Board of Education Work Session: Thursday, March 19, 2026 @ 6pm

001Looking for a motion to approve the special meeting agenda. So moved. I'll make that second. Thank you. Mr. Hammond? Yes. Mr. Mertens? Yes. Mr. Reger? Yes. Mrs. Hartley? Yes. All right. And our board discussion this evening is a work session on board governance and we have um Christie Robbins and Terry Morgan here from the Ohio School Board Association, OSBA, um here to lead us on a work session. And I'll just say a quick hello cuz I'm going to follow Christie's presentation, but it's good to be back. I know some of you from different places and times, but I enjoyed my time working with you on the fine James. That was a fun search. And we appreciate the opportunity and we will try and pack as much information as we can into probably 2 and 1/2

002hours so that we're not here so long. Sound good? Okay, I'll let Christie go. All right, thank you. I'll start off handing out these slides. Some of them are a little small. I apologize for that, but I can send them out electronically. That's great. Just some of you have them to talk about later. She's joining us right now. >> Yep, she's right here. All right, so my role this evening is to share the results of your board self-assessment. And first of all, kudos for starting your out by doing that. This will be a good baseline for you since you have two board members and I'm sure people who've been involved in the community who have observed the board meetings and interactions. Yeah, I have not sat in the seat that you're sitting in now. So,

003as we walk through this, this is really just sharing the results and then we'll talk a little bit about what you can do moving forward with the results all for the purpose of improving. So, um just to um um just as a reminder, you know, when we talk about board self-assessment, it's not something that's required by law like the superintendent evaluation, the treasurer evaluation, but it is something that is important to demonstrate transparency and efforts um to your community. If you're expecting teachers to be evaluated, staff to be evaluated, superintendent, treasurer to be evaluated, then it's important for you to reflect on how you're doing as a board. Um we also um compare the results to the five standards and and basically when you completed the assessment, you rated yourself against these five national standards

004for effective Board of Education members. And um ultimately, as we begin to look at goals and objectives that you may set for yourself once you see the results going forward into the year, it's all about alignment. So, making sure that your board goals are aligned with the district goals and priorities, with the superintendent goals and priorities, with the treasurer goals and priorities. So, um we'll talk a little bit also about um the potential of uh strategic planning um that you might want to do. So, all of these things um are listed as rationale for board self-assessment. I think it's most important to again think about building relationships with new team members. You are a team and anytime there are new members joining the team, there's going to be changing dynamics. So, it's an opportunity to

005level set and to think about things that you believe you're doing well in these five areas and things that you can improve upon and that will help build relationships. Um and again, it's not about finding a way to agree on everything, um but it's finding a way to work with one another and to be able to facilitate healthy conflict, healthy debate and ultimately do what's in the best interest of the students. So, um we mentioned the strategic plan. Uh you can show I guess you're recording this this evening, is that correct? So, just um okay. Behind you. Um so, you can share again with the community uh the results of the assessment and um that demonstrates how you work with one another, what you're going to do going forward and how it's going to be

006monitored. So, in the assessment that was shared, there are five Board of Education standards. Um you can read them here. Um these were set initially by the National School Board Association and hold true today. And under each standard, there are set of indicators that you were asked to rate yourself against. And of course, in some cases being brand new board members, it's challenging to do that and that's okay. Um but it's uh an opportunity again to kind of set the set the pace for the future here. So, we're talking about conducting When we talk about responsible school board governance, we're talking about how you conduct board business. Do you do it in a fair and respectful manner? Do we Do you respect and advocate for appropriate roles of board members and administrators? So, understanding the

007differences between the role of the board members, the role of the treasurer, the role of the superintendent. Uh policy is really what board focus should be as a board, staying at that 30,000 ft level in terms of governance. So, are you adhering consistently to policy? Are you committing to open and honest and transparent communication and working as members of a collaborative team? So, these are examples. If you're thinking about, "Okay, those are the indicators, what are some examples of meeting those indicators?" And you can read through them, um but also this is what you were measuring yourself against in your knowledge of the board's work. The results, this is um standard one and as we just reviewed, there were five different areas that you rated and you can see the green is exceed standard, blue

008is meet standard and yellow is improvement needed. So, when you uh if we look at the first um indicator, conduct board and district business in a fair, respectful and responsible manner, in that scenario, you had one who believed that you exceed standard, three that you meet standard and one that needs improvement. Under ensure the board is accountable and open to the public including seeking divergent perspectives in its decision-making process, um four of you were at meets or exceeds standard with one needing improvement. And then the next two are areas if you're going to focus and kind of drill down on areas that you might want to focus on over the next year, um it would be the next two and that's respect and advocate mutual understanding of the roles and responsibilities of board members and

009superintendent. And in that case, um there were two who believed that you meet the standard, but three believed that there's room for improvement there. And then promoting healthy relationships by communicating supportively, inspiring, motivating, empowering others. Um one of you believed that uh the standards are is being met with four of you saying there's room for improvement here. And then finally, work as an effective and collaborative team. This is an area too. Three of you, you know, meet standards, but two um indicate improvement's needed. I did include the comments because we gave you an opportunity to um write some specific comments. I tried not to reveal who said what, but this is a time for you to speak up. You know, we want this to be interactive. If you look at the comments, if you have

010questions about the comments, we're not going to debate the comments. They are what they are, um but it gives you an idea of why um the this particular uh standard was rated the way it was. So, whether it's, you know, someone observing from previous events that they've participated in or attended. Um the comment it feels like some provide administrative direction in private and maybe even different opinions in administration that it has to spend time and effort trying to sort through this and making everyone happy. Do you want to verify is that the case? Is that how administration's feeling? Changing opinions from one board meeting to the next makes it difficult to get alignment on some topics. Um someone stated, "I don't feel that we act cohesively as a board." Um another, "I felt confident that

011the last configuration met or exceeded the measures or the standards." After just two meetings, it's too soon to tell, obviously, as we said, but um I'm hopeful. So, that's good. And then with the board transition and onboarding two members, having an opportunity to build on past successes and then um seek to grow and improve and be collaborative in the process. So, I'll pause there. Anyone want to comment on um any thing that they uh they shared in in these comments or anything that they believe need to be true based on the assessments in this particular standard. Remember, this one is provide responsible school board governance. And welcome. All right, so we'll again again, this is sharing results. So, um if you're like me, I I to process results and then maybe have some further discussion

012down the road about what do we do with this? Is this something we want to set some specific board goals around? So, the second standard, um I just have high expectations up there. The full standard reads, "Set and communicate high expectations for student learning with clear goals and objectives." So, there are four indicators here. Um you can read through those. You have to rate um yourself and the board against these four indicators. And some examples of what the indicators mean, things like we speak to our strategic plan in board meetings. Do you have a current strategic plan? If you don't, maybe an opportunity for you to think about developing one. Or you discuss topics including special and gifted education, extracurriculars, those types of things. So, when looking at the results here, um this again, um

013when you look at the four different areas, the one area that it seemed that there might be an opportunity for improvement is lead the development, articulation, and stewardship of a vision of learning that's shared and supported by the district and community. So, this chart reflects all of the four indicators, but when we drill down and look at them specifically, that's one of the four where three of you believe you meet the standard and there's two who believe there's opportunity for improvement. So, again, you can reflect on the comments. Um obviously, you know, if with some new board members, you may not truly know, or maybe it's a current board member, a veteran board member who just really doesn't know the answer um to that question. Um think that we all contribute and set high expectations

014for staff as in students. Someone stated they're not aware of a district plan. There may be one, but they're not familiar with it. Appears to me that we're promoting educational success as much as we need to. Um another, I believe the board through administrators does a solid job in ensuring our district is high performing and provides opportunities for all students to reach their potential. And then finally, I think the board has some opportunities for better connection to the to the student learning goals and outcomes. So, that may be reflected in what we were just discussing. Any surprises? Any comments? Anyone want to elaborate on this particular standard? And this is setting and communicating high expectations for student learning with clear goals and objectives. I will just say I think I think finance is probably the

015last one. I think you I feel like Julie does a great job during her presentations, whenever there's some type of like the assessments are coming in, letting us know like timeline and those kinds of things. Um and then and I guess I feel like as a board, for me personally, I feel a little bit more passive in receiving those and in really putting it more on me to be more informed about what's going on. I understand like the importance of those things. Um so really, for me, this was more question that I took like for me personally to be more aware and informed about those. Okay. Anyone else? And I guess piggybacking off that, too, I feel like there are so many uh changes that come from the General Assembly like I'd say annually, but

016that's probably it's probably comes faster. So, I think in some instances, we're absorbing and I think again, Julie, I think does a really good job of kind of helping explain uh it to us, but I mean, I think trying to absorb what is constantly a moving target of what I think what we we know what like general high achievement or should be, but then also this ever-changing compliance and kind of new hoops to jump through. Annually from the state. You know. You never know what's coming your way and um I was at a um a conference at a meeting last night where we had a legislative update from our team and they're monitoring over 200 bills. Yeah, I mean, it's just it has some impact one way or another on education, public education, educational policy.

017So, at the board level, again, at that 30,000-foot view, um need to make sure that you stay at that governance level and that your policies align with what's coming down the road or what's been passed and what is ultimately has to be in compliance. So, it is a moving target and it is challenging to stay on top of. Other comments? All right. So, the third standard um is create conditions for district or district-wide conditions for student and staff success. So, here again, there were five different areas that you were asked to rate from your perspective um how, you know, you feel that you're doing, how the board is doing. And the the indicators you can read um for yourself. The two that I paid particular attention to, provide for learning essentials including curriculum, technology, and

018facilities, and ensure management of the organization operations and resources for an efficient and effective learning environment. Um these are examples of what these indicators mean or what it would look like for you to be successful, to exceed expectations, um that we wanted to provide. And this is the overall result. So, the two areas that I just mentioned, um provide for learning essentials including rigorous curriculum, technology, high-quality facilities, um no one felt that you're exceeding standards here. Um three of you believe that you're meeting standards, two need improvement. So, something to consider and to look at as you make plans going forward. And then the second one, similar results, um this was a true management of the organization. So, some comments here um related to facilities primarily, um thinking that the facilities are not high quality,

019there's a general lack of appreciation and professionalism and pluralism among staff that this person's experienced over the previous years. So, comment that again um is being shared just to make sure people understand where um where this person's coming from. Uh facilities needing improvement, um continued listening to parents towards bullying improvement, handling of certain situations seems to be improving, but need to continue to find and encourage. Um facilities need to be addressed, so there's a common theme here, obviously. And then uh belief that developing a student safety mindset continues to be an opportunity. And then a comment that two areas in which we excel are financial management, so kudos there, and staff development. So, there's opportunities for growth that exist in facilities, safety, and efficient learning environment. So, uh any surprises? Any comments? Anyone want to

020elaborate um what do you want to share? Whether the the ratings are people took the scale differently. I mean, the comments I think show like it's a pretty uh unanimous. You know. On on at least feelings, maybe there's different levels of those feelings, but it's yeah. >> the five beneath, you know, the five different statements where you had to rate. So, these, even though there's consistency in terms of how you all feel about the facilities, um you know, the other areas like like I talked about that aren't mentioned here about learning essentials, curriculum, Right. um technology, those types of things. Just to consider. The fourth standard deals with accountability. The full statement reads, "Hold school district accountable for meeting student learning expectations." Three indicators here that are listed. And for the most part, um you

021believed that uh you meet or exceed expectations. So, I didn't make a note on this particular one as an area for you to consider setting a board goal around, but, you know, again, you do have one person who may not know, you know, again, to new board members, "Are you evaluating the superintendent treasurer on clear and focused expectations?" which was one of the specific indicators. So, again, well, there it is, "I don't know enough to answer this section of this question." Um and comments about the ratings and state standards. Um there was a comment about the board um doing the evaluation of the superintendent treasurer in public. You're able to do that as you I don't know if you know or not, but in executive session and that probably is the more appropriate place to

022do that. Uh if you're having some of those feedback discussions or tough discussions, but again, if you want to make sure the public is aware, you can in in public session notify um them that you're going through this process and uh if there's positive feedback or if there's a contract extension, then obviously, um the feedback's positive. Holding yourself to what's best for the kids. Um student performance is on the district part, on the family and students. So, that's an interesting comment there. Um and then having a solid system for measuring outcomes um what is communicated to and celebrated with the district. So, any surprises, concerns, questions, comments here? And you'll have time, as I said, to really kind of look at them. I'm going to send the full results to you so that you have

023them as well. I just wanted to give more of a high level overview. Standard five, this is an area a lot of boards we work with really spend a lot of time on when it comes to improvement and setting some specific board goals. And the full standard reads engage local community and represent the values and expectations they hold for their students. There are four indicators as you can see that fall within this standard. And of the four, the two areas that seem to be maybe areas that you can focus on if you're interested in improving. The first was collaborate with families and community members responding to the diverse needs and mobilizing appropriate community resources. And even that, I mean you had one individual who believed you had exceeded the standard to meet some to needs

024improvement. And then the last one solicit input from staff and a wide spectrum of the community so that diverse range of interests and perspectives are considered. Here you had two who believe that you meet the standard, three who believe that you can improve in that area. And these are again our examples of things when you think about well what are you know what does it mean to be successful in this area. So overall this is what this pie chart looks like in terms of your response. So. And then the comments, you know, I won't read through all of them you can do that but there seems to be a consistent theme of doing better in terms of developing a better relationship with the community or improving your relationship with the community. Communication as I said

025is always something that every board in the state of Ohio can improve upon. And every board in the state of Ohio hears that they're not transparent enough and they don't communicate enough. Terry may have shared her experience on the board. I served on the Westerville Board of Education for eight years. And this was one of the reasons I ran was because I was very involved in the community and I continued to hear from people that we don't know what's going on with the Board of Education. Even though you're meeting in open session, you're recording your meeting, you have an opportunity for people to attend. We have to do what we can to make sure we're out and about in the community and engaging the community. So it doesn't happen right before you put a levy

026on the ballot. And that's what we were accused of doing was we don't hear from them until they're ready to have us go and vote for more taxes. So. So again any kind of comments when you look at or questions when you look at uh at these comments that come from everyone. Any surprises here? Again not unusual but maybe an area Okay. So I did take a look at your website and I know we had talked about the potentially for a strategic plan. You do have a mission obviously engage equip and empower every student to reach their full potential. And you do have strategic priorities that are listed on your website. So how this works is if you want to set goals that are specifically for the Board of Education and that's what these goals

027would be based on your assessment. It's for you, it's not district goals. It's for the way you interact with one another. It's for the way that you communicate with the community. Whatever you want to do to improve in the area of responsible school board governance. But as I mentioned earlier it's important to make sure that everything is aligned. So this is a matrix that we prepare and provide to boards. Across the top you would list those four priorities, those four goals that we just took a look at here. And then down the side are the five board standards. And so in looking at what you want to do to improve you want to make sure that they are aligned with your priorities. An example might be one of the goals that we had was related

028to engaging family engagement, community engagement, building trust with the community. And that aligns nicely with the standard of community engagement. So we talked about what could we do as a board to to really focus and try to improve in this area. And our community is pretty large 52 square miles, 14,000 kids. So very different. But we wanted to make sure that we were out and about in the community. And we actually set a goal of developing an event type calendar, a civic organization type calendar where we knew that we had people from the board present at some of the really key events in the community. So Rotary meetings, Chamber of Commerce events. Library was a strong partner of ours. So it was one way just to make sure, you know, sure we all show up

029at Friday night football games but what else are we doing to make sure that we have a strong presence in the community and that we're building those relationships and that we're getting the message out about what we're doing as a board and what the successes of the district. And then in terms of staying on track, this is just again a first step. You took an assessment, you have two new board members. It's an opportunity to set the baseline. And then think about what we reviewed and you'll again get the full results and talk about as a board what do you want to do to improve? Where do you want to focus? What are the areas that are most disconnected perhaps or that you really want to focus on going forward? Set those goals. Typically that's

030done at the end of the year, beginning of a new year. So kind of in the June, July time frame. And it also is aligned with setting superintendent and treasurer goals. Again that word alignment making sure you're all on the same page. And then identify objectives. I mentioned the goal that we had about establishing an event calendar for the board. Establishing another thing that we did was we did a board report. So and and again this is a while ago. So we had I mean cell phones obviously and texting but as soon as people knew what happened at the board meeting before you all walk out the come out the front out the door typically. We had a lot of people at our at our board meetings and they were texting and putting things on

031social media. So we wanted to manage the message and so it was important for us to create what we referred to as a basically a one page board report that we was very simple, talked about you know what the agenda item was, how the vote was, if there's any reasoning behind that that needed to be shared. And it went out immediately or the next day to especially to staff because we had a lot of complaints where staff said they didn't know about decisions until they read about them online or social media. So we made a real concerted effort. What's our message? What's important for the community to know and how do we get that information out? So then you would have what's called a formative discussion. So mid-year, you know, you set your goals, you

032set your objectives and then you take time out so you're not waiting until the end of the year, maybe have a work session and talk about how things are going. Goals can change depending on the circumstances. We might have had some really admirable goals and then we had a pandemic and so we had to pivot and that's okay as long as everyone understands why you are not going to be meeting those goals you're going to be changing them. So adjust them if needed and then at the end of the year have that summit of discussion and and again do it in a public setting where this is what we this is how we rated ourselves. These are the standards we wanted to improve upon. These are the goals that we set and only two or

033three, you know, you don't have to set the whole arm's length of goals. And how are we doing? And making sure you're transparent about that. And I talked a little bit about the formative assessment. So these are some questions you can ask again and talk about progress and any challenges and any adjustments that might need. And the summit of assessment So action planning, you know, everything again should be aligned to your vision if you have a vision statement. You do have a mission, strategic priorities. What are the district specific goals and objectives? What are the board specific goals and objectives? What are the action steps? How are you holding yourself accountable? What's the timeline? If you set specific goals you specifically say I want we want to get this done by the first quarter, by

034the first semester, however you choose to do that. And what's the evidence of success? So any questions? This is kind of a quick run through. I appreciate you all digging in and doing this assessment. I know everyone's busy but again the results should help you get that baseline of how are you doing as a brand new board and where do you want to go. And and again you're studying you're modeling, you know, when people watch your meetings or come to your meetings, you're modeling how to behave, how to interact with one another, how to disagree in a healthy manner. I really believe conflict is an opportunity for you to demonstrate, you know, how do we disagree if we have different points of views and how do we come to a consensus that might be even

035better than the original one proposed or solution that was proposed. Any other questions, comments? Terry anything you might add? Terry's got a lot of experiences as well. I'm going to take it. >> Really? For me as a new board member I still learn. Yes. So, I I bring some experience and some knowledge being involved in schools for 15 years. Mostly in the financial end of things, but I've been engaged. I've seen different boards. Seen effective boards and I've seen boards that are quite as effective. So, I have an expectation of myself as a board member, how I want to handle it. But I'm still learning that like questions about having an established mission and I don't know. I'm assuming you have, but I trust that you have. Um but I don't know for sure. Um

036does those missions I don't have any input on that at this point. I hope I will be able to I had to say the assessment a year from now would be totally different. >> Mhm. Mhm. Yep, that's right. But part of it as you said, Christie, is understanding each other. Right. There's a group dynamic that I haven't figured out yet. Yeah. And how do we interact? How do we disagree to agree to disagree Mhm. and move forward cuz that's ultimately our goal is to work more cohesively as a board. Well, and I think you hit on a couple of things. Um my belief is that people run for the board of education. Those who run for the board of education and are elected want to be good board members. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I

037I would say most people want to do a good job. They may be coming from different perspectives, but they want to be good board members. Asking questions. Um when I ran and when I was elected, I met with the superintendent. Of course, I had my ideas of what I thought I could do to help change the culture and my background is human resource management, so a lot of the complaints were related to supplements and supplemental pay and teachers' pay and I thought, well, you know, I can just go on and I'll plop down my experience in the district. What I learned very quickly a school district is much more complex um than being able to take a business model, bring it in and plop it down. But when I met with the superintendent, I said,

038I just want to do a good job. What's your advice for me? And he said, first of all, um to know policy. And you have a lot of policies. You're not going to memorize them all, but if you do get a question from the public going to see if you have a policy first. And then if you don't understand the policy, asking the experts. You have a CEO and a CFO. And they're the educational experts. So, make sure you're familiar with the policies, you know where to look, you understand them. The second thing he said was ask good questions. And governance really is about asking questions. And having somebody fresh, a new perspective coming in and you know, I think whenever we hire new employees, I always say they have 90 days above the waterline

039before you kind of sink down in and you don't see things as clearly. So, ask questions. Good governance is about asking good questions and realizing there's always another side to the story. Maybe two, three, four, five different sides to the story, but um that advice served me very well. Yeah. Anyone else? Any questions or comments for me before I hand it off to Terry? It's certainly Christie, you all would not care if she gets on the road to Michigan, right? Oh my goodness. No, no. I'm going to wait a little bit and then yes. When you need to go then If you guys want to take a quick break, I'm going to change out the power. Okay. My husband was looking for a sports bar, so I'm giving him that grace for now. All right.

040Whatever game is going on right I yeah, not not Let's hear. Christie, thank you. Oh, thank you. And I'll send you the board results. I'll just just send them to you. Yeah, that sounds good. And I did my student teaching at Westerville. North. Westerville North, okay. A long time ago. I'm a South grad. Okay. So, North was built my sophomore year. Okay. And they kept all the seniors at South and then they opened North up with freshman and sophomores. So, and now we have a third high school, I think you probably know. It's just wild the special Well, anywhere around Yeah, anywhere around the outskirts and the 270 it just spreads and spreads even down on the south and All right, thank you. Yeah, it's a lot. It has changed, that's for sure. Now, we

041have 19. Oh my goodness. It's great. You still live in the district? >> Uh-huh. Okay. I um like to live in the district, but I also like my house and I like that the kids come home and grow. Yeah. Yeah. Aw, sounds beautiful. Yes, thanks. Aw. Thank you. I'm going to take a picture of you now. Very good. Jody knows. Thank you. Mid salad. Uh it's a I I did the salad and the garlic bread. But it's a it's a mix and we get it in we love it. So much. It's kale, the cranberry and like a poppy seed. What is that bread? Is it kale? It's got um kale. I think it's got shaved maybe brussels sprouts in there. So, it's got that like firmer. Yeah, but it's When when we had it and

042my dad was raving about it, it was like Woah, that's a can't stand salad. Well, again, thank you for having us. I'm Terry Morgan and I think I've met everybody this evening, but I appreciate you taking the time to walk through a lot of good information and hopefully good conversation. That's really what we want to do in this next section is a lot of the slides Stacy and Stacy have probably seen in previous workshops, but I think it's good for the new board members to have a chance to have the discussion. Is this how we do it? Do we want to change it? Is this working? Kind of thing. And one of the things that you set up very aptly was we developed an onboarding checklist. It's So, we would suggest that new board members

043at one point in time should go through all of these items with superintendent or treasurer and make sure that you have some familiarity. I mean, there's no way that you can ever learn everything even in a first term. So, having some knowledge about the questions to ask, right? about the questions to ask is always a good thing. And for next step, we're doing one for superintendents and treasurers. Oh, that's great. Is this this new fall 2015? Uh-huh. Yeah, we just put it together. And it really it happened because Christie, Quinn, and I as consultants are all former board members and we didn't have any onboarding. I mean, nobody does that. You kind of just get thrown into it. So, we sat down and thought of what are all the things like we hadn't even heard

044of before we started and so This is great. Well, and Chris, did you do one of the OSBA sessions for like new member onboarding when you came on 2 years ago? Um I did a webinar one. I guess I couldn't make it to the They They also had like webinar short version. I did like one of those. Okay. And then I I did like the finance one, too. Okay. And I think we're going to have sessions recorded because the northeast and um southwest sessions of new board member training got canceled. So, we're going to put some of those sessions online so you can watch them at your own leisure. And we're also offering them and I'll put in a plug, shameless plug, at Board Leadership Institute is May 8th and 9th and it's only for

045board members and we are going to repeat at least three or four of those sessions from Election to Action again. So, you have the opportunity here on fresh. And it's really It's a um day and a half, all day Friday to Saturday morning of breakout sessions that we feel are a little bit different than you might have heard at Capital Conference or at least new information for board members that are just coming on and I think we have good interesting speakers for those, too. So, it's a good good attended a good session to attend. Well, there's a plug for your website, too, because there's so much really helpful information on there that you all keep updated as there are legislative changes. Um so, for you probably are on there, but if, you know, Jonathan and

046Judy, if you don't have an account for your OSBA account yet cuz it does require a login, I think, for a lot of accessing a lot of those things. >> line that up. Yep. Yep. So, it they have webinars on there. There's sessions active sessions you can sign up for recorded things, but really some of those like one to two page, what do you what's your role of a board member in a school levy? Yeah, the fact sheets are so helpful. So, it's a great resource. We think so, so thank you. So, we're going to cover some of these things. And like I said, um I'm going to talk about best practice, but I also would like you to have a conversation about, you know, do we do it this way? Should we change what

047we're doing as we go through them? And certainly Christie set the stage for your role is governance, that 30,000-ft level. And one of the most important things, as she mentioned too, is making sure that you are following your policies and being accountable to your stakeholders. And those things will come along if you are following good governance practices, and that's what we're going to talk a little bit about. So, by revised code, your responsibilities are to employ and evaluate superintendent and treasurer. Are you happy with the way you've been feeling about evaluations? Yeah, I think um they think this the suggested calendar is helpful and things and Mike and I talked about that this week about it'd be great to like set up and kind of standardize like set up meetings even then at our organizational

048session. Kind of like slate that for exactly what meetings we'd do. Yeah. So, we're going to incorporate our own self-assessment, but certainly with theirs for their annual and then the mid-year because it's like months go by and then there's a board transition and it's like, wait a minute, how it's the end of the year and we didn't do that. >> and the things that we really are on the back burner don't get moved forward. Do you like the form you're using? Are you using some kind of form? We do use a form. Yeah, we have a form that's based off the uh superintendent and treasurer standards and then individual goals that we set. Well, and the one thing that I will send you because we took that form and we added a column for the

049district goals. And so then what you'd be adding are your strategies that you would like to to use to develop those goals. So, we think it's um just a little more complete and I'll send those to you so you can That'd be great. decide if you'd like to use those. Thank you. Um approving annual budget appropriation, the necessary finances, certainly that is critical. And I'm sure Mike is keeping you on target on what you need to be talking about and what's coming on the horizon. The need of safe and appropriate facilities. We really kind of took that for granted till COVID came along and then all of a sudden realized, you know, can we do remote learning and do we have um the facilities that that encompass good learning centers. And I think that I

050see from your comments that's kind of where you are right now is our our buildings are older, we need to talk about better learning centers. But again, laying some of this groundwork first where then you're setting a culture of trust and transparency with the board will also help in your community buy into the fact that it's time to do these things. Some of the practical responsibilities are certainly considering, approving, or rejecting recommendations from the superintendent. And one of the things that we we used to hear at the new board member training is, I ran for the board because I think they just rubber-stamp what the superintendent wants. And and the reality is that maybe you got such good information, you got the good, the bad, and the ugly, and you sorted through, and you came

051to the same conclusion as the superintendent's recommendation. So, one of the things that we really encourage everyone to do is to have that conversation. To say, you know, I looked through all the options, I agree that um this recommendation is the best that we can pass something. I mean, we don't want meetings to go till 11:00 at night, but you have to show that you're being thoughtful, you have to get credit for doing your homework, you have to be able to give a reason why you're voting the way that you're voting. And that really changed, I think probably during COVID is that so many boards were just wrote, right? Make a motion, second, vote. Make a motion. You have to have a president that every time asks for discussion. So, there's a person, a second,

052and then there's discussion. And somebody say something, right? You know, we we could buy the property at Fifth and Main, but I'm not sure that's our best. So, I sorted through, I asked questions of Dr. Tatman, and I feel ready to go with his recommendation. Again, showing that you're being thoughtful about your decisions. Um goals and objectives, we touched on a little bit with your strategic planning, we'll talk about that later. And um student certainly student achievement, that evaluation you saw that's in your need from your um self-assessment to keep informed about those programs. Informing the public. One of the things that is certainly your responsibility is being that conduit between the community and the superintendent. But it is also your responsibility to make sure you're answering those with chain of command, right? You're always

053going to hear complaints, and so your first question will be, well, did you talk to the teacher? And usually they're going to say, well, no, because I don't want the teacher to be harder on my third grader. So, but that's where the conversation needs to start. And so, if those conversations are hard, you know, maybe you suggest that this person ask for the principal to sit in with the teacher to have that conversation. But it can't just come straight to the superintendent or come straight to the board. And in reality, that's probably half or more of your public participation is they got an answer from the superintendent and they didn't like the answer. And they think if they bring it to the board, they'll get a different answer. So, making sure you are mindful of

054the chain of command, and then letting Dr. Tatman know. I think it's really important that you keep him informed of what you're hearing out there. Because these issues will bubble up and end in his lap, probably. And he's probably already had discussions about them. But I don't know, quick text or phone call, how you'd like to receive them, but we would encourage you to make sure that you're sharing those conversations that you have out in the community. And again, policies that govern you, are you OSBA? There is no way that you cannot have a third-party facilitator for policies. These days things are so complicated, and you know, they sneeze at the statehouse and it's going to change 60 of your policies. So, having making sure that you have someone who keeps sending you, okay, now

055you need to do this, now you need to do that is really critical. Most important, of course, is being accountable to your mission and vision, holding others accountable. Again, I like your mission statement, and we that is certainly the trend is to be short and sweet. You know, mission statements used to be like three sentences long and had every buzzword you could think of in them. And it meant nothing, it lost all of its momentum. So, we we do like that you made yours the three E's. So, governance versus process. Certainly the board is going to set that policy, talk about what the issues are, and then you're going to trust your CFO and your CEO to carry out whatever they need to do to make that successful or to make that happen. If that's

056the issue that it's there's a disconnect there, that's a totally different conversation than just staying at the governance level, right? You need to be able to know that when you direct um superintendent or treasurer that that will happen in some form, and there will be some kind of report back. Uh I don't know, do you do like a Friday report to the board? I do a weekly report, yes. Yes. And that's the perfect time to say, you know, I know at the board you decided you wanted me to reach out and do and I Um and again, the other side of that is that you do need to be able to make informed decisions. Um it's important that both the superintendent and treasurer give you all the sides to the story so they can they

057want they want them to make a recommendation, but you also don't want to be caught that somebody said, well, why didn't you buy the property at Fifth and Main? And you're like, well, I didn't know it was an option. So, again, it's a two-way street. That communication from them is as important as the communication from you back to them. We talked about chain of command. How important that is. Transitioning from candidate to elected official is always an interesting transition. And the first thing that we say is, of course, remember that you are now one of five. As an individual, you don't carry that power of a board of education, the power is in a meeting with the majority of you there. And it's hard because I'm sure like the first week you were elected, you

058started getting calls. I I can remember my first week was 11:00 at night, he calls and says, why didn't they cancel school? Uh because the transportation director and the superintendent made that decision because of the road. You know, it it's again you you want to be responsive and you want to show that you're that you care, but you have to make sure that you're following that chain of command. The onboarding checklist we talked about and making sure that there's understanding from the veteran board members that new board members are going to have more questions. We would encourage you to do as much homework as you can outside of the meeting, calling superintendent or treasurer and getting your questions answered. But it's okay then in the meeting to say, you know, I had a question about

059whether this um was going to be the appropriate cost and I called Mike and I got an answer. Mike, can you tell them the answer that you gave to me? Again, making sure that people know that you had questions, but you asked them in the appropriate way. You didn't just surprise or try and catch superintendent or treasurer. The other thing is too, we have lots of board members who run and can because they care, but they also usually sometimes can have a personal agenda. And hopefully that personal agenda is they want to do what's best for kids, right? The focus is on kids. But I can tell you we when I sat on the ESC of Delaware-Union Counties, we had a new board member start and he looked around the room and he said, "Well,

060where's Pat?" And I said, "Pat's the superintendent of career center." And he actually said, "Oh, I wanted to get her fired. I ran for the wrong board." And we were like, "Board? Okay, that is your personal agenda. You ran for >> [laughter] >> Welcome to public service. I mean, it was crazy. And we hear so many times that, you know, they want to get the football coach fired or they want to get the superintendent or treasurer fired. And so, making sure that you are serving for the right reasons, that you keep your focus on kids. The other thing too, and you touched on this, is learning about each other's filters and how you process information and getting to know each other. Um I was communications director in my real life for the county commissioners and

061we had, of course, three commissioners and we were getting two-one votes. And it didn't matter if it was yes or no, it was always two-one. And so, we started talking about how this one person processed information and we all realized it didn't matter any emotion at all or whether it was the popular kind of thing to do. He only made decisions based on facts and data and statistics. And so, once we understood that as staff, then we were able to give him that information in ways that met his filter, that he could process, we started getting more three-oh votes and more um I guess agreement on things and approaches. So, again, it's important to realize how you process that information and making sure that that you do get your questions answered so that you feel

062like you can vote the way you need to vote. Building trust with your administrators, certainly superintendents as CEO and the treasurer as CFO, that no surprises. We It is always okay for superintendent or treasurer to say, "I don't know, but I'll find out." But if they if it's really something that could be helpful to your decision-making or could help with transparency, you want to know ahead of time so they can come prepared with an answer and be able to have a good discussion about it or bring the statistics that they need. And again, once the majority decides, you have to respect the will of the majority of the board. And uh like Christie said, we don't want you to have to vote yes or no when you don't feel that way because the majority is,

063but you have to be able to say, "I didn't agree with buying the property at Fifth and Main, but the majority voted we're moving forward." Something that says, "I didn't vote with the majority, but I had good reasons and here's why, but we're moving forward." And I saw the repercussion of not doing this. We have a city council with seven members and six of them, well, they all got the same information about putting an income tax levy on the ballot. Six of them voted to do it, one voted not to do it. And she had really good reasons and she went through and she had statistics and she proved her point, but it still was the majority voting to do put it on the ballot, which was fine except that she went out and started

064the campaign against the issue. So, it never stood a chance because people automatically think, "Oh, what does she know that they don't know? Or what are they hiding from us?" But So, again, even if your decision wasn't in the majority, you've got to be able to say, "We're moving forward." Um I want to add real quick on there. So, the the agenda just for um I think Christie, you're aware, but for agenda setting for meetings, um Mike and James work together to like rough draft an agenda and then traditionally meet with the president like the Wednesday before the meeting, we go over the agenda. So, that's a chance I can ask questions, so I'm kind of, you know, again, just kind of representing the board, but like our perspective, what do we know and understand,

065what questions do we have? Um and that's a helpful time. I think Jody did the same where there's maybe something that's new, I can say, "I don't know if we have enough information about that. Maybe if we pull it" because we do use consent agenda. So, if it's something that maybe we want to talk about, so we can drop it down to the discussion session. But I would ask that and I know people travel and everybody's working and are busy. If you do have a chance once that hits, so like we meet on a Wednesday morning, James gets it uploaded and it's out, Mike work on it. Um so, I think by Wednesday, Thursday, you all have a chance to review before it goes public. Um even if you don't have a chance to review

066it until sometime Monday before the meeting, just take a look at it so that when we come into a meeting, if you have a question for me, for Mike, for James, don't hesitate to call and ask to get some more information on it. Um and then you can ask the question again, certainly ask the question again in the meeting, but if it's especially something we may want to consider pulling out of the consent agenda, we can do that before even if the agenda changes, but by the time we get into the meeting, we're approving the agenda for the meeting, we've already bumped that down because we know we want to spend a little bit of time talking about it and exploring that topic. So, that would just be my Oh, yeah, that's a perfect spot.

067It's coming up. >> Yeah, oh, sorry. [laughter] No, that's good. And you know, the the story that I had from this one, I was continually amazed when I was on the old NCT board, we had one board member. This was back in the old days where we would get paper packets and the custodian would deliver to their >> [laughter] >> houses. She literally would come in to every meeting and rip open the packet in the meeting. And we were like, "At least rip it open in the car. >> [laughter] >> Like, glanced at something before you came in." So, again, so important to have that input on the agenda. And it is your agenda, but the reality is superintendent and treasurer have to put the items on there. Board members would never know what needs

068to be talked about, what the deadlines and all those kind of things. But you do have to be able to have input to it. And that's it says, "This is our agenda because we do see it ahead of time and we do have an opportunity to give you that input." Yeah, thanks for saying that and just I want to add that um the agenda goes live to the public Saturday when we meet on Monday, Saturday before that meeting. So, once we hit that Saturday, if we still want to make changes, I'm not comfortable changing it outside of the meeting. So, when we get to the meeting and that first action is um approve the agenda, approve the agenda as amended. Because that way then the public sees they they had their agenda posted Saturday, I

069looked at it Saturday, but when I got to the meeting on Monday night, it was different. Well, we're not going to [clears throat] do that cuz that's not transparent. So, we can change it at that point in the public session. Yep, good point. Yep, thank you. And that's really it. And you have Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. That's a lot more time than most boards have to really review and go over the materials. So, I'm glad you have those three days. Are you using BoardDocs, yeah. We can thank John Jones cuz he I want to see it sooner. We moved the meeting from a Friday to a Wednesday. Well, and you even moved up when you do your board report because it was hitting Friday and then it was the weekend and we didn't want to

070bother if we had a question, you know, we didn't want to bother James on the weekend, so he even backed it up, so we've got another day to review. That's really very considerate. Um so, again, the other thing that kind of is sometimes a hard transition for new board members, particularly if you have kids in the school or you have been a volunteer in the school, is the reality that you now wear your board hat 24/7. You never get to take it off. You, as humble as you are, you do cause a little bit of a stir, not because they're afraid you're going to catch them doing something, but because they want their kids to look great and their classroom to look great and they, you know, want to make sure they're putting their best

071foot forward if there's a board member in the um building. So, we would say at least best practice and I'm not telling you to change anything if it's working, but unless if you were going in as a parent, that's all you do. You sign in as a parent, you tell the admin, you know, "I'm just here to watch my son's concert." But if you're wanting to go in as a board member, then you schedule that through James. That you make it more official so James knows, the principal knows, and you're, you know, ready and they're prepared to have you come through as a board member. If you want to see the new camp lab, again, it's thoughtful communication about what your plan is. Not just walking the halls. That's not a good thing. And I

072would say even I I do that. Like the first stop I make is the principal's office. So, he knows I'm not sneaking around, but he knows I'm there. I usually tell him what I'm doing and not that I'm asking his permission, but he knows what I'm doing. So, it's building that trust. >> one of the hardest things when we do superintendent searches and we do focus groups, the first thing we hear is, "Oh, we never see the superintendent." And yet if the superintendent goes in all the time, they're like, "Oh, he's checking on us all the time." You are in an absolutely no-win situation on that one. Um so, again, uh I think I know you guys have seen Andy videos before. Andy's our [laughter] challenging >> Oh, are we going to bring Andy? Yeah.

073So, we like to use a couple Andy videos to illustrate. >> [laughter] >> Good morning, Mr. Dr. Wilson. Good morning. Well, good morning, Andy. What's on your mind? I have a little situation to talk to you about. I got a phone call from my wife's best friend, Jill Johnson. Well, what was there? Well, our little girl, Betsy, has been assigned to Miss Robinson's class this year. Okay. Jill met with Miss Robinson the first day of school, and she was disappointed with what Miss Robinson has planned for the children this year. See, Betsy can already do the things she plans to teach. I got to work. Robinson's classroom had no decorations at all. No posters, no boards, and nothing interesting hanging on the walls. That doesn't sound like Miss Robinson. So, Jill goes to the principal

074and asks him to reassign Betsy. He refuses, so she asked if I can help. Let's see. So, I went down to the school and sure enough, Miss Robinson's room had nothing in it at all. All the other classrooms are colorful and bright. I can see why a parent would want their child in that room. So, can I tell Jill that you'll get Betsy moved? So, of course, totally fine that he took the call, he let listen to the mother, took the concerns. Next step to call the superintendent and say, "This is what I'm hearing, this is what she's concerned about." And that should have been it, right? Then it's the superintendent's responsibility again to go through that chain of command with teacher and principal. And And And he should not have visited the building to

075check on the classroom because that's exactly why people get paranoid when school board members come into the building. So. Um and again, this relates to relaying student issues and community concerns. The thing that can build trust the best is is being accessible. Um I love that Christie talked about how you should be out at events and and people should see you. Again, remembering that you're only one board member, so you're not going to say, "Oh, I'll fix that for you." or, "You know, we can make that happen." But remembering too that even in emails, and I don't know how you handle emails, but if you would all get the same email, we would say the best practice is to thank the person for the email because of course it was sent to you, you're going

076to thank them for the email, but then you're going to forward it to James. And he might get five forwards, but again, it's usually a running the district question. It's not governing the district. And so, making sure that he has the ability to do the answer. He doesn't reply all to you, you don't reply all to each other. Um again, keeps it up from a violation of sunshine law. But it's important that the person know that you received it and that you forwarded it to the superintendent for action. Is that comfortable? Um and again, having those uh organizations like Rotary, the different service organizations, connections, um business partnerships. Do you do any kind of like state of the schools presentation? Uh through GSP, we do a state of the community and we're invited to participate.

077Perfect. And that's the kind of thing that that is is the And gives you the ability to put the positive stories out there, right? Your Your negative stories are always going to be on wildfire, but those positive stories are the ones that you need to remind people of. So, there are more opportunities that you have to do that. And to do that before you think about a bond issue or a levy issue. You know, the coffee chats are always a campaign strategy. We would say they should be all the time the strategy. Your time is limited, but again, some strategic thoughtfulness about how we connect with our older adults in this district or how we connect with the businesses in the Um and again, remembering that the superintendent is running the district and the board

078members are governing. But making sure that you do listen. And Christie said there's usually like six sides to the story, right? You hear one thing. I remember one of the big issues when I was on the Olentangy board was they decided that they wanted to drug test the athletes. And back then, that was like huge. And every time somebody talked to me, I thought, "Oh, that's a really good point." And that's a really good point. You know, there were so many sides to sort through that. Part of me wanted to just abstain, but I couldn't do that as a good board member. So, we had to work through each of those um sides to the issue and make the best decision. Again, using the chain of command, doing your homework like I said and um

079Stacy reiterated is reading your agenda, your um supplemental materials. Participating and realizing that it is not a public meeting, it is a meeting of the board in public. You would not ever have to be filming while public participation, but we would say that's not a good practice. That is exactly what you want to do to hear from the public, but that can't be disruptive to you having a meeting and getting your meeting done. Um again, we particularly during COVID had a lot of people who thought they could shout questions from the audience or ask specific questions of board members. It It It's important that you have uh a president who really can control that type of meeting, who makes sure that people are heard, but it's done in an appropriate way. So, talking about meetings,

080the open meetings act is prearranged discussion of public business of a public body by a majority of the public members. And it doesn't matter what you call it. So, when you set your organ- have your organizational meeting and you set your calendar for the year, those are all regular meetings. Anything that you add in after that is a special, whether you call it a retreat, a work session, whatever you want to call it, they're either regular or special and your treasurer then notices them um appropriately. One of the things that we did get clarified and again, I touched on with email. Particularly because email and social media are fairly new in the world of school education, um over the years boards were kind of lax about particularly using text and texting a majority of the

081school board members. And so, one of the things that happened is a true clarification of electronic media through White versus King. And actually, this was Olentangy. I wasn't on the board, but I was involved at the time with the school. And Adam White, good heart, really, you know, good board member, had the best interests, but he decided that two assistant coaches were using vans inappropriately. Fine. Again, you go to the superintendent and share. And he didn't. He came to a board meeting and Olentangy usually has media from Columbus. And he proceeded to say that these named the two assistant coaches, said that they were violating the community's trust and they were committing fraud by using taxpayer dollars inappropriately. It just went on and on. And no one had any idea about it. So, after the

082meeting, when again, the they tried to reel it back in by saying, "We will do an investigation." But they decided to do a kind of news release letter to the editor about how this this really needed a complete investigation. We didn't know that Adam was going to do this kind of thing. Well, they were doing it with four board members inviting them. So, they sent a copy out and they said, "You know, do you like this sentence? Should we put this in? Should we add this?" Huge violation. And Adam found out, of course, and took them to common pleas court and Olentangy lost and Adam won. And they appealed, and so it went to fifth district court of appeals, Adam one, the one tangential appeal, went to the Supreme Court and Adam one again. Because

083the Supreme Court said, "Nothing in the plain language of the revised code expressly mandates that a meeting occur face-to-face. To the contrary, it provides that any prearranged discussion can qualify as a meeting." So, in a roundabout way, it was good that the clarifi- the clarification has come about that emailing and text are the same as talking in person. So, that was a good thing, I guess. It's not fun to go So, again, we've talked about this and I think um your process is working great for you that you had that opportunity. Particularly with BoardDocs, it makes it really easy to see the agenda, so it's all super great. Is this how you are seated at your board meetings? In the classroom. Yeah. All right. So. Some kind of you. Because one of the things that

084the visual problem that we've seen with board members um boards districts that have done this for a long time is that they're setting their board members in a straight line and it looks like you're there for the public and that's exactly right. You're leaning back to see somebody or leaning forward to see somebody. So, again, saying that this is your meeting and having the discussion where you can see each other and you know, have those questions and comments back and forth makes it seem like it really is a meeting of the board in public. So, that's good. And you've got your traditions of sharing the or doing the pledge. Have you been meeting here now or is this new? This is our first time here. And so, you'll think you'll do it here? I think

085so. I like this a lot better than some of the other >> Yeah. Yeah, the auditorium is a problem cuz every month there's a student event that would bump you out. And then um oh, the high school, we were there for a while, but now that's the students that recaptured that as the tiger union. So, there's a lot of furniture and stuff there. I I like this venue. Yeah. It's a better venue. And if we the high school cafeteria would be there's too many events going on at the gym. So, this is like the least disruptive place except for staff meetings to set it up, but it's accessible. We don't have to worry about folks can park right outside and and get in here easily. And of our Sorry, but of our three buildings, you

086know, they go to the high school a lot for athletics. Arts, they definitely go to the auditorium and the McCormack for the arts and athletics. There's no real reason for the public to come into Woodland. So, this is another reason for them to come and see the building. Yes. Absolutely. Um now, where do you think you're going to go for executive session? Would you ask people to leave or would the board get up and We have a classroom, like an extra classroom that we have we have set up. Perfect. That is one of the things we have a couple troublemakers around the state who are looking for things to uh catch boards on and one of them is that if executive session listening outside the door. So, that if you ask the people to leave

087and you stay in this bigger room, then they have an opportunity to hear. And so, I'm so glad you're going to a more private, confidential room. Um again, the six legal reasons that you can go in and as Christie said, you absolutely can do the evaluation discussion with superintendent and treasurer in executive session. Um uh I think it's important to Do you put an executive session on every agenda whether you need it or not? We list it with if needed and then we have the reasons Okay. Cuz one of the things, another kind of transparency tip, is that if you don't have an expectation of needing it, you don't even put it on the agenda. Because what we're finding is people believe that you kind of zoom through the whole meeting to get to the

088good stuff at executive session. So, just a thought if you, you know, make sure you can always add one by motion if you need to. But, if needed covers that, too. Um and guests, obviously, it is the board's um executive session and you can invite people in, but we would say that the best practice is that your superintendent and treasurer are always in executive session unless they are you're doing one of the others, evaluation. You might want to invite attorney in, but if you want someone who is a teacher or part of the union and they've asked for time with the board, that should be with superintendent and treasurer in the room and has to be very um planned that you don't have the conversation in executive session. Right, they are only coming in to

089present their side and then they leave before you ask any questions or have any kind of conversation. So, again, protecting the the time that you have in executive session to have those good discussions. Explain that better for me. So, So, let's say we had to have a staff member come in. They can present and then we can ask them questions, that what you're saying? Well, here's what happens. First of all, it should come through the superintendent. Cuz the if the teacher asks for time with the board, the superintendent is going to say, "Mrs. Smith would like to come in and talk to the board." Again, they're both going to be there. She's going to present. A clarifying question might be okay, but the problem with that first question is it starts a discussion and you

090cannot be discussing with her in the room an issue that is then going to be a decision that you need to vote on. So, it's it is complicated. We really would recommend that that not happen very often at all because it undermines your superintendent, too. You know, the trust has got to be there between the teachers and the staff and the superintendent is the ultimate boss. And and they you can't set the expectation that they can go directly to the board and have a different decision. That's what we're worried about. And of course, It It hasn't happened in the last four years. We've Not Not happened that much. Yeah. We had a community member parent with a curriculum appeal uh that came up to the board. It was all done in the public. Yeah, but

091we've never had a staff member, anybody like that come into like request an audience with the board in front of the board. They would still have to go Yeah. It would still have to be a reason. If they wanted to go into executive session, it would still have to be for a reason that you're allowed to go into executive, which is pretty narrow, right? Like like um really defending themselves in a complaint. Yes. staff member. Yeah. That's when we see it happen. That it's that one last appeal they think they can make. Okay, so if you use that example, then so terminating someone, they're still they want to appeal to the board, they would just we would listen, thank you, and then we would discuss or Again, I think you take the lead from the

092superintendent. If the superintendent says, "I want you all to hear her side of the story and then you can help understand my recommendation," but if they're just coming in because they don't like the decision, then it's not going to it's not going to be a good situation. I I just want to make sure I understand. Yeah. Thank you. And we'd also follow policy and like collective bargaining agreements, too, which they're part of a union, so like that there's probably language in there, too, that would dictate the process for that. >> exactly why it's important to listen to the superintendent because you know he's following all those policies. Yeah, exactly. And again, the confidentiality. You have got to know that when you go in there that you can have those frank discussions and and be able

093to talk about things that even when you come out aren't shared with spouse or anyone. Um but it undermines the culture and the trust of the board as well as with the superintendent and treasurer. And a lot of times, what gets out is only one piece of the story, right? And the decision is ultimately going to be something different. So, again, I have an Amy video about this. Amy, glad I ran into you. Hey. Want to know what's going on with the school board. Has the entire board gone nuts? I'd be surprised if we have. Why would you say that, Art? Is that just your way of supporting your local school board? You know very well what I'm talking about. How can the school board stand by and let Hank Fisher be suspended and not

094giving him a reason why? Everybody knows he keeps the high school students in line. No drugs, no alcohol. We won't find another principal like him. And nobody hates us more than I do. And the entire board sees it the same way. Well, if that's the case, then let's put him back on his job and move on. The community is in an uproar. Nobody knows what's going on. Or even why he's been suspended. Not even Hank. Oh, Hank knows why he was suspended. He said he didn't. How could he know he doesn't? Because we discussed it in closed executive session. Oh, so why was he suspended? We're not supposed to talk about it outside of closed session. Okay. But, there is a good reason for his suspension. Well, I can't see any reason to let him

095out like Hank or He was sexual harassment by two teachers. And they came Hey, hey, hey, don't tell anybody but me. You know I won't tell anybody. And again, it's so hard because what is going to happen is going to be a ugly kind of situation and you're going to want to justify why you made this decision and you can't. You can't have those conversations. And one of the other things that I would say about executive session is that if you allow that teacher to ask one question and and they get an answer, then the teacher leaves thinking this is how it's going to go, how the decision is going to go. So again, it's just snippets that is so much better that you listen and then have a discussion after. So again, timely and

096equal information for all. There are very few times that the board president should have information ahead of all of you. If it's a highly confidential or you know, extremely extreme emergency. James might call Stacy and Brent something's fire, but then very quickly after that, Stacy or someone from James' office should be letting you know, you know, there's a fire in the parking lot, but it's contained, the fire department's here and no students were involved. So again, making sure that you all have the same information at the same time. Having buy-in for the agenda. Are you Are you Are you using any kind of hybrid or is it all consensus? Thank you. >> [clears throat] >> Uh with consent, it's for standard operating things. If we have Like all the teacher hires. >> Yes. Anything that's

097controversial or otherwise, we pull it out to the side. Okay. And that's how I would say 90% of the districts are doing it now. There needs to be some efficiency of business. So when you have those things, again, making sure that, you know, if your spouse was a member of the approval in that consent portion, that it's pulled out so you can abstain. But other than that, that's a good way to handle And again, making sure you have that discussion during your meetings. You can't just sit there and and just vote. People need to see how you're thinking, how you're making decisions and that you have good information. The other area that is often a kind of um new experience, particularly for board members, is public participation. We would say that it should be called

098public comment because there's no participation. You don't want participation. You want to be there to listen. And so we checked and our lawyers say even if your policy says participation, you can put public comment on your agenda. Again, just another one of those little things that helps with perception that people realize. You can tell them and put your policy out there and tell them we're just here to listen, but it's still hard. And I remember that's one of the hard first things that I found very hard to do is not to be able to say, "I'm sorry you're going through that." or, you know, that some ask a question, but the reality is once you ask that question, open that door, it starts that conversation and that's not the time to have that. And again,

099most of the issues are running the district issues. They're not governing the district. So one of the important things that we feel like with public participation these days is to have a visual timer. Are you doing that? Even like on your screen or a timer that Stacy would have because you want to keep your policy, which is I assume 3 minutes, 20 or half an hour total. >> We do five. Oh, we do five. Yeah, five minutes. Okay, well, that's good. But half hour total. >> Yeah, half hour total. You you have to be able to treat everyone the same and that's another issue that people are going around the state trying to catch is, you know, you gave this person 5 minutes and 3 seconds, but you gave this person less than 5 minutes.

100And it's also kind of a um nice way that when that alarm goes off, you can say, "I'm sorry, your 5 minutes are up. Um will the next person come forward?" Just a Well, what we're finding is a best practice. And so far, like institutional history over the last couple years, and we most meetings we have no comment. We've had a couple meetings where there's been like a hot topic, like light wires was a hot topic, right? And in those situations the board considered whether we would wave so that everybody would still stick to 5 minutes, but they if it exceeded a half hour, that was okay. Um and then if relatively orderly in that regard. I can't think of a meeting where we've not allowed somebody to say what they needed to say or

101that someone's 5 minutes wasn't more than enough time to say what you needed to say. Sure. We do ask for them to fill out a form when they come in. We did move it, I think when we started public comment, we did it at the end of the meeting, so we moved it up to the front so that if somebody comes and there's information they want to share, they're welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting, but if they just wanted to come come and share information and then move on, they can. But then Mike manages those. It also they then don't need to I mean, you call them up, I think, by the form. So we know who it is and then they don't need to disclose their address. Like we've recorded some

102information there, but it seems to have been working for the length of time we've been doing it. Yeah, and even when we had those uh like light wise comments, like I I would do the timer on my phone. And it never really got There was maybe one person who kind of flirted with the five. Yeah, but it never really went higher than that, yet at least. Yeah, it's just to say you I'm sure heard the Brian Ames stories and that's one of the things he's looking for. So just yeah, boy, I'd be careful. But a couple of things to follow up. Um when you do have a big issue like that, I have seen it work where we have a pro microphone and a con microphone so that you can do one after the other,

103which again makes people feel like you're hearing both sides of the story and it also kind of um allows the group to feel like you're listening to both sides of the story, too. Um the other thing is that you really don't have to collect address because again, they don't have to live in your district to speak. Do you require that that if you have it at the beginning, does that item that they want to talk about have to be on your agenda? No. No, good. We do not restrict anything like that. No. The only reason we give people the opportunity to list their address and phone number, if I remember right, was that then if James needs to follow up or Mike needs to follow up, you know, who it was and how to get

104a hold of them. I would just put optional on there unless you if you don't have that. Again, because you can't stop them from talking. So. Um and the other thing, do you put your policy Did you say you lay your policy out with the sign-in sheet, too? A copy of your policy? I think it's on the form. Cuz that's we're finding that's helpful, too, that if people have the policy before they sit down, they can pick it up and see how things are going to go. So. I think is it in the agenda, too? I think it's listed in the agenda, so if they choose to pick up a printed copy of the agenda or they see it online, it does state on there what how long they have. So when people come, they

105they have to introduce themselves, right? For for to make a comment? >> Yeah. Um so they would have fill out a form first. >> that's that's public that's public information, right? Mhm. Mhm. So if Joe Smith comes to talk, we would know Joe Smith. It's not like it's secret or Yeah, it's not like they would fill the form out, I put them in kind of the order received and then I would say, "Joe Smith is next." But I mean, there's nothing to prevent somebody from not using their actual name, right? I mean, if they really were trying to conceal it, but it it honestly hasn't been an issue. I would just I didn't think it was, I was just I think some some districts have more excitement than others. I I don't even want to

106start on horse stories. Some districts get into trying to restrict it more that it has to be some require you to file in advance of the meeting. So if you haven't emailed them and you show up at a meeting, you can't speak or they restrict it to the topic and it just gets into First Amendment, like it's it it gets messy. So no, ours has worked and I think that one that we've cringed on a few times is we had an elderly gentleman who came in who had like strong feelings about the landscaping or something. And it it was innocuous, but it was like it was becoming like a two-way discussion and it like not really flowing like public comment should, which in isolation wasn't a big deal, but how you kind of have to

107treat everybody on the same process. So that was the part that I think we were like, you know, because in a way that you just can't If you do that with that one gentleman on one topic that he's fine with, right? You open the door. Absolutely, right. Yeah, one of the weeds pulled it at McCormick, but And I think with different presidents have had different, you know, so I think level familiarity sometimes, but again, in the last couple of years, it is not it's the comment from usually a president is just thanking the person for coming in and speaking and then if there was something specific that maybe Mike or James is to you know follow up with them or something. But And that's exactly what I'm saying. The president is really key to public

108participation. Setting the stage to say you know we're just here to listen. You all are giving them good eye contact or nodding your head and you know showing that you're truly listening and then thanking them and any kind of follow up that needs to be done. Absolutely. You know our biggest experience or with remember critical race theory? Uh-huh. That was an experience to hear We did. Yeah. We did. And masks We did. Yeah, masks. Like I remember it well cuz I was there when she showed up. >> [laughter] >> Talking about critical race theory and the board was like what are you talking about? Yeah. Yeah, we've seen some really ugly ones. And that's the other thing that we'd say is you know you can have a gavel or you can try and say you

109know you need to stop talking. But the reality is it usually just fires the crowd up more, right? So there's people that are like oh we need to be able to hear the board meeting take him out or he has a right to free speech. We had a lot of deputy sheriffs in the back or city policemen of those mask meetings particularly. The reality is we would say if it gets to that point that the board just recess and leave the room. It is much better for the board to leave than to try and have somebody hauled out of your meeting. Indeed. But again that's what this board looked like. Um so a couple of scenarios. A growing district must face redistricting. Board member John is facing lots of criticism from his neighbors whose children

110will be bused to a school building not close to their neighborhood. He knows other board members think the chosen option will be fair to all students in the district. How should he and the board Real life from Olentangy let me tell you. I still have mom that won't speak to me because we took her child across route 23. Um but the everything that you do including this kind of situation has to be based on facts and and that discussion of those facts. And the presentations. If you're thinking about doing something big like a bond issue or like redistricting to different buildings you have got to have a number of presentations over a number of meetings so that you have the opportunity to look at all the good the bad and the ugly possibilities and to

111have good discussion about that. Still okay for John to vote no but he's going to say I'm voting no because I don't believe that children should go to schools that aren't in their neighborhood. But the reality is that's what you can't do that and be fair to all the students in the district. And this is actually how I ended up running for Olentangy was because we um had been approached to I wasn't on the board but they had been approached to pass a TIF and have Polaris Mall and Polaris Amphitheater come into Delaware County which was huge. It would provide so many opportunities and so many tax dollars. And three of the board members actually lived in the property adjacent to the Polaris Amphitheater. So of course noise, traffic, lights they they just couldn't do

112it. And all of their neighbors were there and they had little kids crying like please don't do this. So they voted it down three to two and three of us ran saying we really think this is an important part of the whole district's benefit. And so we we ran saying that we would support that TIF because we needed the roads. We needed the parks. We needed the tax dollars that would come from those two entities. So again you just you have to think of the whole district and it's hard because you're going to have you know family and relatives and friends say you got to do this. You can't do this. So. Um committees. So tell me a little bit about do you have committees? What are they? Yeah, we have superintendent and treasurer committees

113so we have a finance committee, a facilities committee, um academic instruction committee policy and handbook committee. So So what board committees do you have then? Any? None. None. Good. And then we have representatives that serve on other community organizations. >> You can have board members all over the superintendent and treasurer committees just not a majority of the board members. Though what we're finding is that gives you um a little more flexibility. You don't have to notice the meeting. You don't have to have an agenda. You don't have to have minutes. It doesn't have to come before the board. And a lot of times those committees like finance and policy and particularly facilities if you get to that point they want to be able to have those conversations about all the options before all those options

114get out there and people make a decision ahead of time. So it is I think as long as you have a trusting relationship that board members who serve on these committees or the outside parks or whatever that they come back and do regular reports about what the board involvement is that's really key. So that you know the other board members don't feel like they're being left out of anything or that a board single board member is making any kind of decisions cuz you can't make decisions in those committees. That's the time for discussion. Um I was at a school district and they were talking about committees and they had one chairman who was serving on a facilities committee and he proceeded to announce that he just picked out all the door handles for the new

115high school. And the rest of the board was like what? Okay, first of all you're micromanaging. And secondly, who gives you the board right than any of the rest of us to do something like that? So again, the real key to committees is making sure that the work gets done and reported when it's time and appropriate and that everybody feels like they're in the know. Committees or reports or actions are often a good thing for your report when you do your report to the board to say you know this is what happened. And I would say some of those most active the facilities was very active and meeting on a regular basis. Finance has been regular and those all have members of the community that are on it too and it's been pretty open. If

116somebody stepped forward and said I want to serve on there like that's great and the more the merrier that people are interested in that. So I think that has felt like it has worked well too for that community connection. >> way to handle it. That openness and and the ability to be involved is at some level that you want to be. Um one of the things that we think about committees is you know if if the issue if you're getting to a point that it feels too fragmented then it should be a committee of the whole, right? That the whole board hears about it. The whole board has the discussion rather than trying to leave it on the shoulders of one board member and to come back and explain what's going on. Social media again

117an interesting transition when you used it for campaigning and you you know put I will bring communication skills to the board you now realize that you're one of five and so we would say best practice is that campaign social media site transitions into just sharing what the school district puts out that you know that the pictures of the students in the play can be shown because they're not on a list that their parents don't want them to be shown. Or that something happened that you are going to let them you're having a board meeting. You're going to let people know on your site. You can have personal sites but again we say that you should be very very cautious about talking about school things on your personal site or even a campaign site because again

118you're one of five. If it's informational great. But if you try and say I think we need a new high school it's going to start a rabbit hole and right? They're going to think oh okay this board member wants the high school and that's what's going to happen. They take that as gospel rather than coming to a board meeting and hearing the discussion and seeing what the majority decides. And I think people have been getting in trouble um when they are using that platform and then somebody is coming on with pointed criticism which got to deal with it, right? Like you're not going to make everybody happy. Like it's okay. Got to learn to roll with it. But then when they block that person now they're getting into their own personal liability for those issues

119and like first amendment issues and it's a mess. Yeah. And and the reality is if you see something on Facebook that you think is really erroneous information like you know we're going to put this $80 million bond issue on then you just let James know and at the next board meeting James says during his report I there's been a comment on Facebook out there that I want to address rather than you trying as a board member say that's not true because again it will go down into the criticism and the jumping to conclusions from the board member. Question? Um the photo thing. So are you talking like on a the school? If you went to a baseball game and you took a picture of the players you can't just automatically post that because there is

120a But on on my on my own personal Right. Right. At all. So if I so if I take a picture of my kid I got to be careful who's Do I have to be careful who's in the background. Yes. Okay. Because now you are a public official and there are is a list of parents who said they don't want their child to be shown. You don't need to know that. So, it's just safer if you share with the school share or just your own children. So, when I posted Sydney singing the national anthem don't do that. Yeah, I would ask the school. Like I think if it's something it gets tricky, right? When you have kids in the district. Um but it gets but it gets tricky because you are a board member. >>

121What if Heather does it? I think Yeah, I Then she's fine. So, if my wife did it, it's fine. If I do it, could be a problem. Yeah. Okay. I mean it's Is it a non-allowed I'm not allowed to It's like you put a campaign sign in your yard, but she's you know doesn't want it there. It You've got a I think be cautious that whatever any of your family does, people are going to think that you also agree with that. So, um I it it gets Some days are hard being a school board member. It is tricky. There's a lot of rules and laws that suddenly apply to you the minute you're sworn in. It's not just our oath to the constitutions. It it is a whole set of rules that yeah, it curbs

122um things that you did right before you swore that oath. Uh because now you're a public official. So, some of those trainings are really helpful. I know you've got those on there though. The sunshine law training is free. It's available online from the attorney general's office or the auditor of state although there's might be just the public records training. Um the Ohio ethics law has training that's available on their website. So, it's good to be Cuz some of it if you're in the private sector and you've only ever worked in the private sector, there's things in public sector that make no sense, right? That it's just totally different. It's fine in the private sector it's not a big deal. Yeah. Exactly. Yep. Yep. I think you could work in the public sector in the education

123public education even so. Still do. Yeah. It's yeah. The things are the way they are cuz that's how they are. For federal rules, you get title nine. You have all these other things that don't exist just in other public sectors. So, yeah, public education is its own special thing. >> The one thing that would be really helpful if you could come to the board leadership institute. We're going to recreate the legal section of our new board member training and our attorneys are so good about being very practical about you can do this, you can't do this and and giving those kind of scenarios. Even ethical versus legal. So, yeah. I think it's still law. Stop me if I'm wrong here, but there's a requirement of elected officials to go through sunshine law. I think you

124can have Your treasurer Your treasurer do it on your behalf. But it doesn't prevent you from having to go if you want to. I would recommend that you I think the public records I found very interesting because It helps explain why you're so restricted. You know, you can see how these things came about and and the reasons probably made sense in the you know mid-1900s, but they don't now. Yeah, I agree. I did I did see that the auditor came out this week with kind of building off social media and I don't use these apps. Maybe nobody else here does, but like those apps that have like disappearing um content like Snapchat and signal. Well, Instagram I don't know that it disappears, but like there's certain ones that are set up to like disappear in

125short order. Oh, Reels does though disappear I think, doesn't it? Oh, after like a day or something? >> They go away for after a couple days. But he's taking the position that those are like a violation. Potentially. Like almost entirely, right? Cuz they're not almost not going to be there for retention. Yeah. You know, if it's a public discussion of the school, clearly it's a public record and you have to maintain But if it's a discussion about going to a movie tomorrow night, that's not a public record. Um one of the things that is good about you live streaming your meetings is certainly that they can get more of the context of your discussions. You know, your minutes are just motion and second and what the um end vote was. So, I do think it's

126a good thing that people have the opportunity if they don't want to come, they still can watch and hear the discussion. That's the reasons that you give. So. Um board member Alice is concerned about redistricting plan options. Believes more people in the community should be aware of the issue and of the potential decision. She'd like to use her Facebook page to encourage people to comment on the potential options. No. We want her to use her Facebook page to say, "Please come to a town hall that we're doing to discuss the options or you know, come to our board meeting to hear the discussion." Informational, but when she starts asking for comments, then again it takes it into the realm of one board member when you really you don't have that power. You have to be

127a majority of the And it gets very negative. Um again, we've talked about most of this and one [clears throat] of the things that can happen is that social media presence by just one board member can end up hurting the trust that you're trying to develop with you as a whole because you have to keep saying, "Why you know, is she doing this?" Or "We can't do that." kind of thing. So. Um just a little bit about communication. One of the important things particularly when you have a difficult decision during a board meeting and you make that decision is for the board president to say, "We decided to buy the property at 5th and Main because it has the best drainage. It's uh you know, close to our current campus and has plenty of room

128for parking." Whatever those reasons were that you made the decision to move ahead with the decision can be repeated that then you all have when you get stopped and asked why that decision was made. If you have media or people watching again, they have the the the real reasons why this decision was made. Inviting students is always good to have students at your meetings. Again, sometimes we get so far removed from why are we doing this? You have to have that fresh face that is at your meeting reminding, "We're doing this for the kids. We're doing what we think is best for the kids." So. Rotating locations again, we would say this is a strategy and I've seen it work well in a couple different situations. Um we had a district a local that was

129very huge and had lots of little townships and burbs and they were feeling very disjointed. And so, having the opportunity for the board to go out once a quarter or once a year to different township halls or to a village center kind of meeting said to them, "You're important to us. We want to hear what you think." People still didn't come, but again, you offered that opportunity and you made it that you really want to hear what they had to say. Um the other thing and this is what you're going to be facing is We had a district that had an elementary that was beloved, right? Everybody had gone there. Everybody loved the school, but it was falling down. And so, they knew they were going to put a bond issue on and they took

130the time 2 years prior to have their meetings in this elementary school so that people did come to the meeting. They saw floor tiles coming up, ceiling tiles falling. Classrooms that weren't even big enough to have any kind of interactive projects going on. So again, it was the visual telling people when when they actually came to them to say, "We need a bond issue. You've seen this." Of course, they had to do things like sell bricks from the old elementary because people had to have that little momento of their wonderful school, but again, it's it is a strategy that we've seen work really well. Having a communication plan. Do you have a part-time or a full-time communications Yeah, we have a part-time [clears throat] person. Great. Great. She likes her job. Great. One of the

131things that we think is important at least once a year is for the board to have a conversation with the communications person there about you know, who are all our stakeholders? What are the vehicles we're using to reach them? Are we making sure that the older adults hear from us on a regular basis? Are we making sure the businesses hear from us? And so, we put together a template that I could glad to send that is just an easy way of walking through once a year saying, "Yeah, we're doing this and this and this and this." And then you put it on your website so that when people say, "You didn't tell us that. We didn't know that." You can say, "Well, we have a communication plan. We should have been sending an annual newsletter

132to the older adults. Did you not get that newsletter? I can make sure you're on the list." Again, just a way of convincing people that you really are trying to get all of that information out. Um surveying I'm going to talk about it in a minute. Um again, speaking up professionally and honestly. I'd like Jude's comment about you can agree to disagree and have those civil conversations. On the student piece inviting students, we did based on one of the OSBA sessions. We do have a student liaison. He's working tonight, otherwise he'd be here, but he does represent and share out news um from the students. But yeah, that was because of that session. John Jones really wanted that. And that is becoming more and more of a trend is that they are kind of an

133official member of the board or a liaison with the board. Again, because we were constantly hearing "You don't listen to us." You know, the students were saying, "How do you make decisions for us and yet how do you know what we're thinking?" And so, that kind of input is so valuable. And plus, it says to your community, "We're basing our decisions on what's best for kids. We're hearing the students." So, good. Um surveying again is a great way to again a strategy, a great way to teach things through your questions like, you know, we have this list of extracurriculars. What do you think are the most important? A ranking or a totally agree or a totally disagree kind of answer. So, again, you're teaching them something but you're also asking for their input. The key

134to surveying is making sure that you always talk about the results. Cuz if you don't ask If you ask and then you never say anything about it, they're like, "Oh yeah, we told them the truth and now they didn't want to hear it and they're not going to tell us what we said." So, making sure that you have that conversation and um give those results. Um it's also a good community engagement tool because well like we we offer a survey service, we're giving you a link. And so, we're going to hope that it gets out to all your businesses and you divide those answers into, you know, uh businesses, parents, teachers, teachers with kids in the district, those kind of things so that you can really narrow down what they're thinking and what their issues

135are. And of course, always a place for comments because you need to allow them to be able to Usually, it's a drive-by cuz it's confidential and anonymous, right? They're going to tell you that the bus driver's terrible, but um it is important to have that. And putting that link on your website and telling people that, you know, this 2 weeks we would like you to go to the survey gives them an opportunity to visit your website when they might not have been on your website, too. Um we've seen really creative ways of getting the link out there like, you know, um flyers on cars at football games or handing out cards at the county fair, all of those kind of things so that you're saying, "We really want your input and and here's the link,

136so please take the survey." This is the kind of thing that we have done. Um this was a question that we asked staff members and you can see the three questions on the side. I feel valued and respected in my role as an employee. I feel empowered to do my job. I think every employee has an important role to play when it comes to student success. And you can see how the um results broke down. Again, a good tool for James to use, but it also prevents surveying directly teachers about James, too. You know, that is not the point of this. The surveying is to um test the culture, to see what people are thinking. And so, keeping that um more of a generic kind of question but allowing them the opportunity to have comments

137is always a good thing. That's an actual one of ours? Huh? No, this is one of the surveys we did. Oh, got you. Yeah. Um and again, the community members we put, "I believe the district is proactive in efforts to ensure all students are safe from bullying, intimidation, and harassment or I believe the district is proactive in policies and practices related to school safety and security." And again, you can see how that broke down. Most times you will find that you are on the right track with the right train, but sometimes there's an outlier that comes out of a survey that you just weren't even thinking about and it's it's an avenue that you can make as your board goal or part of your district goal and and really have an impact on something that

138the community or the business people or your teachers thought was really important. And just to touch on strategic plan again, the importance you have limited time and limited resources. You cannot be all things to all people and and we all try and do that, but what we would like to see is that you have a strategic plan that focuses on maybe 1 or 2 years, but you nothing goes off the plane, right? So, you have things that might happen in 2028, they're still on the plan, but this is our focus for right now. So that all those ideas are captured, but you put priority on them. And that's where a a lot of times school boards get caught up in it is we are trying to do all of this, but we can't. We have

139to do this this year and then next year we'll do this. Um the other thing that makes it nice is that you use those goals, as Christie had touched on, to do the strategies for superintendent measures. So, there's no reason that they need to be working over here when you want to go here. And so, having that discussion with the same goals that you set up for the district and then letting them decide how they're going to do that. One of the most important things we do when we do strategic planning is we talk about what we don't want to go away, the really good stuff that we're doing. And and all often, teachers particularly and administrators are like, "We can't add anything new. We are so swamped now with what we have to do."

140Well, then get credit for what you're doing. If you are doing these town halls, that's a community engagement goal. That's a strategy that's helping you meet your community engagement goal. The surveying is a strategy. Get it on paper so that it says, "We are being very thoughtful about what we're doing now and what new work we're going to add and here's how we're going to add that new Um we have templates that plan should live online with the superintendent so that you can go in and change it and you add deadlines and people responsible. And again, it's not a book that you put on the shelf. When we do strategic planning, it is online, it's a living kind of document. Excuse me. Uh I think I did that. And one of the things, too, that

141we think is important is the makeup of your group. Often times, the board will try and do strategic planning, which is fine, or the um maybe the DLT, the district leadership team will do it, which again is good. But if you truly want that community buy-in on what you're doing, we would say that you need a representative from each of your stakeholders. So, you'd have a teacher, you'd have a student, you'd have um community members, you'd have parents, you'd have businesses. And and that group of 40 to 45 people come together, we do four different meetings where we walk through vision and mission. Are they still working for you? Do they need to be updated? What are your core values? And then we move into what are the critical issues, both positive and negative, the

142things that we don't want to lose track of. Putting them into then goals and then doing strategies after that. So, lots of information. Any questions or other things that we haven't talked about? Anything administrator-wise? School board, anything that we didn't cover you No. I'm so glad that you have such a good board, have such a good district, but you got big things ahead of you. So, Yeah. it'll it'll take some building that trust with you and the community, I'm sure. Thanks, Terry. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. And again, good sessions coming up if you can for board leadership in Susan, too. So, let them know. But that always has a million things. I'm trying to be a little more focused. It's only about 150 board members. And that's the one in May? Uh-huh. All day

143Friday and Saturday morning midnight. Columbus? Uh-huh. Yeah, it'll be at Polaris Hilton. Terry, thank you so much. >> Thank you. Appreciate it. >> Yeah, you're welcome. You did that in less than 2 hours. I did. Cuz we didn't start till like 5:05. Well done. Okay, so no other questions for Terry today. I think our only other item to touch on is we usually talk about the next meeting, which right now is scheduled for Monday, the 23rd. Right now scheduled at 6:00, but we talked about sometimes in sports season we bump a little bit. Yeah, so on Monday there's a uh home softball game. Mhm. Starts at 5:00 cuz then they've got to travel to the other side. So, um if it's okay with everybody, I'm thinking we should move the meeting start time to 7:00

144so that we can watch that game. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. We have it here. And we're going to meet here. Oh, yeah. So, we'll make that official. >> [laughter] >> I didn't see you to walk over at 5:55 and then there's a home run there. That That would be sure to happen. A big out. All right, so I'll make those changes on the agenda. Thank you. Yep. And you'll provide notice of the moving of the meeting and the time. Yep. And the location. Yep. Okay. Okay. And we'll have a special meeting next Oh, and then Friday we have a special meeting uh and that's the I don't know if you want to talk about it. Yeah, the BOR uh complaints. There were three properties um that were found that were going to challenge. There was

145a little bit of a I don't know how to call it, communication error at the attorney's office. Um only one of the three letters went out. It has to go out 7 days prior to the board meeting. So, when we were looking at it, uh Friday seemed to make the most sense where it wasn't going to really push too close to May. It has to get done by the 31st. So, as of right now, I think I think everyone has responded and 7:15 Where are we going to hold that? Well, at the central office. Yeah, it's probably going to be at the central office because here it will just disrupt Yeah. So, it will be a public comment section. >> Yeah. They can come and comment about don't do this to us. Yeah. And then

146there'll be the three and the attorney said three properties the attorney said it could be a consent vote Yeah. Okay. But they're separate resolutions. Is that how the statute reads now? There there are three separate resolutions. >> not get into the details on that cuz we only called this special meeting for the purpose of a work session on governance. Um but certainly anybody questions because there's more information, certainly feel free to follow up with Mike to get some more information on that. Just want to be mindful we can set an agenda or set a meeting time, but sorry to get into discussion too much about that. That's okay. Okay. All right. Uh I'll make a motion Motion to adjourn. Thank you. Second. Mr. Brager? Yes. Mrs. Sanders? >> Yes. Mr. Burkins? Yes. Mr. Hammond? Yes.

147Mrs. Harley? Yes. Meeting adjourned. Thank you.