort but when you say the superintendent I am always listening for well if she needs to do that she can't do that without this and that's mine yep uh can we get J can we get James in yeah James needs to James no very thoughtful discussion I with Misty being the gatekeeper for the agenda my recommendation would be that The Gatekeepers be the board president and board vice president regarding what gets put on the agenda

092not necessarily misy I think that that presents uh some internal conflict that uh that we don't necessarily need um but that that was all I needed to say on that I'm no I understand that you that you uh appreciate Misty's uh mental health more than I do so so AJ the way we've always done it is that she's kind of like the the person that gets it from both sides right so so and and that's the way the bore Le is on has been used in the past is uh they work together with the administration to kind of talk about what what they would like to present according to the calendar and then there's a agenda review with the President and Vice President and then uh We've also added any a board member if they'd

093like to attend so there's three of us so we don't have Quorum um so that uh we're aligned and she also Sor um Jennifer also sends out a note saying if anybody wants to add anything or or delete anything or we not delete but add anything um uh that is done at that agenda review but what I wanted to ask is one of the things that we did when I first got on the board and we were looking at um uh direct reports um we discussed interpretation how the board wanted to see or hear the data and have it aligned with what is it the administration want us wanted us to vote on yeah so I'm making an assumption that that is going to happen as um as I know it's going to take us

094a little while but uh because it doesn't make any sense for Dr Dixon to give us a report and we're like I don't understand it or we need this I I I I wonder when and how that work can be done so that so you've already done the first layer of that which is what gave rise to this document so you've already done the first layer of that right so if you turn past the first page the second and third page is all the interim metrics seen it um and so this these inometrics this is this is the data that's going to be presented back to you with the intention of being evidence the progress is being made relative to these so if you're looking at the int metrics and it's like well wait a

095minute that doesn't help me understand this then one that should have been brought up before this document was completed but two now that we're making some revisions this is your second and likely final opportunity to be like yeah these inometrics this ain't it this this ain't the stuff and so yes you the Board needs to uh be very very clear that it is on board with the data that is being presented to you as evidence of progress regarding your goals and guard rails that is what these infometrics are and if this uh is off base to you then this is your time today is a really great time yesterday would have been a really great time to surface that and so maybe I'm not think so I guess the uh the interpretation how she presents

096the data back to us right so like for me okay you gave me the data so if we missed the mark are you going to be and I'm just making this up are you going to be talking to me about what are your interventions hold hold on to this exact question we're going to do we're going to do some sample monitoring I'll stop the the next item we're going to go to will answer that for you well I mean I know about I know about monitoring but in the middle in my past experience I'm just wondering because it could be you could probably tell me no so we've always had here's here's what we want right and then here's the interpretation of the superintendent based on her seven members of you know and I'm just

097making this up like you know uh one of us is always going to ask about ESL students so one of us always going to I'm just making this up um and then the superintendent interpreting that these are these are the data points that will also have to be included for this report and then therefore this is these are the data points that'll be included in the report so if it's not on here then you should not be expecting it or able to ask about it like you're asking about this yeah this is what you're asking about and so if it's not so what I'm saying is if I'm also asking it on a demographic perspective I could ask it on a on a ESL IEP perspective and so if breakdown I'm just wanted I'm sure

098she'll give it to us that way yeah so is that is that going to be is that going to be the monitoring report I would not rely on that to be the monitoring rep so for example if you really had a concern right now you have a goal percentage of third grade students proficient in reading right if your biggest concern was as a board was around English Learners then maybe your goal should read the percentage of third grade English Learners proficient in reading on the Ohio state test like if you have a concern that is really really narrow and you want that addressed every single time then you need to articulate that as a priority like that's the board's job to say what the priorities are U so if there's something that that we this

099is what we need lean into then you should mention that but I wouldn't need to lean into it unless they're failing what say that again I wouldn't need to lean into it unless they're failing so when you so so there's a 100 I'm just making this 100 students and then 30 30 of them are I'm just making this up ESL students so she puts on her report that the 70 students are doing great but 30 students are not doing well those are the es you see what I'm saying that's what I'm talking about okay now see what I'm saying and yes she she needs to be prepared to have that full conversation with you that is correct thank you that is correct yeah sorry I misund sorry it's probably just me no no no I

100misunderstood yes what you're saying is absolutely correct ignore what I said a minute ago about modifying the yes that that is accurate uh it what you should expect uh is it will take a little while for your staff to get there um just because this is new for them just like it's new for y'all thank you um but yes that's exactly what you should expect so yeah I was just trying to make sure those unfortunately I was through that for six years but it takes a while to get us to where we need to be the next document we're going to by the way that she's speaking to is this one that's titled progress monitoring student albs this is literally uh we're going to finish hearing from the other three people we haven't heard from

101and then we're moving to this document uh any um all right um anybody else we haven't heard from yet keep delete or any deletions or modifications uh you don't have to go if your Topic's already been covered then great I've got notes on everything that's been said so far uh but anybody else uh any other items on the as you look at the June 15th agenda that you had marked during your homework is delete or modify yeah um I just want to be clear that I'm happy to delete board announcements as opposed to but I I love the idea of if not deleting limbing it to whatever we allow the board to do and probably the other I mean allow the public and then the other thing is um I think our four minutes is

102incredibly generous if you look at other boards y oh yes by far that might the norm across the council districts right now is about two two to three uh there there's there's a bunch that have oddly enough one or one and a half minutes which I find awkward um but two is about the most common and then three is the next most common after that um actually when I did the survey of a few months ago of council districts on this I think you all were the only people if four I think there was one District I think two districts of five but this is out of 77 large urban districts yeah that came again from people wanting to hear more from the it's hard it's a hard position for the board to say we're

103we're tamping it down so that's why I think if we come out it with it used to be three an alternative but we're doing this engagement that's more meaningful it'll be a better headline for sure St you were asking for additional comments about the agenda I I'd like to speak to the consent agenda in general yeah certain items in there are by Statute required by the board to adopt others are primarily policy driven and I think many of them especially in the purchasing area that um beg you to get from board matters to administrative matters and I know that sounds perhaps Blasphemous it to some but if you're really using and and I keep you know AJ provided this so this becomes my Bible about what goes on the board agenda and having to have

104direct report to you on data about student achievement I would suggest to you that there are the vast majority of those items on the consent agenda that don't directly provide you data about student achievement and they invite you all seven of you into administrative matters and um you know I I just throwing that out that you want to give that serious consideration again I read AJ and I'm I'm very much in alignment with with AJ and the board matters and administrative this is music to an administrator's ears to to have a clear delineation and a clear understanding of those differences and I'm just suggesting as we look at the consent agenda you may want to consider some policy changes that allows the board to be the board and the administration to be the administration so

105you're saying that um the administration should have authority to enter contracts without our approval for certain categories of things I'm not offended by that at all I just want to make sure I understand that yes I think your I think your limits on that that require us to bring it to the board uh are the Handcuff the um streamlining of administrative actions so if that you'll have to talk about that in Greater detail but I'm just I'm just throwing that out as something that would help your board agenda immensely I appreciate um our treasurer's uh feedback and I agree that the things that we are legally required to approve in the consent agenda should be there but I also think the reason why we include some of those other purchases and items so we can

106gain an understanding of how we're moving the needle related to our LED vendors and processes and I do think that is something that we as a board need to be more intentional about how we're measuring that and what our true goals and intentions are because right now that does give us an opportunity to look and see how many minority business owners are getting contracts and to be honest I think that is the purpose in which a lot of those contracts and items are there so we can speak to that item so I think it should be restructured in that way so um I'll take a moment to be controversial so if if I have not yet caused you to close your ears to the things I've said in the past this may be the thing

107that gets it done this was an issue that came up heavily heavily heavily uh in my my district predominantly African-American um overwhelmingly so um and then you know about a quarter uh Latino and then a little smidgen of everybody else um and so this issue came up uh fairly frequently but when we started having this conversation we tried to apply the same ideology across the board of what is it that we are doing and how can it Bend in the direction of helping us improve student outcomes that became the mantra for everything so if we were going to have a bottle of water is there something about the selection of water the use of water the placement of water on the table that's going to better set us up for Success With Children like I

108mean we were militant like anywhere we could find a slight Edge for children we were we were on the hunt for it and so when the uh MBE program came up uh discussion came up uh minority business Enterprise uh same thing lead right uh LED um came up we applied the same thing we asked if we give contracts to minority owned businesses will that help improve student outcomes and he guesses what answer we came up with no no no we we didn't find evidence correlating those two what guess what we did find evidence correlating parents having jobs we've it became very very clear from our own study of our own students our own Community our own District that if the our family our children whose families had uh really stable employment uh tended to do

109better than their peers who uh where the family did not enjoy stable employment and so what became a top priority for us and we rewrote our policies around was how do we spend District Doge in a way that prioritizes um the likelihood that our families that our children will experience families with stable employment and that became the centerpiece of what we pursued when we went into that work we assumed that that would line up perfectly with our spin for minority business enterprises and we were wrong in our case I don't know what's true for Columbus I don't know what your social economic you know structuring and policies are like in our case what we found is that a lot of our blackowned businesses were based in the suburbs and we're hiring people in the suburbs

110but we're getting business with the district because they were black but they weren't actually hiring families in the district and they were actually white-owned businesses that were based in the district they were hiring black folks in the district um and so when we really broke it down uh and I realize what I'm saying comes off as blasphemy especially because I've been black for my whole life but when we really broke it down we had to make make a decision are we wanting to support gainful sustainable employment for our families or we wanting to support blackowned businesses because in our data those were not necessarily the same thing there was some overlap but the VIN diagram was not concentrate circles it was a VIN diagram and so in our policies we said we want to make

111sure that the people who live here whose children attend here have the best access to opportunities for gainful sustainable stable employment as possible and so we changed our policies to L lean in that direction I give you that as an example because when I said earlier that you want to be ruthless and pursuing benefit for your children in every corner that you possibly can sometimes you're going to go in assuming that it's going to Lead You In One Direction my assumption at the time was this was going to lead lead us toward the rationale for why we affirm our minority business Enterprise uh program it actually wound up frankly doing almost the exact opposite of saying that's not actually where we benefit our families the most we benefit our families the most by incentivizing businesses

112that hire our families which wound up just being again there was some overlap but it was not we we thought it would be this it wound up being this and so I put that out there to suggest that you all have decisions to make if what you want is to promote wealth creation for minority families then your lead uh process probably helps accomplish that but I wouldn't make the Assumption without testing it first that that also accomplishes U sustainable meaningful employment for your families if that's what you want then I would encourage you to be looking at what are our policies that accomplish that um and calibrate accordingly and so I put that out there just to suggest this is the nature of the journey that I'm challenging you to be on question everything in

113terms of is this aligned and there are things that you will assume are aligned but then when you actually put them to the test they won't be um and then in that moment are you going to be a heretic CU I literally had people roll up in my meeting talk about President Judas they had like shirts that had my face on it talk about President Judas wow people be chatting in the audience Jud this Jud this Jud this and and and it was on us to explain what our process was and after we explained it like over time people picked up especially the neighborhood associations picked up on them real quick it's like actually that makes all kind of sense like just cuz you this don't mean that that that you are out repping for

114us uh sometimes it does sometimes it doesn't the question that you all have to ask is what are we trying to accomplish if we're trying to get every possible Edge for our children then we have to be willing to do the homework and follow the data wherever it leads even when that leads to someplace that might be politically um undesirable for your political Futures uh so I wanted to put that out there um only because Dr Pi uh made the mistake of mentioning something adjacent to it but just be prepared to look for opportunities for your children everywhere even the places that are not going to make you popular is it okay if we take a 10-minute recess is this a okay time to take a short little break I think James had a comment

115related to the topic okay James and then we'll take a short recess are you about to call me president Judas with you my my only caution um as as with everything that we're discussing um AJ AJ presents his experience you know from from where he's from and um Columbus is is a bit different in this climate because we do have uh the benefit of having a a city of Columbus disparity study uh that showed just how much uh particularly African-Americans uh which is our predominant student demographic uh African-American businesses weren't getting we have a county study that has you know been conducted that has shown almost the the same data if not if not worse throughout the county um and the the one thing that that really um it bothers me um when we start

116having these types of discussions because I have for years now um talked about the academic benefit of seeing our students come to us from stable families because of the way that we spend money locally but you know whenever we get into these discussions and it talks about let's spend more with minority contractors or more with in our case uh local economically disadvantaged contractors we get we get these terms like question everything and we've gota we've got to jump through this and we've gota you know we've got to jump through this hoop but that's never the case when we're spending money with everybody else and everybody else is able to get rich and every everybody else is able to get grandfathered in contracts and everybody else is able to get no bid contracts but then when

117it comes to spending money with the folks who are most likely to hire our parents we've got we've got this anecdote here that that says that well it may not work and it may and and every time that we do those sorts of things what happens is uh the minority businesses or in our case the the Le businesses get further and further discouraged uh they lose further trust with the district uh they stop coming to us for even opportunities and the cycle itself continues because the hegemony remains um because we're sitting around questioning things when we should be taking action um I I would just assume that we we could just a on the side of let's just get our numbers up with our Le businesses and see what we get you know let's just

118blow our our goal of 20% out of the water let's get to 35 or 40% and see if students start coming through our doors better prepared to learn because their parents now have high-paying living wage jobs and good benefits um you know I I I don't think because of because of what we've seen in recent years with the city and the county spending enormous resources in articulating this problem uh quantitatively I don't think that we need to have another questioning session or that we need to in our case conduct another study we've got the evidence that shows that our businesses particularly businesses for African-Americans have been systemically left out of the Commerce of Central Ohio and if if we if we can just go ahead and and do what we need to do in order

119to move the needle for those businesses l in our case um and then blow our goal out of the water let's just see what what our results look like after that um and that that's just my comment I don't I don't consider you Judas for for articulating um what you saw in your community AJ I just think that your community is your community I think is a different mind monster and and I would I would air on the side of the evidence that we have as well as my experience here in central Ohio um regarding black businesses in particular thanks mam chair uh we are going to go ahead and take a 10minute break so we will reconvene at 11: see you all in uh 10 minutes um are we reconvening at 11 or near

12011 at 11 on the dot AJ thank you he he's brutal he's he's made me become on time I'm not saying something I appreciate it e [Music] and meet one of our customer care item I don't know they have to make the screen um Miss do we have yeah okay we have to tell them I didn't get I need a button or something they did it Missy they did it thank you guys in the back okay everyone we are uh back um we just we do plan to take a lunch break uh around pleas do not when I think 12:30 12:15 is so that'll be our next break people will get excited about that and that's not what we're talking about that's a good point okay uh back to you AJ all right so we've

121spent time talking about what changes we might make uh with the agenda uh the next thing we want to do is actually practice going through uh sample monitoring report now be mindful this is going to be a iterative process and your first year of monitoring is always your hardest year of monitoring uh because you're just constantly refining and getting good at things what you I let me just predict for you now you could write it down you can write it an ink because is going to be true you will get partway through the monitoring you be like we need whole different goals we need whole different interim goals blah blah blah put all that on the Shelf get through your first year of monitoring first learn everything there is to learn and then if necessary

122make a wholesale batch of modifications at the end of your first year of monitoring but don't peace Mill try to make a bunch of adjustments throughout the year just live with it for a year it will be painful you will not love it you will survive it um this is a natural part of the process but you don't want to be trying to make changes to your goals every you know every board meeting that you you'll get off track and so just know you will find imperfections in what you've come up with what the administrations come up with so be it take note of it write it down and a year after you start monitoring we can come back and do a comprehensive um you know touchup that being said today the conversation is about

123uh goal one interim goal uh 3.1 uh Algebra 1 and so the key documents that you will need for this you know I'll give them this one separate one okay and it can see better got it so the key documents that you'll need for this you'll need this one as I told you before called progress monitoring student outcomes and then the superintendent is providing you a data sheet that coming around now uh that has your algebra one uh data on it so what we're going to do is we're going to start by going through this document so if you don't have it up you need to pull pull it up now because we're actually literally going to start by reading through this progress monitoring student outcomes so the first thing I want you to do

124is I want you to read the first section called what is monitoring so take a moment to read what is monitoring uh and then we'll talk about it what is monitoring what's something that jumped out at you um what's something that jumped out at you as you're reading the first section what is monitoring take a couple comments before we move on what's something that jumped out at you yeah James the last bullet point which is what if the answer to all three is no the board may have to reject the report and reflect on how to respond to the superintendent's non-performance why that one jump out at you because it's pretty dramatic and extremely important yeah and it goes back to the initial statements I've made why you direct the superintendent because at the end

125of the day if you reject that report you're going to reflect on the superintendent's performance that's 100% correct that that just I mean that's huge that's making a statement if if if we don't get the report and it doesn't show these things it's on you and we're going to reflect on that Pro I mean that's big that's accountability to me and that jumped off the page I agree with that but uh I also second bullet point uh struck me partly because I'm not quite sure what it means table the matter keep the conversation going uh commentary below um and uh guess just need uh better understanding uh we we will come to keep the conversation going in a few minutes so okay uh hold on to that question hopefully it get answered James did you

126have your hand up yeah what's section of this that jumped out of for you well the term sufficiently aggressive strategies I think we we talked a little bit yesterday and in uh about Michael's point on setting the goal aggressively and my my concern is is if if we felt like the goal was not aggressive enough would the strategy be aggressive enough and and in looking at this uh um I think it sets up set yeah you know so I'd like for us to finish that discussion from yesterday I know we talked a little bit about it but um I think it this is the more appropriate place to to really kind of have it um that convers that specific conversation I'll ask we table because I'm going to work with your Administration to bring bring

127back to you some revisions to that document so I'd rather you all reflect on the revised version not the current version because the revised version May fix your issue but your your first point Rock Solid Gold which is that if you have a a goal that is not aggressive then it will inspire strategies that are not aggressive because they'll be able to meet the goal if you adopt a goal that is more aggressive then it will require strategies that are more aggressive in order to accomplish that and so yes you all absolutely in your goal setting set the pace for the organ ation that observation cannot be overstated U this is why this is why I really appreciated you all lifting up this exact conversation yesterday because it it is the right conversation to have

128now the flip side of that is the more kind of aggressive your goals are that means the more aggressive the strategies are what that also means is the more disrup disruptive not destructive disruptive the strategies will have to be because there's not magic money out here so if you want to be really aggressive with strategy in one area what does that invariably mean more money and where is that going to come from the other areas other areas in the organization which is going to cause disruption in those areas in order to cause uh um more aggressive Improvement in other areas and so the more aggressive you get just don't ever be naive you have to be willing to pay for it and not only in terms of human and financial res resources but also in

129terms of the disruption that you were inviting in other parts of your organization to cause the improvements in the areas that you've prioritized uh but as long as you willing to make that tradeoff then absolutely go all in anyone else anything about what is monitoring that jumped out at you anyone else let's read the next section how is monitoring beneficial um and try to identify what's is there some one of those specific ideas about why monitoring is beneficial to most res reses for you how is monitoring beneficial for what's one item in the how monitoring beneficial section that really resonated with you who'll be the F formative evaluation say more about that um so in the past we were able to take the monitoring reports and and you know I mean you asked us to

130reflect on June on the June 15th meeting we all kind of looked at each other there's a lot of work there's a lot of things that happen in between each meeting uh we forget um we're human um so uh so being able to say you know what we voted down your presentation uh superintendent because we weren't seeing the progress uh and then you go back and you're able to truly evaluate um on a on a year line basis uh the performance of of U an adherence to the to where we wanted to go yeah for me is communication and formul formulative evaluation on the calm side um one of the most interesting uh things I've experienced in my tenure is that with I any given number of superintendents there's always this open window of misunderstanding

131of what our directives are um sometimes it's how we have to commun very communicate it very succinctly and clearly um whether it's via our policy whether it's via a strategic plan or embedded in in a uh performance evaluation um but you know it seems like where some things get lost is even at the board table unless we absolutely voted on it so I like the idea of you know identifying a space or a set of spaces um outside of codifying something where we're very very clear about what our expectations are and the super super intendent and our other direct reports are clear on you know where we're providing directive uh so that's just been one of those places that you know under any any space of you know executive leadership in the organization um I've

132seen some some friction or some confusion some you know some gaps uh on the formulative evaluation side it is us getting back to uh embedding that behavior in our uh on a meeting for meeting basis uh again at the time that I was elected to the board uh it was uh our board governance model or the board governance model was uh policy governance the Cara model and essentially what it did was provide clear delineation between roles between the board and direct reports um in addition to that it provided a set of what you call executive limitations that any direct report but most specifically the CEO would be uh evaluated on things like treatment of people things like facilities and grounds um and where they are weak or strong in these areas uh it also provided

133opportunity for the board to evaluate itself via community input and insight we had a committee that was a established that provided those metrics on a you know semiannual annual basis that gave us a grade rating um we never we never got below a b based on what we said we would be in Fidelity to in accordance to that Cara model that was also structured by four different goals so at the end of the day I think this formulative evaluation piece should be something that we not only structure in accordance to our dire reports but more importantly to ourselves and use that leverage that Community input to do that very objectively anyone else something about how is monitoring beneficial jump out at you yeah Carol um the lead by example um I think that uh we

134need to change the culture so that everybody feels safe to be open and reflective and we have to do it very publicly ourselves and hold holding ourselves accountable and um and the the other piece is um continuous Improvement because we're not doing it in any punitive context we're just doing it in a yeah you know okay let's adjust okay let's adjust so it's it's all very much about the kids and getting it right as opposed to who's responsible and I think that's really important thank you rlin James was your hand up than you just he went like this something about uh how monitoring beneficial it resonated for you yes I I agreed with uh with board member beckerly and um I I also I was concerned that in in reshaping everything that we were doing

135with the agenda that there would be less opportunity to celebrate some of the accomplishments of some of our staff members I think this gives us a really good opportunity um to do that if if we're changing the entire culture like board member beckerly said some of the things that we celebrate within our staff can be how they uh present data to the superint to the superintendent and how that then is in turn uh given to us um and so these this provides some real good opportunity for us uh to recognize best practices in the district and then uh celebrate them in the context of of the reporting that gets back to us so um I really I really felt that can can I add something really quickly only because it ties to this and it

136ties to something that might Michael said to me a while ago that really resonated it stops us from celebrating these one of things that we do really well but that aren't systemic and you know I tried to do for a while because I thought it was the right thing to do celebrate like catch somebody doing good so I did those little things at the end of the meetings like the and then Michael said to me once I'm so tired of them and I was like what do you mean I thought that's what we're supposed to do and he pointed out exactly that and this gets us all focused on that and so we're celebrating the thing that we're focusing on and that really creates a laser-like Precision that we've been lacking and I'm sorry I

137just had to say that because it was tying that conversation together too and I think on the flip side AJ is catching those things that we need we have big opportunities to fix right so one of my frustrations was that things would come to the board when it's so broken and then now we're trying to catch up right A lot of it being the fear of being truthful with the community and say hey we're failing and when we say we we say we you know CU if if if the if the superintendent fails the board fails the community fails and we fail our kids so being out there and saying this is the data this is where we're at and all hands on deck to get us back to where we need to go because

138this is our goal so we always talk about we got these LEDs and this and that and we have all these community members that want to help and you know what's are our alignment and how do we bring everybody in that say these are our goals and the only way that we can meet our goals is with you all to be aligned in these particular areas third grade greeing you know what algebra you know and if you're not there you know uh that's that's not where where we're aligned so I I I think it gives us an opportunity to be very clear it's succinct in uh the things that we're doing well to keep on doing and expanding or whatever the the the goal is there and then the opportunity to be all hands on

139deck and be with clarity saying this is where we're deficient not to lay blame but to to bring us all together so that we're striving all en rolling in the same direction and because I think a lot of times well I don't think I know a lot of times when we come back and say whoa we got enough and then all of a sudden everybody's like no you're blaming me you're no we're blaming all of us because we knew in December we weren't meeting there and we told you in January what we're supposed to be doing I e you know what are your what what's the superintendent's plan and interventions and now we're in March and we're still in the same place so uh so that's that's what I appreciate about that that gives rise

140perfectly to the next section tips for Effective monitoring if those are the benefits of monitoring they only happen when you monitor effectively what are tips for Effective monitoring read that section and then uh we'll ask a few folks to share if is there a particular tip that most resonates for you for what what's a specific tip for Effective monitoring the most resonating yeah um no Goa governance um I would definitely say in the first four years my first term I saw a lot of gotcha and what it did was it perpetuated a culture of fear of reprisal yep it perpetuated a culture of you know impulsive decisionmaking hi the data jerk reaction and really lack of paying attention and having faith if you will and I don't want to use that word but uh for

141for some yeah but having a strength and and a confidence so to speak a confidence in what the data really is and understanding reality and knowing how to articulate that to the Greater Community and to our my own colleagues um the other one though for me is don't offer advice here's where I agree with it here's where I agree with it to me advice for for intelligent people for people who have a bit of even an intuitive understanding of what they do advice is don't eat yellow snow advice is hey never take a leak up wi you get your leg wet you understand so that's advice um wise counsel though is something different wise counsel is now we're thinking intuitively about our work now I'm telling you where I see some gaps and some holes

142and I think these are the areas where we need to either Drive something or prevent something from happening here's where we can mitigate things here's where we can see not even just beyond our noses but even down the street and around the corner right so to me wise counsel I have no problem with that at all I think each and every one of us has the right and entitlement to provide that um so I I I think that should be a part of the monitoring process quite honestly I think it is something that says that right track wrong track or concern about something to me that this bullet point is premised on the idea that we're going to overstep and you know do the whole weed thing with the superintendent or any direct report that

143we're going to be you know in the mix of their day-to-day work I don't think so I think it's our opportunity to really guide if you will um giving them a sense of right track wrong track where we can be a little more effective and maybe where again we can even communicate to bring that back to the table to say that this is a point of of concern or point of Praise um so that's my two right there wholeheartedly powerfully potently disagree so the the problem the fundamental problem you run into um and I have personally observed this with this team um is that aice from above is indistinguishable from a command that is the problem you run into as the advice from above is in or as you describe it wise counsel from above

144is indistinguishable from a command and I've observed this and and I'll be blunt with you some of it is uh I think weaknesses is you know in your your direct reports not telling you to piss off uh a good direct report would manage up enough to tell you to you know yes I hear what you saying that is fundamentally not aligned with what we need to do um and I have not witnessed your direct reports being that direct with you all and there are times where they should be given that as a weakness of your direct reports that puts you at even greater risk that you will offer wise counsel it is actually not the best idea but because you have given it that that's what they're going to go do anyway the problem that

145you face advice from above wise counsel from above is indistinguishable from a command and so what happens what I've observed um and again I've observed this with this team on multiple occasions is that each of you are very Swift to go and offer advice and counil to your direct reports um but you aren't thinking of it as advice or counsel you're thinking of it is this is something that needs to get done go make sure this happens and so every time you do that what you're doing is uh causing Administration to behave in a way where they take time away from the things that you have said are the priority to go do the latest errand that you have sent them off to do I've watched I've watched you do this I've watched multiple people

146around the table do this um and I find this to be a dysfunction of organizations it is as I said before it is a weakness of Administrators um the I think the stronger your administrators are the more seasoned the more uh uh the more comfortable they feel with the with the professional leadership of the board the more likely they are to actually use wise counsel as just that wise counsel but I don't see it being used as that in this District I see it being indistinguishable from a command um and has the effect of diluting administrative focus on the things that you say matter most um so no I do not think that there is a level of maturity on this governing team and that is the 10 of you I do not believe that

147there is adequate maturity on this governing team for you all to be able to do that and have it serve the function that you intend so I hear the function you intend what I'm telling you is your team is not there you would like for your team to be there I'm telling you categorically your team is not there and so what will happen is you all will use these for the occasion for advice giving to your three direct reports and you will dilute administrative focus on the things that you say matter most that is where you are as an organization doesn't mean that's where you'll always be I've seen very healthy organizations where wise counsil is just that where super you super you know you go to the Super say hey what do you think

148about this it's like huh you know let me check with my team let me think about that and and they come back to he's like yeah you we hear you but here's the reasons why it's actually just not a good idea you know we're not going to do that at all uh but thanks for bringing that forward I suspect you all have not experienced a ton of that instead what you've probably experienced is a ton of oh you know what we're going to look into that we're going to try to figure out how to get that done when you start hearing your direct reports uh regularly tell you thank you for that idea but we're absolutely not doing that because it's unaligned that's when you'll have a sense that you are starting to get into

149a level of maturity as an organization where wise counsil can be received as that in the meantime you are 100% thoroughly unequivocally not there it will will not be received as wise counsel it will be received as a command what steps can I'm J it's James and then then you um I guess my my I've got two questions one to Dr Dixon and then one to you AJ I guess you know often times when I am giving U what I consider to be wise counsil I appreciate the self the self- awareness right yes it's it's always given with they you know you can take it or leave it um correct you know sometimes in more harsh uh terms on on you know what I think she do but how however I I do I do

150mean that um I I think we have uh and I guess my my question uh to to Lisa is is that is is that always taken uh you know directly I I don't want you to ever feel like I'm I don't mean it when I say that and you you tell me no quite often you know some things that that we you know that's just not our focus at the time or what have you um but I I would hope that um that you you would feel comfortable and pushing back and then my question to you AJ because um and this again is uh historically based in Columbus we have seen in this lifetime not very long ago uh where my children were being you know educated a superintendent with absolute power I mean the

151the in in a part of what we're doing is trying to align our governance structure with the perception of things that we have just come out of that were community crises we have seen a superintendent who you know maybe she was given advice maybe maybe they they maybe they were given advice They didn't accept it maybe they just told you don't give me any advice um we've seen terrible things happen to this District over the last you know couple of decades because the perception was the board was not advising its leader hold on you you all you all make I want to clarify something y'all may be globalizing I'm talking about a monitoring conversation right that's the only thing I'm talking about it's and so so so if there's something not related to monit like

152hey you know there's a one of our schools down the Street's on fire and you stop by like you might want to have somebody put that out like that's that's reasonable I'm only talking about monitoring conversations I'm talking about monitoring specifically the issue that we had was around monitoring the the the the biggest national issue that we had was around monitoring and you know I I think we've we've now moved past a lot of that however creating an an environment where this this board is being directed to not necessarily give advice around here I think that's a little bit dangerous and so the the one thing I would like to know from tsa's standpoint AJ you can help inform this what is the best way what is the best way for us to inform you

153of what it is that we are thinking regarding this issue specifically I I guess is is my is my question you and like I said every single time I tell them you can take my stuff or just throw it out the window you know so thank you James you always do that um um two things one I've created um I'm beginning to create a different system and so I just I just have I didn't bring it with me this this gray notebook that has um board meet but uh board reports and and conversation so I'm now since we have a we have our goals outlined um we're working on the calendar now I know where to put conversations so there um we've gone to a I'm moving to a monthly board meeting once a month

154longer time and the reason I was doing that because I wanted to spend more time with board members individually if it's lunch or dinner to kind of talk about some some other things and outline those things in a notebook um but also leave myself more time to focus on this work so that when those questions questions about the work comes and we're talking about those things but then those other things that may come up that are not part of the goals I can say okay I have that thank you so much James let me just you know I'm G jot this down in the great um in my gr notebook and then we can come back and see if this stuff fits right so I've we've had the conversation I've noted it you understand that

155I've put it in my notes but it's not a sense of urgency um um at that time but you've got you had that conversation with me and we've talked about that piece that was um the thing that important to you does that make sense because what I've done in the past if I've reacted right because it was because we didn't have a system in in place so I react to all of you you know because I think all 70 of you guys have things that are important that you're hearing and that you're seeing that may be happening because we didn't have the goals outline but now we have goals and we have strategic priorities to all of this work is coming together so now as the leader I know how to um compartmentalize U those

156conversations and and I would coign on that the question I heard you ask is if I want to give wise counsel where is the most appropriate place to do that in those one-on ones yes what I am categorically very demonstratively saying is your monitoring sessions are not not the form for that you uh so there I'm not suggesting there's a form for that I'm saying your monitoring sessions are not the form for that that's the only thing you're hearing me say and AJ I think that comes from years of people saying if you're not asking questions and you're not making comment to the superintendent then you're not engaged you're a rubber stamp board but I would I think go back to this where it says do your homework you should be asking about the who

157the what the why the how absolutely right so how do you how do we do that effectively versus I got you you forgot this you should have done this uh you know it flips the script from making a comment and directing because just like you're saying if you you got a title your tit with the title comes oh uh I'm your direct report uh one of my bosses just said X so I should address it in some way whether we like it or not and we've always talked about it should be a board directive I.E goal in and guardrail and that's how we're speaking and growing in the same direction but it what this uh um helps us do is that first point is making sure that we are asking the question who who's responsible

158for it why are we doing that help me understand why we're doing that uh what just happened why why did those no those numbers drop you know what what are the what are the interventions that we're doing how are you going to be doing that what's what's my role or how can I help uh you know so those questions I think are still going to be out to ensure this public perception when you do governance right that's the hard part of doing governance that if you're not actively making a comment then you're not actively paying attention to what's going on in the district so I think that's a a re u reverse of what those questions and how those questions come um and um and and really giving cuz I prefer that Dr Dixon comes

159back when I ask the question I tell her all the time I prefer that when I ask the question that we have a response because that tells me that we're thinking about it but it's aligned with the direction that we're going yeah yeah and to add on that another way of thinking about this if you look at the how is monitoring beneficial if you want your monitoring sessions to confer these benefits then these standards for Effective monitoring what you need to execute on if you you're comfortable jeopardizing these particular benefits of monitoring then ignore these effective monitoring strategies and by the way they're echoed on the third page where there is an evaluation for board members you can evaluate did we do an effective job of monitoring or an ineffective job of monitoring or a

160highly effective job of monitoring and so there is built into this some ability for you all to have your own uh kind of thoughtfulness about how effective were we but one of the key elements of monitoring that is distinct from everything else that you're going to do is that this is really your opportunity to inquire of your direct reports and figure out what they know it is not the opportunity to tell them what the answer is it's the opportunity to figure out do they have the answers because guess what what you think the answer is isn't what's critical what your direct reports thinks the answer is is what's critical because that's what they're going to confer to their staff and their staff's going to go execute on and so before you said about the task

161of giving advice what you really want to know is left to her own devices what is she going to go tell people to do and you get access to that by asking her questions not by telling her what the answer what the answer should be um that I don't know how to be any more clear about that like if you your access to really understanding what is is and isn't happening in your organization isn't through advising it's through inquiring and so the nature of monitoring as you will see on the next page uh we can go ahead and turn the page is to get the data and then to have uh a a really deep and frankly in times intrusive conversation about what exactly is this data telling us uh what do you think it

162means you know as our executive team um and that is the behavior of monitoring that is going to help confer uh the the benefits that you all want particularly on the clarification of strategies advice giving does not clarify strategies it obscures strategies what you really want is to hear from your staff what are you going to do next uh in order to accomplish this what are you currently doing to try to amarate what we're seeing uh that will help uh Drive alignment but if you have two or three different board members each kind of saying hey well have you thought about doing this or hey you know I think you should probably do this or have you considered this that's not going to clarify for staff what the strategy is now they're going to be

163wanting okay so which which parent do we listen to um and and what they'll do is they'll listen to whoever they agree with the most whether or not that's a superintendent and in that moment you have just dashed alignment to strategy uh because now people are going off the different directions so this is not to be heard as a categorical rebuke of advice giving it's to say that that's simply not part of the monitoring conversation right that's all let's look at before during and after monitoring and we're actually going to role play this we're going to have this conversation here is uh the uh data that your superintendent provides you you for wait a minute no it's not which one algebra uh algebra yeah oh Jesus I can't see that so it's um a one

164page I me uhuh one to yeah you see and this one yes so it's under close opportunity gaps so we're looking in room go 3. 3.1 is this real data yes yes um students quite as readable as might be for some of us the old folks some of us are old all right so the good news is we've just gotten our first feedback about monitoring make the print bigger got it yes um I do want to provide some context um well hold on before we get into before we get into monitoring no so you're doing during monitoring where you're trying to start talking about it before we get into monitoring there are four questions that you have to ask about the monitoring report that is in front of you who will read the first question

165question one does it clearly show what is being monitored which specific policy end goal interpretation Etc so does does this document clearly show what's being monitored yes yes what's what does it say is being monitored 3.1 interm goal 3.1 algebra one course school year 2020 to 2021 okay who will read uh before monitoring item number two does it clearly show data for the three previous reporting periods preferably on a line graph does it clearly show the current reporting period does it clearly show the target reporting periods annual targets and deadline targets so the first question is why would you want all of those data points context context context and compar one point does not a trend make is you cannot determine the trend from a single point impossible U but so if you don't have

166multiple data points for multiple reporting periods you do not have a monitoring report period uh there there's no way around that so the question is does this have the items indicated in number two no no it absolutely does not if this was not a role play What Would I counsel you as a board to immediately do to ask a superintendent to redo the report yep to immediately stop I would not go any further I wouldn't I wouldn't consider it I wouldn't discuss it I wouldn't do anything else I say Madam you know you got a little bit more homework to do when you get that done we're going to put this on next month's rep come on back we're not going to do that cuz we're just in a role play so we're going to

167pretend that it does have the full you know it's got fiveyear you know historical data the current data and it shows you you know where we're headed in the future it's got all that we're going to pretend it has all that but if you ever get a monitoring report and it does not have that if you cannot discern the trend line for the monitoring report there's not a lot of valuable conversation to have you should just immediately stop yes ma'am can we stay there for a second so um it the way that this data is structured I think may I suggest it it be modified um when we go to monitoring question number three back to the first page um that question is um no question number two is there growth towards the vision none

168of this data is showing the slope or the rate of change across the 5e monitoring period so because you're missing that data point you're going to get questions from me about how are my black students doing how are my elll students doing how is this particular region doing if you simply included that data point that would alleviate a lot of questions because now I can pinpoint and see and what I would offer is your slope or rate of change is really your guard rail you have to figure out what guard rail is going to advance that change that we want to see to get you to your ultimate goal so for every one of these goals there should be a slope or a rate of change that corresponds to a guard rail whether it's an

169interim guard rail or I'll let you pick whatever one you want right but I'm suggesting that we need that rate of change right now and we tend to do this you give the percentages and we're just simply as a board saying well why did this one go up why did this one go down and that's what opens up this discussion around interventions and what we think you should be doing you're the expert we don't know this stuff you know this stuff your team knows this stuff our job is to monitor not to go in and say are you doing this evaluation did you purchase this software are you you know expanding this reading program the the second thing when we're presenting data um there should be a key or some some terms here so we

170have a brief a and you you don't identify what those abbreviations are DNA Inc DNA it's whether or not the children had DNA on really or it could be did not did not you know assess but it probably also means something about their D it so to me it's are we giving data to really inform us to have a deep dialogue around our goals or are you simply giving data just to say you gave data Behavior problem number 12 in this organization yeah yeah so when I told ground grounding people in data so when I say earlier yeah and it was really maybe I should have said feedback but these Pro these conversations that I know I've had with Dr Dixon with treasur boric even with Miss Smith is hey and these have been one-on

171ones I think we should do this I think we should calendarize your work and not share it just with the committee share it with the board because you report to the board right so i' I've had these kind of conversations and providing my insights to say I think this is how you'll communicate with us better and more effectively but I absolutely agree with Dr uh uh Dr Pierce in that there needs to be just like for example right here at the top um interim gold 3.1 well State what it is State what interim go 3.1 is yes so so I I I would join that encouragement that on the actual monitoring report I'd actually write the language of the goal and then actually write and say we're monitoring goal three and this is what goal

172three is and we're the data we're using to monitor that goal is 3.1 and this is what inter room goal 3.1 and this is what that is and then go into showing your line graph that shows here the previous three reporting periods here's the current reporting period here's where we're trying to get by 2026 and and either those dots line up or they you or you know the dots are doing this you know while the goal is up here um yeah so I absolutely absolutely agree with you the comments yeah yeah ER I'm just one more thing I think also what Dr Pier stated is really relative also to question four um does it clearly show supporting documentation that evidence the superintendent evaluation um no documentation here to that effect if the district is not

173at Target or superintendent evaluation indicates implementation is not on track does the monitoring report clearly describe any needed next steps yep so if she's saying that that slope is first of all a barometer of where we are to provide some measure of context of where we are and then where we intend to be by what you you you're recommending to us to implement then that's how you make that conversation with us a heck of a lot more effective so if the premise is that we are not the experts and some things we are quite honestly we're not a bunch of dumb folks sitting up here you know listening to you all pontificate things to us we aren't and I really apport the idea that we take that away from ourselves in some respect or another

174because that's just not the case um but with all that stated I think that's where you help us all the more is by giving us the clear steps by which you're going to do it in some measure of me some Metric some some barometer that says we're right track wrong track yeah so if I could just be clear the steps are identifying the guard rail that you've started with and the guard rail that you're going to use to further increase that slope that upward trajectory of where we want to be your pivot or that's your steps that you're giving us you're not going into the weeds of this software is getting us there this number of Staff members are getting us there you're keeping us aligned with the guard rails can I ask AR to

175pierce a question just because I want to make sure I understood um it seemed like you were saying um you have a goal Trend and a guard rail Trend that's supporting the goal so you were thinking of them being both integrated on a report they are integrated on the report very much and the same the same report not SE not separate reports not separate reports all of our goals should be strategically aligned with guard rails there should be no separation values are leading and providing the foundation for the actions that we are taking the actions that we are taking are our goals so if our goal is to So you you're looking for a guard rail to be reported in conjunction with this so if 3.1 students who complete the algebra 1 curriculum during their

176first attempts right by the end of the nth grade and earn at least one math credit Will increased from 69 in January 2021 to 80% in in June 2026 we should be able to come over to our guard rails and say we were able to employ for for example increasing the multi-tier funding that we had around Algebra 1 and it related to this particular increase that we saw or we should be able to come down and say that we budgeted more money towards a particular program or a particular algebra piece to align our resources equitably and this resulted in an increase our change it's not a it's for me it's it's not this separate piece our entity the goals are the values that are informing the actions and the go the guardrails are the values

177that are informing our goals and our actions everything should align what I was going to say just a couple of more observations I think is that um this discussion uh demonstrates uh the need the importance for this material to come to us early M and uh one of the things that uh we we didn't specifically talk about um was the uh the need for the board to do its homework um none of this is going to work unless when we get those things early we spend the time and we actually read them and respond and have conversation with Tesa or conversation with whoever we need to uh otherwise you know we're not really monitoring um and and that's just a responsibility that we have to understand and take on and finally um as I've said

178a number of times and I really appreciate uh Tina mentioning the acronyms jargon uh all of that these documents need to be understandable and readable for Lay people which is what we are um in the education Arena and they need to be understandable and readable by the public because as they get better they'll be more um of Greater interest to the public and uh they need to be self-contained uh which is you know you don't have to go find and reach and read uh a number of different things to make sense of it um all three of your direct reports are at some point going to be involved D in um monitoring and so I hope all three of you are taking notes on this so a few things to Kea W Eric uh um

179and Dr Pier said is one your monitoring reports you generally want them to be uh one to three pages definitely no more than five like the intention is not to overwhelm the board with data it's to be surgical um and to be you know as Dr Pi said you know this you're looking at high level stuff we're not in the weeds you know trying to figure out you know um you know really technical um and tactical issues we're trying to stay at the Strategic layer uh the other thing uh you know that Eric said is absolutely spoton um you want the monitoring ports to be targeting to be digestible by your families so whatever your practices are in family communication you want to apply those same practices to the development of your monitoring reports so

180I don't know what your practices are regarding ing parent communication that's a y'all thing but whatever those are um in terms of kind of grade level proficiency that you target language at and things of that nature whatever you apply to your parent communication apply that here um and so that's just again good monitoring reports usually one to three pages definitely not more than five pages if you can't express the performance of The District in less than five pages it's because you don't understand the performance of The District adequately and and and I was um and I was ruthless with my own I've always been this way with my own staff about this is if they had a big concept they wanted to pitch me you go was like Hey you know I think we should

181do this bring me a one pager and if you can't convey your idea on one page you don't you have not adequately thought it through well enough I think the same way about monitoring if you can't convey performance relative to one of these interim goals or interim guard rails in one to five pages and you have not adequately studied it in order to have a meaningful conversation with your board um and so just want to coign on the things that they mentioned there heyj can I ask you a question yeah is it is it can these reports kind of be standardized like for all types of monitoring I mean they know that they're going to need to do certain graphs and by the way Stan does awesome graphs um but like a standardized format so

182what is pretty common is that districts will over time and you just get there over time like whatever you come up with next week ain't going to be it uh but you'll just iterate um and that and that's just the normal process i' I've never found anybody who found the right thing the first time out and so it'll take you several of these but then they'll get into a flow that yes what I normally see is that they tend to fall into a gold template and a guard rail template uh just because the monitoring of them winds up being very different uh monitoring adult imp put data is to be very different than monitoring student outcome data um and so I tend to see the wind up with kind of two different templates one for

183goals one for guard rails but that normally doesn't emerge until usually about six months into the monitoring where you've kind of you know shaken off all the dust and figure things out and that's the that's the where I was the trajectory I was asking about you know it's the what's required what's the interpretation what does the reporting look like to be aligned with the requirement and then lastly the monitoring and I and I and I want to appreciate the work that we're doing to get our data in the right place so you know understanding and just having a sidebar with Treasurer Bor that he has you know years of data and his data he can do different things with it so when I see his reports I can see the change he can throw in

184numbers and say Here's how this will change and you know Dr Dixon isn't in that space where she can do that but I think as a district we're going to get there and we need to be able to get there to be able to adequately assess how we're moving on these goals and Stan can attest that that took a while for me we have to be able to say that our guard rails are impacting the success of our goals if we're not doing that then we just have two separate processes going on um Can somebody read the third item before monitoring does it clearly show the superintendent's evaluation of performance what does that mean anybody what does that mean does it give us a clear idea of how well we are either on track or

185off track based on her own personal Insight why do you want to know that from from why do you want to know that from your executive uh because she's the expert she's she's leading the district she's the one who is the major respons you know the major stakeholder responsible for uh our outcomes and we have to evaluate her but I think also it's important that we can see whether uh she gets it whether she recognizes um an area of of weakness or or not because if she doesn't then she's not communicating her the message clearly down to to her staff if she doesn't see the problem then then she's never going to communicate it to her staff to solve it absolutely I mean you really you want to know like if so if the trend

186line you know is doing this and she says my evaluation Is We I don't we right on time like you want to know from her okay why do you think that like what what do you know that we don't know but similarly I've seen it go the other direction absolutely I I've seen data going like this uh and the superintendent come like I need y'all to know we are off track like the data looks real Rosy but let me tell you why that ain't right um and explain to you like here's what's going on behind the scenes we're about to drop off a cliff and the data is about to get corrected and all these other things or you know or you know you know we use the wrong template when we reported the data

187and now you we're about to clarify the template but we're probably going to drop Five Points I mean there you really want to know because as a board you know this much about what's happening to the operations a superintendent she'll know this much and so you want to have real clear from her what exactly does this mean and so at this point you know uh we don't don't have the trend line so it's hard to do that um and so remember this is just practice this is not real but you know for the purpose of the Roll play if you had to assign a red a yellow or a green to this um where red means what this tells me is that the goal the board has uh the percentage of for your graduate cohort

188students who complete State and dist graduation requirements will increase from this to that by then um red means based on this data we are definitely not on likely to accomplish the goal by August of 2026 we're definitely not likely to be at 86% by August 2026 or it could say yellow we still have a shot at getting to 86% by August 2026 but not on the path we're currently on we're going to have to make adjustments or does this would you identify this as green like yes looking at this data we are definitely on the path we need to be on to accomplish 86% by August 2026 would you identif would your evaluation of this be red yellow or green Madam superintendent yellow I say yellow why yellow because when when we look at the

189data um and the reason we focused on this one um because we recognize that with opportunity gaps Algebra 1 is still the gatekeeper for Student Success and we were not offering algebra one to all our ninth graders and so this is last year was the first year our ninth graders were taking integrated algebra so this data is a is we're establishing Baseline okay so um for our St for our 9th graders being required to take algebra one so when you receive a monitoring report and you don't have some type of evaluation and sometimes I see districts use colors red yellow green sometimes they use different words onrack partially on track off track thank you ma'am um you know there's a lot of different progress monit monitoring tools that districts can use um and so I

190don't know what tools she'll ultimately wind up using you know I'm definitely sharing multiple different examples uh with her and she and you know you all will get together and figure out here's the progress monitoring nomenclature we're going to use all the way throughout all of our teams um but whatever that is if you don't have that in the monitoring report you hand that monitoring report right back is like no no no no we need to know from you what you think this data is telling us comment about what Dr Pier stated because we were not initially thinking about the alignment of the goals in garals and the reporting um so when we think about um yeah neither was that right so so that just called me pause and I just wrote myself a note

191so if we're thinking about um algebra first time n9th grad has been required to take algebra we looking at we had 1900 students now we're thinking about we go back to fund intervention reports we were thinking about it primarily from the reading Strat I mean the goal strengthening reading but to your point I mean there is a you know um I just put my note yeah okay there is a u math in a reading all districts focus on that so we could think about what other interventions that we're were using in math to make sure that ninth graders have not only access but are doing well in it and it goes back to so I see some alignment I'm making notes of that I just want you to know that I'm making note of that

192but that was not the way we initially was thinking about it and the way that we initially um um designed this I'm happy you were thinking about it because as I look at this I would say we're in the red right now if we use this as our Baseline you have 60% that got the credit 20% that are at that halfway point so if you keep that as your Baseline and you're going to have to have at least one to two years just maintaining that Baseline you're only at 80% your goal is to be at 86% by 2026 that already put you at 2024 so how are you going to move that 20.5% to get that 6% that you need to meet that goal right and so you're just want to be sticking stuff at

193at the wall so you that is exactly the type of conversation you have when you get into monitoring you're just like 30 seconds ahead of us so before we dive into that I want to uh you already read it Michael I'll ask you to read it one more time question number four before you start monitoring question number four does uh does it clearly show supporting documentation that evidences the superintendent evaluation if the district is not at Target or superintendent evaluation indicates implementation is not on track does the monitoring report clearly describe any needed Next Step all right do you have that in this monitoring report no no if you ever receive a monitoring report and it shows either that you're not at Target or the superintendent's eval is not green or whatever the version of

194that is and it doesn't have that what should you do with that monitoring report I that there is not a conversation to have if she is not revealed to you yes we are clearly not on track and here is at a high level what I'm intending uh to do to get us back on track then you need to just slide that back over now remember I said earlier these things are never going to be more than one ideally one to three but definitely never more than one to five pages so this is not going to be a dissertation this this is going to be high level um and um I I certainly agree with Dr Pierce if there are interactions with your guardrails then it does make sense uh to surface that however often I

195suspect that's not going to be the case and so if there are other highlevel strategies uh of the the the priorities that you all are implementing uh at the administrative level then this is certainly appropriate place to elev so quick question so when we give these reports to the board these reports include the before monitoring pieces there as part of their pread no these 1 two 3 and four are the prerequisites for what should be in a monitoring report yeah we it's before we do the monitoring to reflect on got gotcha gotcha gotcha okay AJ will those numbers be adjusted now that we're past Co because so a lot of the pre-work that we did was uh give or take a little bit depending on covid will we will will these be adjusted to because

196I I noticed she says she's got 68.9% here yes so B based on our conversation yesterday with what what I committed to is I'd work with your Administration uh we'd make some adjustments to this document and bring it back to you including the numbers right well yeah that's including numbers because remember that you have because obviously now you have the data now we actually have data we didn't have the data when we were doing the goals yeah and a lot of these were just predictions by the team right Based on data that right so for example it says or decline in the bench Market due of Co all that language will go away because now we actually have data bases I figured I just thought I'd ask yeah let me ask um more mechanical and

197timing uh practical question and that is um these reports are handed to us early which is good and we're going to read them um and let's say not all that information that's required to be here is there at what point do we and how do we give it back to the superintendent to to to redo uh I don't think we want to do that publicly at the board meeting um you absolutely do it publicly at the board if the superintendent makes the mistake of showing up at a board meeting not doing her homework you absolutely now ideally you've received all these long in advance um and the board chair has caught this long in advance and says yeah we're not this is not ready for prime time right but if board chair misses it and

198everybody else misses it or doesn't communicate it and you find yourself sitting around this your know horseshoe and you look down it's like wait a minute this doesn't actually have any of the previous reporting periods if you missed it until you get to that board meeting then one y'all didn't do your job and so you should have a personal conversation with yourself of why don't I care about children enough to do my job right um but two you should in that moment do your job which is to say this is not ready for prime time we need to post this and then everybody else will look at be like oh yeah show you right this ain't ready and um and so it should not come up in the public meeting because it should be flagged

199well before then but if it's not then yes you should absolutely not fake like the monitoring report is ready for prime time so that's the one ones when you when you're talking to when she's reaching out to us she's asking us what did I miss what what what data are you wanting to see that I haven't caught yet or well now obviously it's going to be based on this but when we're talking to her one I mean that's the whole purpose of the one1 it's like yeah uh Dr Dix especially as we're learning to and we're creating the template which you say Hey you missed number three hey you missed number two or um well yeah and and I think that is what I meant is that we should plan for it to occur during

200that early period at a one-on-one or with agenda review or somehow um but rather than to wait to do it publicly can't we just call her up I mean like's no we don't have to be formal about this we just communicate it right okay because we want our data the way it should be at the board table so gotta it's not gotcha we're using we're using our time wisely yeah I just want to reiterate if none of you all catch that until you the board meeting remember what I said that means you failed to do your job you should reflect on why you don't care enough about children to do your job or white and you should do your job in that moment which is to call it out but all of that is predicated

201on what I first said which is that means you didn't do your job which is you should have caught it before you ever got to the board meeting it just means you didn't read none of your board materials um and that happens sometimes I've watched multiple of your board meetings where y'all be asking questions it's like I feel like that was sent to the board bers like get practice to doing your homework folks so that is what it looks like to have a proper monitoring report it has to have all of those things obviously what we have doesn't have all those things but we're going to pretend it does what's going to happen now is we're going to take a break uh we're going to take a break folks going to you know get their

202eat on you know stretch the legs do whatever you need to do when we come back we are going directly into a role play we're not going to have any questions we're going to dive directly into it as if we in the middle of a board meeting and this is the monitoring report and and we are conducting monitoring so we're going to go directly into the role play we're going to stay in the role play we're going to be there for a minute and then after the role play we'll debrief the role play to figure out okay what worked what didn't work what questions do you have now in terms of your preparation after it's uh it says before then it says during and it has four columns for the purpose of this role play

203you will want to plan to follow the columns so first be asking questions about which students are the data talking about if you have any questions about which students we're talking about which students we aren't talking about you know who's the DNA who's the Inc uh you know any questions about who ask those first then after you know the conversation about which students we talk about dies down then go to questions about what then go to questions about why what you definitely won't do during the role play because in the role play I will actually you know call IT Tech on you is you definitely won't jump straight to how questions which is what your instinct will be to do how you going to fix this how you know how how are you going to

204handle this problem how are you going to do this what you definitely won't do is jump to advice giving why don't you do this have you consider doing this um you know maybe it might help if you could do this all of that is future focused you will start with past Focus first thing you want to do is understand what is reality for your children today that is the most important thing that you're going to doing it will feel like the most important thing is to give advice or ask about the future that is in fact not accurate the most important thing you can do as board members in the monitoring is get clear about what is the reality for my children today what is the reality they've been experiencing and that will be surfaced

205to the who questions the what the why I've given you sample questions here but you don't have to use these just anything that helps you contextualize and understand the data presented to you that you and that's that's always a retrospective then at some point I'll be like all right folks we've kind of got the past understood now start asking the logic making The Logical connections of asking the future Focus questions hey super tited I asked which students should this day to talk about and you mentioned this particular group of students and when I asked why are they struggling more than others you said this how are you responding to the needs of that specific group um and So eventually you will connect those dots but before you go to the Future Focus questions don't even

206go there just stay in the past Focus questions the who what why and at some point I will give you this signal and that will be the indication okay you spent a lot of time really trying to understand the data now you can start connecting the dots on what is your response to data so that's what the role play will look like and again once we come back from break there will be no preliminaries there'll be nothing we will just dive immediately into the role play um I will play the role of the board chair conveniently uh just so that Jennifer can get some actual practice in rather than having to manage it so you'll have a eight member board uh for about 45 minutes um but just be prepared you can dive in um

207and you'll want to watch what I do in terms of trying to manage the flow of the conversation cuz you're going to be responsible for this m um and so this gives you a chance to see it instead of having to uh try to lead it and learn at the same time so that's what we'll do when we come back any questions Madam chair when are we going to come back okay we are going to go on recess until uh 12:45 that's a 30 minute lunch there is another room uh next door tables so you don't have to sit and eat at your station that's okay I didn't ask but there are tables in another room so all right we are going to go on recess thank you [Music] e report students who complete State

208and District graduation requirements will increase from 81% and 4% in August 2020 uh to 86% uh by August 2026 uh and in particular we'll be monitoring interim goal 3.1 states that students who complete the algebra 1 curriculum during their first attempt by the end of their nth grade year and earn at least one math credit uh will increase from 69% in January 2021 to 80% by June 2026 uh so with that as our uh monitoring report first I just want to assert for board members um items one through four that we're always look for and we're looking at monitoring reports um that this monitoring report does have the four items necessary it shows which items are being monitored goal one and goal 3.1 uh it has the three previous reporting periods in the line graph

209that you can see here on the monitoring report the current mon reporting period in the next uh three reporting periods um throughout the duration of this goal uh it also indicates the superintendent evaluation of performance which on here uh she is indicated is yellow on a you know three color scale yellow you know red yellow and green she's indicated that it is yellow uh that is the indication that um in her professional uh experience that what this data means to her is that the district is off track to accomplish the board's goals however with some amount of intervention with a moderate amount of intervention can get back on track that is distinct from uh if she had indicated it was red which would mean she believes that it is uh significantly off track and uh

210is unlikely to get back on track without a very extensive uh intervention uh but she is in this is red um and then she has provided uh some supporting documentation uh that evidences her evaluation and a little bit of description about the next steps so with all items being in order for us to have our monitoring conversation the floor is now open to board members uh to engage with inquiry remember the first part of our conversation we like to really dig into the data itself um and then later on in the conversation we'll spin a little bit bit time on a forward-looking approach of what can we expect from our Administration in terms of their response to data board members the floor is open for questions on the monitoring report uh board member Pierce um

211based on our student demographic groups what groups are struggling the most or who is struggling the most uh either of those questions are perfectly appropriate yeah yeah Madam superintendent yes so the students who are struggling the most are African American Girls you have a followup or there other inquiry yeah M call and can I oh please African-American girls specifically in region one that was question you made me smile with that I mean not that that makes me smile but the way you reported it yeah the specificity yeah board member Cole can you help us understand what the variable to um that lack of success are what are those impediments particularly given that it's uh isolated to a region yeah thank you well we found in region one that our students are struggling with reading and

212we believe that if and we're seeing that um our students that are not reading well are not doing well mathematically so we see that correlation there and in region one is where we have the students with the uh that are strugg struggling the most in reading so what we've de um um we see that those are the students that are not moving and those are the students where we need to provide more um intervention and supports for can you give us a general idea of where region one is please yes region one is on the west side of Columbus and a specific school that we are targeting are Starling um Middle School we're looking at the students that have been prepared before they go to Briggs and West High School because West and Briggs are

213high where ninth algebra one is being um that course is um being provided for students and we are hoping that Starling could provide those courses in eighth grade and make sure our eighth graders are prepared I may taking pre-algebra to get them ready for algebra one in high school we'll go to board member Adair then board member Ragland and board member Brown um who is doing the best right now what group of students in what regions the students that are performing the best are students in region six and those are our africanamerican female for m d did you have a followup thank you and I can ask some context of why sure so this is and the reason we see the students in region 6 doing better in Algebra 1 in high school because those

214schools have pre-algebra courses in um in their middle schools and and also those students in region 6 um is where the Career Centers are and so those students that are going into the Career Centers we find that their um mathematical skills for some reason either they have that um some um a quality teachers and in experience in their middle schools and elementary schools and we're seeing that those are students that want to be in Career Centers that are programs that are rigorous and require that students have good math um skills You Remind Me is the are the boys and girls schools in region six no um the boys and girls schools are in region two okay thank you I will go to board members Raglin then Brown then beckerle then Reyes um yeah can we

215check that data from the region two uh boys and girls school I my question is what strategies are are could we Implement uh that are successful in region 6 what strategies could we use in region one that may help our our students there so I want to pause on that that is actually a forward facing uh question you're asking you know what difference are we going to make in the future uh before we so hold on to that question we can come back to it before you get into that we're first digging into what are practices uh that are have taken place so if you want to rephrase that um or if you want to keep it as Ford FOC focusing then hold on to it which did you prefer I'll hold on to that

216okay uh then uh we will come uh back to you when we kind of switch polarity from a past Focus to to a future Focus uh board member Brown thank you um with respect to these students and and the report says there's 1943 of them does this count all of the students in nth grade throughout the district or are there some groups uh not encompassed here thank you these do not um include our students in our gifted program or our students that are in our special ed program are we um doing something with those two groups um that addresses the goal for them and and why are they not being uh monitored in this way right so good so our special ed students we um wanted to make sure that we had um data um

217how did we pronounce it so we wanted to make sure with our um gifted students that we those students usually a data has shown that they perform really well in math um especially algebra 9 I algebra one and those students are all getting algebra one so we're not sure why that particular school is getting algebra one for their students and the others not so we believe there's some Equity issues that we need to address there as relate to our special Edge students we did not find that those students were being offered the special a was not I'm sorry Algebra 1 was not a course that students that were in special had an opportunity to take so again there's a equity and access um concern that we addressing for those two groups thank you and I

218will clearly have some followups when we get to the Future can I clarify based on that what you just said so we removed them from the D set because it basically skews the number is that what you're saying okay on both sides yes on both sides okay got it we've got uh up next board members beckerly then Reyes then Pierce okay um I have a I guess a who question um and kind of a what question so it sounds to me like we're in transitioning in terms of how we're um course-wise what when and how we're offering nth grade or Algebra 1 correct can you explain that like so these are eighth graders these are nth graders these are only nth graders and they're taking algebra the first time the second time or it's all

219of that algebra thank you ninth grade students who are taking algebra one for the very first time okay and that's part of a shift toward a different Focus than we had been doing with the integrated math correct ninth grade students were not offered um um algebra one unless they're in a gifted program previously previously okay and so we're offering this only we offer it move shift from integrated math because we believe that that was not students taking algebra in the 10th grade was not giving them the opportunity to take advanced math before they graduated from high school okay um so we wanted them give that opportunity to take advanced math before they exited um and so we knew that and we know that our students can do well in algebra one if they're prepared right

220especially if we prepare them um in our middle school so this would give us establishing a baseline to see what do we need how do we need to change our approach to teaching um and that will allow us to see what we need to do differently in our eth in eth grade and maybe have more pre-algebra and maybe look at some honor courses too but we have to get back to offering rigorous courses more rigorous courses earlier for those students who are ready to take courses at that level okay so this is the what question then and so we're not necessarily teaching algebra in middle school which I I mean I'm I'm all for that we're getting them ready for algebra corre High School unless they're in some accelerated program exactly so it's not Rank

221and file it's not Rank and file yes um the other uh question I just have about the number so this 1900 is the ninth grade cohort of last year the student to 1943 and it doesn't include gift and talent and I understand that's a data or that's another however many and it does include special ed and is that special ed you're talking about special ed but not necessarily not the alternatively alternately assessed correct so you're talking about the special ed who are required to take the test but you just took them out we just took them out but they are still in terms of the state requirements they're supposed to pass in in order to graduate yes but they can take it as 10th graders yeah so so are we doing it's that cohort of

222special ed that I was trying to figure out what we were who we were moving out okay or not including okay I got it thank you board members Rey and then Pierce so I had to change my question since mine was related to raglins but since I'm in the mix I might as well keep going um uh what gaps exist between student groups other than the ones you mentioned primarily those that may be on the cusp of passing so let me pause for just a second so this is we um um we're making this all up I know okay so I just want to make so so no so I was going to to you the question was I would have the data so I would go ahead and make that part up too so

223to talk about the groups because that data will be there with all of our groups for sometimes you will sometimes you won't if you have it talk to it if you don't you know we don't have that absolutely but but you know what on Friday we'll send that out to folks yes got okay okay I think that's a great pivot to that yes okay all right so um thank you we do not H have that data but that data is important for us to review and we will bring that data back um send that out to you and review it at a later time perfect um and when you um I think it's also important important for for us is who would offer interventions to those groups um to because we obviously want everybody to

224be just like region six African-American girls but um in region six but um i' I'd be interested to know who would be would be offering those interventions and if uh you need something from the board in order to increase the number of people that offer those uh inter or what do you need for for the board might be going to the house so this is a textbook perfect question for later on hold on that we'll come back I know but I'm but I'm really excited that you caught that yes and that your colleague board member dare caught it as well yes board member Pierce H so I know this is pretend but you know me I'm always doing homework based upon our um 2021 High School course guide our accelerated mapping should have actually are

225GT students taking Algebra 1 in the e8th grade so this data is actually pointing out a limitation with our gifted and talented program if our gifted and talented students are doing well in the nth grade it begs the question how many students in our GT program are actually accelerated in taking algebra one before their nth grade year okay so how many students in I gifted a talented program or identified as gifted and talented which of the two groups are taking out one is ninth grade or accelerated accelerated track and taking algebra one as an eighth grader they should be done with algebra one by exactly okay so a point of clarity yeah board member um so I understand that you did not offer those to um subgroups but no she did they're just not in

226the data they're just not in that they they skewed it so I know but um I think I think we not to say that we shouldn't have it I think I mean I think there should be a graph that says these are the ones who these are the ex group that have that met our requirements for the evaluation and this is the other subgroup that we're making that didn't meet the ex uh requirement B inquire or whatever and these are the things that we're doing together because otherwise I feel like they're unimportant and or we're not addressing it or we're um uh uh you know there's no expectation of so so part of what I'm hearing for colleagues is that the monitoring report does need to be clearly focused on interim goal 3.1 however in

227circumstances where that data capture is uh less than 100% of the students who naturally be captured by it that we'd be curious to see the remaining of students captured in supplemental data yeah because she's gonna she's going to present she I mean she she responded this is why it's not happening and this is what I'm doing to ensure that they're caught up to the the group because otherwise I'm going to make an assumption right so that does that come as part do we add that as part of the monitoring report next yeah I think that'd be I think that particular data request I think is a reasonable thing to add into the monitoring port in in future iterations of it that um say there's 80% of students captured by the interim goal then keep the

228interim goal the interim goal that's a done deal but then in the supplemental data say here's what the data looks like for the other 20% who are appropriately not included in the board's interim goal got but who you're still curious about know that we have eyes on them and here's what they look like we're not ignoring them we're putting them where they need to be that's an excellent point and then we just put that does that okay you show me how to put that in the report okay uh let's do a quick time jump in the role play Okay so we've uh been going for about 45 minutes uh really doing a retrospective analysis of where our school system is and where our students are uh regarding inter goal 3.1 I really want to invite

229board members to bring in some of your questions that were more forward- facing uh what's most valuable in this is to always take the answers that you received to the data Deep dive and then connect to questions about how the administration is going to be responsive to that or anything else that's forward facing uh the board members the floor is open uh board member Raglin thank you uh what strategies are successful in region in region six that we can incorporate into uh the reg thank you what we found in region six that region 6 has um four stem schools and with their um CTE programs we found that they have those schools have a stronger emphasis on math mathematics and they um have teachers with more experience in math especially in the elementary schools where

230you usually find teachers who have a stronger background in Reading those schools have been able to departmentalize and put their strongest teachers in math in front of their students and and divide pull those students out so we are looking to um utilize those same strategies in our other regions and also at as one approach and then the second approach as we are looking to hiring teachers we want to make sure that those teachers have strong um um stronger backgrounds in mathematics and then the classroom strategy the last thing we're doing we're making sure that students have math clubs so students are not only doing mathematics during the school day but they have our opportunity to um um after school clubs that are emphas uh have emphasis on math can I clarify is that what is

231that what region six is doing current that's what region 6 is doing currently and that we're looking to um um make those um use those same um um strategies in other regions um however we have found that um with the regional approach we have um looked some regions are kind of focused on um um more so on reading than math um and so we've just trying to make sure that we're that while all six regions are focused on reading that those um region that need to focus on math or science or some other content um area that we allow them the flexibility to do that as well and the resources oh I'm sorry please continue uh yes just point of clarity how are the math clubs staffed in region 6 Dr Dixon so those they

232are staffed by teachers who receive a stien um and those schools are using their title $1 because they have identified in their Title One plans that mathematics is some is a um is a priority for them they're doing well in reading but they want to increase the students performance in math so they've put math coaches and given stiens for after school programs and my last followup does that opportunity exist in other regions throughout the district um it does but what we've allowed schools to do is doing their the school the building U school Improvement plans and so as they're building their school Improvement plans with their staff they're looking at those priorities is a reading and math and useland schools those are your your two highest ones um two High Focus areas so um we

233have not as a district giving buildings a choice to do both but some of the principles who believe and know how have the skills to do both those are the ones we see in region two I'm sorry region six who've decided that they're going to um prioritize math and use both approaches because they know how to do it well so we uh it's a culture that we're trying to make sure that other regions know that they have the same opportunities too uh board members Rez and board members Pierce and uh col and brown so um Dr Dixon given what we know about the successful interventions in region 6 and the world that opened up for us from a technology perspective where our students can connect via Zoom how can we speed up this uh the

234progress on adding these interventions in other districts via technology and uh would that increase our cost or have a budget change in order to do so thank you that's a great question well what we've been able to do since we're utilizing technology we have those curriculums and those resources um on their laptops on their Chromebooks so students have access to that information um 247 um we um have um um developed teacher professional development where we are and we've have a new strategy now that we're allowing teachers the opportunity to get more professional development on how to use those tools um um to so that students can use them independently I guess what I'm saying so we know that teachers are teaching the content during the school day we want our students to be doing some

235additional work after hours so we want to be able to leverage technology for those programs um after hours um um while teachers focus on making sure students are mastered in content during the school day uh maybe not ideal but that's how we're approaching it right now so I was just wondering if we could if region six has those clubs after school now and region one does not is there a way that we can utilize technology for those region one students to access or attend um what's already available until weaking disperse and grow yeah that's a good idea I definitely would talk to technology team to see how we can make that happen um you're right with technology we should be able to have students just kind of plug in to the clubs um U virtually

236and that is a way to leverage technology thank you thank you so so board member Reyes uh your question um if we're looking at clearly you know um in the green kind of in the gray area or clearly in the red I describe that question as being kind of gray red leaning in terms of advice giving and so um a different way of asking that question in the future instead of adding on the tail end of it that offers the advice just ask the more general question of what could we do to have these students have access to these resources given the constraints in our system and then maybe she identifies technology maybe she identifies something else and so I felt like that was kind of in the gray I think it could have easily

237been made uh green just by dropping that off but it also was very quickly headed toward red just CU I tried to keep it in the gray the first time but she didn't quite hit it so had to go specific so uh next we next we go to board members uh Pierce then Cole then Brown uh then beckerly so Dr Dixon thank you so much for sharing this data um and I appreciate uh you calling uh to our Focus the fact that that region one those students are not performing as well as region 6 what I find interesting about that is that um um the two subgroups that are doing well are African-American female but what I also want to I guess uh challenge or push the envelope on is um the cultural aspect and

238difference between the two regions so while I appreciate the administration moving forward to implement um math groups and math clubs I understand that from a sociopolitical aspect those are two very different cultures and there might be various reasons why some families have chosen to put their girls in um Career Centers and chosen to put them in schools in region 6 versus the choices that are happening in region one so my question is how do we bring interim go interim guardwell 4.3 to bear on helping all of our ladies in region one be more successful in algebra so that also starts to fill gray yep um so in that moment you're identifying a specific strategy that you think is the one that's going to make the biggest difference in asking how will you use this particular

239strategy um so what is the more general question that gets at what the superintendent believes is the ideal strategy how will you begin to ensure that our mathematic teachers are culturally relevant and understand the culture of the Westside student to be able to connect and scaffold learning in Algebra 1 in such a way that they get it and they succeed yeah thank you so one of the things we doing is one U one of our priorities is that we ensure that we have strong learning communities in every region and with that we are ensuring that every teacher in every region understands the students and the families in that region um that is so important that we are telling those stories we will assign um even a communication expert in that region so I think is

240that's the piece that we missing that we look at the district as a whole and we have not really focus on where students are coming from and then when we have a better understanding of where they come from then we will I believe um know what strategies to use for those students in that region um and that's something that we're working on with our Equity team and their work um as well as our curriculum team so they're working on those strategies um together what we have found that is working um in Region 2 um in our girl school we have a strategy that we're working with um Dr Mo'Nique Brown and um and really working on um confidence of students specifically black girls and making sure that they're are com conf not um they're confident

241um in um their skills um and we believe that those um working with teachers with Dr Monique Brown working with teachers in Region 2 that that would be a strategy that we should um utilize in um in our other regions specifically to to girls and so as I'm thinking about the question another way of asking the question that might be more clearly in the green is um you know Dr Dixon to what extent is there an interaction between what we're measuring in interim goal 3.1 and what we're measuring in interim guard ra 4.3 and if there's a strong interaction um how might that be leveraged and so the the key difference in the inquiry is one getting a sense of does she see an interaction between them um which gets you out of the assumption

242that this is the right interaction to pursue but then follows it up with if you do see a strong interaction how might we leverage that and so that's uh I think it fundamentally gets to the same thing uh but still has you focusing the inquiry on your superintendent's judgment rather than applying your own is does that make sense well I mean the the the applying my own judgment really was just around um culture and culture defined very broadly yeah right um you know to be specific I didn't really see it as a racial question I saw it more as a socioeconomic question if we look at that West Side like you know it reminds me of my family you know Appalachian it it reminds it's very it's a socioeconomic more than a racial we've got

243yeah but but but I when I look at that one region one and region six I see the same thing right cuz region six is that Lyon area and I mean from a social economic um so maybe I mean it's more like J Vance have you so it's it's a it's a JD V it's a it's a culture around there's some gender elements there there's some socioeconomic class but it operates very differently in a in an Appalachian agre yeah it's hard to explain if you're right I know right so next up we've got board members Cole then Brown then beckerley uh thank you Mr chair thank you madam superintendent for your presentation thus far um in this data walkthrough you've alluded quite strongly to not only the culturally culturally responsive aspect of our district where

244we might have some weaknesses there um you've also alluded to uh the idea of equit Equitable allocation of resources in the district with is that a fair assertion first and foremost correct that is fair okay um so with that in mind if we're looking at the idea of closing opportunity gaps in the district which it seems like you are directing yourself towards doing um what interim guard rails do you see uh do you intend to employ invest execute to close those opportunity gaps and thus I mean with that in mind I guess where I'm where I'm kind of going is is I I've seen some alignment between some things I'd like to get an idea if you can make the same correlation um do you see a connection between your goal yeah 3.1 and and

245any of the interim goals that and and guard rails particularly well hold on hold on before you get in particular first let's just figure out from a Green Field question is there something she sees without being prompted while she's thinking can I do a timeout question because I have to I have to so he started off cross-examining the superintendent is that appropriate yeah so sure so what I the question I heard him ask was um I think that there I think that what I heard you say was this um am I understanding you correctly that that's what I understood the nature of the inquiry to be okay uh was to try to test to make sure that he interpreted a prior statement accurately that uh I think is absolutely you know inbounds um um to

246take the convers I think what would be problematic is to take the conversation outside of the scope of the monitoring of hey you know I'm out in the community and they say you did this you know you know what's the situation why are you do you know what what's going on I I would you know the fact that he referred back to what was taking place in the monitoring conversation is what made that safe to be if it had been the exact same conversation about I heard this you know you know when I was down here uh on the Block like I no that's let's let's focus it inward that would feel more like an externally derived cross-examination for which she has no way of being prepared you really want to keep the focus on

247what is she prepared to speak to which is the the content within the monitoring report mhm it did sound like a lawyer to me too well because we're using fake stuff me we would know everything she's going to say anyway if I can yeah provide the clarity and this is a practice I I make fairly regularly I want to make sure in keeping to the conversation um that everything that you said open the door for me to be able to ask you that question so yes I wanted to to clarify are you saying that there are opportunity gaps that we can leverage greater investment for Equitable allocation of resources right your answer was yes okay um you alluded to some issues around uh again I think it's it wasn't content it was tone we're not

248supposed TOA yeah we're not over here it just sounded to me like yeah it I was on the same page got did so so that was so much more lacked G but that's that's That's Mike but it's Mike but still it does it SS the tone for the and you know what and sometimes like well what if it's not then it comes across like accusatory yeah in interrogate I I I could totally see it I can totally see it going that way in a heartbeat I I I now I completely understand where your question is coming from cuz I've watched board D okay well how about this superintendent well well how about this that was not your int my experience is that it's um very much gender based the recognition of tone and uh how

249that play that's just been my experience that you know gender based that you are Venus and Mars are more sensitive than tone right so so so two that's horrible looka walk out walk out so two things I would lift one I don't know about that um the um I I see alignment to three of them just all four of them one when we talk about focus on on the whole child right so we know with mtss there are two sides of the pyramid the social emotional and the academic are we making sure that we are meeting the academic needs and the rigor of all of our students where are they on to continue um fund interventions what are those interventions that each region needs based on how well their students are performing so we may

250need more interventions um on on the west side of Columbus than we need in Region 3 for example region six um align our resources equal I think this is a one that we have to that we're working to do a better job and that is how we allowing how we staff each of our buildings because what we're learning that in region six they're they're allowing their elementary schools to um departmentalize right where on the West Side they don't have enough teachers in their building to do that um and so that causes a problem when you're a teacher that's trying to teach both reading and math and accelerate um your students um the insure culture responsive staff I think that fits as well because we want to make sure um I know we always talk about

251one of our um former colleagues us to say that belief Gap and I I agree um if we see that our um our staff don't believe in our students which we believe and hope that they do but we how that is demonstrated and how um they interfaced with our students and how they grade our students and how they um basically stay and interface with our our students so I definitely see some correlation um of those um all of those guard rails as it to um inter and go 3.1 awesome so uh okay so you do see that there's alignment you feel that correlates to some of the interim guard rails absolutely okay awesome awesome I look forward to hearing a little bit more about that as we go on so I want to pause uh

252the role play in a moment I'm going to have you self- evaluate the role play and see what you come up with but before we do that I just want to hear how are you feeling about the monitoring conversation so we are roll playing what literally half of the time in a board meeting would be spent on so we likely be in this conversation for an hour hour and a half how are you feeling about the conversation kind what what is this like for you yeah I think it's great but I am scared about how we're going to start off monitoring this as me like making sure because I I know that some members already think that I shut people down and and I just if we have these if we have these you know

253set things that we supposed to ask and not ask I just want to make sure we all have consensus on the way that you would like me to monitor that and tell you we are out of bounds because we're all agreeing on what we're doing and it's you know even though like in the moment I have to try to make the Judgment I I just want to make sure I'm doing that in a way that you all agree so like so there was a difference of thought about how Michael you know said his question Rona and I heard a tone that was that was felt like a gotcha even though it's not what he intended um that happened right now but there might be others like you know you said Dr Pierce her question was

254not quite aligned you called out Ramona and James that they were too far ahead so I'm asking my colleagues how you would like me to how comfortable you going to be with you're doing what I did yes right so if I can this is just a thought the first is is about timing so one one of your questions is answered in terms of timing and it seems that we gives our we give ourselves enough time to deliberate on or even investigate on where the the past and the present that we're making some time available to identify you know those issues those questions we have then we move in transition to to and very smoothly you do it well transition to okay what are the future next steps and guiding Us in that way I think

255one of the things that we do is is I'll Express very honestly here at the table right now and say anytime moving forward or anytime in the previous I own I have to by virtue of my seat I own any gaps lapses issues that we have so if you stated something and identified it for me it's not a gotcha now it's an opportunity for me to tailor the conversation directly to those things and then align our interim guard rails or guard rails to how are we going to identify those Solutions if you see correlation where do you see it where does it make sense to you and then that guides us towards what we need to know moving forward uh I I want to finish your question but before we do I just want to

256get everybody to check in right quick if you could use one maybe two but if you could use one word to describe kind of your feelings about um the monitoring so we just role played one but imagine that you're spending this is what you'd spend half of your time your board me meeting doing if if you could use just one word we'll start with raging we'll make our way around the circle uh if you could use just one word to describe uh kind of the feeling or the experience of monitoring or kind of what it's like for you uh what would that one word be rag terrible terrible terrible no sterile sterile sterile okay got it that's a different word purposeful you said purposeful I said purposeful [Music] oh I'm at a loss at loss

257no I have no word no word yeah helpful helpful objective objective stery objective supp lot lot sentence she's got a sentence um almost transitional transitional ah aha I feel like we're finally getting to the important yes yeah yeah uhuh that's not that's more one toisa oh gosh I one word um almost like for like almost like a connection it's like it's yeah so I gotta tell you I was sitting over here quite excited I've watched a lot of your board meetings I've never seen you all have a conversation like the conversation we just had um I've I've I've I've never seen you all have a conversation like the cover conversation you just had what what that tells me is like it is in you like there like there there are some boards where the first

258time we do this run through I'm like this is going to be a lot of coaching um and that is not the case here like you all are really quite Adept at this already um it just and so it is already within you it's just going to be a matter of just you know you know practicing repetition to get into this as a habit of behavior rather than kind of how you normally uh run your meetings but but it's not not like you need a bunch of coaching on how to interpret data or how to be thoughtful about inquiry and that's where I wind up being with a lot of boards like so you all are like in this whole monitoring scenario like you all are you know trending GT compared to the the what

259I normally you know deal with and the quality of in like the quality of questions you all were asking is just where boards find themselves like 12 months into this almost never where they find themselves initially uh yeah James and then piis um thank you my my question uh to you AJ and I guess would include Dr Dixon in this if we're going to be getting the information well in advance would it be helpful if we generate questions that we want to be addressed in the public setting for us to submit those to you either through Misty during our briefing opportunities or what have you I mean I I just you know whereas I I I want to allow for there to be space for board members to be uh president accounted for ask certain

260questions I think there's a place for that however um it it if you know if we're if we are transitioning uh and and this is a transformative way in which we're going to do business can we submit some of the stuff that we that we want to have fleshed out yeah in and then have that uh so absolutely absolutely absolutely I I love the inquiry the answer is 100% yes um it is always going to be helpful to the process for you all to look to the monitoring report and then if you have particularly questions of a technical or tactical nature don't ever expect that your superintendent will have an answer to those on the spot it is not appropriate for you to expect the superintendent to have technical answers on the spot that are

261beyond the scope of what is literally in the monitoring report or tactical answers on the spot in terms of you know what is ground level implementation at a particular School look like what you should always expect without any prompting without any advanced notice is that your your Executives should always be able to respond to strategic answers um at any given time without without advanced notice and proping like if if your Chiefs don't know what the strategy of the district is like you have larger problems so strategic questions can always be asked but particularly if you have questions of a technical or tactical uh nature definitely send those in advance but that being said you can also send the Strategic ones in advance as well to give her a chance to respond the key difference is

262one of the things that that you all have said is you want to create a framework where you get information for business items earlier and can ask questions about those business items and get answers about those all occurring before the board meeting the intention of doing that is to save time at the board meeting that you don't have to be asking all that the intention of submitting questions in advance for monitoring is not to save time you still want to ask those questions at the table in monitoring the intention of submitting those questions in advance is just to help your uh help your staff with their preparation for the monitoring convers ation and so just remember you're asking the questions in advance for two different reasons on monitoring things you're asking in advance to help

263staff be better prepared for the conversation that you will always want to have you never want to shortcut the conversation this is a culture building conversation the Q&A that you do on business items you're doing that in advance explicitly to save time to carve out more time for the monitoring conversation and so yeah absolutely send those in advance I really appreciate you surfacing that you you said Pier yes all right so um I want to go back to um when we're talking about um Jennifer uh president of there posing the question how would we feel with her playing the role that you play yeah I think one we have to establish that we assume good intent yeah right regardless of the tone and tenor that people may take always assume good in inent and I

264don't think that assumption is always is always there right um so I think collectively we should probably work on that and and assume that more um secondly I think when it comes to the gray area questions and this is where the homework comes in on our board part the question that I related or I I uh posed about culture can only relate to interim like if you really look at the guard rails it can only relate to guard rail 4.2 4.3 maybe 3.1 and maybe 3.3 like there's only a couple so by me drilling down and pointing out 4.3 and relating that to knowing that one Math teachers need to be specific in their content area and what they know and connecting that for you help to alleviate this do you see The Connection by

265keeping it a broader green question like I'm helping to pinpoint that question specifically you're advising I'm advising the way that the question that I'm posing the question because I that's the answer that I want I want the answer related that's yes I want the question the question is related to 4.3 I want the answer related to 4.3 Point Blank period now I I appreciate if she comes back and says well it's related to 4.3 3.1 3.3 like yes oh you got me smiling we going somewhere now so if you already know the answer to your question why bother asking no I don't know the answer to my question because here's the difference even though I'm in education and I'm at a a a university I see Dr Dixon as the expert and I and I'm

266not ashamed to say that right um and I have I have a doctorate I'm at OSU I work for different people and I've told Dr Dixon all the time I might question or or you know ask a lot of questions about why you're doing it or how you're doing it but once you tell me this is what I'm going with I say I support you I got your back if this what you willing to do I got you we going to make this happened right and so because I see her as the expert then my question is yes understanding that both of us as Educators know the importance of culture and how that culture on the west side is very different than the culture on the North side how are you then responding related to

2674.3 to address the goal that we have for ensuring that those young ladies are being more successful in algebra yes ma'am that a better question that question was different question very different asked yeah I mean that's the question so that's not the way question no it's the same question that's the same exact question I think I think that the answer you want is the same but I think the way you asked it was different in terms of you didn't give any advice in that sec in that the way you said it in it you weren't you didn't tell her the answer that you were seeking in the question I think what let's Replay that CU I don't recall giving her advice in the question is it safe for us to give some illusion to where

268we see a connection not as advisement but just merely Clarity to see if there's a shared sense of that or a shared urgency around any particular because I think that's is that the spirit in which you were asking the question but but but I but yeah I I think you can ask but that's what I offered uh as an example I said hey you know Dr Dixon you know to what extent do you see a relationship between uh what we're measuring and interim goal 3.1 and what we're measuring in inard 4.3 and in that moment you are explicitly asking you to what extent do you see a relationship there it could be no we don't see we we're not actually seeing a whole lot or Yeah we actually see a whole lot or moderate um

269but the intention of that question is not to lead and say there is definitely a huge connection what are you doing about it it's to what extent do you see a connection between these things um and sometimes the answer is going to be uh We've looked and we didn't see anything or we haven't looked my guess is it's probably only moderate it's definitely not the most influential thing that's why we're actually focused on 3.2 instead right and to another thing that we're going to do I think I stated it earlier we did not look at these as connecting that alignment so now when I go back to the team I'm going to make sure that we are keeping that in mind because when we miss I was doing the calendar we were thinking that we

270will report on the guard rails like separately and they will be calendarized and it be they will be counter okay got no I don't I don't I disagree yes can I address I totally disagree with that I think they're part of each each they are the values absolutely yes so the definitely recommend that you focus on uh one thing at a time and their interactions can be a part of that conversation but I recommend that for this monitoring report it clearly be about interim go 3.1 and I recommend that you clearly have a separate monitoring report where the conversation is centered on interim guardrail 4.3 uh that's fine but they're just not they're not out of bounds it's connected no no I didn't they're out of bounds I said I said they're going to each

271of your interim goals and each of your interim guard rails are going to be calendarized that's that's the only thing I said is they are going to be Cal calendarized separately so you're very specific to each of so there is going to be a time where each thing gets centered in and of itself um and then you could talk about what are the other things it interacts with but through the lens of we're focused on this thing today and then the next day we're focus on this thing but we're checking on interactions and the next day we're focused on this thing but we're checking on interactions let me ask um with these I guess question about what the monitoring uh report from Dr Dixon will look like how to you know how much breakdown will

272there be well it's going to be no more than five pages so not a lot right I understand that but we've asked a lot of questions and and many of the responses have to do with Equity have to whether it's it's gender or race or something else um we also talked about things by region so will the report that we get to read in advance um and and then ask questions about uh contain that breakdown that kind of data and some of that will go to a guard rail in addition to a goal yeah so the the short ERS to remember one to three pages definitely no more than five so will everything that could possibly be in there be in there absolutely not right which means there going to be things that aren't corollary

273to that you really want apples to apples in your monitoring so whatever you're looking so if you monitor this particular thing four times a year you want to be looking at the same data sets each of those four times so that you can start to see the trend line if you jump around a different oh we're looking at it by school this time we're looking at it by region this time we're looking at it by gender this time then you won't see the pattern over time and so yes in order to do this well you sacrifice some amount of granularity for a higher level of clarity in Trends over time and that is just the nature of monitoring you're never going to get everything you want in the monitoring report that doesn't mean you don't

274get that other data it just means it's not part of the monitoring report and she'll probably send it home on a Friday like hey here is a 15 pages that go deep into you know this area feel free to read that at home uh but for the monitoring report it's going to be this now that said What specifically that will be that's going to wind up a ongoing conversation between y'all and the superintendent over the next six months and expect that that's going to it's going to evolve and then usually about 6 months in it reaches an evolution that yeah this is pretty static this is this is what we need on a go forward basis so just expect there to be some you know some fluency you know fluidity rather um over the next

275six months and what the exact content of it is while she's trying to calibrate to what it is that you all most want to know over time AJ I think what we haven't said or maybe we haven't it's implied is that we need the data set that provides us the the information that Dr Dixon needs in order to move us forward so um and I think that's and I and I think that's what Eric is getting to when I when I'm think you know if she wants her support if she needs us to give her more money if she needs us to whatever falls under governance if she's asking for that then the only way we're going to be able to say yes is that we have the data set showing progress towards the goal

276whatever that looks like right so like the reason I said trans transitional is because we're there right so I want to talk about what what is it that I need to know in order to give her the yes no maybe whatever it is that she's asking asking of us number one number two I also need to know whether she is going in the right direction uh as to what we have said that we want her to do uh towards the goals so my questions should be focused around those things not hypothetical you know well you didn't do that uh you know more like okay so you know I need this data set and like you give me this data set then I'm good to go um so I I I I think that's the when

277we're when you're talking about what is the report look like so I agree with Eric or I mean you got us there with the including the uh gifted and so forth right because if you're only giving me 80% of the data then I don't know what what's happened to the other 20% oh now I know what the other 20% is is is doing so and again you all will get there just be patient because it is it is going to be an evolution for the first two few times through Carol you've been trying to jump in here um one thing not weighing in on the what are how does Jennifer manage us the actual don't wor I'm com back to that the actual thought I have about um Dr Pierce wanting to I think correctly

278understand how we're being intentional about the um guard rail supporting the goals just a thought as we think about that more it may fall in better when we're not so much monitoring the goals but when we're monitoring the guard rail so when we get to guard rail um 4.3 you're talking about what specifically did you do to support goal one What specifically did you do to support goal three it might it just might fall better those questions are completely inbalance and vice versa and and but I guess what I'm thinking is it might naturally fall there rather than doing it in reverse with the gold because then with if you you're monitor your goal you end up monitoring four guard rails at the same time that was my only thought but I'm it just we

279don't need to talk about anymore I'm just fing out there something to think about I think we'll practice it and figure it out yeah so I I want to ask I want to come back to uh Jennifer's question and I'll just ask it simply this way um so during the role play I would either if it was generally what happen I'd let you ask your entire question and then once you're finished asking your question I try to identify is that something that's in bounds um but needs to be asked later uh is it in bounds and should be asked now or is it something that's gray or completely out of bounds and I I waited for you to answer your ask your question question and then generally before she gave an answer U tried to

280do some traffic direction are you comfortable with your board chair behaving that way uh during these monitoring conversations that's the question that's been posed and I think it's fair that she receives an answer to that it's her job I heard you say it's her job I just want to make sure we have everyone I I agree provided she does it in the right tone now we got J you're going to get a completely different tone Eric starting today okay so here's the thing part of part of what that means is you're going to have to look you know just do the normal work to level up your own skill set in this area so my commitment is if that's what you all want I'll work with your board chair provide you some clips of monitoring

281you know you know meetings from around the country you know we can run some role plays you know I can throw questions at you and try to and see if you can identify kind of where it falls and so we could do some additional coaching uh to try to uh support you in that but I want to switch to right now well hold on before you move on for my colleagues that means I'm learning this as well and so there might be moments where you do disagree with something and we can come back and work through that later um but in the middle of a board meeting I prefer us not get in a big fight and we can we can take those as learning experiences we can debrief we can do our own continuous

282Improvement an evaluation to tweak how we do that but I would please I would ask that we not do that in the middle of a board meeting I don't think we typically do but I just want to put that out on the floor um basically because we're all learning is accept the referee call in the moment even if you don't like it but then let's commit to talk about it um after the board meeting and if as a referee I need to recalibrate then I'm open to that yes and I think you should share those thank you I think you should share that with the board because you know what because you're going to coach her and we're going to be like share that information where did you come from I think it's valuable for

283us to know um to see good and bad examples yeah fair oh yeah yeah yeah I think the board will be a surprise materials you share with the president we should have them as well for our own purview and it's our due diligence yeah yeah yeah um and and the some of the boards that do this you know particularly well often it's usually because they've practiced a lot like the two boards that I'll be medely share links to um they probably did you know five six seven eight sessions just like this before they ever did one for real and AJ we did that with when we had Panasonic when I first got on the board I mean they showed us good examples bad examp we did a lot of role play I mean we had

284we have had a lot of board Retreats when I my first few years on the board we had a lot cuz we were still in the implementation Fades M uh we had a lot of great coaching um every Friday night and Saturday I mean for at least what every once a month we had a weekend board retreat where we were being coached by Panasonic it and it's intense but I think we're a different board now and I and I appreciate that but we're a different board and I think the value in this whole process is that everybody should be included because you never know when leadership will change yeah so everybody should be prepared well it's so to take it on and so if you all if if instead so I don't know what your

285appetite is for beating so like I said some of these others we literally had six seven eight uh practice sessions over a three or four month period before they actually started in on their monitoring and so if you would rather do that so that all of you were leveling up simultaneously I will gladly do that I just didn't know if that was your appetite if that is not your appetite then I'll gladly meet you know with just a small group of you or just the board chair to help them level up but if there is an appetite for that my personal preference would be you know do role plays with everybody and when we've done those role plays we've actually pass the gavel around um and so okay for this role play all right Cole

286you you chair this thing don't don't screw it up yeah uh yeah I just want not easy huh yeah it's it's a lot harder than it looks right it is uh the the only reason I make it look easy because I've had more practice when you have as much practice as I have had you'll be it'll be smooth but getting there is just going to take a while because you just need practice and if I might add too that will help us um lead our committees better as well because at the end of the day we chair committees as well and we get questions from community members and then some clips too for us on the presentations because we've not organized ourselves where I'm the one that's doing all the talking here I should know

287know thisinformation but is it presentation and then because usually we do presentation just have your presentations and then they're asking the questions no it's monitoring report dive straight into conversation so so right so all those presentations that we've done those are the ones we're saying that we could videotape right so that's what I'm get to so we videotaping sending those in advance you've had all that pre do their have the videos and then we go into starting a meeting Deep dive right the the the way you saw me model it is exactly what I recommend like first you know as board chair like all right this is what we're going into you know we we've affirmed that we have the information we need all right the floor uh first we're going to start with you

288know questions that really help us dive into the data later on we'll get into questions about administrative responsive data board the floor is open I mean that's what I did I like that I'm just want to make sure too that I prep the my team for now we're going to do videos even we do here we come doing our videos and we making sure we get those in a timely fashion so you get your packet and your videos and all that information is sent PowerPoint I'm I'm just asking because I've never done this before either I think that's true and I think the other thing that we're saying is is that saying you really just need to update us on what you think is important they don't need to do a report unless it's really

289it it need not be as in depth maybe as it's been or you know okay so we don't want that stuff that we didn't have you can think a little bit you can you can pair down first of all I'm not sure any report let's be honest I'm not sure any report you've previously done has actually been tailored to this correct that's what I'm saying I'm saying we've not yeah so I'm not sure we can actually answer this because we haven't done the exercise yet hold on the answer is is one that you keep your portion of it to 5,000 fet five pages no more correct one to three ideally right where you are going over your highlight points we have now an operating Paradigm by which we will have a very guided conversation with

290you and a deliberation amongst ourselves if there is any additional supplemental deeper dive information that will provide us stronger context around what you brought to us via three to five pages submit that submit that as early as possible so so so the question right right because I'm saying so we we're going to do more we're going to do more practicing right we're going to do more practicing so % right so next month I'm coming to I'm coming to I'm coming Tuesday well not Tuesday we it the next board meeting okay I'm coming to the board meeting we won't we won't have these because the calender will have those dat data points yet then what is the board looking for those what type of reports are we are we not doing those reports we're going to

291just doing business Oh you mean in in between while we're waiting ready right so what are we doing in between that as we are getting prepared to Monitor and change the conversations based on um how we're going to you know move forward I just want to know what are we going to be doing in the interim because I don't want to to kind of flipflop go back we get some level setting data like I I don't know AJ so like we did on the 15 I just want to make other operations would ideally entail the treasurer with his continued report reports based on our committee work okay I I I we we've got other real business that is non so you know so to speak non- student based but we do have other business to

292tend to I would I would suspect that that would be a part of that conversation just not as much of the conversation as it has been in the past and the last thing we want to do is have your team busy making reports for us and not getting this stuff done so so right so my team is already we're organizing that this this is the work yes we have our priorities aligned to the board goals this is the work but what I'm hearing is we need more we need some more practice to get ready for our meeting so all I'm just asking is as we are practicing to get ready we have a meeting Monday I already know what I'm report on next Tuesday um just small points not a big same report but I

293want to get the organization those going to be watching seeing that we we're moving in a different direction so I don't want to do two months of old reporting out but but we don't have data sets it's okay we understand right we don't have data to come back like we're doing this is a make believe but we don't have these data actually what I would say is keep the meeting really short and let's try to schedule another practice session uh so Dr parison then Stan I thought I saw you trying to sneak in here and um so could I could I just offer that one um as we are in this transition we will be going back to school during a pandemic and I think it is important to share snapshots of what's going on

294in the district um this wouldn't necessarily be the student ambassador reports for each school right this wouldn't be you know this is how the students are getting on and off the bus right but these are snapshots to say hey 75% of the routes went out on time right 80% of the kids came to school the first week right you know 95% % of our staff is vaccinated and ready to go so that that high snapshot right of data if you want to call it data um the the the second thing that I think um might be helpful for us is um as a board it would be nice to see committees outside of policy governance give um reports um you know our community engagement did not give a report it all last year and um

295the year that both Ramona and I served as chairs you know we really got online and we had a calendar and we were moving forward in a positive way and never gave a report there's actual work that we as a board and as board members are doing that we don't report out on so we should be giving reports and telling the community the work and the actions that we are doing within um our our board structure and recognizing that that's going to have to change but it should not always be our Direct reports reporting out on what they're doing that's correct and that needs to be calendarized as well mhm um and and then I think too that you know with our meetings I think um and how can I say this um we as

296a board we're not legislative like we're literally oversight if there are some decision points that you want our input on bring those three decision points and that's what we're disc in so if the decision points is yes mask or no mask then that's what we're discussing if the decision point is transportation and what we going to do about it that's the decision point but to bring 10 decision points that we literally only get a small fraction of time to really dive into and discuss is a disservice to us to the community and to your team oh I listen I I recognize what we've done during the pandemic I mean it was uh it was Overkill I was stressed I've been stressed but the way we have been reporting out because it's been but I think

297me and my colleagues ac across the country could be able to say that and so I try to think about reporting out prior you know pre pandemic right um and then thinking about what are those things that we want to discuss as we move and change the culture of our board meetings and I think the way we begin sets that tone and so even next Tuesday uh even discussing with Scott what is my report in taking the small pieces so I'm not going through you know this long report of of of what what AJ calls a certain show um but we just really get to some meat of the things so that's why I said let's let's talk about mask right so we you know we may not even need to talk about it now

298since CDC has already come up so we were ahead of the game so we we were and we talked about mask and we we we made it mandatory and now CDC has but to to your point I just don't want to start or the expectation of the board to be that I start the year and the meetings in the old manner in the old manner right as we prepare the organization for something different but I think we also have to be prepared in that those decision points that you bring to us may not be the popular the decision points that are in the community right the decision points that you bring to us should be the decision points that legally we're required to make that mass peace Mass piece is Administrative I mean I hate

299to say but you know we we can as a board establish that policy so if you want us to support you on that way to do that then by all means bring it to us but I think you will have the tough job of prioritizing and really um probably along with legal and and um f Bor will probably help you with that deter what should come before us in terms of the decision Point yes sure so Dr Dixon I I am not a fan of immediately jumping into the deep end of we're just going to send you all paperwork and presentations when we haven't even sat here and talked about what this oh I agree agree we're not there I'm a fan of just like say what I've said before is like giving us information

300that we need for you to make a decision based on whatever you're going to present I mean for all I care if you're going to present three slides that say uh you know I need a decision on this decision that this whatever whatever what whatever is going to end up being is what I think we need to work towards to to have an illusion and this is not to you just maybe to us to have the illusion that we're going to start this year in one Manner and can't change it for the rest of the year um and I don't know that's not what you're saying but I I think it's a trans um Jennifer has shared with the public and with everybody we're transitioning into a new way of doing business so bear with

301us as we work through this the work of the board and the district right so the work of the board and the bit so it's going to look clunky out there but um uh I you know you coming in I think I I would see uh some sort of small short presentation you can give us the background prior to that so that we so that as as you're learning what we want to see in the finished product whether that's I mean it might take us the whole year to figure out what the finished product looks like but you know as you start shaping it it'll start looking different and different and different until we got to that point where you're saying you know what this is exactly what we all agree should be a presentation

302of whatever topic now we can transition to you sending this that and then going to the meeting I don't feel comfortable with saying just send us because we're all going to interpret in a different way we're all going to start reading and we're not going to be aligned I can't I think we're talking about two different it and and maybe I'm confused anyway there's if you think of each meeting is in two parts 50% is supposed if we as we go forward 50% of it's supposed to be monitoring and 50% of it's supposed to be the other business now we're not ready to do the monitoring yet so we just lost 50% of that meeting correct until we're ready to kick off the monitoring and that's going to be an iter of process and that's

303going to be cor you know all of these things it's going to be clunky at first and blah blah blah and we're going to just keep doing continuous Improvement on that if we're talking about the other 50% right that is legal decision we have to make um anything we have to vote on because our policies say we have to for contract reasons or whatever uh and unless we change our policies that's still that very long list and somebody today suggested we shorten that list and that maybe we establish a committee to take that up take establish a committee to take up this engagement thing that Tina has suggested but what I'm want to make sure we're all talking about is that other sort of business as usual superintendence report which she kind of touches in

304Fairly detail bunch of you know on different things now I think the two things to think about that is the more she's doing that to Lisa and her team are doing that the less time they're spending really focusing on the monitoring so I think we don't need reports for reports sake no right saying the exact same thing we are I just want to make sure because but her but the the way that it started was we're going to give you all do you her question was do you want us want me to give you the information and then we dive into the questioning that was one of the which information the monitoring information or the non-monitoring any information yeah yeah I was just starting off saying that when we start our meetings off until we

305get to more practice exactly what do you guys want to see in the superintendent report maybe I should just say it planer just say you know what because I don't want to start off the school year in the old superintendent report but Dr Pier said it here the things you want to vote on um here the things we legally have to talk about of course in stay um and those are the things that I'll make sure that I have in my reports moving forward and I think you can you can have very little yes yes yes yes yes yes and and you need to know that we're okay with that yes and that's why I was trying to make sure that you guys were okay with that so there's not an expectation that we have

306those oh uh it's not the expect three points I wanted to to make briefly uh first then James is next okay oh I'm sorry that's okay go ahead um Everybody first is is that yes this is moving and it's going take some time for us to develop the monitoring function and to develop that and to allow that to be half the meaning but uh in the meantime I think we can immediately start working on pairing things down we have to find ways to you know give up some time that we already spend and we can do that pretty quickly um second um with respect there will always be exceptions uh the exception that came to mind was about masking uh that is something Tina is absolutely right it's an administrative de de ision entirely however

307based on where we were and CDC and pediatricians and everybody else hadn't acted first uh we talked about let's publicly show yes that we're on the same page with our superintendent even though it's not necessary that we act on it right it would be a good thing now that everything's shifted and followed us maybe it's not necessary I agree um and the uh third thing is uh more of a uh so excited it may be personal but it may be everybody um when we get these written reports and it's going to be expanded and I like that if those documents could be given to us not only electronically but in Native format which means not pictures not PDFs necessarily but documents that we can put our own notes on documents that you know uh there's

308going to be a lot more documents you can put notes on PDF yeah you can put notes on PF do you mean like if there's an Excel and you want to like play with the data or something and you can do that in board doogs actually if you we if we actually use board dos the way we supposed to use board dos you can uh you can highlight put things in the margins you can do all that stuff we we have not taken full advantage of our own tools that we use as a board I mean seriously you can sit there you can have and as a matter of fact you can even share it back to whomever you can have a whole highlight it with a thousand questions and share it back to the

309superintendent and say these are the 100 questions I have we just have never yeah I utilize board docs like that for other boards we don't utilize that like that here and if that's a way to do it the point is just need to be able to mark up and take notes and my email trying to find a document um so I know we've got um I know we've got one more board member but then we have to transition okay what do you got for us Ragin um to the point about the board docs tool I think be a product of our orientation process I mean there will be formalized training and we've talked about that before um those types of things we should do it there um I I would I would hope that um

310if there are issues that we need to vote on um in order for school to operate uh in August then I think that that should be the priority for the upcoming board meeting and then if it's you know if it's only an hour or two of a meeting because everything is paired down fine but I would hope I just want to voice my uh opinion that we should we should have more of these type sessions as we as we pair this down we should more input um as opposed to us getting a a baked product so that's it for me break amen break all right uh we're going to take a uh break when are we coming back um let's do a 10minute break so 220 all right at 220 we will come back and

311take a quiz that is the quiz we're going to take when we come back got okay so we're gonna work on this St outcomes [Music] e [Music] AC that I'm hoping to live that long I'm out of my Lane here all right ladies and gentlemen break is over all right so the next task is the final page of the document labeled progress monitoring student outcomes the final page is an evaluating the quality of monitoring please Circle the uh column in each row that describes the board's performance during the previous role play please Circle the column in each row that describes the board's performance during the previous roleplay conduct the monitoring quality evaluation on the third page of the document was it ineffective approaching Effectiveness effective or highly effective please Circle the appropriate one for each

312row for I give you a another minute go ahead and circle what how do you do on Preparation data and opinions question statements past and future progress monitoring and project management give you just another minute to go ahead and score yourselves on the last monitoring session on our practice monitoring session how did you do all right um what did you all do for Preparation well we didn't really have preparation because I just got it so had homework exactly I uh um scratched through it entirely if you scored yourself on that you don't know what you're doing all right that one's done you gave us homework though uh how did you score yourselves on data and opinions effective why effective I thought for the purpose of this roleplay this exercise in part because we were directed

313you know immediately prior to this to do that I think we adhere to that fairly well anybody else uh anybody have something other than a yeah what do you have um I scor us as highly effective um I I feel like there was a real um on our part there was a genuine um move to understand the data what was missing from the data um and there was specific reference to to the data and we tried to come back to that data often so I I put highly effective anybody else have something other than effective or highly effective all right um I would for that one I would have rated you effective um as I said you all were really impressive you were absolutely not highly effective there were a couple questions so highly effective

314says essentially every single question reference data in the monitor report that was close to accurate but that was not I think there are two questions that snuck in that did not um and so you were very very very close which as I said earlier is highly abnormal uh at this stage in the process um it'll be very easy for you ought to attain High highly effective High Effectiveness uh what did you do for questions and statements um I thought we were the high end of approaching effective uh because you were help helping facilitate us there was help oh yeah uh anybody else have something other than the high end of approaching effective I had effective yeah why effective I felt like we were our conversation did mostly focus on the data presented I thought we

315had good conversation around that data we tried with as much Fidelity as possible to really stick to that um I feel like we were effective monitoring in a transition towards becoming highly effective with that potential that I had it marked down as effective um primarily because what stuck out for me was it approaching effective it starts off conversation is largely statements of opinion and I would give kudos to all of you because For the First Time in seven years I did not hear board memb give statements of opinion I thought you did a great job of at least attempting to to stay away from that so as a as a direct report it it that stuck out to me like a sore thumb and I'm impressed that you all could do that that quickly it

316that was it it was like I had to go out and check and make sure I was in the right who are these people who who who stole my boor yeah I I like I'm looking around going oh so that's that's why I said I thought it was effective he just stayed away from the opinions and and maybe you didn't always stick with the data you didn't quite ask a question correctly but the spirit of was okay here's this data what do I need to know more about that and I I didn't hear you trailing off so that's that's that's what I thought was pretty cool I'm really pleased that you're able to say that to board I I think that's great yeah so C certainly that was my experience uh as well I literally

317said the same thing earlier is I've not seen I've watched a lot of your meetings I've never seen a conversation like this one um I had you down um as effective um uh not yet to highly effective but again I can't think of a board in our first I can't think of any board that I've worked with where in our first practice monitoring session um people that the monitoring session was as quality as this one was like I just I I can't I I don't have any examples of that in memory and so that's why I was said like this is clearly already within you all you've just been waiting for an opportunity to express it um and the opportunity is now upon you past and future how'd you write approaching why approaching I think

318there was uh quite a few examples of uh questions that went to Future that were you know because you were here to referee got redirected yeah everybody did that I think that's going to be a hard thing for us to do it's a tough thing uh can I ask um I what's the thinking exactly by how you're more quality monitoring the more you're talking on focusing on the past it's just because it promotes understanding of the reality and that's the goal yeah so the the first intention of monitoring is to understand the extent to which reality for students matches the expectations of the board that is that is the first major function you know of monitoring but that's uh for for some people this is helpful for other people it's not um but that's also

319kind of fundamentally true in your plc's like step one understand what's true for students what do they learn what did they not learn and then step two is what are we going to do about it but if you go to what are we going to do about it without fully plumbing and understanding and having kind of this deep-seated understanding of the root cause behind what don't they understand and why don't they understand it what you choose to do next probably is going to be off Target and so this this lives in the genre of measure twice cut once I also think it lives in the genre of you can't unknow once you know yeah and you know this is forcing you to know in a in a detailed way that might not have been as

320clear to a board member who wasn't digging into the data this deeply in the past and I think that um it's do we should not as a board and I I'm doing that I was a teacher so I can tell you Shuffle but sorry I am I think that this will have a huge cultural impact that you can't even begin to Fathom when it starts to sprinkle down that the decisions are being made by people who are forcing themselves to really know because all I mean for it way felt when you're down in the trenches teaching that there was such a huge disconnect between your reality and the decisions that were being made and this is going to narrow that and I think that it's going to change Rank and file Behavior a lot faster

321than you realize so I'm I'm excited AJ can I ask a question about past and future see if I can try to articulate this so at some point the future becomes our past and does that mean that it's then open game to talk about so for example if at one meeting we obviously have a future question like superintendent how you going to yes that is entirely appropriate and then the next it becomes part of the past discussion and so that's why it's enely appropriate it is fair game at that point you're absolutely correct so here and and that is a healthy practice is so you know TSA says oh yeah in order this is what the data says and oh yes Dr Paris we're absolutely going to work with that here's what we're going to

322do about that you know over the next you know few weeks three months later we do the same monitoring it is absolutely fair game to say hey one of the things that you saw last time was that this was an issue and that you're going to do this did you do it and did it make a difference at that point that is a appropriate past facing question to ask that is absolutely Rock Solid appropriate um they in some districts they even go so far as to have you know their version of Misty kind of keep track of some of these things and say hey we're not evaluating our superintendent on whether or not she did these things but we do want to make sure that in our next monitoring that we remain cognizant can you

323keep some notes of what some what were some of the high level things that the superintendent say she's working on to amarate these things and help and so that we can be reminded of that going into the next time we monitor this three months from now I mean so that's absolutely a great question totally fair game uh so how did you evaluate yourself on pass in future what rating did you give yourself anybody approaching is what I did you did approaching I I thought we were a little higher than that but again you helped us cuz you as soon as you identified at the beginning with the wrong type of question I think then that self adjusted our Behavior yeah I put you all down is uh effective cuz yes it did take a little

324bit of adjustment but the fact that I saw you all noticing and flagging oh wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute uh that's that is that is exciting to watch and then finally progress monitoring and project management how did you rate yourselves anybody uh James how's your right yes I had us effective on that why well I just felt it says mostly focused on understanding performance rather than discussing school and system operations um I think it was a detailed discussion on on what the performance was uh we dug really deep into that and we stayed on it I mean of course we had a little bit of help but I felt it was effective um I felt it was effective that we that we stayed on task I guess yeah

325uh anybody have something different than that I had approaching you had approaching why approaching um because when we when it when it's talking about uh conversation is blend of offering advice discussion programs and understanding for programs I think we were we were um clarifying among each other what was advice and what was not and then um thank you I'm sorry we were clarifying what was advice and what was not to move us into one of those um to discussing programs and what type of questions to ask so that we can get the the answers that we need so that's why I think it was approaching effective I think as we practice more I think we're going to go from approaching to highly in my estimation because we're we're just um getting to seek understanding and

326understanding what type of questions to ask yeah I had you down as effective for uh every domain on this evaluation I've literally never ever ever before had that be the case in the first role play for a board it is literally never happened um so on one level like I said you all really have demonstrated the you know GT status on this uh practice uh on the other level however you all are really very distant from highly effective um like so like it as much as you are absolutely not approaching effective in this role play you are clearly highly clearly effective you are also very clearly not anywhere near highly effective and so there is a growing edge here um but this is the growing edge of youo our U you know our graduation rate

327is you know 95% we're trying to make it 98% this is not like our graduation rate is 75% we're trying to get to 85% it's it's it's a very different uh very different kind of growing Edge uh but certainly I encourage you to do that and so just every time that we do a role play we'll probably pull this thing back out and give you a chance to um self-evaluate again so you can just be thoughtful about what do I need to change as we as an exit ticket you know is a as a way of exiting out of the conversation about monitoring and we've intentionally spent all of our time on monitoring because this this is the this is the meat of your your meetings going forward but as a as a way of

328exiting out what is one thing that you've learned or will take away uh from our time today spent on monitoring what's one thing you learned or one thing you gained one thing you'll take away um uh who will be the first to share what's one thing that you learned one thing you took will take away from our our monitoring session yeah um how powerful this tool is because once we all started taking it serious seriously we got on the same page like you know it it it's almost um it feels a little like magical um because you know it it really does help everybody to align um understanding the balance of the conversation understanding the balance of the conversation in a way that doesn't feel like we're being l a fair leaders yeah if there's

329anything that I personally struggle with and why I spent so many of the years of my participation on this board being not engaged in daytoday but really getting to know the district by being in the community being in the buildings talking to families being totally open to you know getting that conversation in the grocery store is because I don't believe in being hands off yeah Laz Fair leadership um this this training here has given me a measure of learning how to have have a conversation with all of you in a way that is objective substantive without feeling like I'm being totally hands off like you go do I just don't believe in that right amen nor should you that's good anyone else what what did you learn what would you take away uh I think

330going through this in this way was was really helpful but uh I think one of the things that I've felt is that it's easier than uh I thought it might be and listening to the rest of my colleagues everybody in the room um it feels more doable because everybody's on the same page and we've been able to have the opportunity to to discuss that uh some of these are things that I've had in my head for a long time and and some of them are new but I just you know giving us the framework and uh helping us understand why this is good and why this is important um I don't think it's as difficult to actually get there what's difficult is to decide that we want to do this and make the change and

331that we're willing and open to doing that yeah anyone else what what did you learn what you take away yeah I think it's also um it points to the importance of us having group Norms um taking um assuming positive intent respecting one another um because there are going to be times where one person assumes or two or three people interpret a question being one thing or related in in another way and um being respectful enough to let that person that is asking the question talk through the question and explain it um I think that's going to to be key and crit critical for us how we interact and the Norms that we establish as we're going through this process um president Adair being vulner enough vulnerable enough to say hey I'm learning this as well

332so you know just so we don't get into any fights because there there's going to be moments of fights and tension yeah um whether it's related to an opinion being given or question being asked and where we see those questions aligning and falling and so I think it's going to be very important for us to collectively establish what the Norms are as we enter into these spaces to have meetings yeah absolutely to oh um I think I know this process allows us to let the the board become kind of experts in the areas that they have identify that are important so you heard from the community we prioritize these things so now they have all the information based on what I provide and we can openly discuss so that their discussions as Michael says he's

333go back and talk to community members they have the real story and there are no gaps and they're able to fill those gaps and monitor that information so provides a lot of clarity for me as we um um pull these pieces together um so that that's good thing you know I want to invite you to notice and you may have noticed this before maybe you hadn't noticed this before but begin to reflect in your own life and begin to notice the frequency with which what you talk about in the community is very much connected to what you talk about in board meetings like a lot of what you know about the school system occurs in board meetings a lot of the in-depth you know kind of details about the school system you grab in board

334meetings begin to reflect on the reality that for most board members members what you discuss in board meetings winds up playing a pivotal role in what you talk about outside of board meetings so imagine what will be like a year from now when you have spent a year with the majority of your time at board meetings talking about where students are actually at and talking about what strategies are actually being deployed to make an impact on that begin to consider whether you realize it or not now just the habit of be behaving in that way in board meetings will have a significant impact on what you talk about and how you talk about it out in the community and everywhere else you go outside of board meetings if you've never noticed that before you just

335notice it you know it's sometimes easier to notice in your colleagues you can go back and notice the things that they talk about in public at meetings and stuff like oh yeah that's those are the exact talking points that we went over at the board meeting that's just because that's a that's a normal natural habit for board members is to is to to uh respond and and focus in on what we talked about there because that's where you've grown some expertise that's where you've grown some additional knowledge above and beyond what the community has so now what we're saying is let that knowledge let that growth be grounded in what is possible for children and then let that be what a lot of your dialogue of the community flows from it's uh we talked yesterday

336about the impact of this work on culture that's a significant part of board members who are deeply steeped in monitoring is the predominant focus of their time each month talk about things differently than board members that don't do monitoring at all uh anyone else uh something you learned or something you'll take away from our time together before we transition yeah James um I appreciated the process I appreciated that we were able to you know pretty much get on the same uh sheet of music board the the big ele in the room for me is is always going to be you know what is our appetite for the resource allocation yeah once the is interpreted and yep that resources are going to have to be moved in order for the solutions um that we that the

337superintendent helps us to come up with um you know to to be manif it and um that's where it gets tricky uh for us because we have other actors and so the one thing that I'm going to going to take away is to make sure that I'm cognizant of strategies that we come up with or the superintendent comes up with to do this type of training uh with the rest of the staff so that the culture is in place there and that they understand it the way that we understand it it can't just be because we're monitoring it differently um that they'll have an understanding and then a willingness to go along with it I think they're going to have to get a little bit more granular on this as well and so I'm GNA

338that I'm going to be interested in seeing how that how that happens over the next you know couple of months yeah that is a very normal part of the process is then superintendent will call me up and say okay the board's doing this I clearly need to level up my uh cabinet and uh senior leadership team around this and so I wind up spending in fact I had three different sessions this week that weren't with boards they were with cabinets and kind of super cabinets you know usually anywhere from 15 to about 35 folks um and in one case they brought in all of their District leadership so it was actually there were about 300 people in the room uh for the session specifically to support them and catching up to where the board was

339heading and so that that's a normal uh thing for superintendents for for a request and I absolutely spend a fair amount of time doing so that's good anyone else yeah sign him up yeah I'm I I I mean my biggest thing is now we're going to be more student focused right so um for the last several years I felt that we have it was rare that we discussed what was going on with our students sad to say um you know I can't remember the last time I seen I mean there was there was Snippets but to be uh you know and and TSA said it earlier you know I was CU like can we calendar can we be very specific do we have data so that we can um so that we can focus on

340the things that need to that we can do to help you eventually get our students where they need to be so I'm I I like the focus I like the restructure um yeah you know I like uh governance and the executive leadership work uh that I get to support teams around um but it's actually not my area of greatest strength in the education realm that's actually an restorative discipline uh one of the things as was most proud of my time as the Deputy Commissioner in education in Texas was I helped lead uh uh development of a whole new set of tools for our school districts across the state uh in the area of restorative discipline and so getting to go out and actually train middle schoolers in uh restorative practices and high schoolers because I

341believe in a peer-led model where in my ideal view students run the discipline uh and behavior systems for schools in adults or secondary they only get pulled in if the students aren't able to work something out um and so I was doing a training um uh last school year well not last school year yeah it was last school year but it was before the pandemic um with a group of middle schoolers um and one of the students who came to the training Janice and one of the teachers was like man what is Janice doing here like she's so bad she's always acted up she's you she's a mess you know you can't rely on her she's always you talking she always starting stuff uh you know why are we rewarding her by letting her be

342a part of this work you know because I was leading a two-day Retreat you know for these students um I like well we we'll see this could be the opportunity she needed and sure enough man she took to Pam mediation like that like she could sniff out BS from her fellow students and redirect them and get their like no no no you obviously you know created this harm now you need to be clear about what harm you created and what are you going to do to repair the harm I mean she would break folks down because she had been on the other side being the foolishness and so you couldn't get nothing past her you U so this school year that just finished um she actually led the peer mediation team uh at her school

343I mean all her grades suddenly turned around instead of being all C's and DS they're all A and B's she joined the basketball team she's wound up being the captain of the basketball team and she joined the principal leadership you know uh Team for the school i' be complete turnaround um and one of the things I said to her after that initial Workshop when it was clear to me that her trajectory is about to shift I was like Janice you got a problem and your problem is this during this Workshop you have shown me what you were capable of so guess what I will never be accepting again like any patience I had for anything less than greatness is completely ruined I will never accept non- greatness from you again Janice cuz you don't show

344me what you have to work with and sure enough over the past year has been nothing but her stepping into the greatness was always within her why do I share this story [Music] ah y' don't messed up now I feel like I've been incredibly patient and kind and generous in every interaction with you all about your behavior but that patience and kindness and generosity must now die because y'all have shown me something more that y'all been holding out that you obviously have it within you and that you have just been waiting holding on to this greatness to step into now that y had unstepped expect that there will be nothing but impatience from me regarding anytime you choose not to live into the greatness that is clearly within you well done next topic committees two

345documents us us up two documents completing a board committee diet and your current Columbus committee structure two documents so once again you can turn to the second page section called section two how to conduct a board committee diet you will need this document you will need pen and paper all that good stuff and so the first thing you will do same thing we did before the question is is it board work or not and the way to get clarity about is board work or not is you can only answer yes to that if the entire purpose of the committee is directly not indirectly or tangentially if the entire purpose of the committee as written is directly focused on the board's adopted goals or the board's adopted guard rails or the citation can be found oops

346I got typo can be found in state or federal law mandating that the school board create or have a committee of this nature so basically if it's directly related to your goals directly related to your guard rails or is somehow mandated uh is legally required then we'd say this committee is focused uh is focused on board work and so what you need to add next to the name of each committee is either a why for yes this is focused on board work or an N for no this is not focused on board work again is it directly related to your goal directly related to your guard rails or for for some reason legally required that you have it and if so be prepared to share what that citation is don't don't give me assumption it's

347legally required either it is or it isn't uh go ahead you'll get about we put three minutes on the clock go ahead and put a y or an N next to the title of each committee either yes it is focused on board work directly related to goals guard rails or things that are legally required of the board or it is not yes or no for are you legally required to have this particular comme is it directly related to your goals directly related to your guards if your assertion is that you are legally required to have this particular committee please find the citation in statute got one minute left all right let's start with the first question which which one of these committees is required by Statute which one of these committees is required by Statute

348I don't think any of them are all right you don't think anyone of them are anybody else which one of these committees is required by Statute I think we have them to do some of our statutory function but I don't think they're required yeah that that's an important distinction we could use them to fulfill statutory requirements but that's distinct from are they statutorily required they're not anybody else which one of these is required by law yeah in part the Audits and accounting committee to the extent that the auditor requires that um I'd say yes but aside from the auditor's requirements and uh reviewing that data with us uh I don't think so is the audit committee required by law what you're referring to would probably be the post audit conference and that's a by Statute

349allowed to be with the full board so you don't need the committee so you the full board could be addressed by that in executive session that's a allowable condition so the purpose of the the debt does not require a committee okay all right engagement has previously been by Statute it was in I want to say 09 to 12 or 13 when it's been funded by uh the state house all so there may have been a prior condition where one of these was but sounds like there's no current condition where any of these all right well that that knocks down one of three criteria so now the question is uh which items did you put a y in um which questions did you put it on in next to so let's let's start with wise um

350oh who uh put a y next to one of uh any of these in which one yeah uh I put a y uh on audit and accountability on finance and Appropriations and on governance policy okay um so audit accountability Finance appropriation and governance policy so which of the three criteria did audit and accountability meet so the three criteria are directly related to goals directly related to guard rails legally required which of those three criteria did audit and accountability meet I I would uh suggest that uh it's related to guard rails uh without that work uh I think we would tend to go uh off track uh Fair amounts and that we would uh which audit can be directed which guard rail is directly is audit and account the general purpose it says I'm reading the

351general purpose which guard rail is this saying that it's response that it's directly speaking to I'm not asking can you could you potentially in some way use this committee for that purpose I'm asking which guard rail did you say we are designing this committee to help us address this guard rail which guard rail is that G2 I think uh align resources equitably uh so audit and accountability committee um let's see the superintendent will not allow any region to be without strong learning communities uh annual budget allocations Personnel allocations um school-based comprehensive Staffing I don't see any of those three things mentioned in the language of audit and accountability committee like not even hinted at am I Ming something all right so Equity statement the equity stat the committee will utilize Equity as one safeguard to

352maintain legal industry compliance standards CCS programs and operations can I explain this document can I explain this document that we're looking at okay so remember remember everyone this was a draft and we were trying to do our own restructure trying to start the work AJ's got us on right ourselves right and so we knew we needed a restructure realignment we were trying to figure it out this was in draft this is how we proposed what the new committees were going to be and we discussed them and we agreed on the names and then we were all in the process of of writing charters for these new committees which we did not we stopped because then we started working with AJ so not everything so this was a draft at a point in time um that

353was written prior to some of the final things going on with the goals and guard rails prior to AJ coming um and so that's if you were just to remember what this document is um and we were were in that process or we're in that process of writing the formal Charters which we paused and and to Jen's point I think she anticipated the goals and guardrails and a lot of them because she wrote it to say that the committee work this one doesn't say is to make sure that right we're monitoring the goals and guard rails so I think that um yes AJ you're absolutely right nothing of this now in terms of how it's written ties to the golds and guard rails but I'm wondering if we said the purpose of the audit committee

354was to audit our implementation of the goals and guard rails and that was the lens through which um the AUD Universe was identified and in terms of how that whole function works I don't I mean I think to your point though I'm guessing that you're going to say the whole board should oversee it and not a committee like I guess the distinction maybe is audit function versus audit committee like we're not throwing out the audit function just because webe we conclude we don't need a committee no so the audit you clearly have full time staff so audit function is not going anywhere right um so now the only question is what who look over what does the board what committees does the board need to what are the deliverables that need to be delivered back

355to the board uh that would be benefited by having a committee work on them first so we came up with a really very compelling example earlier today of a specific deliverable that it would be a little bit unwieldy to have all seven people try to work on so in that moment it makes more sense wait a minute is this board work yeah it's board work it make more sense for a subgroup of the board to put something together and then bring that back to the board and did the board could work from you know that deliverable so there are really really really good reasons for having committees we literally surfaced a great example earlier it also doesn't mean that the actual committee and the people involved just disappear it just might mean that instead of

356a member chairing it Carolyn chairs it or Stan chairs the finance committee or it becomes an administrative committee not a board committee because I think functionally St you have your hand up you can speak to it directly I think they help you uh your committee helps you but it doesn't mean and board members could participate as you see fit but we wouldn't share it you're on the right track in my opinion I mean I think that if you look at the the the topics and the substance of this particular committee is it administrative it has to do with internal controls and internal functioning that's administrative I believe that the biggest help internal audit can be is is to help administratively internally and and I I understand the concept of Independence and the importance of that

357but you set yourself up for Independence they're inde that that committee is independent of those of us who are executing so it's it's a very strained relationship at time so you think you're if you think that that committee there is to monitor well you just went through a whole exercise where your goals and guard rails are going to be monitored that's what you do this committee is not to monitor that somebody's I think one of you said well it was to monitor how we were doing again I don't believe that's true you're going to monit monor against your goals and guard rails because this is that's what you do that's where board member Cole said this is where you can get be handson with your goals not so much with audit I I don't think

358I think it plays a greater role administratively to help us look process procedure compliance internally that's our job not yours so there was a history of non-compliance in that seat I.E I wasn't here when this was created so let me just refence that from not it but the reason it was created was the the board felt there was not an um there was some challenges for a number of years of the of the position uh and therefore the board felt their what I've heard was their they needed to be more oversight it's kind of like uh and I'm again I'm interpreting because I wasn't here for that decision what I've interpreted before was kind of like assigning two or three board members to ensure that that office was doing what they were supposed to be

359doing versus the whole board yeah that's what I interpret it to be can I just say that I mean it's this a is is a critical point and and I I just this is really important to me then set a goal and a guard rail monitor it and just like it said something about you have to evaluate your superintendent's non-performance then you evaluate that direct reports non-performance and you get I'm not saying it was right Stan I'm just giving I'm just just but I'm just I'm building on that I'm saying and when you set a goal in a guard rail and you monitor when you get to the end of that you have to evaluate non-performance and if that non-performance and that individual doesn't have a strategy to get you to Performance you get yourself

360a new direct report they did that's what the board does don't come down and tell me how my directors are supposed to behave or how my clerks are supposed to behave or monitor every little step that I do give me a goal and a guard rail monitor evaluate and the only thing you should change in my opinion is your direct report they did can I just say I love how you said give me a goal in a guard that's the first time I've just heard you embrace it and take it I mean earlier you said you all share but you said give me you like own that I felt that when you said that CU this is the first time I've really seen this connection between goals and guard rails and that monitoring piece and

361when when board member Cole said this is a way for us to be uh purposely on handson with because I can tell you in my 40 years of working with boards the biggest struggle is you get elected and you you want hands on God you want to do something you want to have an impact and we're fighting back going no no no that's my job don't tell me to put a new oven down in that school don't tell me how to clean that building that's our job I struggle what what can I give you to be handson with this you just did it this is this is what you guys can be hands on with and it has to do with exactly what we're what we're doing student performance you you sat you were down

362at uh downtown High School right well not this board but you were they were writing things on and toisa went up afterwards to just wrote academic performance academic perform I told her later I said you you had me at academic performance enough if we're not doing something related to academic performance we're doing the wrong thing so say I was saying context and my ending statement was when I've served on the committee I didn't know what my role was yeah because I kind of felt like a and I know some other people have served on the committee and have been very vocal I I was kind of like well this kind of runs itself for me you know yeah and into your point uh just from a coaching perspective uh I realize other people view this

363differently I can't imagine ever recommending to a board to have a subset of the board responsible for supervising the board's employee like or said differently if I'm a board member I'm never going to be comfortable that you all evaluate the superintendent and I don't I'm you know and if we have if the board has an audit executive I'm never going to be comfortable that y'all evaluate the audit executive but I don't what what does she work for us or does she work for y'all um and so in terms of pushing uh responsibility for oversight of a particular employee to a committee I I would I personally would not encourage that I would encourage pushing responsibility for deliverables to a committee uh and so maybe somebody needs to design the evaluation instrument for the audit executive

364that makes sense for a committee y'all go Design This and but then bring it back to the full board and then we'll collectively decide if this is the instrument that's exactly been our process for every direct report that's been our process and that is a quality that that's that's a quality approach uh because I I don't think I think it's cumbersome for the full board to try to design documents but I think it makes sense for the full board to to decide is this document right for us or what tweaks do we need to make and just be clear I wasn't here for that decision so I do not want to throw that board under the bus I'm sure they had a a reason yeah but they had I want to move but I want

365to move forward I don't I don't want to relitigate the past I want to move forward and the and the question that's moving us forward is uh what did you put a a why on so you were putting either a y or an N so Eric gave us example of a why that he wrote down we've interrogated it I still can't find any evidence that it should be a why I agree as I as I continue to think about it and um you know and and I think my colleagues know I I've been very focused over the years on board versus administrative yeah and policy versus operations um and I I think I really like what Stan had to say and uh you know about the Committees um I do see it and I guess

366it really isn't my call it's it's yours in Carolin um it it appears that that committee is made up uh both both committees are made up of experts from outside the school right from people in the community who can help you look at things and see things in a different way and that that for you is is probably a very good thing and I having uh been in in audit uh it's very much the same thing but that isn't necessarily anything that the board members have expertise in um and yet we tend to dominate many of those committee meetings uh unfortunately and uh I I think they're worthwhile but that's that's so I'm hearing the why switch to an in with a footnote that this may that that may be example of something to hand

367off you know and that becomes his and you know um and and he runs with it Michael what do you what do you have a why for are there any of these that you put a next to uh well I'll speak very quickly to uh audit accountability um as a former chair of that committee I definitely see a why I see a why first and foremost because the position of internal auditor is one that is statutory first and foremost it is one of the maybe at best for because legislature offers us a business manager person that could possibly be an independent direct report to us so by law we have the superintendent the treasurer an internal auditor that was given permission to be directly reporting to us um and of course a business manager but

368we don't do the business manager piece the superintendent really acts in that role so to speak so one is statutory in effect um secondly because again there is that oversight of that on the committee's part to adhere and Report what the state audits us as so there's that conference that we do as he state every year where we have that conversation with the state about their auditing and management report of us um so there's that statutory side of it that that is interrelated here's the other side I see it very it it helps us in a very generative sense um when we look look at this from the standpoint of uh strategic planning as a board when we look at it in terms of internal accountabilities and that's inherently what the position was designed to

369do it was designed specifically to ensure internal uh compliance and you know adherence to all the matters that the district is largely responsible for how do you continuously improve to that endeavor that is largely what a great portion of our work has done how has this translated to student outcomes one big humongous way that it is done that is the reforms that have been made uh to the it section of our organization um we've we've had some albe we've had some changes in leadership to who's been in that role of IT director or chief or what have you um we've seen tremendous change in those areas that have protected the district that have allowed us to to have greater and more relative equipment internally and even for our students so you know and also internally

370it's helped protect employees and information we've had areas where there was some challenge with that a few years back and as a result of the investigation and the subsequent corrective action that was taken you know those processes have now changed and been more defined if I'm off any step in and tell me I'm off but that has been my experience particularly in my leadership at that time of that committee I see it as having generative you know uh opportunity for us to be sure that we do our due diligence not just for our students but also for our staff and when they're disempowered when things aren't working well for them that there is a latent impact on our students it is and and and and a horrible impact over time it can create you know

371emergent crisis for us internally and organizationally so I I see Carol and I see more POS the internal auditor not just her as a person but the internal auditor uh that position as you know needed I I think that because we didn't say get rid of her I'm I'm not I'm not forgive me let me move move to rephrase okay all right okay so the way I'm saying this is is that the need for a committee in this space I think is is important to the board I believe it's board work I do the one exception I would have Michael is I don't believe there's any legal requirement there isn't to have those things um not legally required that we have an internal auditor it's permissive in state legislation and uh three school districts in

372the state have somebody in that role but there's no requirement I I didn't I I I'm not I don't think I said that I think I was just clear that making that legislative that that statutory excuse me that statutory relationship that that is present and we've leveraged best practices to that effect as a result of that position that have not only given us local but National recognition in that role yes doing administrative work but at the same time with a group of people at the table and the ability where we can be stronger is where she reports more to us on what is being done that's that's been my area of critique for her for a long long time I alluded to that when she was here I think that we can do greater work

373with her reporting to us about what what her direction is what she's doing where there's progress um in closing and I'll lead it to a question zero right I I'll tie it to a question zero this idea of change and transformation the question zero for me uh to this committee since we're talking about the committee itself my question zero is um how do we look at our committee work in this space and tie it more definitive ly to our goals and guard rails even at the time that it was governed by policy governance its inherent weakness of policy governance was that again there was no tie to any of the direct reports they were mentioned but it wasn't any direct tie to what their work is specifically we are in the space now to con

374make these considerations so I would I would argue that we we keep this committee I just want everyone to know that auditor Smith is actually listening to us on uh through Zoom right now I think she put a message in I don't know if if it was something she wanted to say no oh she just was saying she's here okay got it so uh having heard um those comments um I actually much more convinced that that's absolutely no correlation between that committee on legal requirement or the goals or the guard rils that I so I definitely hear the things that it's doing um and I definitely hear that there's some work that has to get done like you know um supervision of board staff that absolutely has to get done um I don't ever recommend

375that be pushed out to a committee I recommend the board comes up with mechanisms for that to be something the full board does but there is there are threads of work that I heard described that I think it is important to be clear about how that work gets done and who owns it um but nothing I heard in any way suggests that the function of this committee was designed to accomplish either a statutory requirement um you know further a goal or further a guard rail um and so the whole point of this activity um we are not yet at the point of hey you should delete this or not right now all we're doing is saying does it meet one of these three criteria yes or no and so I want to clarify that I

376would really really really love folks to stay focused on the question at hand does it does it address a statutory requirement uh is it directly focused on the goals directly focused on the guard rails if the answer to one of those three is yes then you should put a yes to it if the answer to none of those is yes then you should put a no next to it this from everything y'all described is very clearly a no now whether or not you choose to keep it that we haven't gotten to that conversation but I would ask you to be intellectually honest in this conversation it will not benefit you you know to invent ways to try to pretend that things are statutorily required or connected to goals of guardrails can I say this so

377um two things one um if your tone feels like you want to get rid of it I'm just going to that's since we're using tone today that's he wants to get rid of all of our committees let's just be let's be clear there's no joke here's no that answering AJ's question n none of them meet this strictly defined criteria none of the Committees meet I spent hour and a half with AJ on this particular none of them do so every single one that we mentioned he's going to have a direct response that is a valid response based on the criteria that we were giving given to Define um the Committees in this context and so let's just start there let's let's do the work okay if none of them meet the the the defining criteria

378let's say that they don't and let's get busy then because what it to for me is this might just be the point where you know I don't agree with AJ yeah on the approach and and so we've got to make a determination of okay based on what we said we we want to do and based on the structure that we've been given and that we've agreed to for the most part up to this point is this the defining moment where we say yeah but we like the way that we're doing this portion and we're going to keep it and I think that conversation yes yes so so if we so if we accept this idea that you know Ryland puts forward that making a connection between these and those is not is tenuous at best

379for most of these I think there are actually a couple that you can make Arguments for but is but you'd have to make arguments there isn't any of them that is I just clearly this was explicitly designed to meet a statutory requirement or to address a goal or to address a guard rail that that doesn't exist are there ones you can make arguments around yes but if we take that approach the notice that that doesn't end the conversation that just takes us to the next step of the conversation you know to James's point and so the next step of the conversation is do you want to keep it do you want to delete it or do you want to modify it this is why I said it is not valuable to be intellectually dishonest about

380the first First Step because we have because there's still always a second step um Dr per jum based on the memo that we received from Dr Rous um our general counsel we are legally required to have annual appropriations of funds in the tax budgets to purchase sale and um convey property and uh various tax levies so finance and Appropriations Committee should get a yes no it's not it aligns with legal requirements because we can do it as a full board do it as a full board there's nothing that requires you to do it in committee it's absolutely nothing apparently auditor Smith has her hand up which I can't see so auditor Smith if you can hear me did you would want to say something yes hopefully I don't break up because I am traveling um

381so I will hopefully stay in this area where we I do have a sale service um the audit and accountability committee was if you are correct there's nothing statutorily that say you have to have this committee but the committee came about after years of the auditor of State coming in and looking at our operations and seeing significant um areas of uh fraud areas of waste areas of abuse areas of no internal controls so the auditor of State Jim Jim Petro uh before my time made a recommendation that the district could benefit from having an in actually an audit committee was the first recommendation um that the auditor of state made so the board created an audit committee and then later the audit committee working with the board read the position of the internal auditor to

382go up and to do audits to see how we could basically get in compliance with those things that we were not in compliance with so that is the the history of how this department how that committee came about and the committee the board decided to have the committee first of all be made up of um I believe it was board me members and then they realized that they needed some experts in the field so it expanded to community members so that is the history of the um the office of interal audit and the audit committee what the you know I I think it would be I I you know I I'll just leave it at that but that that is the history and what we do no you know we provide Assurance to to the

383board and to Senior Management that the things that they believe are happening either they are happening or they are not happening so as you're talking about those and guard rails you know internal audit is positioned well to see that the information that is coming to management that they're making decisions on is accurate it's complete and it's timely I think one of the last things I heard was um so so I'll just leave it at that you know there is a I believe that there is a tie for internal audit to definitely provide that Independent third- party Assurance yeah that the information that you are making judgments and decisions on is accurate and is complete so I will go back off the mute and listen and if I have another comment I will use the raise

384hand feature uh thank you for the could you uh could you I don't know how Misty knew your hand was raised you just saw it okay because I can't see it from here so we'll we'll try to pay attention to that auditor Smith Miss Miss Smith just a quick question too was there any punitive action on the part of the state for us to have this committee at that time if you recall was there any punitive action that they that they might have leveraged against us if we did not develop this type of committee I would not say it was punitive on the state's behalf but I do not that the organization would have made the corrections to eliminate those risks had the audit committee not been formed because they if it was going to

385happen they would have did it without the state coming in and saying you know you could benefit from having an audit committee and having an internal audit function if they could have did it they would have done it I I I think Michael's there was something percolating in the legislature that was targeted at us yes ma'am and then either never got appropriated or it never became applicable that was our alternative and this is where Ohio is unique But but so we are happen in other places so we are at this point just like every other District we have the option have an internal order but we don't have to it's optional having an internal auditor is optional in Texas but there are places where the state has said you all will in fact have a

386internal auditor but to me this feels like a very gray or a red area um because it's it's not matter of if these committees are statutorily required or you know us connecting the legal requirements to them is whether or not the Committees are giving us the the capacity that we need to be able to get the work done that we do as a board yeah there no question there value and the thing is it's it first of all it's not a referendum on anything the auditor does she's here she's useful her everything and and I do want to correct her for a second though because she said you know we do this no auditor Smith you do this just like TSA and Stan it's up to you um you are the the direct report who

387is responsible and so I think the question again back to what Dr Pierce just said it's not it's not about the committee itself like the committee can still function if auditor Smith believes it is beneficial to her and she comes and reports to us as her actual responsib um and and and that committee can function um either with or without board involvement at her choice um I it goes back to what Dr Pierce is saying and look guys I'm GNA tell you straight AJ and I got into it about these committees like I I still want to fight about some of the Committees but as a bigger like question I'm trying really hard I'm tring really hard AJ do do the Committees help us with the goals and guard rails that we have established right

388now understanding and appreciating the history that all of them went not saying that the work is not important it is but should they me be modified in a way where they still are functioning appropriately and most beneficial to our admin side um and then giving us what we need as a board yeah that's what I think that's exactly where I think I think that's the that's the better question yeah that's that's the question we're trying to get to so I I want to respond to something you said earlier James because because it got me to think and I needed to reflect on a minute uh to be clear about it you said um based on your tone it feels like you know you're not a fan of this committee um and I was like huh

389I think I do have a tone where where is that coming from and so it took me a moment to reflect on it here's and here's where I've realized the tone is coming from we just went through a practice where you all demonstrated a high degree of competence as it relates to focusing on uh the goals you have for your students um and even W woven into that was even conversations that showed that you had a high degree to focus on the guard rails you've adopted for your organization um and then we the immediate adjacent activity is look at look at what is written in this document and tell me is this focused on goals and guard rails and all of a sudden the answer is yes when the answer is obviously no and so

390the problem is it's not that what committees you all choose to have or what committees you all choose to have but it is really fundamentally important that you all know when you are choosing not to be focused on your priorities and when you are choosing to be focused on your priorities it is not helpful to you to pretend that things that aren't focused on your priorities actually are and so to watch you go from having a conversation where you are very deeply focused in on your goals and guardrails and then 10 minutes later like all of that seems to have evaporated that capacity for discernment I think that that's that was the concern I have is every moment you choose not to be focused on your goals and guardrails is is I'm not suggesting that

391that is a evil thing or bad you should you know end all of that what I'm saying is I want you to do that in the full knowledge of this is something we've chosen to do that isn't the key priority but we think it's important enough that we're going to invest time in it anyway because when you are kind of that intellectually honest about your activities it will cause you to naturally moderate and say well this actually isn't high enough threshold that we should take time away from gold and guardrails for it we aren't going to do this this is high enough threshold we are going to take time away uh to do this and I think you'll naturally balance out but if you can talk yourself into anything is goals and guard rails then

392there will never be that moderation and will'll come back and you all will have completely slid backwards rather than Marching for started to lead us into that when I respond I would I would describe I would hope that we would be able to describe our goals and guard rails as a priority um but there are other things that we will have to attend to that are clearly articulated in the goals and guardrails document agree the criteria for this exercise was was very clearly defined very clearly defined and if if what you're telling me is that the only thing as a board member that I am to pay attention to has to be clearly defined in that goals and guard rails document it's literally the opposite of what I just said it will be it will

393be my priority yes because that is the work that we have put in but but there are issues that we will have to address that will will be a priority for me okay should they come to my attention let me just clarify you all did just hear me say there are going to be times when you choose not to focus on your priorities because something else you think is important like you're you're clear that that is going to be the case AJ you can say that but giving us the examples and I guess we know our community and we know how we function um and and in some ways we can forecast in what we pay attention to so in this instance I think what I hear my colleagues and the consensus that we are

394are coming to is that there will be or there may be some committees that we are willing to keep because those are priorities that don't necessarily align with the goals and guard rail PR you see them aligning with the goals and guard rails but as we collectively and from a consensus see them aligning with the goals and guard rails you know I'd like to add a different maybe quite a slightly different way to think about this and and these may be dots that aren't warranted to be connected but um what I'm trying to discern is what value like I have a year in change now in on the audit and accountability committee and it's been a valuable year for me because I've gotten really Smarter on the process on the organization on a lot of

395things and I've worked pretty hard at it actually um and one of the values of that work on that committee I think is clearly that we have Community input with a lot of experts who are really helpful and I think Carolyn would probably agree that they're helpful and that that I can say clearly is a value that the commun the committee adds I'm not so sure that it being a board committee is required for that well that is not required for that value I'm what I'm trying to decide is what value at being a board committee and James and I add to it um because we're not Auditors and what I would have told myself before reading some books about you know effective boardmy that I've been reading recently thank you AJ um is that

396um what we were doing was serving doing board work in the sense that James and I were getting Uber focused and Uber informed so that we could turn around and recommend to the board all right we've kicked the tires on this or that issue and it's our opinion based on having kick the tires in depth that the board should vote X or Y but what I realized I was missing in that process is that then it becomes James in my opinion and not the whole board's opinion because the whole board's not informed so that's really a failing if that's the value that we think the board is bringing to the the committee work is bringing to the this board even though I would have thought it was a value but it's not really when you

397realize that if we become the subject matter experts and they all defer to us then it's our opinion it's not a whole board opinion so that's the one thought the other um thought about some of these committees is that and certainly I think it's true from what I understand of the history of public engagement is it's it was formed to some EXT extent to step into the breach when there was not any coherent public engagement happening in the district and a group of I mean not en it was it was actually I just went back and it it was actually brought down from the legislation okay uh it was the family Civic engagement plan provided to us by the go down from the governor's office down to um the state level to create a family

398and Civic engagement district for the uh uh plan for the district and that doesn't exist now yeah there's a whole document on okay so I misstated the history follow this doc or go back to this document they would align with I think I think we' captured it we a different down a different so that's still the legal reir uh no because the they said that we did it well change with Governor would change a regime and banial budget got change okay so I misstated that but I guess my point is in the last two years under tsa's management we've created this whole office of engagement and so to some extent you know is there a need for that and you know and then culture and climate like to some extent I think we're trying to

399um make sure we get it right like it's well intended but I think we just end up adding a layer of if not management a layer of effort that you know we need to really think about I have a a question understanding you know that a lot of what we do um is very generative I would say our our Board model in and of itself is a generative model it is a model that comprises what are our statutory responsibilities what our our um daytoday kind of you know meeting for meeting responsibilities also adds in you know uh the higher and Fire Element as in the strategic planning element so it com it comprises quite a bit how does one in our role particularly without being reported to at a board meeting how do we identify

400what is possibly a smoldering or emerging crisis yes right how do we um understand this organization the way we should yeah we should have an indepth intimate understanding of this organization three ways just hold on just hear me out real quick um how do we do that in a way uh through you know this type of work how do we learn these things about our organization so that we're ever aware we have a an a a pathway or a mean some sort of systemic apparatus by which we do have knowledge and interaction with what our issues are to become better and Design Systems that help improve that and like I said Carolyn has been that leader in that space But that's the importance of our presence to me in that space and more importantly that

401committee as as a whole but how do we do that absent of that so so there are three key ways that boards receive uh get gain information about the institution that they govern um you know the the probably the one that's most crucial and also often most underused is the one we just did which is monitoring reports from the superintendent so I think of that as internal monitoring reports so this is where the board says here's what our priorities are on a regular calendarized basis bring us reports about this information in this way you're not going out looking for information you were saying what the priorities are and demanding that information on a routinized basis be brought to you that is the first way U that that a board uses to gain this information now

402I'm clarifying I'm distinguishing how a board does not how board members do uh we could that is a separate conversation how the board gets information is the first ways uh from internal reports you also get internal reports you know from your treasure these are Financial nature you get internal reports from your auditor obviously the this is where you as the board have said here is a priority you bring us information about this so internal reports is the first of three ways external reports then is the second of three ways external reports are fundamentally the same thing they just come from parties outside of your uh outside of the institution that you're responsible for governing pdk Etc uh the most obvious example pdk that that audit is perf uh the Council of great City Schools brought

403you an audit about um yeah Transportation um each year you hire a financial firm to bring you a financial audit uh from outside of your organization each year the state brings you a uh external report on the state's view of your performance as a school system they give you some type of rating so these are external monitoring reports now most of those just kind of happen at you because but you can also intentionally call for external monitoring reports so when we put together this monitoring calendar pretty much everything in there by default you know will mostly be internal monitoring reports coming from staff but you could just as easily say you know what we want an external monitoring report on interim guard ril 1.2 you know this idea of school climate yeah we've got our

404internal monitoring report based on Panorama but we want to hire a third party that's going to do a random sample and completely disconnected from the administration entirely and they're going to give us a third party report on interim gardo 1.2 and that will be an external monitoring report it's completely completely independent of your internal team that's a second of three ways that a board gains information about its institution then the third way that a board gains information about its institution is uh direct inspection is that the board puts in place u a system system or some type of systemized approach to uh board members directly inspecting what's happening in the institution um and then coming back to the board uh and Reporting out on the uh nature of their inspection you all don't use this

405um uh but it is a pretty powerful tool when used what you all often do is not that is not direct inspection is you as individuals kind of go out and do your own thing that is not direct inspection because that's not board activity that's board member activity would not our participation as committee members on the auditing committee not would that not constitute inspection so if the board is clear if the board clearly says here is the specific thing that we want uh a monitoring report on and then you all go and inspect that and then you bring the monitoring report back to the board uh then that could be a form of direct inspection that's what happens this is what we practice that's precisely what we do that that is precisely what we do

406I well so first off let's be clear no you don't because you don't have goals and guard rails that you've been using for these committees so no you don't go out and monitor your goals and guard rails and bring a direct inspection report back valuation but you could but that's but I'm saying yes absolutely could we wouldn't create that's I'm saying you absolutely could so right now it sounds like what you're using them is to inspect a variety of things but what I'm talking about is the board inspecting the board's priorities uh the board has said what your priorities are and no from my observation you are not using your committees to inspect your priorities but but to the point yes you could you absolutely could but I think again that goes to what board

407member Raglin is stating what I'm stating and what Cole I think is stating is that sometimes we will have priorities that do not align 100% with the stated goals and guard rep and when those happen on an episodic basis not a standing basis then it's not unreasonable for the board to say we are going to dilute the organization's focus on our priorities because this other thing is so important that we want to spin up an ad hoc committee to go do a direct inspection on that they'll go do that they'll come back with a report and then they'll report that out to the full board so that we can have the benefit of that Direct inspection I appreciate your choice of of word dilute but I think the choice of word um in in many

408respects sets a tone and a tener that just really continues to just uh these committees just aren't they're not necessary they're not needed like you're you're pushing and you're being very deliberate with the words that you're using and I just want to call it out and put it out that those words are very triggering because they continue to just radical leadership it's radical disruptive leadership I get it I like it but let's let's just use some different language that's but let's just can we can we just I I think we should just operate under this understanding this is the goals and guard rails document itself is relatively new yeah none of the do this because none of the Committees have been restructured in order to do it which is why we doing this course we

409we haven't we haven't done this in the past because this is we've just gone through this process right of getting goals and guard rails document together to getting the goals and C rails in place this entire function has been something new to the entire Board of Education and so no the Committees aren't aligned with that I think what we need to determine is whether or not we're going to do it and it's going to be under this strict definition um as it's been articulated here um right that that is exactly the conversation are we going to follow AJ's advice or aren't we and if and you know no no no the activ it's not I don't think it's that it's not it's not that the activity is keep delete or modify okay so my my

410question for AJ James is correct your experience with an internal auditor with your leadership how did you you adjust um you know with with your organization if you had committees at the time did you adjust those committees what happened in your experience with you know when you had a a a government structure yeah that's similar to ours it may not be the same but similar yeah yeah you're very similar so you James's you know point on this was spot on is the nature of this activity is to First be very clear and and honest with ourselves about what we have today and then grounded in that do the next step which is to decide do we want to keep it do we want to delete it or do we want to modify it uh that's

411that is the that is the only thing that's been put on the table what's happened is we've spent literally the last 20 minutes defending what you have right now that's that's not the best use of the activity the best use of the activity said okay let's recognize what we have right now let's where where it came from which you offer offered you know the uh uh Carolyn offered um let's be thoughtful about what we have right now and then in the span of that recognizing where things are aligned with our priorities or are not aligned with our priorities make the decision do we want to keep it the way it is which obviously you're the elected officials if you decide to keep it you decide to keep it that's why it's one of the three

412options do we want to delete it uh if you can't see any way to cause it into alignment and you don't think it's important enough to keep or do we want to modify it to cause it to move more into alignment this that that is that is the question um and so the that's the thing that we're I'm kinding to nudge you into is being thoughtful about there are going to be times I'm probably almost never going to recommend them but there are going to be times where as the elected representatives of the community you say we want to go this way that is not aligned with the things that we've said we want to put all our focus on and your energy as a board is in fact finite which means every drop of

413energy that you invest over here is by definition opportunity cost that is not invested over here that's what the term D that's what I mean by the term dilution is that it it is there you can you have to make decision about how we deploy energy it is very important to me that you are crystal clear about when you are deploying energy that is an alignment and when you aren't because if you can't figure that out for your own activities your staff won't be able to figure it out for their activities either and that's why this is important this is culture setting and so I'm I you obviously know that I I my desire is for you to be as aligned with your with what you said your priorities as possible but notice the activity

414keep it delete it or modified and so I'll I I will answer uh James's question if y'all want me to but I think the more valuable thing is for you all to go through this and say okay this one no it's not aligned nope I don't think it should be aligned I think it we should keep exactly the way it is or nope this one is not aligned is there a way we could modify it now that we have newly developed a set of priorities is there a way that we should this be modified to be in alignment with those priorities or should we just keep it the way it is recognizing that is in fact not aligned or should we delete it entirely those are the options I'm putting in front of you and

415what and what I would ask is that in order to forward this like we could you know debate the finer points of all this or we could take the next step of the activity which is for each one of these just say hey do you want to pick a different committee pick a different committee because you've picked a committee that is just a hot topic for everybody if you can't figure it out can we're that so to discussion at some point to what I'm Ain to the idea of discussing at some maybe latter Point uh modification uh modification for what for audit and accountability oh got you so stand's right start with a different committee so so so to clarify on Michael's point the next step in the activity which I'd invite you to do

416solo uh we're doing this the same way we did you know the agenda earlier so you put a y or an N next to each committee that was the first step now the second step is you put put a keep a delete or modify next to each one that you put an in for and then we'll check back in with folks so put either a y yes this is aligned to our goals of guard rails or it's legally required or you put an in next to it for anyone where you put an end next to it now next to that either identify we should keep it we should delete it or we should modify it uh take that step and then we'll talk about it in a minute but I I want you to do

417that work first and then we'll talk about where you are with it can we please do this work and uh simultaneously take a break a working break so those that do need a minute to stretch uh and so uh H how about we come back right at the top of the hour and so you could do your keep delete modify and take a break whatever you need we'll start back right at uh 4:00 perfect thank you [Music] please stop contributing to the the delinquency of an employee all right so it's 4:00 we're uh jump we are 37 seconds past uh start time uh so the question on the table was keep delete modify keep delete modify uh so it was asked we just started on the front page academic policy and accountability committee the question

418is did you put keep did you put delete uh if you had an N for this did you put keep did you put delete or did you put modify uh who will be the first to share I put delete uh oh why delete this is Administrative work uh this is the superintendent's work and uh we can play a monitoring role but I don't see a need for a board committee um if um the Lisa would like help with her work from some outside people great she can ask for it she can ask for it but we don't need to participate at this level uh keep the Le if you put an in by economic policy and accountability committee uh if you put a y by it this conversation is not for you if you put

419an N next to that item that it's not focused on your goals your guard rails or legally required then do you recommend keep Del leete or modify yeah I've been there uh for several years I always felt that academics was the work of the whole board and it need to be directed by the superintendent I've been there for a very very long time and even when her and I talked about I was like uh I push back a little bit um eventually obviously I gave in um I understand why um folks would think but I've always been the I feel like someone else is looking and pay attention to academics that's basically what I'm supposed to be doing as a board member shouldn't be one or two of us it should be all of us

420in in conjunction with the prend Madam chair so I put um modify um specifically do you want me to explain why I put modify yeah why modify so um the the job of this board should be to help to create the board monitoring calendar the specific time that that work should begin is May annually and that report should be given to the board for adoption by our first meeting in September let look folks this is what it looks like to make my job easier you know be really clear about what is it that we're going to do that's not aligned or say you know what we actually do have relevant work to do that is aligned and here's exactly what that deliverable is and here's where it's due U that is exactly what we're asking

421with this activity is is it aligned or not if it isn't do you still want to keep it anyway or do you want to modify it or do you want want to delete it and the modification I heard was that we definitely need to be responsible for de delivering the calendar um and that needs to be delivered by May the work needs to begin May the calendar needs to be delivered for board adoption by the first meeting in September got it uh anybody else keep the leite modify all right let's turn the page audit and accountability committee uh if you put an in for this keep delete modified delete why uh I think we have discussed it fairly well already uh as to this committee and I think that this is one again that is

422Administrative work that is under the internal Auditor's purview if she wants help she can put a group together to help her uh but I don't think there's a a a place for board participation anybody else keep delete modify so I'm um I'm interested in this whole direct inspection piece and um and part of it is um I've also been vo vocal about this um without going to meetings and again I I prefaced it with I didn't see of value per se for me at as as far as an inputter uh but um a lot of Carolyn's work is done outside and not something that we visualize we're responsible for evaluation and unless we figure out a way where we can as a board build a gold or guard rail so that we can see more

423of what she does so that in order for us to evaluate it I don't know other than direct inspection how we're going to be able to do that we hear we hear a lot of reports from Stanley a lot of reports from Pisa but not a lot of reports from Carolyn and it could be the nature as we've talked about the nature of her role right you're not going to be sitting here and going we got 20 crazy things going in the district hey and then our our our community goes HeyWire uh so I want to so I don't know if it's uh external monitoring or direct inspections so I want to see what a modification to this audit and accountability committee would look like Mr chair I want to say modify um and to

424Ramona's Point um I'm going to hopefully work with car on increasing the information that you all get every meeting um a lot of the details that are happening within the office of internal audit are gone through um with a fine to Cone during the committee meeting um and I think some of the things that we uh are needing to do based on what we've talked about today in adjusting how information is delivered to the board um getting reports from the committee meetings to board members well in advance um and then using the opportunity to present in person maybe to highlight some of those areas we have a dashboard that that she goes over every single month that list out in very fine detail all of the work that is being done in that department and

425you know maybe it's maybe it's the presentation itself that gets overlooked uh maybe it's the information is not being disseminated to um other board members uh in a manner that that they're able to uh receive it and so I'm going to do uh some work with each of you to determine what needs to happen um regarding the information that you would like to receive and then I'll uh work with Carol and Carolyn uh to adjust those things in order for you to to get the information that you need so that you understand all of the things that are going on unfortunately for internal audit um on a lot of levels you may not uh know or understand what is necessarily happening until there is a real problem um that is outside of you know that

426is the focus of entities outside of the district um and I think that Carolyn and her team has done a really good job of making sure that we intercept things that could become that um and you know um in a lot of levels on a lot of levels silence is golden for that department you've seen even this year first time in 20 years we got a clean State audit you know and I don't care what you all think about the the three occurrences that we did have the state called it clean I'm calling it clean so um you know say say what you will about the audit not being as perfect as you'd like to see it 20 years based off everything that this district has gone through and you might not understand um the

427importance of what she is doing because it is not as forward- facing as the superintendent's report or uh the treasurer's report but um we're going to work on that and my my that's why my my my input there was modified um I a question aent yeah so and I think this question connects again to changing the language in all of our um that guard rails paragraph to to read our direct reports so um they can begin to Vision how their work how their current committee work aligns with our goals and guard rails in this modification process should it be the board chairs that are leading this how the committee chairs that are leading this work of how does the current work fit into the golden guard rails or are we empowering the direct reports to

428really think about it strategically in communication with one another to figure out how it align uh I the board committees should belong to the board and so my recommendation is if the board can find work that it needs done then it should spin up a committee to do the work um and then go away when the work is done if the board can't identify work to be done done uh then I wouldn't have a committee at all and that's why I strongly recommend if there is not a clear deliverable then you probably shouldn't have a committee like if if you can't tell me this is the exact deliverable and this is the exact date by when the deliverable will be delivered then you probably shouldn't have a committee and so I I wouldn't if if

429your direct reports have something they need help or advice on they will contact you um but I wouldn't sit by the phone they because for the most part visiting with your three people they're generally a type of folks who they're going to go figure it out on their own they're probably not going to call and ask you for advice um they're probably just going to get it done but if they need advice they will call you and so I wouldn't expect them to surface that for you um I think they already know they can I think the more important task is the board as a whole says here's the work that needs to be done we understand that this is going to pull board members in a direction that may not be aligned um and

430we think it's important enough uh to dispatch those board members in an unaligned Vector uh recognizing that doing so is going to pull the full board with him in that direction it's going to pull staff with him in that direction but I think the board and only the board as a whole should be making that decision um and that generally unless the board is convinced that that is really meaningful the board should actively avoid doing so because of the organizational cost incur um I I'm think been thinking long a hard about this and I I am leaning towards delete because I'm trying to think of you know James and I are in the position as the board members on the board from whatever detail work we do then we have to turn around deliver that

431message to the board and they need to you know finally make a decision if one's to be made but even just in terms of reporting the activity of the in office of internal audit and I keep I keep coming back to this conclusion that're we're just adding an unnecessary layer I would move to uh I'm sorry was so I guess I'm leaning toward delete gotcha uh I want to move to next committee uh we we're just I'm going to try to move through these just to hear get some ideas on the table climate and culture um if you put in next to this keep delete modify if you put why then this is not your conversation if you put n no it's not aligned with our goals guard rails are legally required uh keep delete

432or modify we'll hear for each of these just to speed things up we'll hear from whoever the first two board members were most eager to speak and then we'll conclude by hearing from the currently listed chair of set committee if they want to speak uh keep delete modify anybody want to speak to this one I think this one is because it's new I think this one does align because it's about culture climate which supports the whole child and the I don't have it in front of me I shouldn't getting tired so if it does line what is the the deliverable I don't know because it's it's so new and so the committee itself hasn't convened convened and so now that we have solid goals it could so maybe it needs a modification to more further

433align but I don't think I'm in the lens of completely deleting this one because um there are things here that I think that this committee um definitely could work on and and some things that to Tina's point that we kind of have Community issues that might not 100% align with what's on the paper that need to be handled and so it's one of those Balance things that um and I'm specifically talking about our school safety right um conversations all right so as a followup question I completely agree with you if the community has concern concerns about school safety that does in fact need to be handled so the followup question is who is best position to handle it well we've we have to make the we did it as a board and then we have

434put it down into a smaller group um and now actually it morphed into superintendent and some administrative Administration kind of working in a research group with uh with other partners from the city so that's where we are right now know that all right so keep delete modify I don't know so the chairs get the all right we we'll come to the chair last yeah uh one more board member before we go to the chair anybody most Goa I I you know for the reasons that Jennifer said and uh and I I know it's new and hasn't had much chance to operate but I think that uh the example with safe schools uh is is a good one and I think that where it's ended up being with the superintendent and administrative folks with the head

435of security with uh City people that are in this uh makes a great deal more sense to me uh if there are matters that uh need board action they can be brought to us if there are things that um we need to just know about that they can be reported to us beckerly okay I I think it I I'm tending toward delete with the idea that if there's uh things that come up we should have a uh you know more specific charge um I couple of my thoughts are um some of the things I really liked about this committee I'm starting to realize are really um not board work you know I liked having all the different categories I hello I'm Carol Beckley you know my name is Carol and I'm a micromanager hello Carol

436um but you know you know I love the idea of getting all these different disciplines together Safety and Security leadership trans like because you know but that really is me trying to micromanage and and I I I I'm owning it um the other thought the other reason I think delete is because the truth is I've thought a lot about this over the past six months eight months when were we in July and talked with um Tina talked with Michael talked with Cheryl Ward Dion uh Angela all these people that are listed as the support and it's unwieldy I mean you know we talked about maybe we do it this way maybe we do it this way and even just getting all the people in the room was a real challenge so we have to narrow

437it somehow if we keep it for sure and I'm not so sure that it's not um it should just be deleted and then we create committees as the need comes up for very micro so I'll I'll speak to that in a second the next uh committee or tea up for folks we want to talk about is finance and Appropriations on that point um and to kind of speak to question James asked earlier as a board chair I used a lot of committees had a ton of committees now every single one of them was ad hoc we gave them a very specific deliverable they went off at a very specific deadline they went off and they did that um there usually three or four members they'd go off they'd be on their committee they' get it

438I had a n member board they go off and do their thing and then when they were done they'd come back and say okay here's our deliverable our committee no longer exists and so anytime there was something that came up that the board had to attend to if it was aligned that we'd spend up a committee if it was not aligned we'd kind of debate do we want to invest energy in this and if we did then we'd spin up at ad hoc committee they do do their thing and so you know just want to clarify any assertions that I'm anti-committee doesn't match my record used a lot of committees but but we use them as scalpel not as shotguns and so what I hear you saying is I don't see a Clear Vision for

439this whole committee like in living in perpetuity and doing stuff but there might be specific items that come up that we might need to spin up a committee for could could I plead add that with this one it should be modified specifically the reporting um focus on a template report for um a guard rail interim guard rails 2.2 4.1 4.2 and 4.3 it should be literally an adoc Committee in um establishment for 6 months to a year to create what that template report should look like across those guard rails um I really appreciate your thoughtfulness on this however uh the monitoring reports are solely the property of the of the staff Who deliver them so monitoring ports in terms of the exercise that we went through today we were able to quickly show here's a

440missing element of data as it related to the slope because these guard rails you're going across 4.1 4.2 and 4.3 2.2 also relates so I think you having the opportunity in just this ad hoc for 6 months to a year to bring here's what the template of the data will look like could could could be very beneficial I and helpful I strongly recommend that be work done by the full board uh and and part of the reason for that I want to clarify monitoring reports are literally a slice of your superintendent's annual evaluation that's um and so as I something I said earlier is I would not encourage Outsourcing evaluation of a board direct report to a committee the monitoring reports are literally at the end of the year you'll have a stack of monitoring

441reports rep that is the data you're using to conduct your annual evaluation and so any kind of the the elements of that I'm always a little bit Leary about Outsourcing only because um it you may be in a position of board members feeling as if they were deprived of being part of the brain trust in the evaluation of their own employee and so I actually love the idea uh and it's and it's the right spirit and it's the right uh it's the right um iner to bring into the work I I would just that particular activity I would en encourage to occur at the full board level that's all uh finance and Appropriations uh keep delete if you put it in for this keep delete modify I think we delete it and give it to

442Stan yeah uh is there a second board member who wants to share keep delad modify uh to me uh hold on we'll come to you last because you're the chair right got got you is there a second board uh rag what you got uh I would modify the way the information is disseminated to the board but I would keep the committee uh what talk to us about the modification uh how would you modify it um maybe maybe a a streamlined uh document again I you know I I'm I'm operating from the premise that I I get the information fully in the finance committee meeting um if I weren't on the finance committee I would I would probably tune in for that because I think it's an area of weakness for me and I feel like

443understanding it at that level is is absolutely necessary um but I feel like there is u i feel like there's some unreadiness from my colleagues around the time spent on the information being delivered during the actual board meeting and so if there was a way for us to condense that information for them um I would I would do it but I I just see the functionality of that committee being pertinent to the the success of the district moving forward um everything from Community input from the topics of discussion um you know I I just I would keep it but I would modify the way that the board gets its information and then with every other committee that is of Interest encourage the board to participate um in the actual committee meetings um I think that's

444a that's another another way of of uh of helping us do a little bit more of our homework uh in advance of the actual board meeting out of curiosity before you mute if this belonged to St man um and he had a bunch of Finance experts around the table and they Workshop this stuff and that was all live streamed and then recorded on YouTube so board members can watch it on their own time would that meet the need for you well I I think we have that function already um the the the current finance committee meetings are live stream they are recorded in archive um and and the information is always uh available um you know regarding the the monthly reports that we receive as well as our forecasts um we receive those things uh

445in a very timely fashion consistently every single year so it's not it's not a surprise where all that stuff is and and if you want that information you can have it um I I just want to be careful that we're not saying oh well let's just do away with the committee because close your ears Stan you know Stan takes a half hour every time that he's given a report he still take a half hour because it's still his job to do the report yeah I know that but but you know what what I'm what I'm getting from a lot of this we don't you know and this is from the top of the day today to now is we need to find a way to shorten the meeting our board meetings so that that we

446can spend more time with everything associated with the and guard RS and um you know if if if we spend 10 less minutes on finance and Appropriations then that's 10 more minutes than we can spend on gold goals and guard rails and so I'm saying modify by figuring out a way to spend 10 more 10 you know less minutes on uh on finance during the meeting now mind you I value the information because every time I hear it it's helping me get better on the finance things but that's that's just me and my personal you know area of weakness that I'm trying to get better with um but that might not be the case for the other board members however I don't want to see the finance committee go away uh and one thing I

447will just uh highlight before we come to Cole will be our we're letting our chairs get the last word on these things um is that no matter what the outcome of this process is one thing that I would consider inappropriate is for board members to have less access to information as a result of this than they have today so no no matter if you deleted every single one of these committees I would still expect U and challenge that whatever information board members got they would still need to get um that just means now you'd have to be creative about how you have and is that via YouTube is like is there reports that go out on Fridays I mean but what's not acceptable is in a dieting process in a committee dieting process what is

448not acceptable is for the board to have net less access to information like what you said you know James you know really resonates with me is I W as a result of having access to this information I have learned more and I feel like I could be a better board member as a result that can never be taken away that U but so anytime you decide that you want to delete something that creates an affirmative obligation that okay what benefits was that producing and how do we reprodu those benefits in the now in the absence of the committee uh last word on uh Finance before you do that I don't see the connection between the finance committee and Stan's report what James was making because finance committee is there to advise Stan and they're great

449they're experts and they help him do his thing and I think there is question about how do we modify the report how how to stand maybe add more of the goals and guard rails and Alignment I think that that's that's a fair question but to me I personally am missing the connection between the committee and the report that Stan gives at the board meeting like James was talking about it uh Cole finish this thing out yeah um for me uh this goes back again to the conversation around uh audit and accountability I think the the issue was around reporting not getting the information not seeing the information um or not maybe uh understanding the information as it was given um and it was you know it was my interpretation that we were um really kind

450of correlating the performance during the actual board meeting um to the functionality of the committee um and you know forgive me if if I made the wrong assumption that that was the case on on this this particular um committee itself but um you know that's that's kind of what it what it felt like and you know again um this this whole process yesterday started off with us taking a look at the agenda talking about the time that was spent on each particular um issue on the agenda the reporting of the finance and Appropriations Committee is a I mean on on the actual report is a product of the committee the committee you know literally hears the report asks questions about the report the report gets submitted to the board all right through the process that

451gets worked through during the committee we go to now I'm sorry uh C can we finish out with Michael uh we've got three more of these committees we got to get to and we're almost out of time give me Michael what you got all right very quickly um keep the lead modifier I it is there's certainly opportunity for modification I think that we can look in ways and where we condense information um I think that in even my conversation with uh treasur of boric last night um we can find some definite alignments to the goals and guard rails that give deeper understanding and explanation about what is being funded and why we go through a bit of that exercise every time we discuss approving a set of line items whether it's for new employees uh

452upcoming programs things to that effect uh um without going into some of the other more controversial things um but I think this is area of continuous Improvement and growth for us I have been around since this organ since this committee was established right um I know that there was not a finance committee prior to my onboarding uh and that was 2014 I think this committee has shown some considerable value to the board it has most assuredly made me a better board member along with account audit audit and accountability um I think it's included it's it's greatly improved my knowledge capital of this organ organization and help me benefit that in a certain way um so I see opportunity for growth and modification I think moving forward I certainly intend to have greater conversation with treasur

453Bor to that effect as well as Dr Dixon governance policy and advocacy uh keep delete modify if you had an end for this keep delete modify we'll hear from a couple board members before we hear from brown or if nobody wants to speak on it we'll keep it moving bil oh no mod delete um as a member of that committee I find often um that there are a few policies that come through um Neola or they're uh statutorily um updated by Dr Rous um we have very superficial conversations around them there are some policies that we have really deep dialogue around but that deep dialogue should really occur with our board as opposed to with that committee um and so I think definitely um while board member Brown does a good job of chairing that

454committee um many of those policies we could um move forward as a board and as a body we could do it on a more calendar and scheduled basis so we're taking a whole group of policies um and really getting through them and I think that would free us up to begin to write our own legislation as opposed to getting can legislation that we simply adopt uh one more board member yeah what do you got so I um and I don't know if it's disc committee but uh keep Del modify in in a in a way um I think this was ad hoc because uh we changed our policy structure so we changed all of our policies over to a new system right policy governance to whatever it is Whatever It Is Well Neola sounds like

455a lot of to yeah well Neola we were transitioning so that's why this was created so that we could uh uh switch that language into the new system so modify in what way uh well um ad hoc if needed because of a change like that but I'm also curious where the board work for governance or legislation things that are happening in at the state house where we need to be involved where that falls whether it falls here or not work you know we constantly talk about X legislation is being heard that will impact our schools whether it's school funding whether it's uh changes uh to to the way that uh the grade system or whatever those things are things that the board should be involved in but we have not gotten to that uh that

456section so I don't know if it's there but that's something that uh needs to be done Brown keep delete modified modify substantially I think that um I think that the committee um as as wonderful committee as it is and we've got some really good people um the Neola work the compliance with legal requirements that are always changing that's pretty routine that does not get the kind of robust discussion that certain other matters do uh and I think that that can go administratively directly to the board and perhaps in batches which is really what the committee does anyway where I do see value is those robust discussions of policies that are just really significant whether it's the transgender policy that we've done uh whether it's U so what's the modification modification is we do those ad

457hoc when we need to that they be um with Administration or um and I I'm not sure if this would work or not if we did it as a board as a whole um we might get better participation by all board members which would be even better uh because we have a committee that's going to take the first look and work through a lot of these things I think a lot of board members that are not on the committee are simply going to pay less attention to it and when we bring it to the board I don't think I ever get any comments back after the first rating about you know that people are giving thought to it so I'd love to see you know that we could try getting rid of the committee if

458we're all willing to undertake the work uh to prepare for meetings and to prepare for these matters thank thank you really people and operations policy uh uh if you had an end for this keep delete modify looking for a couple board members before we go to a dare keep delete or modify it can be deleted for the same for the same reason that Carol said I mean I mean I think the benefit of this was just a couple times getting all the operations people in the room which I think is just a message back to Dr Dixon that they need a mechanism to connect on the operation side and we have a new person now um and it became a space where we were like you know you know we were like tell us what

459you need and they're like I don't know so it you know I at this point it didn't we tried and I think that you know if you need us in this area we're here to do ad hoc yeah uh any others keep delete modified public engagement Jenifer delete public engagement uh and external Communications modify specifically with the goal being to develop a process to engage the community that work should start annually every year be delivered to the board for adoption in September's meeting given where we're starting right now and thinking about our goals and guard rails that work should start now and that plan should be delivered to the board January of 2022 can you say the first part again um develop a community engagement process for the board okay a regular like a regular

460what we were talking about earlier earlier so that would include identifying a schedule you know identifying how we're going to design it if it's regionally if it's two members if it's office hours you know all of that that we discussed earlier is there another board member keep keep the Le modify modify why modify uh modif again to uh solidify and embed a community engagement process by which the board uh has some ownership and regular so yeah absolutely it should be ongoing in 2013 or 2014 excuse me we did a dream big moving forward uh Community engagement piece that also produced which I think is important for us some real valuable research information um that we were able to present to the community and get their feedback we turned it into an actual document called dream

461big moving forward 2020 I think that continuing that kind of process expanding benefits the board benefits the organization Reyes you're up keep the lead modify um it's at hoc so I'm saying uh we keep it at Hawk and for such things as Community listing sessions the FMP Regional me meetings we did step up to Greatness uh maybe modify student ambassadors I mean the list goes on so it's ad hoc as needed uh it has to be in alignment with um uh however the superintendance because we didn't have a engagement person before so um wherever that engagement person is going to land and it should be ad hoc as the district as the district needs it and as the Board needs it but I think um Dr Di saying standing for the purpose of being responsible

462for overseeing board engagement and scheduling it making sure it's happening and calendaring it and tending to it so in that regard it would be a standing committee not an ad hoc committee the specific job of this committee every year would be to develop the board's engagement plan the board engagement not the board right CU we have a that's big distinction the board engagement not what staff is doing because the staff has this engagement plan thank you and I would not include all those little programs and AD the school and all like no but for to figure out how do we deal with public comment how do we deal with public engagement I I want to be very clear on that I agree and and and I suppose a vehicle and part of that work is

463going to include taking what we learn yeah and bringing it back to the board proper and to you agree but I just want to make sure that if we're talking about board work that is be boardled and facilitated because I don't want it to to create work create work for the team because they're crafting another engagement plan that department we talking about making sure we holding ourselves responsible or holding ourselves accountable for regular engagement with the community kind of like building on the listening sessions right exactly because Ramona what we've done um as far as our district priorities we created that fourth priority with this authentic engagement and that will be happening across the district with our families and our students um in our buildings Regional base and what we're talking about here is how

464the board stays connected to the commit through the listening sessions Etc so um which I think so Ramona just asked me what about FMP because FMP is a board let Al not really let's give it up for the administration for actually doing a lot of it but there's pieces of community engagement it's a boardled initiative because it's going to leave lead to Levy yeah can go it's part of that work I think it could I think it's tied but it's also tied to just general Community engagement because in reality that's the story we're telling is our District's story out to the community and why we're going to or can listening sessions have a specific topic for that whenever they happen to FMP I think when we need to collaborate on a project together there's opportunity

465to do that but I think as we think about the critical work that we need to do in this first year to establish a foundation good governance we need to deal with the public comment portion of our agenda and really defining what we mean by public engagement as a board and and you know what else I'm thinking now is we don't need any um community members it's our us to do it ourselves yeah so we've reached the end of our committee diet process I think we're a lot skinnier not disagree I don't think so look at AJ going really okay I'm sorry we did we not just delete some I think we ended up with half one delet deleted more than one you only there was only consensus on deleting one of them one there's

466only there's only one I'm taking notes there's only one that there was consensus really to delete are you sure we trust me if IID saw more one operations up said operation give us operations governance and policy I thought was a delete yeah uh no that was not consistent for that there was it was actually the well not everyone modify modif had three you talked to three people you didn't no no I'm saying of the three people I heard two of them for that one said modify not delete I wouldn't describe that as consensus of the group no no no no what I'm say what I'm saying is if three of the seven of y'all say delete something that well I guess what I heard was a recognition that we don't need standing committees what we

467need are like you said committees on certain issues and we have certain issues in some of these parameters is what I heard and so as a standing committee it doesn't need to exist in the way that it does currently and that's the modification and I still think that that makes us skinnier AJ no so if there yes so if there are things that are being converted to ad ad hoc legitimately they're saying this is no longer standing committee what I I was not clear I think as I'm looking at my notes I think there are only two of these that people said yeah that should definitely be ad hoc the rest of them it sound like the modifications were this should continue to be a standing committee okay well finance and Appropriations was my thought

468was continuing to be a standing committee yeah so that has some modif so that so that's what I heard uh was a lot of that I I didn't speak on all of them because I thought that we were just having a few people speak I didn't realize no no no that's because we don't have time we don't have time to we don't have time to debate right now the only thing I said is there was only one of them for which all of the people who spoke of you actually said delete um all the other ones there was some sort of some f the the focus was more on modification than anything else well I mean after hearing Carol talk about culture and climate cuz I first said whatever I said keep our modify I

469mean she said delete so I would go with delete then that brings us to two where there's a consens so we haven't done the exercise of true consensus no no no no no I'm not saying we did because we didn't have time to I'm just saying of the conversation most of the comments were around modified not around delete that's the only point I was thinking I heard too um and so what what happens from all these notes because it's time to talk about next steps after here so I've as I promised you yesterday I've been doing nothing but taking copious notes over these two days I have a ton of notes I also told told you yesterday the next step after this was that I would have to go back and put together a rewrite

470of your uh implementation timeline for all this work that uh takes into account where we are now um I think as so as you know there was an intention that we'd be where we are right now back in April of and so we need to uh readjust and so my next step is to take all of this feedback and I've got pages of notes here and then come back uh submit back to all a modified timeline that tries to account for all these things and then you all will have to decide whether or not you want to adopt said timeline and proceed with implementation uh that will be your opportunity uh to as JB said earlier Rebel and decide this is not in fact the direction you want to go like it literally needs to

471be a decision that the board makes as a whole yes we're going to pursue this work or no we're not U but I will uh put that timeline together and then submit that back to you when is your your next regularly scheduled board meeting Tuesday Tuesday Tuesday it won't be by Tuesday when is your next next regularly scheduled board meeting two Tuesdays after that um I will third Tuesday thir the third Tuesday then I will endeavor to have it to you in time that you can uh when do you need to have it so you can send it out to board members in advance of that meeting Tuesday Thursday the Thursday before the Tuesday gotcha so I'll try to get it to you uh it sounds like the second Wednesday uh by the second Wednesday

472of the month is when I'll try to get it to you then I guess some do we want to go ahead and get before commit to I think we said we wanted some additional dates so Missy and I work will work with AJ to get some more Retreat dates so the 11 if our meeting's going to be short Retreat dates we can do a retreat or we can do them all those days okay got you Retreat dat you know to continue the um there's no on the On's no executive session plan yeah on the board date since we will one the recommendations were since we were modifying the the agenda agenda that we can fit AJ in on those nights for more AJ how long of a time how long are your practicing he wants

473us when we're hungry H and tired monitoring practices normally run about 60 to 90 minutes okay okay yeah and that's practice debrief James um every other Tuesday you have you identified opportunities for AJ to go through some iteration of this process with um at least your your cabinet maybe that expanded group he talked about right as when he spoke of spoke about that I wrote that down I didn't realize he would do that so he is going to do that I think that's because and part of it to your point James he has been working with the team on the alignment of our strategic priorities and the bo board goals so they're familiar with him so um I think it would be a a a great exercise for cabinet and El definitely just in's consider

474move Great Space downtown so m i put on my timeline I'll have a revised timeline back to you uh no later than the 11th hopefully sooner than that and I just want to confirm that is in time for you to get it to the board and on their agenda for your next board meeting yeah um so as we close so those are the next steps as we close out I just want to end you know with uh create a space to harvest the learning um we spent two uh large chunk of two days together um we started off U with talking about our blessings that we've experienced that this was really the first time that the whole team had been back in the same space in a long time and we started Ed by describing

475our blessings then we walked through uh the goals and guard rails and surfaced some areas of adjustment I've committed that I'm working with your Administration I'm making adjustments to those uh then we went through and did a agenda evaluation uh then we went away we came back we jumped back into the agenda evaluation conversation this morning and you all offered ideas of what things You' want to keep delete modify on that front uh then we transition from that into a sample monitoring uh your very first and you all killed it like I just I still cannot say enough how remarkable what you pulled off was it is simply above and beyond anything I've experienced with other the boards um and so I just really uh really uh inspired um by you know what's possible for

476your students through uh your uh intellectual you know Collective intellectual capacity uh then we moved into a committee diet uh activity and now here at the end of our time together uh if you could only use one word uh this time we'll start with TSA and work our way back around the circle ending with Raglin if you could only use one word to sum up your experience uh one word talks about what you'll take away or what you got or what your experience of our time together over these two days were what would that one word be um someone used it earlier it's I'm exciting exciting encouraged encouraged we'll come back to Rona one word ready to go ready ready one word I do edified edified Jen said it I was going to say productive

477but we're not quite there yet on the verge of being productive on the verge pleasant pleasant surprise surprise Ragin pleasantly surprise we can sentence energy uh Ramon I'm assuming you're asking how do we feel after this one word yes uh tired you can't say tired uh do then I should I say energized then yeah yeah energized um I am incredibly grateful um I always find it weird when people tolerate me and you all do um and so I'm incredibly grateful for that uh there is nothing I want more than your greatness on behalf of your students um and uh it is my style as is the same way with the students I work with you know middle schoolers but for me mostly high schoolers that I've had the privilege of working with um that they

478experienced the relentlessness of my expectation regarding their greatness um and Unapologetic about pushing uh for in my case predominantly African-American Latino uh you know boys and girls in Kansas City to their level of greatness Beyond and above whatever other adults had told them they were capable of similarly there are people in your own Community who have suggested what you are not capable of and those people are demonstrably wrong what Falls to you is is to show is to show them uh the greatness that is within you on behalf of your students and to the extent that you allow me to be part of your journey I'm incredibly grateful uh I'll get my work done and follow up Madam chair back to you thank you uh thank you AJ for these two days thank you for

479rearranging your schedule so that you could be with us in person I think that that did make a difference and we appreciate you for that um thank you for your continued um commitment to us and to our children and to being hard on us and encouraging us and loving us all in the same moment um so we appreciate you so thank you with with that I will take a motion oh do you want to say something in I do rather than taking rather than asking for a motion okay if you will just speak and say without objection we're adjourned I guess maybe we could do that couldn't we you could yeah all right without objection we are adjourned woohoo a new efficiency hey we just saved 10 seconds y'all hey I'm not playing like that

480is real talk like every everything you can say in last place everything you can save save every moment we can do the same thing at the front end no uh one one of the clips