001a little fancy here okay oh he's with us i am calling the july 30th special board meeting to order mr treasurer you please call the roll president adair present mrs becker president mr brown here mr cole i'm here dr pierce president mr ragland i think he's on mute i'm here we can't hear him but i know he is here um and vice president yes you have a forum madam president thank you and for remember raglan if you can hear us we can see you we've logged your attendance and we'll figure out why we can't actually hear you that might just be a new technical thing because this is new new setup to us all right board members uh let's look at our agenda this evening we are here to have a another great facilitated discussion
002with aj krabill from the council of great city schools to continue our goals in guard rails uh and and speak about governance um and that is all we are doing this evening and we will continue that tomorrow as well is there a motion to approve our agenda i believe i heard miss beckerly and um i think it was i didn't think over the years you didn't say anything oh i'm sorry i said the board member said something okay i've got it president adair yes ms becker yes mr brown yes mr cole yes dr pierce yes mr ragland yes thank you and vice president reyes yes social care thank you so much so i'll go ahead and turn it over to aj krabill from the council create city schools hi aj thank you for having me
003it's a joy to get to be in the same room with you all after so many months virtual it's nice to meet you all in person um when's the last time this group was in the same place at the same time right after before we closed everything down right back in march wow it's been quite a while and so as a way of coming back together into the space uh what i want to do is open it up in a circle just share often what we think about when we think about the past 18 months is how much it's taken away it's taken so much away from our children in terms of time uh in instruction uh it's taken away so much in terms of time and together and connection and obviously it's it's taken
004you know loved ones uh that's often the context in which we focus when talking about this but i um on this occasion of coming together again as a team uh as a governing team i want to actually go in the other direction and look at what are blessings that have been experienced since the last time this group was all together in the same room and so as your way of checking in for the evening we'll go around the room everybody you're in the circle then you're in the conversation uh what is one blessing that you've experienced something that you're really grateful for that you've experienced over the last 18 months who will be the first to share what's a blessing something that you're truly grateful for yeah uh i would say uh for my team
005and i and i say team uh with that true meaning it what what the blessing was was while we were a team before we're really a team now so enhanced teamwork through all of this is a been a real blessing to get us through yeah thank you uh i think for me um it's just been a further incentive and uh and pushed to pay attention to health and to pay attention to medicine and science i haven't focused on science for many years i used to and it's given me the opportunity to do that and to spend a lot more time with my wife yeah real blessing [Music] i'm grateful on the school side to have been able to um assist the official graduation ceremonies that was a real honor and pleasure for me as it
006is every year um i'd say on the personal side much like board member brown being able to stay healthy having about with something i don't know what it was but having a bout with something that i was eventually able to uh over overcome yeah thank you and welcome who else plus you've experienced yeah really spending more time with family because during the virtual meetings someone from the family would have to come to the house and stay with my mother so it was a lot of family time together that i have learned to appreciate and learn to rely on others i think on the school side i think it's been a blessing that we all stuck together in this and i think even though again we come from different backgrounds and different kind of experiences i
007think when it came down to our students being number one we all really did that and it made that a priority and then similar to everyone else more on the personal side family and staying healthy and during this time i was able to add a new member to our family and be in a position to do that to help help another child so that's a blessing um for school we were able to just thankful that we were able to make tough decisions for the state's largest school district we were able to get school students back in school safely graduate students safely and have 8 100 students involved in a summer experience like never before and it's because we work together we continue to be focused and we relied on our partners to help us navigate
008this terrain on a personal note that even through the loss of loss of my father we my siblings and i were able to start a memorial scholarship fund in my parents name and we gave five one thousand dollar scholarships to five high school seniors last month on father's day so um to be able to do that and was a blessing and kind of commemorating that a year of the loss for him um on the school side um i'm grateful that we now have a laptop in every kid's hand huge and i think that uh you know we we sort of have leapfrog to whatever we were going whatever the next you know 21st century learning is going to look like with technology and integrating it i think that um you know moving a district our
009side is hard and i think that the pandemic the silver lining is it got us there and i think there's a lot of people excited about the potential in that teachers i mean instructionally and that's really good on the personal side and i think it we almost missed how significant it was because we got it done and then we were on to the next crisis and that's really significant on the personal side um uh despite my advanced age i'm a relative newlywed and um we ended up bill and i ended up with my two sons and my stepdaughter with us for a good eight or nine months um and i never would have spent that time my sons are in their 20s and out seeking their fortunes they never would have been with me for
010that period of time anyway and they got to really know my husband my husband got to really know them they got to be buddies with their step-sister and i knew that we exceeded beyond any of our greatest hopes when they all ganged up on me we'd arrived at that point it's gonna be hard yeah james do you want to go yeah i am i'm blessed both of my kids came back home from school uh safe and sound really really big blessing for me i'm i'm grateful uh to all of you uh i think it's huge that we were able to stick together and move this district through um probably its most challenging time in our history uh and i just commend all of you for that uh and jen and ramona and your leadership dr
011dixon your leadership as well as stan and miss carolyn it's just been a herculean effort but uh grateful that we were able to make it through and see some light i think so very grateful for all i'll just keep it short just grateful that's all i can do for now um so i'll keep mine short too and um there's no separation between professional and personal i'm grateful that humanity as a whole is valuing our children that every day new children and babies are born that hope exists for our society and world as a whole and it's a blessing that we as a board did take what 28 29 days to stop and actively engage and participate in that whether it was for our families for our district for ourselves so i'm grateful and blessed for
012humanity well welcome for all the blessings that you've experienced over the last 18 months welcome back to the circle so we've got a lot to get done over these next two days um we are going to dive into uh what it looks like to begin implementing the work of the board based on having priorities sorted out the first step in the journey is always being clear about what the priorities are you've taken that step and you were nearing really nearing a point of completion with that uh which we'll talk about later such that you can now actually start using the priorities to completely redefine your work and that is all that we're going to spend our time on over the next two days we're going to talk about what it looks like to completely redesign
013your agendas uh to be intensely focused on the priorities that you've put together we're going to talk about what it looks like to redesign your calendars redesign your committees redesign your policies redesign your procedures everything top to bottom with an intention you're just really really really focused in of the things that you all say matter most that is the name of the game for these next two days what we'll come away with at the end of these two days is a fair amount of information that helps us understand what specifically you all want the future work of this board to look like i'll be taking extensive notes over these two days to then try to put take the implementation timeline that was previously created and upgrade it with the new items in the new timeline
014based on where we are at the end of this weekend and then from there we'll use that as a guide to rapidly begin to move you away from your current set of norms and into the set of norms that you indicate over these next two days that you want to be in that is the work over these two days that is the deliverable is a refined implementation timeline uh that then outlines on by which exact dates uh the specific things that we talk about over these two days will happen in reality and then we'll wrap it up and call quits later tomorrow evening that's the intention for our two days what questions do you have about our agenda for these two days what questions do you have all right then the place to begin is
015in here you have a document that shows your goals and guardrails you all have probably seen this document before it looks like this you'll want to go ahead and pull this out uh indicates the board of education goals and guard rails and on the first page it has your three goals your four guard rails listed out i want to start here and just ground us in this uh check in where folks are at with this because i don't know that we've had a conversation about these uh in a while so i want to start there and just check in with folks regarding the goals somebody read for us goal number one goal number one strengthen reading proficiency the percentage of third grade students proficient in reading on the ohio state test ost will increase from
01643 percent or a decline in the benchmark due to covid in school year 2018 to 2019 to 55 by june of 2026 thank you uh anyone have questions about that first one i want to have questions about that first goal be more ambitious say what can it be more ambitious yeah curiosity about uh ambitious oh as you think about that let's read through uh after we've read through all three of them one of the ways of thinking about that question uh which is certainly an appropriate question for the board of contemplate is uh what what things and everything has to exist in balance so if you're going to add some place the question becomes what are you going to back away from and so start thinking in terms of i would like to see this
017be more aggressive here what are things that we back off of slightly uh to free up space energy and resources to really double down here um and so hold on to that uh question and as we go through all the goals and guardrails uh then we'll come back to that and give us uh and i'll be asking you to give us a sense of what would you want to you know strengthen up to and what would you be willing to back away from in exchange for that other questions about goal number one somebody read for us goal number two develop portrait ready graduates percentage of the class of 2028 who earned the portrait of a graduate seal will increase from zero percent in june 22 to 25 by june 28th what questions do you have
018about this goal i am i don't really have a question because i think the timing is reasonable but i i'm wondering if in my mind these were five year goals and that's 2028 and i don't know if that's an issue or not but i think that that's probably a reasonable time frame because we have a lot to do to build it out before we can even start to graduate kids with the seals so i'm not worried about the timing per se i'm just wondering if we're wanting a foul of any sort of official important concept by having a gotcha anyone else questions about goal number two just for us to consider kind of going back to your comments earlier for us to as a consideration think about what are the barriers to um you know
019more ambitious percentages yeah absolutely all right who will read goal number three goal number three close opportunity gaps the percentage of four-year graduation cohort students who complete state and district graduation requirements will increase from 81.4 percent in august 2020 or decline in the benchmark due to covet to 86 percent in august 2026 what questions do you have about this goal any questions about goal number three all right who will read the first guardrail fund intervention supports the superintendent will not allow the multi-tiered system of supports mtss or students needs to be underfunded what questions do you have about this one i don't have a question so much as a recognition that the devil will be in the details on this one mr ragland yeah okay i think i think my uh my comment kind of
020goes to carol's concern as well um we we should be the ones to determine whether or not it's underfunded um and so i think the board is going to have to do a bit more homework on uh determining what funding looks like and we're going to have to reach out to all of our partners to make sure that we have a clear understanding of what that means we should not be being told by one particular entity or another that it's underfunded we've got to know that ourselves and don't know it very well yeah so the next step in the process uh and one of the things that we'll spend a lot of time on tomorrow is around monitoring so the board doesn't just set priorities and then walk away and hope that things work out
021the board sets priorities and then redesigns its monthly agendas try to invest half of your time into monitoring progress and so one of the things that happens next is the superintendent says here's how we will monitor here's how we will provide evidence that these are in fact not underfunded uh and so as we get into that monitoring as you look at those interim guard rails uh if your sense is that those don't in fact help provide adequate evidence as to whether or not your mtss is underfunded then it's time to have a conversation with your superintendent say did we did we pick the right the right things to pay attention to but you shouldn't have to go out as a board you all shouldn't have to go out and track down information information about your
022priorities will be flowing to you and and that's how it should be you shouldn't have to run around town to figure out what's happening with your own organization your organization should be providing updates and data to you on a regular basis specifically in accordance with the calendar that you all adopt yeah the only observation i have on on this one is that if this document is not only for our use but also for uh the community then we need some place to define multi-tiered systems of supports more than any other phrase or words on this page that stands out to me as something that requires that yeah is that not in our glossary for our policies well we also have a whole booklet about it yeah we clearly but even if it's just a reference
023where somebody can oh yeah yeah no no i'm not yeah no i agree but i think that it's more of a reference because we have a pretty refined concept of it yeah james oh can't hear you okay i think he just might have been nodding in agreement maybe uh who who'll read the next uh guardrail i will align resources equitably the superintendent will not allow any region to be without strong learning communities what questions do you have about this cargo all right we'll read the next card row uh james you're going to read the next one for us prioritize a whole child focus superintendent will not allow the district to ignore a whole child approach what questions do you have about this one and who will read the last guard rail for us ensure a
024culturally responsive staff superintendent will not allow the staff to be culturally non-responsive what questions do you have about this cargo considering a matter of our our state biennial budget and what do we let me flesh it out a little bit but i you know i'm thinking of you know what the state just outlawed but how we're going to move around that how are we actually going to be culturally responsive in a way that um uh not only adheres necessarily to law um but at the same time really meets the needs of our students and staff um understanding that you know 56 percent of our students are african-american another contingency of our students not only are african-american but a different type of african-american and more importantly also that we have other enclaves within the district with
025their own you know global history that they have every entitlement to learn about critical race theory aside you know to me that's a a theory that was created by someone and rightfully so an intent but it doesn't to me it doesn't encompass every truth that there is to be taught in a in the history and communication of of in relationship cultures of people it's it's not the defining theory that tells everybody's truth so how do we how do we putting critical race theory aside to honestly tell folks who they are where they come from and how it's germaine to this to the history and and productivity of this country their contribution so i agree with what michael said but the idea around cultural responsiveness uh is really more of a philosophy that embraces how we
026kind of use culture as a superpower the recognition that every student is coming in not as a blank slate but as a culture and how do our teachers who also come in with a culture uh really understand who they are understand their students and then understand how that's actually a benefit to the learning experience um so it's not so much of a curriculum uh kind of conversation which it could lead to but it's more of a philosophy around how do our staff and students and families interact around the idea of culture which can be actually more expansive than just race and ethnicity yeah were you going to reply to that no no before um i think my question relates to all four of the guard rails as i think about the work that our district
027needs to do that our community needs to do and the importance of language i'm concerned that every guardrail starts with the superintendent in the 21st century we need to be embracing of a collaborative leadership model and i think by introducing the guardrails and the preceding paragraph by saying the superintendent may not use or will allow in pursuit of sets a tone and sets a frame i would like to see guard rails that indicate that we being inclusive of the superintendent the treasurer the internal auditor our staff our educators our bus drivers our custodians our board members our community our parents are also included in these guard rails the goals are framed in such a way that we're looking at a district or we're looking at an entire population of students but when we come to
028these guard rails we've tunnel focused it so much around one person so i think that was more of a statement than a question but something to give thought to james do you want to jump in i i i would entertain that thought if if dr pierce would be willing to share um language around some changes i think that may be a good a good exercise for us to engage in because i do believe that it would be inclusive um understanding that you know dr dixon has been with us the entire time and that she owns uh these guardrails and has um from their inception uh i have a tendency to to agree with with dr pierce here and i would just i would hear maybe if she had um new language that we might could
029consider as a board um that that articulates what it is that she's trying to say i don't have it but i do want to say that i agree with her statement and i would suggest i guess looking at this a little bit differently these guard guardrails as i read them all pertain to administrative matters and for us to put that i think appropriately on administration is really to say the superintendent and her team uh we you know adding that may help i don't know but i think that ultimately with at least being at the top of the administrative team these things are her responsibility people in the community board members don't necessarily know if we are or not focused on whole child approach or focused on you know we're not gonna know without being informed
030by our administrative staff by our superintendent whether our student needs are underfunded and i think that this place places the burden on on them on dr dixon to tell us that that's the case so that we can respond to that and act appropriately to make sure that we give her and her team what they need to be able to accomplish i respectfully appreciate your input board member brown but i beg to differ i think parents who have students that are dyslexic and see their students not getting no services let us know that those are underfunded i think parents that walk into community members that walk into a school and see that children aren't being challenged our students aren't being engaged know that there's not a priority on the whole child so i beg to differ
031that only an administrator or administration can inform us as board members that these guard rails are out of whack when i walk into a school such as brookhaven the other day and i looked at the condition of that building and i thought to myself oh man our staff our team is going to really have to pull this building together by the first day of school and my heart was just like they are going to be working tooth and nail to get this stuff ready for our babies i can recognize that as a board member i don't need dr dixon to come tell me hey i need you to notice this any other questions about the goals of the guard rails before we proceed james oh yeah james i i i think it's a it's a
032i'm looking at it from a bigger perspective than than the board member brown i i think believes and i may have done a bad job of articulating it um i i think the way that you've explained um your interpretation of the guardrails is probably uh the way that we've done business uh for quite some time uh as a district and i think with with some of the things that we've learned uh over the last year or two is that in order for us to really kind of achieve the goals the community is going to have to be a bit more focused on the guard rails and what they may have been in the past and so you know prior to this day and it may have been okay that you know the superintendent would would
033own this and you know disseminate the information for us but i think one of the things that's going to be a a blessing coming out of of covid is that more people will be um intimately involved in some of the operations um you know pertaining to the district on every level and i i think it it started with us going out to them uh and gathering the information that we needed uh in order to come up with this document um you know what we saw in that engagement process was a community that was not just willing to give us feedback but but prepared uh to give us feedback and i think if we're if we're talking about doing things differently our level of inclusion for that community has got to be greater and i just
034think that um it it it hit me really well when when dr pierce mentioned that uh along these lines and that's kind of what i was thinking sorry i took so long to explain no problem at all yeah other questions um i i just have one thought about um i think dr peterson um james is absolutely right that it's very that we it should be a we thing in terms of this is our community values i think this document though is a as i think of it anyway as our management tool for dr dixon so i think that it's a both hand and that i think maybe this language should be the way it stays in terms of our management tool but i think being really intentional about getting the message out to the community
035that these are our values and we've gone through this process and we want all of you to embrace it is a really good idea in terms of a campaign going forward and you know maybe really being really intentional about that and maybe even you know we can get these community listening sessions kind of up and running as a regular thing part of the way we do that is we check in with the community and say how are we doing how are we doing oh i didn't want to be up there [Laughter] james turned his camera off but anyway that's my thought about um it's at both end really i agree with carol what carol just said but i also think that because our district is a little bit different in our management structure and i
036know some of these goals and guard rails do apply to things that stan will need to do and carolyn will need to do and you know they are obviously evaluated separately from dr dixon they're equal equal in this organization as leadership so i don't know if it makes sense to add them as well to ones that make sense not all of them but ones that make sense that they would have it would be tied to their evaluations and in that respect i would be very open to using the administration or um administrative leaders um understanding again that dr dickson is the champion of this this is how she's being evaluated but this looks like a very outwardly facing well thought out document that will go beyond just the hands of board members so i would
037like to propose that that language is more inclusive of of our team at least before we transition away from this conversation uh you know michael made a statement about when to see about adjustments and you know my invitation was yeah tell us what you want to spend more time on tell us what you want to spend less time on i go back to you i'm sorry i was entering a date um what would you like to spend less time on in exchange for um spending more focus in other places so looking just at this document nothing else this is this is the only thing we're talking about here what are the things on here that you like to spend less focus on in exchange for investing greater focus uh in other places based on this
038sheet here i mean i i want to make sure that we're we're very focused on certainly all three of our goals i think to me the the multi-tiered system piece um is really just setting the setting the guardrail in motion that this that that establishes our commitment to funding it that's how i internalize this that's how i interpret it that we will maintain uh within this within our time frame our fidelity to multi for to mtss that we will not defund it we will continue to invest in it is that a correct assertion yes and it yes and it also stemmed from ensuring that some programs that we had in place that that we um make sure that the entire district received those trainings that's what we investigated we found that the district stated that
039we were funding some programs and we were not and so you said to us to me that the board expects that these programs like restorative practices for example was the one that we want those programs to um help all staff members be trained absolutely and that we find the funding to make sure that that happens okay so that's a great example for that so that so that i understand this clearly i mean as long as we're saying that we're going to maintain our fidelity and strength of resources to investing in this model um to me the areas that need the greatest discussion are going to be the prioritization of our whole child what does that look like um aligning alignment of our resources to create real equity within the district what are going to be
040our pathways to that and then the final one would be to ensure culturally responsive responsive staff what are we going to do what are those methods of embedding that and that might be a little more tactical in nature um but to me what 5 000 feet what does this look like and you know how do we even start from our cells down for example um restorative practices we went through that training we went to the schools in pittsburgh and saw that how do we lead by example by learning ourselves so um to me these three prioritizing whole child align resource equitably and cultural responsive staff and students board to me these would be the things that i think we should focus the greater portion of our time on these two days go back just a
041moment because i really liked and was thinking about what carol said and and also what tina has said uh about the community because i think they do have a vital role and while we can't uh and i like that the separation you made of you know what we can expect and and insist on from our staff from our superintendent we can't expect or require that of the public of parents but we can consciously go out and educate them and tell them here's what we need you to tell us here's what we want you to you know keep us informed about these are our priorities and uh you know especially in these areas don't hesitate to tell us about other things but you know and and really uh use this as a tool for continuing dialogue
042and the reflections before we transition so i uh go ahead oh well just going out a limb here um i read and re-read the preceding paragraph to guard rails and um it it's pretty specific you know these are operational actions typically strategic not tactical which the superintendent may or may not may not use or allow the pursuit of the district goals i would assume those are the three above right on the top of the page the guard rails are based on communities values aligned with district educational visions and goals and are non-negotiable i took from this that all the work you've done was determining community values that you determine these goals that are aligned with those values and you've determined that they're non-negotiable in your eyes and so i think it's important that sometimes i
043when you're when you're leading and executing that when you make everyone responsible then no one is responsible and it's it's critical i believe and i can't speak for carolyn but for me to know in each one of these it's the superintendent you've made a crystal clear that it's the superintendent will not allow this to happen now how does she do that well that's up to her to figure out and to incorporate in how she executes that to meet the needs that you have for inclusion of parents and community and support groups and the two of us but from the onset i think you make it crystal clear in this statement to your staff to your administration to the community that you are empowering and directing the superintendent to make sure that these things in this
044particular way they're written don't happen you're not allowed to have this happen and that that's that's my take on it so i read that preamble if you will and that's what i took from it and know that you're empowering her and she's the one that we have to work with you can't negotiate these you have to figure out how you're going to execute these in support of living within the guardrails but in support of achieving those three goals so not that i get a vote i like the way it's written because it doesn't say the treasurer i wish i could laugh but uh i don't think that gets you or our internal auditor off the hook for the importance of what you contribute to the achievement of these guard rails and so no i don't
045like the way that it's written it needs to be a collaborative joint effort and it needs to acknowledge that not just our superintendent can do this alone but i don't want to continue to be the dead horse in regards to michael's board member cole's comment around what we should focus more on i agree that if there was a guard rail to focus more on it would be the prioritization of the whole child focus the other three guard rails coincide and lead into that and are intertwined with that so if our number one guard rail and focus is a whole child focus we're going to make sure that we're funding intervention supports that we're aligning resources equitably and that we're ensuring a culturally responsive staff any other reflections before we transition i just have one because
046i think it's important i like how stan used the word empower because there's a there's a flip side to this and we really are empowering the superintendent to go out and do these things you know the flip side is we're we're expecting them but there's also that element of you know she can wave this document around and say wait a minute and i just think that that's an important aspect to understand and what we've done to add to this is those um the strategic plan that we have and the four priorities that we're rolling out bull will with the gall rails so you would see more information and i can bring something tomorrow that talks about the district priorities you know those four is whole child focus strong learning communities in every region providing equitable
047resources i'm sorry equitable opportunities for all and authentic engagement so those are the four priorities that we're focused on so that there is clear alignment with the board goals and guardrails that would be great i'd love to see that and so we were making sure that we were purposeful because heard from the community and we want to make sure everybody is focused on those four things in order to get these things done yeah and so fortunately i've been taking a lot of notes um it won't be tomorrow because we just won't have time but um i'll certainly work with the administration and come back uh with some uh slight tweaks there a few things that i think just the wording can be tightened up things like that but i've taken notes on everything you all
048have been describing so just know that i'll work with your administration to try to execute on those notes and bring this document back to you so thank you uh for checking in uh by going through that and affirming you know that your that these are your priorities that these are the things that you want your staff all of your staff focused in on what we transition to is are you actually going to honor that or not and the way that you honor that the first way that you honor that is through how you choose to invest your time in the document june 15th uh agenda is provided to you it is in the document also in the document in your list of documents is one called completing a board agenda evaluation you will need these
049two documents for this next conversation there's june 15th regular board business meeting and there's completing a board agenda evaluation you will need these two documents so uh what i'm going to ask each of you to do i'm asking all of you to do james you're not off the hook asking you to do this too you'll just have to figure out how to do it there staff i'm asking you to do this as well um everybody you're in the circle tonight and tomorrow you are in the circle for every single activity and so what i'm asking you to do is start with item number one on the agenda and the first thing i want you to do is i want you to guesstimate how much time do we spend on item number one and round to
050the nearest minute uh with no item receiving less than one minute if unless you just skipped the item entirely then it would be zero but round to the nearest minute so for each uh each item item one item two out of three out of four out of five out of six go through and estimate how many minutes you think you spent on each of these items obviously the intention of this is not to be perfect so don't worry about that but there are 26 items on here 1-26 the first thing i want to do is just do a quick guesstimate in minutes with zero meaning we spent literally spent no time on it which is true for some things on here um one minute meaning we spent anywhere from 10 seconds to 60 seconds and
051then the number of minutes beyond that but in whole minutes estimate how much time you spend on each of these items that we actually spent during this actual meeting june 15th actual meeting [Music] don't spend a ton of time on this the point is not to have precision if i wanted that i would have already done it for you there's a method to the madness and precision is not a part of it estimate for june 15th how much time do you feel like you spend on each of these items give you about 60 more seconds to go through intention is not precision uh just a quick guesstimate how much time do i feel like we spent on this out of curiosity that meeting started at 5 30. anybody know when it ended probably about 11
05211 30. um if you subtract out closed uh is that including closed meetings is that including executive session i think she's right if it's she includes executive yeah all right so if you subtract executive session just the public parts of this meeting how long two hours about two hours that's my guess okay oh there you go now you've heard one guess yours may be the same or different but just gives you a ballpark go ahead and put down what how much time you feel like you spend on each item on june 15th again don't spend a lot of time on it goal isn't precise you have less than a minute left your partner can't help you so don't bother can't remember oh you will when you think about it it was the very last one
053yeah it was here yeah and the community engagement is the triple c vote of conduct remember estimated minute counts plugged in okay so now that you've got your estimated minute counts plugged in what we're going to do is utilize the procedure in this how to conduct a board agenda evaluation which is on uh basically the third page of the thing uh it's called section two how to conduct a board and evaluation this is what we're going to be doing so if you're curious about it about any instructions offered just read that because that's what we're doing so now that you've got an estimate of the time what we're going to do is we're going to have you then go through and for each of these next to the time you will put a why an
054n or a question mark a yes a no or a question mark and the thing that you're going to be evaluating is this item focused on your goals for student outcomes now i want to be clear about what i mean by that and so i will read from the instructions as clarity the only way to answer yes to this question is if the entire purpose of the agenda item is to monitor progress relative to the board's adopted goals using a modern monitoring report on the timeline defined by the board's monitoring calendar if as a result of the board item board members walk away with data that shows current student progress towards the board's goals for stu outcomes the item is probably stu now comes focused and you can answer yes otherwise it's almost certainly that
055the answer is no so for each of these items where you just put a minute count you're going to go through and identify was this item focused on your goals for student outcomes yes or no so put a y or an n next to the items was again the only way to answer yes to this question is if the entire purpose of the agenda item is to monitor progress relative to the board's adopted goals using a monitoring report on the timeline defined by the board's monitoring calendar if as a result of the item board members walk away with data that shows current student progress toward the board's goals for student outcomes then the item yes is probably student outcomes focused put a wired in next to each item yes or no these items this agenda
056item is focused on student outcomes as a result of this item we actually receive data about how students are performing in reality relative to the goals that we've set if the if that was not the case then you would put an n next to the item if that is the case you would put a y next to the item give you about another minute no that's the right though you just go to the right again i'm going to check in with what you've written down so far about 30 more seconds got less than a minute left put a wire in next to each item thank you all right so just as a quick check in how many y's did you have we'll uh we'll just go around the circle we'll start with james and we'll
057just go around the circle how many y's did you indicate how many y's did you indicate james being that we had such an austere definition i had one y oh which i which number item was that uh that was uh voting on the consent agenda so so that was my next closest why was eight all right so maybe eight maybe nine got it um carolyn how many wives did you have um i had six okay which ones i had convened the meeting okay so so hold on let's check it out so as a result of the convening as a result of doing to call the order the roll call the establishment quorum and a pledge of allegiance did the board receive data about the extent to which students are performing relative to the board's goals
058well if they didn't convene the meeting that's not the question the question is during item number one did the board receive data about student performance relative to their goals okay no got it so let's take that y away how many y's did you have okay under those premises the only way that i can quite possibly backup might be the superintendent's report depending on what it was all right so on the june 15th through the superintendent report provide data to the board members regarding student uh performance it's possible most likely which item is that number five all right got it uh how many y's you got one which one is that five all right christina how many wise you got good job stan i have the same thing but i have a maybe which is the
059superintendent's report if i'm not mistaken i do think we received a report related to graduation and data was given so that was my other why which one which number was that that would be number five superintendent ceo executive report so that's your one why that's my one why but oh sorry board recognition it was my other why if we had um i feel like we had graduation diplomas or students that received diplomas okay eric i i had one number five michael i would say one number five okay i had none okay um but mate uh maybe for the superintendent's report but honestly i don't think it was directly tied to any of the goals and guardrails as written okay ramona how many y's did you have same as what she said okay carol how many
060y's did you have same uh just the maybe for depending on the question mark for five yes all right talisa what do you have based on associated with goals and guardrails zero zero got it all right um before we go to the next step what are you noticing there were very few to no wise best case scenario was one there was not a lot of focus on uh the things that you identify as priorities best-case scenario worst case scenario i didn't focus on the things that you call priorities at all but best case scenario did but very little the worry that i have for you is that your staff is going to align not with what you say are the priorities but with what you show are the priorities that is my fear for your
061children right now my fear for your children is that your staff won't align with what you say are the priorities they will align with what you show are the priorities does this make sense to folks that is my fear for your children you can calm that fear by actually yourself creating alignment between what you say and what you do but as long as there is a gap between the saying and the doing you are always undermining the potential for alignment within the school system around the things that you say or the community's vision and values your actions actively you know pathologically undermine what you say the community's vision and values when how you act is out of alignment with them part of our work over these two days is to begin to talk through what
062do we do to create alignment between the board saying which is why we started with this document because you declaring the community's vision values really is the first step but alignment between what you say and what you do and everything else that we're going to do over these two days is just an extra layer on top of that theme of how do we bring alignment between the boards saying and doing yeah um i agree with what your your fundamental argument i i totally agree with it um what i'm going to push back is that every bit of what we have voted on at that meeting as board business in some way shape form or fashion does align to what we prioritize it's just a very condensed illustration of what that is first and foremost we
063sat through a board review i called that young woman on the phone and we went through 20 minutes 25 minutes of walking through this agenda with my questions about what investments or where for example um i can't read um whether it's uh authority to enter an agreement to purchase hvac control systems upgrades to agm energy services right this is a part of our equity initiative via our project fix-it that is providing safe warm dry environment for our students that is for all of them in the areas that we've targeted as need in that equity space so it's very easy i just want to be careful of how we word things because the general public the community who watches us or who isn't aren't really aware of the pre-work that is done in advance of a
064board meeting to ensure that our questions were answered and when they aren't i bring them to the table she bring them to the table he bring them to the table and she any one of us brings those queries and concerns to the table and then we have extended dialogue and at times i'll state it lovingly diatribe about what these matters entail so i want to be i want i'm gonna i want to follow your process and think about how we reframe this whole piece to illustrate it and demonstrate it differently yeah but please i want to be careful about how we say we're undermining the community because we really aren't yeah i didn't say they just don't understand that i didn't tell you undermine community i said you were undermining the alignment of your staff
065okay and that that's a huge difference i can't speak to your community i i don't have the context for that um here's what's clear is the things that you're describing are spot on there is a huge gap between your intent and your impact and much of our work is designed to bridge said gap so if you all do all this work to try to be thoughtful about alignment of resources but nobody knows that you did that right then your intent is well intended but that doesn't mean that it amounts to any impact what i want is to bridge that gap is to support you in bridging that gap and so there are practices that we could bolster that can make apparent the areas where you are trying to cause alignment but that are unapparent and
066that you can begin to redesign the areas that are aggressively non-aligned so without being getting would i be getting too denitev too about terms um because i'm gonna go back to my conversation with sarah before this in preparation for today so the impact is that our buildings got hvac students who did not have heating and cooling students who weren't in necessarily a warm safe dry environment my sister here mentioned uh the old brookhaven the new for folks who are listening the new global and columbus north international school where they have immersion languages and multi-ethnic racial students who are going there mastering all kinds of global lingua franca it is no longer brookhaven we closed it and that's not a dish that's just straight facts so i want to be you know careful to call the
067school what it is they're concerned about their identity i digress again we we've done considerable work in this space to already make sure they had a new gym impact to make sure that they had heating and cooling in that building impact to make sure before they started school last year that they had painted walls impact so the impact of our work are these things now what the what staff or community may be missing on are the outcomes the outcomes are not necessarily what we are again in terms of intent are really clearly showing i totally agree what you're saying i do and i want to be i want to work towards that effect that process so that they're not only aware of the impact because they have to experience it it's hard to have to
068really understand what our impact is beyond funding something when you haven't experienced it again with what doc was talking about what she said i walked in the building and saw this that in a third that's experiential again a major part of how we demonstrate impact but i think what we really focused on in your conversation is outcome inputs things that we invested put forth and the outcomes things that were the anticipated result so to speak that are measurables that we could discuss so i again just sticking to the dignitative definition of inputs outputs that whole logic model type thing inputs outputs and impacts i just want to make sure we don't confuse those terms too yeah ramona so i agree with you aj i've been saying this for a little while i'm happy that we're
069here because we do need more data we do need more information and we need the data on the information of what we're saying you know uh dr dixon can tell you like we're never to go to this is what is important this is the information board these are the resources i need or these are the deficits these are the things that they're going well and then where are we at to ensure that we're reporting to the community to be a board member here and be at the end and find out at the end if our kids don't are not succeeding instead of the third month or the fourth month when we could have possibly made interventions so i am in total agreement that there needs to be a shift in what we're reporting whether it's
070adam five six whatever it is um you know we going back to um scheduled uh meetings on you know this is when we get the report cards we're going to discuss with the report cards student outcomes uh reading proficiencies this is where we're at these are the interventions these are the things i need as a superintendent to ensure that we're meeting these goals and keep on going so i'm i i i understand where you're where you're at i guess is my point other reflections yeah dr pierce i think um board member brown had his hand up before uh i i understand and i agree that we need to make these kinds of changes structurally to the agenda to how we operate the place that i question is the assumption that that i think you're making
071that people pay attention to how we spend our time in the board meeting other than our administrative leadership i don't know the extent to which anybody pays much attention yes there's some people that watch online yes that number increased over this past year no we're on the same page yeah so okay look when i watch you all's meetings you all spend a lot of time you know talking to the camera i don't understand why because out of the massive size of the community here essentially nobody's watching right like even if you have a thousand people watching for the scope of who you serve that if you think that's an adequate way of getting the message out we have different ideas what community engagement sounds like so you all spend a lot of time talking into
072the camera saying hey i want people out there to know as a functional matter that is not how the message is getting out of the concern that i'm lifting up for you is that the one of the key things that boards thoroughly underestimate is the power that boards have in terms of the creation the culture of the organization and that culture is not merely transmitted by your staff watching you nope that certainly is the case it's also very much transmitted by how you all conduct a business what type of things you prioritize or don't prioritize if somebody only shows up at your board meeting once per year and they hear you say this but they see you do this and then they never come back then they have a fixed understanding of the extent to
073which your actions match your words so there there is a cultural leadership element to the work that the board does they absolutely should not be underestimated the other way that um in i think the more you know direct and frequently dangerous way is transmitted is if this is the agenda that you are telling your three direct reports reflects the vision and values of this community then your three direct reports go forth and behave as if this is what it looks like to focus on the priorities they have no other tangible way because there's no other time when the board meets they have plenty of other interactions with board members but if this is their this is their interaction with the board and so this is what your three direct reports experience to say okay well
074um if we have a board meeting and there are questions as to whether we ever talked about results for students and that is a normal and acceptable practice you have clearly articulated a cultural norm to your three direct reports and you would be wise to recognize that that does in fact have impact on how they choose to allocate their time throughout the week which impacts how their direct reports allocate their time and so on and so forth throughout the organization that's the that is the mechanism that we're uh fighting against here not you know not that the community and a thousand teachers are watching you it's that how you all function gives clear signals uh not only to your community and your staff but more explicitly you know to your direct reports aj i just
075want to do a little time check it is 7 51. thank you yeah um so thank you for providing me an opportunity to respond to this so i think we're bringing two very um two elements that we should work on separately but then couple and marry together so one i don't think this retreat is a referendum on on our board we haven't been evaluated we haven't you know um we just haven't gone through that process right so uh some of the language was we as a board aren't we are we as a board aren't aligning our work isn't aligning right so it became um if i might say it sounded like it was a referendum on our board and so you know one it's not that two i think what it is is we have
076an agenda and the agenda can be very simple the delivery of the information that aligns with that agenda needs to be tailored better needs to be concise so when board member reya says that we need data we need timely and accurate data and every statement made by a direct report needs to tie in not just numbers and figures but in a meaningful way timely and accurate data whether that's quantitative or qualitative data that's what we need to go along with that and so for us to be held to a standard and in which we have this is our first year operating i think as a board where that's taken as a given um it's an ouch moment it's a oh wait a second we haven't even had the opportunity to sit down with our direct
077reports to look at this agenda and say hey every time you bring something on item five align it with either go one two or three or align it with go real with guardrails one two three or four right to connect that so i think those are tweaks that can be made and so i appreciate this activity and conversation and dialogue that we're having tonight but i want us to be mindful that it is really two separate processes our agenda's fine it's a straightforward simple agenda the way we deliver it the way we structure our meeting is what needs to be improved other reflections on this so kind of along the lines with what dr pierce is saying i i mean first of all aj made me do this process as your board president like months
078ago uh to get ready for this and that's why we tried to tweak some things if you guys remember i was doing small tweaks because i didn't want to do this by myself i need to do i need your help um so maybe i've just had more time in it and so it isn't that we are doing anything wrong in fact everything that we vote on is essential it is aligned with uh things like in the bigger sense aligned with where we want to go and pushing equity and certainly things in this agenda we you know we voted to join the uh the the group that's uh looking at the fair to school funding i mean that's really important to our district um i think where aj's having us go though is just an analysis
079of like like what dr pierce is saying be more thoughtful about how we are aligning this agenda to really spend our valuable time together doing these things that the community values and i will tell you guys it's not going to be the whole agenda we our goal is to get half the agenda really targeted because we still have to do the hvac and we still have to do all the other things that we need to do um as a board um because here here's the truth even though you know we we have these the board is going to be super focused on these three goals these four guard rails we're going to talk all about them everybody's work is so critical in this district to get here and so there's nothing wrong with our agenda
080there's nothing wrong with the way we've been doing it this is all brand new it is an exercise like dr pierce said um but i just want to make sure that also you know people that are involved in this and um you know don't feel like they are being undervalued because that's not what this is either this is really just a way of kind of thinking about how do we spend our most valuable time together because our community has asked us to be here they've told us what these values are and then in turn we know that's what our staff is spending their most valuable time on to get ready for these board meetings yeah and i think to add to that too it also helps that now when we bring our reports we're laser
081focused on whatever that item is so if we're coming back in august for example we are talking about interim goal 1.1 that's it right that's a lot of data to digest and dig in and i think that to me helps our team so we're not trying to come back with three goals rush to it it's a long meeting people are tired um and and so focusing on one piece on a calendar really allows us to do that deep dot deep dive and you ask those essential questions of us and getting that feedback and people see you people see you asking those tough questions that you asked during the meetings with misty right you're asking those questions people don't necessarily see it all but you're all asking those questions so it really helps us focus on
082this is what we're going to bring into the board this is important the board wants this information you want to ask questions publicly about it um and you're monitoring it shows that we're monitoring those so i like those adjustments that we're making because i think it's going to help our team bring back that data that you want so hold on hold on uh we are we're essentially almost the time uh so i want to respect that and close this out but don't worry we're going to jump right back in this in the morning so you know bring bring your hiking boots because we we go on march so here's the thing this is the context you know for our work tomorrow all we had to do all we had time for today was to set
083the stage tomorrow we're going to dive into what does it look like to actually monitor progress uh relative to the you know the board's priorities we're actually going to dive into that and and do some practice around that so you have some sense of what does it actually feel like if we're going to spend half of our time each board meeting really doing a deep dive into what is true for our students what what what are they what is their lived experience you know is the data reveals it for us if we're gonna spend half of our time there we need to actually practice that and start you know leveling up our skill set in that area so so that's gonna be a big chunk of our time tomorrow but then we're also going to
084circle right back to this conversation and we're going to finish this activity so don't lose track of this because we'll do the other part of this activity but if you want some homework the question that you have to ask yourself for every single item that is an in so there was n's and y's for every single item that is an n if you want to do some homework to speed up our time tomorrow do the last piece of the activity which is keep delete modify for every single item that is an in where you said no this is not focused on student outcomes go through and answer the question okay so do i want to keep that item do i want to delete the item or do i want to modify the item with the
085idea being if you spent two hours in a board meeting then how much of that time do we want to focus on student learning two hours if we spend two hours in a board meeting get our goals fifty percent focus on those two dog cubs then how much time do we want to spend on an hour at least an hour so now you got to think as you go through this thing you're doing your keep delete modify what are we going to have to change or delete in order to free up an hour in this calend in this agenda to make sure that it's focused on the things that we say matter most and then the other hour is how we what do we need to modify about that to do legitimately do the work
086that our legal and moral authority requires within the remaining hour that is a huge part of the conversation tomorrow feel free to feel free to finish this activity you've got the instructions for it keep delete modify feel free to finish that activity at home either way we'll dig into it tomorrow but if folks actually do some of that tonight then they'll get us a step ahead madam chair back to you thank you um we are now at eight o'clock uh and aj has given us our homework so i will ask for a motion to adjourn this meeting i motioned to adjourn this meeting sorry i threw stan off i was too quick he should have been ready well it didn't recognize me because i had my mask on i believe dr pierce made the motion
087yeah and did i hear board member brown second correctly thank you are you all set yes thank you uh miss beckerly yes mr brown yes mr cole yes dr pierce yes mr ragland yes vice president reyes yes and president adair yes that motion kerry thank you we are now adjourned have a great night everybody thank you all you