001uh today uh we will be honoring four individuals who are happily awaiting to take their open Office um I want to recognize some City officials officials thank you mayor Alexander for being here and for always supporting the beautiful wonderful children of Norfolk Public Schools we have members of council here we have a lot of our community members here so thank you again and we're going to get started so today we have Dr Adele Martin taking the oath of office along with Tonya the scene Carlos planton Tiffany Moore Buffalo and Lauren canson so at this time I will be turning the program over to the honorable Judge Gerald Jones thank you thank you good morning everyone all right Mr Mayor and all assembled we've now moved to the very important uh part of the program to
002date administration of the oath of office we will begin with Ms Martin Adele Martin please come forward technically judge Jones I have him in alphabetical order I'm sorry so miss Basin and then we'll go down the line thank you I was reading the program all right then uh Ms Basin if you would please come forward seen are you prepared to take your oath of office yes I am please raise your right hand and repeat after me I do solemnly swear I do solemnly swear that I will support that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia and that I will Faithfully and that I will faithfully and impartially and impartially discharge and perform discharge and perform all the
003duties incumbent upon me all the duties incumbent upon me as a member of the school board as a member of the school board of the city of Norfolk of the city of Norfolk for a term beginning January 1st 2023 for a term beginning January 1st 2023 an expiring December 31st 2027. for expiring December 31st 2027. according to the best of my ability according to the best of my abilities so help me God so help me God congratulations [Applause] thank you all right Miss Tanner the next person then will be Miss camson I'm saying good morning absolutely someone here to you're gonna all right New Hampshire are you prepared to take your oath of office I am if you place your left hand on the Bible raise your right hand and repeat after me I do
004solemnly swear I do solemnly swear that I will support that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia and that I will faithfully and that I will faithfully and impartially and impartially discharge and perform discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me all the duties incumbent upon me as a member of the school board as a member of the school board of the city of Norfolk of the city of Norfolk for a term beginning January 1st 2023 or a term beginning January 1st 2023. an expiring December 31st 2027. December 31st 2027 2027. according to the best of my ability according to the best of my ability so help me God so help me God congratulations thank you
005thank you thank you [Applause] people try again thank you Mr Clinton please come forward good morning are you prepared to take your oath of office I am please raise your right hand and repeat after me I do solemnly swear I do solemnly swear that I will support that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia and that I will faithfully and that I will faithfully and impartially and impartially discharge and perform discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me all the duties incumbent upon me as a member of the school board as a member of the school board of the city of Norfolk of the city of Norfolk for a term beginning January 1 2023 or term
006beginning January 1 2023 an expiring December 31 2027 and expiring December 31st 2027. according to the best of my ability according to the best of my ability so help me God so help me God congratulations [Applause] thank you Ms Martin now please come forward it's always good whenever we get to it right good morning be prepared to take your oath of office I am please raise your right hand and repeat after me I do solemnly swear I do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia that I will faithfully and that I will faithfully and impartially and impartially discharge and perform discharge and perform all
007the duties all the duties incumbent upon me incumbent upon me as a member of the school board as a member of the school board of the city of Norfolk of the city of Norfolk for a term beginning January 1 2023 for a term beginning January 1 2023. an expiring December 31 2027 and expiring December 31 2027. according to the best of my ability according to the best of my ability so help me God so help me God congratulations thank you I know thank you let me give this to you and Miss Moore Buffalo please come forward there's more Buffalo are you prepared to take your oath of office absolutely please raise your right hand and repeat after me then I do solemnly swear I do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the
008United States that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia and that I will faithfully and I will faithfully and impartially and impartially discharge and perform discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me all the duties incumbent upon me as a member of the school board as a member of the school board of the city of Norfolk of the city of Norfolk for a term beginning January 1 2023 for a term beginning January 1 2023. an expiring December 31 2027 an expiring December 31st 2027. according to the best of my ability so help me God so help me God thank you thank you all right that concludes the administration of the oath thank you very much [Applause]
009we're going to ask our school board members to make any remarks if they choose to do so never been one loss for words um I just want to thank everyone for coming um no matter who you're here to support um because we're all in this work together I am so thankful and humble that I stand before you today as a little girl from the south side of Chicago and this is just I want every child in Norfolk to understand when you have a dream and a passion inside of you that you just keeps burning and you don't know what's going on follow it believe it we are all gifted and talented and we are all have gifts to to contribute to our society and and for those who are watching children who are watching those
010who are present as a community and City we have to wrap around our children you have to make sure that they can have all the opportunities and be the best individuals they can be and so I am committed to this work I would pray every day that I come in this building and do what's best for children best for children and I am so thankful to be serving to beside each and every one of you thank you for this opportunity [Applause] are there any other board members that like to provide remarks um good morning everyone um I fever missed in going forward in comments here without recognizing some of the steam guests that are here with us this morning Mr Mayor we uh thank you for being here councilman Wilmington Royster our new Wisconsin member
011Mr JP page our Commonwealth attorneys marine marine fatty is glad to have you all here with us this morning and to be able to show that support from both sides of the street um this is the second time and um I 2018 was uh my very first time and if those who've known the lifelong child here born in Park Place in Lambert's morning Norfolk proud product of Norfolk Public Schools to be able to come back I'm having worked for the division for nine years literally across the hall and to be able to sit in that seat and as what has been my Mantra which is being student centered and teacher inspired my teachers are the ones that inspired me a child who was the oldest of three single parent home to come in and be
012an example I mean so to keep our students first it's always been the Mantra there learning and working on this board we've come in with different perspectives and difference of opinion but at the end of the day it's all about coming together to do what's in the best interest of students and so I again look forward to being able to work with all of my colleagues here as we have an awesome four years ahead of us a lot of great projects a lot of great things and initiatives to be able to move Norfolk Public Schools to where it needs to be so with that I'd say thank you all for the opportunity I say for those who are watching those who are present here thank you to the voters of Norfolk and Ward 3 and
013throughout who have entrusted me with this opportunity I will not let you down I will continue to fight the good fight and continue to be your voice for those who don't have a voice and so with that I say thank you all and again thank you all for being here today [Applause] okay I'd like to call for Miss a toy Carrington she has some special certificates to pass out foreign okay and that's all I have to say about that alrighty so first I'd like to call Adele Martin wealth of Virginia City of Norfolk to All To whom these presence shall come greetings this is to certify that at a meeting of the Electoral Board of the city of Norfolk held in this circuit court and upon examination of the official record deposited therein it was
014ascertained and determined that at the election held on November 8th 2022 Adele M Martin was duly elected member School Board Ward 1 in the city of Norfolk for a term prescribed by law witness the following official signature and the Seal of the Electoral board on this 15th day of November 2022 and was signed by then Michael candlewall Norfolk electoral board secretary Thank You Adele appreciate it foreign Commonwealth of Virginia City of Norfolk to All To whom these presents shall come greeting this is to certify that at a meeting of the Electoral Board of the city of Norfolk held in the circuit court and upon examination of the official records deposited therein it was ascertained and determined that at the election held on November 8 2022 Tanya k bachane I'm sorry about Sin was duly elected
015member School Board Ward 2 in the city of Norfolk for the term prescribed by law witness the following official signature and sealed of the Electoral board on this 15th day of November 2022 and was signed by then secretary Michael panderwald of the Norfolk electoral board [Applause] Commonwealth of Virginia City of Norfolk to All To whom these presents shall come greeting this is to certify that at a meeting of the Electoral Board of the city of Norfolk held in the circuit court and upon examination of the official records deposited therein it was ascertained and determined at the election held on November 8 2022 Carlos J Clinton was duly elected member School Board ward 3 in the city of Norfolk for the term prescribed by law witnessed the following official signature and seal of the Electoral board
016on this 15th day of November 2022 and was signed by Michael panderwaal then Secretary of North collector board [Applause] amen Commonwealth of Virginia city of Nova the all to whom these presence shall come greeting a certify that at a meeting of the Electoral Board of the city of Norfolk held in the circuit court and upon examination of the official records deposited therein it was ascertained and determined and at the election held on November 8 2022 Tiffany are more Buffalo was duly elected member School Board Ward 4 in the city of Norfolk for the term prescribed by law witness the following official signature and the Seal of the Electoral board on this 15th day of November 2022 and was signed by our then secretary Michael vanderwaal of the Norfolk electoral board thank you Commonwealth of Virginia
017City of Norfolk to All To whom these presents shall come greetings this is to certify that at a meeting of the Electoral Board of the city of Norfolk held in the circuit court and upon examination of the official records deposited therein it was ascertained and determined that at the election held on November 8 2022 Lauren D Hanson was duly elected member School Board Ward 5 in the city of Norfolk for the term prescribed by law witnessed the following official signature and the Seal of the Electoral board on this 15th day of November 2022 and was signed by Arvin of the Norfolk electoral board thank you congratulations [Applause] thank you very much Miss Carrington this concludes our swearing-in ceremony we want to thank you all for being here today to honor our honorees and so right
018now we have a nice reception out in the hallway and take some time to excuse me take some time to greet our honorees our newly elected board members and um just just have a good time and the next meeting is at 10 30. to between now and 10 30 you have time to socialize thank you for being here everyone members of the school board and members of our community thank you for being here this morning as you are aware I will briefly be in a unique position while the school board enters into our governance training which begins with an organizational meeting at which time the board will officially or formally elect a or chair and a board Vice chair as such I will be chairing the meeting as the board prepares to make that determination
019so at this time I'll call this meeting to order specifically for the purpose of organizing the roles of a school board chair and vice chair for a period of January not September January I'm already into starting school January the 11th 2023 until December 31st 2023. so at this time nominations are now in order nominations are now in order for the office of chair I thought we do the roll call after that which is what we did last time nominations are now in order for the office of chair of the school board that's more breath I would like to nominate Dr Adele Martin as for a school board chair please okay Dr Adele Martin is nominated are there other nominations [Music] the motion to close nominations is in order do I hear a second the motion
020carries and the floor is closed for nominations Miss Tanner please call the roll and each member please State the name of the candidate whom you whom you support for the role of chair of the school board of the city of Norfolk yeah Martin I don't hear my name Martin I already got a yard oh I need that just wanted to roll okay Martin Buffalo Martin planting pardon okay thank you candidate Adele not Martin has seven votes so congratulations Dr Martin on your selection as the chair of the school board for the city of Norfolk I'm going to turn the gavel over to you oh yeah thank you congratulations okay um so now we will open the floor for nominations for the vice chair position Dr Martin yes I'd like to nominate on Dr Noel Gabriel
021okay any other nominations Dr Martin I'd like to nominate Tiffany Moore Buffalo okay thank you any other nominations okay um okay so we'll close nominations and um yes the clerk I was trying to remember this like yeah who's the nominations yes I'll second to close the nomination okay thank you um uh Miss Moore Buffalo Dr Gabriel Gabriel Jordan Buffalo Martin Ms Moore Buffalo sorry oh I'm sorry Miss more Buffalo Gabriel okay congratulations Miss Buffalo thank you thank you thank you congratulations congratulations all right um so next we have the appointment of the school board Clerk um they're any comments about do you have comments about Dr Martin at this time I would recommend that Karen Tanner continue in the role as Clerk of the school board and chair yes um I like to accept the
022recommendation of the superintendent second any discussion okay all right Miss Tanner please call the vote let's see I Gabriel aye Jordan hi Martin aye look wonderful um congratulations Miss Tiana um next we have the recommendation from Dr Birdsong on the appointment of the superintendent designee Dr Martin at this time I would like to recommend that Dr James pole Chief academic officer and Dr Mike Cataldo Chief Information officer serve as my designees okay okay thank you and I get a motion of acceptance I move that we accept the recommendation brought on by behalf of Dr Birdsong second thank you Mr Clinton seconded any discussion okay Miss Tanner go ahead and please call the vote hi Samson hi Gabriel aye Jordan aye um aye all right with that we'll um recess until all the time 11 o'clock
023and we will have our school board luncheon thank you um hi everybody thank you for your patience um so Adele you're okay with us continuing after you leave correct or you're saying absolutely okay okay all right all right man someone make sure okay um I'm excited about having to miss this really when I'm anticipating at least you get to watch it on the recording so um I'll let you guys get us started oh well um yeah let's go ahead and begin um and uh thank you valda and Inger for being here absolutely as you see we have um our new board member yeah Tiffany more Buffalo I'm built in a little welcome we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna do some official welcoming she's gonna put you to work getting caught up absolutely but you have
024the floor excellent thank you well Happy New Year everybody we're so glad to be with you and um continue this really important work um I can't believe it's already been I mean I can't believe it's January honestly so and it'll be June before we know it so um I did want to officially welcome our new board member because there's a quote from the book if you remember this on page 77 it says every time a new trustee joins the board it's a new board the new trustee May in fact bring a breath of fresh air to the board culture so no pressure but we're looking for their breath of fresh air um this is an important point to make about you know how when one member shifts the member joined to shifts to culture they
025talk about high performing teams right and and what we know is that on that high performance wheel it's forming storming norming and performing we've been working really hard to get to high performance of this board and so we don't want to have because one new member comes that we go move back into forming or storming right so and I'm glad you've not had the opportunity to kind of sit in on many of the meetings and be part of if not part of the conversation directly but you've been able to hear it particularly as we move forward the norm So today we're going to spend some time really unpacking those norms and really trying to finalize them under normal Circumstances had you not been present for those previous conversations that you've not read the governance core
026we essentially would be starting from scratch because you can't establish Norms without having you know all the people at the table so today's conversation will be looking for you to provide some of that input right to say you know what you're thinking is around the Norms that we're going to try to finalize and adopt in today's meeting so welcome what I'd like to do real quickly is allow you to tell the board members what you need from them to be successful in this role already I said each board yeah tell us what you need from us um just to be good listeners um communicators um and just um being a voice someone to receive if I need to share of anything and just be receptive to that and know everything that I do is out
027of love so I just need everyone to help me to to acclimate myself as part part of this team absolutely so absolutely well thank you and everybody you know you just heard what she needs right she needs I'm gonna read I'm going to reiterate right um open-mindedness is what I heard listening ear right um you all have been in this role some of you have been in in role of co-chair before right and you've been on the sport for some time so I think it's really important for us to adopt the attitude of how do we support your success but also how do you benefit from the experience of all the folks that are here already who have been in this in this work and so that's what true partnership is so we're excited to
028have you be part of this work um as always I'd like to start us off with the Norms that I've brought to the table but keeping in mind that after today's meeting if we adopt these your Norms we will be opening going forward with your Norms but I do want to always ground Us in keeping our eyes on the prize right everything that we do we want to be centered in what's best for Norfolk Public School students speak your truth and create space for multiple truths we've been trying to create this Brave space for honesty among this board and I would say that we've made a lot of progress I think we made a lot of progress I think that the board that you're joining now is not the same board that existed last July
029I've seen a lot of growth and so I think that that's we want to continue in that same momentum Step Up step back monitor privilege be aware of how much space you take of emotionally and verbally stay engaged because in this space we are all equal we are attempting to really get proximate to the problem the problems of this board have been around relationships but it's also we want to Center ourselves in what's best for students and have that be your work you're going to find that today we're going to spend more time talking about like you know goals and and and really lending itself to the conversation being about the academic performance of students in Norfolk right that's that's to stay in consistency with our with the commitment you all made because we are
030trying to change that narrative right around what students are capable of doing but also the image of the board right of course this is this has been this has been inconvenient and sometimes uncomfortable work but stay committed and engaged respect the process and again continue to lean in listen respectfully and respect confidentiality and then maintain hope right even in the face of brutal facts um we're going to keep holding space for centering the experiences of those most impacted and in this respect I always like us to Center the students that are most impacted right students of poverty students who you know who who are part of traditionally marginalized populations we want to always Center on what is best for them that does not mean that we're not meeting the needs of kids who come from
031affluence or who you know who may not be part of a marginalized group but it means that we're making sure that we're focusing on what each student needs right versus the every and all I'm going to recognize limitations of our own lands we all have our own biases right that create blind spots for us and we also want to make sure that we embody a posture of curiosity over judgment so we always come into this work questioning what could be different it could be better right the whole idea of dismantling and rebuilding I always like to help people remember that disruption is different than dismantling dismantling is pulling things apart and putting them back together in a better way right being more Innovative people often talk about like you know we want to disrupt the
032systems right and I'm like is there's there's a better approach to that right so I think the work of this board is not to disrupt but to dismantle systems that we know don't work for all kids and put them together in new and more innovative ways and so let's do that from you know by being curious our essential questions are the same ones we've been working with right how will you as board members live and Advance the Norfolk public school's mission statement and then what's your responsibility both personally and professionally to dismantle as I just said reimagine and rebuild the policies and practices that meet the needs of each Norfolk public school students I love the idea of dismantling and reimagining I feel like there's a lot of power in that right I think like
033when people tend to go in with a a posture of disruption there's not really a plan for what happens after that like I don't know if you guys watched the 15 rounds of the Kevin McCarthy um right trying to become speaker that that was that was derailing and that was disrupting it wasn't about dismantling right and you see how chaotic it felt and and it still it took all that time just to get to the same end result and so there's a lot of wheel spinning that comes with with being just a disrupter right whereas dismantling I feel like is so much more intention and you have a plan right and so you're saying I'm going to dismantle this existing system because it does not work for us but here's how we're going to get
034to where we want to be that was lacking in that whole process right and I want you guys as board members to think about what are the systems that we need to dismantle that don't work for us that don't serve all kids that don't meet the needs of our family how do we reimagine those and then rebuild the policies and the practices to get us where we want to be right because that's that's essentially the work of the board so I always like to frame Us in that because that's that's the big that's the big challenge that's the the B hag the big hairy audacious goal is that we get to a place where there's a clear through line in what we're doing right like the decisions that are made here at the board level
035they make their way into the instructional core there's there's a clear we can say we clear we as a board did this and here's how it impacts students in the classroom right that's the idea that's the AHA state of a board is that you can see that work and that's where we've been trying to get us right um so we just invite you to continue to lean into that so for today we're going to continue to build relationship because I think that's a big part of especially because we have a new member now and so we've built in some activities that we're going to think about how you know we can continue to advance and build the trust and relationship that needs to happen with you all everybody took the strength finders assessment and you
036brought your reports with you yes or you have your results excellent excellent you can pull them up okay great um because that's going to be we're going to kind of do an activity where we're going to ground this trust building in who we are as individuals and the strengths that we bring I think we've been in a we've been operating from uh what's wrong with each other right kind of framing right and we're moving away from that to a strength based approach what are my strengths right how do my strengths capitalize with your strengths to make us this High performing team that we espouse ourselves to want to be so we're going to focus on that we're going to adopt the norms and protocols part of your over-the-break homework was to go through the revised
037draft and to come with any edits because I want us to to finalize those norms and think about the next steps in order to make those Norms move forward but my hope is that we will actually adopt formally adopt the Norms in today's meeting okay and then we're going to talk about coherence because I ask you guys to read as your homework was the help coherence framework we're going to unpack that a little bit too because that's kind of creates the mental model for how we think about strategy management strategy monitoring all the things that the board is supposed to do so we're going to talk about that and then I have a process that I want to share with you all for how we're going to take the Strategic plan goals and run it
038through the logic model which each of the areas of kelp and so we'll get through we're going to model that with one or two of the Strategic plan initiatives but my hope is that at each meeting we can then take one of those initiatives and do the same thing run it through the logic model think about what data we need to be looking at thinking about like what needs to happen for the board to be focused on advancing the Strategic plan goals so we'll we'll walk through that and then we're going to talk about what the next steps are that we have right because we there's some things we need to be thinking about for example board priorities need to be established right um and that's going to be based on the data and based
039on strategic plan but again they're not they're not current on the website last I checked I don't haven't I didn't I didn't check like in the past week but so that's that's a an on uh an important Next Step um and then we're gonna also work on you know developing a theory of action so the two things that I think that should be public facing on your website on the board's website would be the board's theory of action as well as the board priorities and we'll get there it may not happen in today's meeting but we'll get there as we have conversations around the Strategic plan around the data around the things that we know need to happen as next steps but that's that's where we're working towards um and as always you're a community
040of practice right I like to remind us that the answers are always already in the room um Inger and I's job is to facilitate those discussions right but as a community of practice you want to make sure that you know we keep our interactions you know centered on what's going to be the work that this board does to advance the common concern right the common concern being student achievement for each student in Upper public schools and that you all become this High performing board that really is able to address the needs of students staff and Families all right Community Builder turn over to you all right so again hello and welcome everyone welcome to 2023 welcome to a new community because that's essentially what you have now and earlier in the week I was talking
041to a colleague and we were she's also in education as well and one of the things that she said is that the culture and environment is the second teacher the culture and environment is the second teacher and what defines a community of course is what their culture and the environment and so where you all are now is at a place where you're building this new community you're building a new community with a member who is familiar with what you do but that seeing it from the outside but now actually being a part of that means that that whole idea around trust and relationship building has to be re-established with new membership so I wanted to really help you all understand better understand because some people already know what it is what a community Builder is
042and why and Valor is probably like Inger no not Community but I believe in building community because it strengthens relationships it's the things that we do that are low risk because we don't want people to get anxious or anything about their opportunity to be vulnerable and share relationships but it's how we build trust and how we build collegiality within a group of individuals who are working towards the same thing everybody here is working towards the same goal and so it's important to acknowledge that in order for us to do that it has to be a constant reminder of how do we connect Community Building how do we connect relationship building how do we connect trust building all of those things go into this process so what we're going to do is give you an opportunity
043to connect in a different way so this community Builder this time together will give you a chance to just share a couple of things about yourself again it's kind of low risk so not we're not digging too deep but you're going to take a moment to think about what's one of the most influential media pieces that you're seeing it could be a book it could be a song a film that you've seen recently or a podcast that you've listened to and then think about where's home to you some people may feel like you know what I've been in this area for X number of years I'm originally from right across the Dismal Swamp in Elizabeth City North Carolina I live in Maryland have been there for over 30 years but Elizabeth City is still home
044for me I don't know why whenever somebody says are you going home yep to Elizabeth City but that's just home for me and then think about especially in this group who's your model who do you look up to could be someone that you know that is within this room it could be someone that you're related to it could be someone that you don't know but you would like to know but you see certain characteristics in that person that make you say you know what they are someone that I aspire to be or their characteristics about that that person that I Aspire and then what drives what are some of the things that drive your passion for this work so what drives your passion why are you here as a board member what's driving that so
045you're going to introduce yourself and you can start in any one of the quadrants and give you some time to think about it you can jot it down we'll leave the slide up and then we want to hear from you so take about five minutes they're picking one they can go through all of them but if there's one that really stands out for you that's the one that we want to hear about a minute each Mister just clarification on the first quadrant did you say info The Book Song is something recent or just something anything it's just an influential one okay are we starting we'll give the people to give people just a few minutes to think about it yep [Music] hello anybody ready quick you were so right right take another two minutes and
046then we'll hear what some of your thoughts are thank you all right we're going to start alphabetical by first name yes that's you okay um the first book that came to mind that's influential although I listened to a lot of podcasts these days but um I would have to say uh bullying Alone by Robert Putnam um it when I read that book um it just it was like someone gets it like they the either role of social capital and it was it's actually written about the downfall of so you know social capital and society and um and then that sparked my interest in for my dissertation so um and then actually uh I invited him here when he wrote his book um our kids and Noel and I had dinner with he and his wife
047Rosemary and it was just uh when it was like experiences um and so yeah that was um very validating and and it you know it was a great it's you know it's very influential to me um the home thing I know I'm gonna get in trouble if my husband watches this is that while um this is my home um and I'm very dedicated to this area when I go home it's Akron Ohio so that's where my family is um and uh yeah so um my uh what drives my passion for this work has to be my my vision I have this Vision in my mind that Norfolk public school district is a high performing District um where students who you know or graduates have fond memories of their experiences here where you know adults want
048to flock here to for to either work or support our schools or be a part of this great wonderful community and that's what we're known for um and then I would say my role model it would be the two women who stand out in my life are my grandmother he's 88 now miss Janet Jackson is her name and um yeah and um and her best friend Mary my Aunt Mary um we all aren't Mary and uh Hildebran and the work that they and also my grandfather did in Akron public schools and I was just just growing up hearing the stories about the newspaper drives and how they volunteered their time to make sure there's a lot of unrest in the late 60s and how they would um Mary actually was the president of the Akron
049PTA and my grandmother was the vice president and they would travel all over the state trying to bring resources and and to resolve the conflicts that were going on and and they patrolled the school the school to make sure that all the kids were in the classrooms and no one was hanging out outside you know everyone was where they needed to be on time and and just hearing just all of like you know when you're little you're like you old ladies did that but you know just the impact that they continue to have and in the involvement they continue to have in the in the schools there um it's just really always obviously left an impression on me yeah excellent cool that's what that's the kind of that whole idea around the uh the immortality
050of influence how people influence you in so many different ways so thank you Dr baritone I thought it was first name that was just to get a start okay that was really just to get us started but we can go back to that I'm fine Carlos see I learned that in Norfolk schools okay so the influential book um um I was kind of the thing but honestly I went back to a book um it's kind of like when I got my first start in my professional career and it was who Moved My Cheese by Dr Spencer Johnson and um which was really cool at an early age adapting the change um you know both in life and work and so constantly being able to to how do you approach that and how do you move
051forward that so it's kind of been my Mantra learning from that being that that person is like okay right you know change how you keep it moving as long as you're staying focused so that kind of jumps into what drives your passion for this work um and that is the ability to know that I was a student in in this division from this community um and knowing that I'm in a position to be able to positively make an impact um very much like the individual teachers that did for me and changing the director of my life and exposure and then I have the opportunity to try to do that for so many others and to do that in an impactful way in working with our superintendent and colleagues to do that so that's what drives
052me how can we push to create change that can just change the old trajectory of of how we do public education and and to open their eyes and the opportunities for so many students so where's Home of course right here Norfolk Virginia 757 Park Place LP um [Laughter] well you know so um those are I mean this is home this has been home for me been a lot of places but Hampton Roads Norfolk always has a special place role model is kind of hard but I will say that now kind of more in my professional life the two in Two Gentlemen who come to mind that I had an opportunity to work with when I was president of the National Urban League Young professionals and that was President Mark moriel and both of them are
053fraternity Brothers of mine and then the other one is Don Cravens who was ahead of our policy but now he's the first under secretary for our new minority Division and both of these gentlemen from their leadership um to how they impacted change their career Pathways and the different roles that they were in have always been an inspiration and they're people that I consistently have an opportunity to communicate with and they serve as an inspiration to kind of drive to keep going excellent thank you I love learning more about you all because it's always those things that help you connect all right who's next is it over here L okay we're in Alice [Laughter] um the most influential book that I can think of that really guided similar to the stuff I did in my work
054[Music] um can't go wrong with that briefs and I my whole trip um after attending one of his things he worked a lot with our school district and uh and I had I was in it was year four uh which was five years before the Sol started I I was this I went in second year as a principal and um and and we were one of the lowest lowest five schools in our district when the sols came out and our district was in the toilet so you could imagine how low Ocean View was at that time and so I was trying to to step back and see what we were doing wrong and what we could do and but I kind of just stayed with the same pattern that we had had in our building
055for the first year and then I started going to his training and uh and I can remember it after year three when we did I went in and I just changed so much because sometimes that's I mean you can't just keep doing the same old thing and we made changes and we got rid of committees and we just did data uh vertical and and horizontal stuff and and and we started having Saturday data I mean um in um check creating our own little little uh tests that we would give each each month and we just did all these different things and we and I made and I made a notebook for every single teacher dismantle then you rebuilt it sounds like right yeah so anyway so I'm reading his new book as I'm flying home
056trying to think what am I going to do because it was it was year three for me usually about three years you can turn school around I think we found out that's not necessarily true certainly wasn't an ocean view because we were flat I was out out on the playground it was field day and I got a thing to come in because back then they just the state just dropped all your data you know nothing was secret everything was boom it was out there and I'm trying to get it by grade level and to teach and realizing that we were flat after all those even the notebooks I gave them and uh and so I'm reading it and and I'm thinking what what he told me what I learned from that was you can have
057all the data in the world but you have to you have to use it and that was the piece that was missing which RTI actually fulfilled for us later but finding that out and coming back and putting those things into what we were doing we had already created our notebooks we already we'd already made up our little assessment tests and all but we were flat flat flat and once we implemented it the next year we had like 20 point up all kinds of things just everyone knew how to do it we just were doing it and it and it changed the way I looked at education I looked at how to teach my children how to track to make sure I would catch anyone that fell overboard I mean it just everything just in one
058year and and that was all the inspiration from his and his you know sessions that he did to train us but also for coming in and explaining stuff it was anyway I don't talk too long again but uh that's that's why that book was influential I'll if I didn't already I think I threw so much of my SQL stuff when I moved on in back in January but I will let y'all know what that book is if if you wanted to get into that and I learned to just tack it on to what he did into the RTI that I was so known for and um and it changed everything uh role model is hard for me for for a while but as I thought about it I realized there was a principle that was
059very influential in my life that was before Ocean View and we opened Ghent was when we were open against school and it was totally different from everything it was now they've you know put stuff to create walls again but before it was wide open to these big communities uh everything she did was different the the fourth through fifth graders would be would come into their little grade level area but then they would split up depending on where they were in the extra help they needed it was just different from anything I'd seen before and I learned that and that was something I could go back to when I was reading Doug Reeves is you have to take that jumping in you have to do something different because it ain't going to change if you don't
060and so that was Bonnie Bill she's a retired principal now but she was probably my biggest role model for what I do the reimagining yeah yeah home what can I say East Beach Norfolk Virginia since since the third year of college I've been here I used to live across the river in Yorktown but then I was here and yorktown's been so far in my past no what about Caroline what you can't forget about Carolina oh no one can talk to her never forget but I left Carolina when I was seven but I did go back to stay with my grandmother every summer until I was 12. all right and what was the last one oh well it's easy my passion's children that that's where I get the extra that I talked about is the children
061thank you thank you all right who's next Who's Next oh it's me um my role models are my parents my mom and my dad my mom's in heaven right now she passed away before I came onto the school board but I can say now as a parent and thinking back on everything that they taught me um my home was filled with a lot of love and sacrifice and I appreciate that now as a parent uh parenting my own children and seeing what they are going through and I try to think about that as a role that I serve as a board member start everything with love of what you do and and try to go from there so those are my role models my home is in Norfolk Virginia this is where I was born
062in my home the most influential book um I would have to say at this point in time in my life is probably the Bible it's kind of like one of those books where you read it at one age or you read excerpts and it means different things at different times in your life but again now going through this as a parent with a lot of different other responsibilities you interpret the meanings that it has that the scriptures have in a different light and you you try to think of it from almost like an omnipresent sort of perspective um and it it really has for me it has the answers to a lot of things like um for example I remember I got into this Marie condo kick about trying to tidy up the house and
063everything and then we go to church in one of the Gospel readings is about you know Jesus saying you don't need all these Treasures you know you just need you know to believe you know and and that was it and I was like man I should have just gone back and read that message it was here all along um they're always speaking to you yeah every time so um so I would say that that probably is a book that is influencing me probably uh the most at this time I really didn't have a lot of time to read a lot of other um like luxury reading because I'm always reading medical text on my patients so you know that is my that is probably my go-to and then what drives my passion it it is
064kids I knew at third grade I wanted to be a pediatrician I knew I always wanted to work with kids and I think that my drive this like internal sort of sense that I have in my my inner being My Philosophy is driven to number one help others but specifically for children because they are our future and they are going to be the ones that leave the Legacy they are our Legacy and if we can do right by them then we know that this world will be in a better place than we found it so that's my passion thank you that's awesome all right I think I'm up that's right R I think so um well I started off uh thinking we had to do one but I feel like we can do a little
065Jazz here so um who are influential book um I wrote down many but um I kind of thought back to junior high high school so I one one is uh miseducational the Negro by Carter G Woodson um who uh many hope everybody knows is the father of negro history week and what we now know is Black History Month um but in the book he was examining uh what role does education play uh this was I guess he wrote it back in the 1930s I think uh so that that book um was one of the first books that I think that kind of impacted me in terms of uh academic excellence and achievement and uh really individualized learning how do you appreciate education and his roles for in his role impacting individuals based upon their experiences
066and circumstances and how are you how do we as a educational system uh address those those needs so that was one um I Think Jesus is going to disinherited by Howard Thurman is another so as Dr Gabriel was mentioning the Bible Jesus had disinherited Howard Thurman was a theologian um I think opened one of if not the first but definitely in California the first uh what we call interracial Church in uh in in the country but he was considered to be the spiritual Godfather the civil rights movement and then Jesus in a disinherited he asked the question what does the message of Jesus mean to those whose backs are against the wall so we talk about dismantling and who we're impacting I think of things in in that context and then I'd also written you
067know Dr King's letter from a Birmingham Jail um home uh uh home is Norfolk but home is also the home where I grew up which is in Virginia Beach so uh that's that's home uh uh Park places home and green Pine Lane is home uh Role Models I have many uh I originally wrote down Ed Haywood who used to be on our board I wrote down my father I wrote down Montana but then I decided on the founding members of uh Lambda gamda Omega chapter of alpha cap Alpha sorority in Virginia Beach where my mother and my Anna were founding members and growing up a lot of the meetings were at our house or in our backyard but uh watching them and their service to education and I just being exposed there uh just really
068gave me a sense that you could just do anything as I watched them do what they what they did outside of singing the song and uh and then what drives my passion uh generational advancement seeing the progress of you know it's at least in my family the the objective is you're supposed to leave things better than you found it and so we were talking a little bit over lunch and you know I just think about the progression from my at least on one side to family great grandmother the grandmother to mother to me who kind of screwed it up and uh and now hopefully seeing my daughters and my grandson have it better than than I had it so that that really drives me and also in the context of dismantling barriers and then rebuilding
069systems that uh hopefully using my what I call my grandson Josiah I don't want Josiah to have to go through the same thing that his mother Paige did who went through the same some of the same things that I went through I want to see that changed I think I hit them all thank you I think it's interesting two things resonate for me um one to leave things better than you found them that's like a valburn family Mantra like my parents were very big on that Mother's Day always say from the simplest things to the large things if you've touched it and you need to leave it better and that's always stay with me and then the other thing that you mentioned is that changing conditions for your grandson the one thing that we know
070about education is that like it's the one thing that hasn't changed like think about like think about like from the Inception of when school started it still looks the same like you know what I mean like every like all the technology advances and so that does speak to the power you have as a board right because we've we've systemically not changed what school looks like and there's so much power in that idea of being Innovative right and thinking about how do we shift those conditions so that's like a perfect way to kind of think about like how do we make sure that our grandkids don't have the same experiences that we had right love that yeah thank you and the power of family you almost everyone has talked about a family connection and the influence
071of family so think about that from the students perspective and how many of our students are impacted and influenced by their families yeah all right two more real quick I think yeah okay so I think I'm next um [Laughter] well speaking of family I'll start with um my role models my role models are definitely my parents my father is no longer living he died long ago at a very early age at 43 and I miss them every single day but he had a tremendous impact on my life um everyone in my family says that I am my my father's daughter so um you know my mom reminds me of that often so yeah so I can imagine when she's upset that's just like your dad blah blah blah um but definitely they they are my
072role models um my parents work very very hard and um they were very proud that they educated four kids and they provided good home they provided us access to a lot and it's because they worked hard it was all about hard work my mom they were very different my mom was very kind of calm and was kind of the reasonable person in the house that you could go to and and talk to about anything and and my father was you know all about social justice I mean he spent some time in jail for Marching for civil rights and all kinds of things but definitely an activists and and very very involved in what he felt like doing the right thing for for his people he would say and so there's some history there in Wilmington
073with the Wilmington 10 I won't go into all of that but yeah my dad knows a lot about that and so there were a lot of things that I was exposed to very young that I got to see myself like history in the making and I'm not going to go into all of that but again they are definitely my role models and if I'm half the parent that they were to us then I'm very proud of what we've done with our children so they were my role models but also had another role model my kindergarten teacher Margaret Brown and Miss Brown was probably one of two or three Brown teachers in our whole school I just remember going to you know kindergarten first day of school there weren't a lot of children who looked like
074me and definitely not a lot of teachers and the principal I remember this well the principal did not welcome my parents into the school with with open arms I'll never forget that and they they knew that and they talked about it at dinner but that did not keep my mom from joining the PTA and for being active from being active in the school so she was definitely there and very visible and I think because now that I'm older I can better understand some things that went on during that time I just remember Miss Brown allowing me to do a lot of things that maybe perhaps other children didn't get the opportunity to do one thing that my parents did they made sure that we could all read like by the time we were like three
075we were like reading and so in kindergarten every day at the lunch I got to read to the class because nobody else knew how to read but I knew how to read and so I got to read to the class and she would she would make me feel special she would tell me you can do anything you want want to do and I'll never forget that I'll never forget that so she was definitely a role model and influenced me in being an educator as well living he's not she's not and so home would be Wilmington North Carolina for it for me that's where I was born and raised I'm a Carolina girl magret girls raised on it I own it I love it and yeah and I miss it I don't get to go home
076very often my mom reminds me of that all the time so she might be watching hi Mom I'll be home soon but yes Wilmington is definitely home for me that's where I feel most at home is is in Wilmington North Carolina born and raised my mom still lives in the same house that they built we were the only family that lived in the house she still lives in that house and so lots of wonderful wonderful memories in Wilmington and that's why it feels so much like home to me um what drives my passion for the work um let me talk about the book first one of the books and this is a professional reading Mike schmoker is one of my favorite authors um so he wrote as you probably already know focus and he wrote
077a second edition to that so when I was kind of piggybacking on Lauren's story I'm reminded of being a brand new principal at Azalea Gardens Middle School and just just there was so much that had to be done in addition to student achievement there were so many other things that that had to be a focus you know that I thought you know going in as a as a brand new principal but after reading that book I quickly learned that I would not be able to do everything overnight um and I thought I could I mean you really go in thinking I'm Gonna Change the World and it's going to be wonderful and great and it doesn't happen that way so I I quickly learned how to focus on the focus and so I we had
078to come together I had to be very strategic we had to talk about what our priorities were set goals and then move forward to achieving those goals and I think um we also did a book study on that book at the school and so everybody was on the same page what you know this is what we need to do we're all on board you know make changes along the way but again all about the children academic achievement and so he we had an opportunity to invite him this Summer to our leadership conference so he he came I was like oh I get to meet him in person and so he did um um he provided professional development for my building principals in central office staff and it was just really good and um and speaking
079of strength finders that used to be it's interesting I took it before and you know lots of changes with my my top five but Focus used to be one of mine it didn't appear this time so it was kind of interesting so yeah it was a bit interesting but definitely a very good read and so what drives my passion for this work um it's all about it's about the children it truly is and making a difference and I know what education has done for me in my life and my siblings and family members and we have that opportunity to provide a high quality education for the children in Norfolk and they can they'll be able to do anything that they want to do and and that drives me each and every day I also think
080about access and opportunities and options it was my experience just about my whole life I was probably one the only African-American child of my all of my classes or one of two and and it again because my parents pushed for you know she will be tested you know and if she's gifted she will be in these classes and it was just it was a struggle just to get those options provided to all and I I knew that there were other children who were brilliant but maybe because they didn't lack that you know parental support at that time different factors of course for every different for for families but just didn't have options and opportunities and that's what I have to do I have to make sure that all kids have options and opportunities so they
081can achieve whatever they want to achieve in their lives yeah wow this is a powerful thing yep and then there's more Buffalo right um so I guess I'll start with a book um with so one of the books that I found very influential and inspiring to me was a book called my own country by Abraham virgasi it's a book by a physician he's a physician author who wrote about the HIV AIDS epidemic before it was known to be you know um before it was known to be that in Tennessee and what inspired me about it was I was just starting my master's program in public health then and just the just the nuances of one you know the bewilderment of you know the symptoms that we're presenting among the patients that were coming into the
082hospital and wondering and trying to figure out you know what was going on what was happening and it just it just he the emotion The Compassion the the drive to figure out you know what what was happening just wrapped up in this um it was a memoir you know of of that time um was really inspiring to me and at a time when you know I knew I wanted to go in the public health route but was also struggling with a lifelong of being brainwashed into going into Medicine by you know my parents were like you're you're going to be a doctor and so it just really honed in the importance of Public Health and the role that that plays in um in medicine just in general so it really informed the path I would
083take professionally and just in a lot of different ways and that book just really um if you haven't read it I would read it um it's a great book he's a great writer he's written other books too that are fantastic but um anyway that was a influential book in my in my life in my life in my profession and and all of that um where is home that's a complicated uh piece for me um because you know I hear comments like you know home is a place I love or a place you know you feel really connected to or something you know I've lived here for 16 years I had someone earlier that are swearing in say oh are you from here you know you know how long have you and I've lived here for
08416 years and you know I'll be um I'll be honest it doesn't feel like home yet to me um you know we've talked about I've been involved with the school system for long before I was on the school board been part of the mission of it being a proudly diverse community and they grew a long way from there it doesn't feel like that as an indian-american it doesn't feel like that it doesn't feel like come to me here and I don't know that we will stay here um for Beyond when my children are out of Norfolk Public Schools because it doesn't feel that to me and so when I think about I also think about where places that have had impacts on me just in life I think of my time in Atlanta which is
085where we live before I moved here where I have my kids that to me is is a big you know emotional connection and then I think you know where I grew up but then I think you know and I've been thinking a lot about this because my parents are are Elder you know are getting older I'm in that place of being sandwiched between teenagers who are you know going to college and also having elderly parents that need my attention too and being an immigrant family and having spent lots of time in India as well and my parents wanting to be there and so and we spent a lot of time there and having right now lots of conversations with my dad about wanting to go there as he's his health is not doing great and
086I've been thinking a lot about the times that we've spent there and the connection with I have lots of family there and when you talk about that connection with family I I feel like I almost have a stronger connection there even though I'm here every day but it's that that sense of connection um there as well so home is complicated um so I'll leave it there um but I want to say as part of what drives my passion for this work the piece about embracing diversity is part of what drives my work and in a city that is diverse I think that there's room for improvement and how we Embrace that diversity but I'll get back for a more complete answer on that too role model you know there there are many but I also
087again I guess because I've been very reflective on my parents too and having a lot of emotion there um you know my dad likes to remind me he came here with six dollars in his pocket we have a similar story you know um even though I was a trained physician how to start basically from the beginning in an ink Factory and in working in a florist and just uh just starting from the beginning and um and the things that my parents prioritized along the way you know to build that like you said a generational advancement um for my sister and I and then what we are trying to build you know as the first generation for our kids and the priority that they placed for us on education the value that they placed on education
088for us and what we are doing for our children you know that's that's also what drives my passion for this work um but when I think of Role Models I think you know we look at role models in various ways whether it's love whether it's you know and that that's very complicated when you talk about parents sometimes and I think that's true of our of the students that we serve you know we talk about parents it can be very complicated and families are very complicated and families mean different things to different people um so so I'll leave I'll leave that there what drives my passion is I feel like we know like I think a little bit to your point I think we know the why like why we are where we are and what
089drives and for me and it's also reflected in my results is I always want to know the why like the analytical piece is one of my is like I want to know why it's happening it's in my professional you know has been you know the core of some of the the professional work I've done it's the core of like when I'm looking at data I want to know why and and if I know why I want to know now what are we going to do about it but curiosity is what drives Innovation yeah exactly and and I think like you said school has been how it's been it's been the exact same we could talk about our experiences whether whether we're You know despite our age you know we have age diversity on our board
090but yet you know school is still school could look very similar um and it's it would even look very similar uh for Mr Jordan's grandson if he were you know it's it's just it's very similar and and we know why there are discrepancies we know why or disparities and now it's what drives me is let's do something it's time for action it's time for Innovation and so that's what drives me so oh wow thank you there thank you and and I know that we're we're running short on time but I do want to make sure we get wild time but I hope as you're hearing these conversations you are seeing each other differently and you're seeing how people bring these different strengths and these different experiences to everything that you are hearing and seeing and
091doing as part of this this board work so these are all the things that show that show up in the way you show up right they influence the way you show up so yeah okay well influential Book song film or podcast um when I was working at the middle school level years ago here in Norfolk we had a faculty reading failure is not an option by Alex blindstein and it talked about the six principles for making students success the only option and so sitting in a support role I always wondered what how would I do impact Student Success I'm not a classroom teacher I'm not the principal I'm not the AP but I have a part in this work and so just understanding my role and how I can impact children and what I do
092daily you know in families our community where is home uh I grew up on the South Side Chicago I am the South Side Chicago girl I moved here as a teenager attended Granby and Norview High School those that's where my roots are you know praying playing double dutch fire hydrant just I remember a strong sense of community schooling I went to predominantly black schools with teachers that look like me so I got a very Firm Foundation of who I was and and everything so Chicago is definitely home but I've been here since I was what 15. that's I'm telling my age but it was a long time ago so yes I considered them both home but I definitely got the foundation of who I am um in Chicago Role Models oh I have many from
093teachers to clergy to people I serve with in Ministry to you know uh women I served with and sorority because one common thing they're all Community minded and they love people and I love people I love the diversity in people and so my role models um are examples of that so from teachers um you know leaders that I work with and many I could say and that's what draws draws me to that because of community-minded people minded and so um I could go on about role models um what drives my passion for this work um I think it's been said several times children and how the work we do impacts that I think you said when you can see your work and how it trickles down and um policy making and making sure that everyone
094gets what they need whether it's instruction going into a safe and secure building policies around Personnel that we retain and hire the best of the best to teach our children so that was drives me is what I do here and how it's going to possibly impact what we what we're doing for our children thank you so I'm gonna I I'm gonna hop in because I feel like in the spirit of of transparency that we should also share so we're gonna pick one because we're running out of time so you're going to pick think of your one I'm gonna do Role Models um just because there's somebody there's so many similarities and experiences that I heard from as you guys were sharing I don't know if you know this I'm the child of immigrants uh my
095parents are from Haiti I'm the only one of my siblings six siblings born in this country and as I was listening to Mr Jordan talk I was like oh my God sounds like my mother because my mother would always say you know that they I recognize that I said on the sacrifices of you know of my family right and so she would always say we didn't come to this country for you not to to take experience and so if you've been there if you've touched it leave it better and so that resonated for me I also think about you know both my parents are deceased but you know I feel like I am they're you know that saying that t-shirt your your ancestors wildest dreams I feel like my siblings and I are there a
096while the streams right like we you know they were able to put us all through college and everybody is doing the damn thing right whatever that thing is and so I often think about if I didn't have them as parents would I be sitting here today in front of you right would I would have had the experiences that I've had and so um so I think that that's that's very much shapes who I am and how I show up to this work having been the only child of color for most of my Catholic School upbringing like sitting on the on the receiving end of a lack of cultural competence the inexperience of the Educators that worked with me around diversity equity and inclusion and ways to create belonging in those classrooms all of that is
097why we do the equity work now right because I think back to my experience and I say I want to work with boards and principals and school districts that are trying to change those conditions I don't want any kid to have that same story you know when they're 50 something and they're able to think back you know to their experience and so I think all those things shape the value you guys get to experience once a month because those are all the impacts you know that that shaped my my K-12 experience that I really I ground myself in when we work with districts around how they can change those conditions so anger all right so I'm gonna lean into the role model piece too and think about my family on both my mother's side and
098on my father's side on my father's side I grew up with great grandparents a lot of people did not have that opportunity my great-grandparents were very influential because they did not have a lot at all I mean I remember going to visit them in Williamston North Carolina they did not have indoor plumbing so I was like okay we got to go back there again but I'm okay we're going you know I Want To Be A Champion I'm gonna go but even without that it did not matter because they created the kind of memories and shared the kind of love that made me want to go back and sit with them and visit my grand great-grandfather's Brothers started their own school he was a very handsome man very handsome and just kind of quiet and stoic
099but had so much history behind him and love for his family love for his family and always always with a smile and I say that because there were a lot of things that he didn't necessarily have to smile about because again they were not rich they but they put kids through college my grandmother and my aunt uh you know some of them had the opportunity to go to college back in the 40s and that for me was just like I can't believe that you've had these opportunities and in addition to that again on my father's side my cousin was supposed to be the valedictorian of his class that year they did not have a valedictorian at his school because they did not want a black man a black student to be valedictorian even though he
100went on graduated from Colgate graduated from Stanford law he was still even to we had this conversation last year he still remembers the pain of that and I again don't want anybody to feel that pain either of my boys or any any child on my mom's side they were activists my mom bless her heart she's deceased but she was only about five feet tall but she was I used to call her fearsome feisty because she did not play and one of the things that again I loved about my mom's side of the family is that her mother was not given the opportunity to vote because in North Carolina you had to be able to read the preamble and to write the Preamble she couldn't do either she did not let that interfere with her being
101able to vote she was able to change the voting laws in North Carolina in a case it's Bazemore versus a state I think you're related to the base Morse yes I know them in Williamston yeah well taught me yes yep she was able to change voting laws even though and think about this she could not read well she could not write the Preamble but that did not stop her and I think about all you all have said about children and being resilient and persevering that's the kind of family that has shaped me and so when people say Inger you can't do that I'm like up that's all I needed that was the call I'm gonna do it I'm gonna make it happen and so we've got kids and families when they hear those things they're
102like okay I'm gonna do it I'm going to make it happen and we all have to have that in spite of everything I'm going to make a happen attitude with this group in spite of all the things that have been going on you're going to make it happen yeah I'm just going to ask him to make cousins to both of you actually in in Dr burst song I just wanted it so I'm working with a group that's in conversations with Dr Ben Chavis with the Wilmington and so as you were if it ever comes a time that you feel comfortable I would love to hear that story because uh you know I knew Dr Chivas before but when I met him on this Zoom call um I found out that when he came to Norfolk
103he got arrested in Portsmouth and my uncle got him out of jail and I had no idea to that conversation and then my uncle also worked on Virginia's poll tax and they did a lot of work around the South and I would love to know if there's a connection with with with your story that you just described so those things just kind of resonated so I just wanted to put out there that I would love to hear that story and then I've been work with some young people who have been documenting those types of stories and I hope that you know we got our own pain and trauma too in our family with that stuff but I think we should tell those stories and make sure that they are left for others to to hear
104and it's interesting too because it it really surfaces how we all have some level of impact on History right and and and you know like it's the reach back history but it's also like we don't know what history we're impacting today for moving forward right when you're in a position of power when you've got the The Authority both formal and informal we don't recognize it in the moment but we are shaping history right and so you know imagine 40 years from now and and the conversation with that board is I remember our superintendent was a lady named Dr bird song right or you know what I'm saying like you never know like what the story is the impacts you've had and and your historical context That You Don't See yet so I love the fact
105that we've kind of had this conversation grounded in the things that influence us because they shape the way that we influence others and so we have the responsibility to kind of pay that forward so I appreciate that and they shape the strengths that you all bring so yeah absolutely so so we had intended to probably be a shorter exercise but I don't care because it worked out beautifully I think we we've been striving for you all to get to know each other and it kind of is a great segue into what we're doing next right because we are going to still be telling our story so you just kind of had your preamble to your story but I want you to we're going to do an activity you're gonna get up and move around a
106little bit but we want you to focus on your strengths right oftentimes when we engage with people we engage with them in ways that create comfort for us right and so we focus on the things we have in common right we minimize our differences and that kind of thing and so we wanted to have this conversation grounded in your strength finder results because we want you to be able to share with one another here are my strengths here's what I bring to this work right you just found out the why you found out who the role models are you found out where people where their sense of home is but what we want to focus on too is you know what are my strengths how do those strengths show up in the way that we
107engage with one another and how can I use my strengths to capitalize off of your strengths right so we're moving out of the deficit mindset into a strength-based um way of thinking and so um Tom Ross Tom wrath who wrote uh strength finder says if you spend your life trying to be good at everything you'll never regret at anything right and how true was that right and oftentimes As Leaders we feel like we have to do it all right Lauren you were saying you went in that school and you're like I gotta turn this around I got to do this fast right same thing with you I had the same experience as a principal first year principle let me fix this right and then I quickly realized wait a minute this is going to take
108a little longer than I thought sitting down in tears one day exactly right and so and I think that as Leaders we have to resist the urge of trying to be great at everything right and recognizing and focusing to your point on the things that we know are going to get us to the most results for the children here in Knoxville public schools and so so keep that friend of mine as we go through it in the toolkit um you need to link again real quick does everybody have access to the toolkey I'm going to pull it up let me let me I have a slide that the QR code somewhere right here thank oh wait I may have I think I do it yeah you have access to the folders oh it's going to
109bring up the QR code [Music] there you go you can use your phone on the QR or you can type in the bitly there's a folder for January 11th I believe right Mr Jordan foreign [Music] good good yeah we're going to in a moment hold on to this one in the other one okay she I didn't have the this one done before so in the folder is a um document that looks like this let me go back real quick um looks like that lifting strengths themes it's just a two-pager that has all the themes from the assessment on it and hopefully you know where you fall on on this your primary orientations but there's four domains of Team strength that I want us to spend a few minutes talking about you know where you land
110in a moment you're going to share with share with the group in an activity where you land but they're executing influencing relationship building and being a strategic thinker and so if you're dominant with executing it says that you're probably outstanding at getting things done right if you're an influencer right you're you're at you're outstanding getting momentum building momentum with others right and the first one executing is really about how you helped make action occur right how you move things forward I'm I'm executing that's me I'm an Executor right it says there in a work setting you're likely excellent at turning a vision into tangible practical steps and you can take the 30 1000 foot idea and get to the street level resources to pull it off oftentimes people who are Visionaries are not the same
111as people who are in actors right I don't ever worked for folks like if you have previous bosses that had great ideas right and could articulate them beautifully but but then relied on the people around them to make it happen right and so most times Visionaries are not necessarily executors the influencer though right that person does get build momentum in others right that person can you know call out what needs to happen um and then they say here at a work set and you're likely comfortable with taking charge you might speak up or give others a voice or give or give a project a voice when it would have otherwise been ignored so if that's if you're influencer that's where you fall relationship Builder right that's a person who is has high emotional High emotional
112intelligence High EQ right um and they they got good people skills like they they're the person who who can rally the troops who can get people to like you know listen to them right it says here on the job you probably build rapport easily you help others feel seen heard expected and you can pick up on those nuances that hold a team together to create that culture of high performance that we're aiming for and then a strategic thinker this is a person that can make decisions right and they're a critical thinker they kind of see things through they get all the pieces and parts before they make a decision says on the job you can absorb and analyze information well you probably enjoy nerding out on chosen topics you might like research predicting processing information
113in a way that teammates don't it's funny because as you guys were sharing earlier I was listening to trying to figure out who's in what by what they said right like I got I don't know I could be wrong but I got thinker from Miss bassane saying like that Curiosity so I don't know if thinking is one of your top two but I got that whole curiosity and that like one having questions wanting to know why right that's a strategic thinker so hopefully you you know you see yourself in each of these right for for executing some of the key terms that come out are achiever arranger you know having belief consistency deliberate Focus right responsibility being restorative for an influencer right that you're some of the key terms are activator command communication competition right
114um self-assurance significance woo have the woo Factor right that's a person who you know can get people to say oh I get it yeah you know I'm with you on that right relationship Builder just what it sounds like right adaptable connectedness developer has empathy uh an includer right those are all the terms related positivity those are people that hold the team together and then strategic thinker some of the key terms are analytical context futuristic ideation right input intellect a learner and one who's strategic all right so you know where you fall in each of these areas and what we're going to do is I've got you in groups of four there's only two groups I'm going to take one side of the room other side of the room so you're gonna get up and what
115you're going to do in your groups is you're going to each person is going to spend five minutes you have the floor for five minutes to share your story through your strengths right and so you're going to think you're going to say I'm an I'm influencer I'm relationship Builder I'm executor I'm strategic thinking here's how that shows up and how you experience me Etc right after each person shares I want the whole group The the quad to then take five minutes and make connections I connected to that Rodney because I connect to what you said Carlos because right and so each person will make their connections in your conversation and then after each after that you're going to have another five minutes to talk about um how you're going to leverage the collective strengths and
116talents of the group and we're going to share that out with the larger group so both groups are going to have their separate conversations and they're going to come back together right so group one is Dr bird'song Dr Gabriel miss campson Mr Jordan and group two is Mr Clinton Mr sane Dr Martin who had to leave us in Miss Buffalo so you'll be a smaller group for a moment that's okay but what I want you to do is when you're in that group so you're going to share your strength you have like I said you have five minutes you're gonna share your strength you're going to tell your story around how that strength shows up as with you as an individual but also you know how you bring that strength but I want you to
117incorporate these these four kind of prompts you get the best of me when you get the worst of me when you can count on me too and what I need from you is right I'll leave the slide up for you so when you're in your groups so five minutes because I think the report like do you have Dr Martin's spot top five I don't oh okay no because I thought you probably had it yeah we thought maybe the you've all also got we did not get your results we wanted them to be organic huh yeah okay yeah so I don't have so I don't have it we don't have anybody's results so that's what you're so oh okay so what you're what you're going to do in your small groups is you're going to only
118share your primary orientation oh yeah I'm sorry I left that out this is your top strength your top strength right you got an uh if we got a strength from one to uh five oh it's whatever Falls in that category number one you're for your primary orientation right so you're gonna share oops sorry so you're going to share your your number one your primary orientation in in your five minutes time now you can if you wanna you have five minutes five minutes five minutes is a lot when you think about it right so you might say you know what my top was this but here's where here's the other places that I show up share what was it wasn't surprising to you share how you think it manifests itself in the way you you know
119show up to this work um to use your five minutes wisely I'll give you up I might give you a little minute to plan for it but but in your five minutes you want to share those things and then you want to also incorporate the four prompts you get the best of me when you get the worst of me when you can count on me and you I what I need from you okay yeah tied to my strength go back to the previous slide so the the someone said they got four if something said they got five the one that was number one look in the pie chart you find that if that tells you your domain yes yes yeah so if you guys want to take a minute take a minute go yeah your
120report should have it too the color coded they're color-coded as well foreign they'll tell you if it's executing or strategic thinking or relationship building or influencing yeah on your on your results report yeah you should have the it should be color coded yeah for each area and I tried to match the color so and she also put it in the uh toolkit and like yeah on this page see how they're yeah what I'm saying anyway we'll figure it out no okay so take a minute take one minute let's actually let's do a um if you need to do a bathroom break go ahead and do that too prepare for your conversation and then we'll come back in five minutes and you'll get in your respective groups everybody good with that okay yes five minutes per
121person to share so they have the floor for that five minutes then you each make a connection and within the five minute period so then you can each go around and say oh I connect to Sharon in this way right okay whoever the speaker is then at the end after everybody has gone and you've each had an opportunity to make the to draw the through line for your connections then you say how do we capitalize off of our group strengths right we're going to come back and do a debrief so that you'll be able to hear some of what they came up with and some of what you came up with when we come back together so I want you to follow that protocol but also as you're having that conversation you add these four
122prompts when you're the presenter the you get the best of me the worst of me you can count on me and what I need from you okay everybody clear or I'm Gonna Keep time for you I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna keep reminding okay I'm gonna keep reminding you time wise all right everybody ready everybody clearing the directions yes yes all right go for it you all decide amongst yourself who goes first so as everyone is coming back make yourselves comfortable if you need to stand if you need to stretch do what you need to do so that you're ready to kind of engage again so we want to hear from you all in your in your small groups what were some of the findings that you had so um take a minute think about
123what were some of the things that you learned about the strengths of your colleagues today and then the biggest thing is how are you going to apply what you learn about each other and really strengthening and working and building these relationships so what's something that you learned and not every you know we don't have to hear hear from everyone but if there are some things that you're like wow this was really important especially as we begin working together we want to hear that yeah since you guys didn't hear what each other said too maybe from each group you can kind of share something I learned in my my search okay all right I learned that Tanya is a researcher and she loves it so uh you know when you talk about policy and want to
124get research on policies and how to move forward about you know get information about a policy um creation I would you know as Tonya do you mind you know I know who you go to yeah she loves to do that so have at it I'll I'll add for for my group um so we we had commonalities with the analytical executed executor um realm but it was interesting um well we didn't have Dr Mark Adele wasn't with us so really um you know with the five strengths you know I really fell into domains whereas like Carlos for instance fell in more than two domains so you know I just think um I don't I don't know how to uh which I thought was interesting that so that maybe you know I like I'm more like a
125behind the scenes worker bee kind of person and maybe he's a more out front person you know um and so those are some Revelations and and uh you know that may be already part of our you know what we already know about each other uh but also it's kind of affirms affirm some of that you know how do you see opportunities to put that to use in other words how do you apply that um I think I think for us you know even when we talked about the for the paradigms of I think I think it I hope that it leads to better understanding um is where I see it taking us you know the what do you need from me you know when we did that exercise it was like okay so you see
126that this is this is who I am like it's not like that I am trying to do something to someone it is this is who I am I need to understand things I need I ask questions I'm analytical this is who I am at my core and um so accept me for who I am and so that's but I hope that it that's I hope the story that yeah and it changes the way you see people sometimes you got to give each other reminders and say remember this is the way that I think right and seeing it as a strength right because I think that's that ends up being the the caveat is that things that may be counter to the way that we approach things we then see them as a deficit in another
127person and this like this activity is designed to help you think about it and from a strength-based framing right exactly that was um is the Triad in that particular group down there one of the first things that came out of that that I Didn't Know Tiffany is a Virgo like me so immediately I was like oh I already know some of your traits so because we we share some similar traits in that and one of the things that I learned and even with saying um even during the six months of kind of like sitting in that particular chair I knew that probably like to ask a lot of questions but it was like trying to find that balance in that one and I you know hearing from her down there it's like she's a researcher
128she's it's like I could relate when even when you were talking I didn't share to that respect but when I was younger with my mom I was that kid who asked why my mother would say something and I would say why and then it would just be keep drilling down as soon as you can get that particular sense of understanding and that was one of the things that I realized and I was like okay well that's where we had this whole conversation about documentation kind of like I said this because I want to remember things where I'm the type of person like I have so many things that are going on and I'm moving and I'm just getting it done that sometimes if you send me a text or you send me an email if
129I don't respond to it then and there it may get lost in the sauce and then that can be misinterpreted that I'm ignoring or not trying to get to you because I've moved on and then I see it and it's like oh crap so that's when I communicate it's like and I've said to talk I said anytime you've ever called me I've always answered um I'll answer the phone so for me I'm the type of person if you really want something even if you sent me an email or a text just call me and if you know and I'll get back to you and and I hope that that understanding is out there just call me um and I'm gonna communicate because that was the other thing that we realized when we were talking I
130hate text messages because I'm an analytical person so I use a lot of emojis in my text messaging because when I see things come to me I can read it and get 13 different interpretations based on what I'm experiencing at that moment or whatever this is where Dr Burson and Sharon told me to calm down because sometimes you'll be like what is this like are you okay but that's one of my things and so I've learned so why coping with that one is that I'll do Emojis so I put a smiley face like hey I'm sending this to you but I'm doing with a smile it's it's nice though it may be direct it's a smile because I'm a direct person too so it just was one of the things that we picked up was
131like oh yeah I understand because that's how she communicates with tax I know what's interesting about that like that so so you think about when how we're raised right so imagine if this goes back to like you with being a y person right if you're a raised and you are a why child but you're always told because I said so right or you're always shut down you become an adult that when you're working with a person who who's in who's inquisitive right who asks a lot of questions you see that as because you were raised with cut it out don't ask too many questions right and so then you see that as a challenge so a lot of times a lot of a lot of our reactions to people's strengths is based on our own
132upbringing remember that one of our Norms is the whole curiosity versus judgment and also recognizing our limitations of our own lens those are the we respond to people and you know what may be their strength we may see as a deficit only because of the way we we were raised right and that created a blind spot for us and so you might see a person just asking a lot of questions as you know what is this what's this person's problem right like you shouldn't be asking questions because you were raised with the whole because I said so stop asking questions sit down go children are seen not heard right all those things and so we have to recognize what parts of our yeah we have to recognize what parts of our own upbringing right make
133us experience people in these ways because you experience People based on all the filters you had coming up so that makes perfect sense yeah anybody else yeah well I think we found an interesting thing as we were doing it when we were doing the second one and the very last item was what do I need from you and and and we and what we were doing is we were doing everyone was doing one and then whipping around yeah yeah well not so much that's how we got behind we would discussing but when we got so we had done it all and we just had the last one and it was going to go around the table and and so someone said well I need you to be there to catch my back and and then
134the next person said yes and this is what what made and we got to talking about the same thing basically that was what we were all going with and I thought that's kind of the point of what we're doing even while I was over here pouting over the papers she's straight now they're used to it yeah sure exactly Sharon and Miss Tanner got you what you needed right what it accomplished for us was to realize we were kind of all on the same page which is what planning to go what we're trying to accomplish here and so I mean didn't y'all kind of feel that because we were all it was funny oh one person said I want to know that you could be there to catch my back and then someone else said yeah
135and then we started talking about different examples of it yeah so I think it it was it had a good purpose and that we learned that we had things in common was the big thing that came out of it it was a method behind our Madness I've been wondering but but I think too the importance was that is that you were able to be specific and say this what I mean by well and that's we all did that and we all just and that was like having it all of us do when after everyone doing that same one of just doing around the circle we kind of let us tie together and look at the differences yeah and it's funny too because Val and I were talking about our own I did this it's been
136years ago but one of the things that I found is one of my top ones is I'm a connector and I'm always thinking about how do we build these relationships how do we make it matter and and so she and I get on her case about it like we only have four hours with them and I'm not spending two hours doing team building mind you we just spent two and a half hours so she won that battle but and I'm the one who's like you know what it's important you have you cannot deal with people if they don't have a relationship right so yeah and we balance each other out because she is the executor I'm executor all day long and I'm like okay but first before we can execute we got to have a
137relationship so yeah so thanks for indulging Us in that because like you're right we did we spent two and a half hours really focusing on building team that's that first outcome right about how do we build these trusting relationships and we thought it was important to invest this time because we have a new board member and we appreciate you leaning into the process and hopefully it does inform the way you will engage with one another right keeping this keeping this this these interactions front of mine as you think about who your colleagues are the the many things that make up who they are like no one person in this room is a monolith and so always kind of when you when to live out that that um the norm around uh you know not coming
138from a place of curiosity you know if you can always kind of remember this activity and say what don't I know In This Moment like I'm receiving this in a contentious way or whatever the case is whatever whatever it is that you're receiving from an individual if in that moment you take the time to pause and say what don't I know in this set in this circumstances and what might be an alternative interpretation right so to spend that time saying I wonder if the reason why Carlos is responding in this way is because and you're putting it back on that's his style that's his I remember oh that's right he's he's analytical oh that's right I remember when we did the strength finder activity right that creates that buffer of your mind going straight to
139it like a negative interpretation so keep this activity in mind I think there's there's some strength in that right there's some strength in always reminding yourself that you know I need to take the time to one ask the right questions what don't I know um and why and then notice in both those both the questions that I'm posing they're not questions you're asking of others or questions you're looking asking yourself looking in the mirror for what don't I know what's another way that I can interpret what I'm feeling right now right what's an alternative interpretation to what I think I'm experiencing right now um just those two questions I think gets us to a place where you say oh you know what let me take my defense out of this let me recognize limitations of
140my own lens let me come from a place of curiosity over judgment and reframe my response to what I think I'm receiving right those same two questions by the way I had a school that I was coaching the principal and we they this particular school just had like I guess it's their process that all you had to do was fill out the referral form and Buzz and we come get the kids right and so I was coaching this principal so I I'd be on site it was in Pennsylvania and I'm like okay I know you I flew here for the day and always spent the time doing was running to classrooms to pick up kids and so I was just like this this is not working for me like I'm supposed to be here coaching
141right but what we did was I said let me see your referral form now the referral form was nothing but all these statements like into disrespectful all these like various objective things and so all a teacher had to do right Carlos is acting up let me get my little paper check check check check check check the whole thing off because all I have to do is check out boxes there's no form no place for a narrative check Buzz the office please take Carlos and be gone right and that's all we were doing is running around going and be in and picking up kids and putting them in this room and I asked to see the referral form when I saw that it was a bunch of check boxes I said I said I got something
142for you so we changed the form to those two questions What What In narrative form describe the behavior of the student right right what might be an alternative interpretation as to why the child acted that way same two questions now I will tell you referrals cut dramatic dramatically right one practice and nobody want to fill out no no no but two it forced the teacher right it forced the teacher we shift the behavior back to the adult in the room what are you doing how are you interpreting this Behavior what might be another reason why this is happening we this morning had an experience we've been talking about on the break we went to Wawa to get a cup of coffee there was a young man and this this is aligned with that I know
143you guys in your neighboring City a six-year-old I brought a gun to school right yes but in the Wawa yeah in the Wawa um a little boy who I say should have been to school but he wasn't was upset with his mother and with someone we think Mighty might have been his mother who for context was purchasing beer at 10 o'clock in the morning okay this young man had clear behavior problems like you know as an as an educator and a mother like I wanted to go scoop him up myself I wanted to go and like cut it out right but he's swinging at her and he does this gesture oh my and she makes a comment that he's lucky security is in here because there was a security guard in there that whole that
144whole thing just disturbed us terribly right and we were talking about like what kind of trauma is he experiencing right and so I so I kept thinking about that little boy in a classroom right and what are we doing with that little boy the referral come get him right and get him out of here and instead I would want someone to do what we did like we were debriefing we were like I wonder what trauma he's experienced what's causing that behavior we didn't just say she had bad kid you see how he was acting with his mother that kind of thing we immediately went to that whole you know what what don't we know right now what what what help does his child need like what's going on behind of course we don't have those
145answers but in that moment right we didn't go straight to a deficit mindset about oh he's gonna end up in jail and oh my God look at this kid which tends to be like most people's first inclination right and so so similarly right it's just it's like you know how do we train ourselves to always be in this Frame of what don't we know right what's an alternative interpretation of what we think we're experiencing and then what do we do about that you know there's a part I've been sitting here all morning thinking like where is this little boy now like because because when Mom made the comment about like I could think security needs to follow her out because she's probably going to cause him harm if they're probably going to have a fist
146fight because the way he was swinging at her he was doing mid-air swinging like you know like towards her it was the most disturbing thing and this kid five six tops I would say six at the most and the mom likely may have some trauma as well like maybe it wasn't her beer maybe she was told to go get it by somebody else yes and you know the kid doesn't want to go back to the house because of what's going to happen there's so many things right person drinks the beer so many interpretations that that we don't consider in the moment and I think it goes back to like we had talked about this in a couple sessions back about always coming from a place of Grace you know even with one another because those
147are the things that help to build relationships if you don't come from a place of deficit of what's wrong with the person which is why we wanted to shift you to what are our strengths like here's my strength here's the strength that I bring to this work this conversation I need you to use the lens looking at me through my strengths right and not seeing what I see as a strength my my ability to be analytical my you know my my being inquisitive you need to see those things as strengths to help make us better and so hopefully you that you came away from that activity with kind of that framing so we hope that you you take that forward in our work before you move forward can we hear the top five from everyone
148yeah oh good good yes yes sure I did not so I can go past me and I'll listen to okay everyone else start the corner are we going alphabetical no you can speak [Laughter] it would be me all right go for it all right so uh top five number one responsibility purple um number two is analytical green number three is relator blue number four is developer blue and number five it's restorative purple they had two purples two Blues yep and I would point out that I had no influencing under my tent go down go down you see that green box oh yes so that means that this thing is green that's your top five yeah okay well those colors are not oh I see how did I miss that when I go those aren't yeah
149they don't match I mean they do it's just hard to like it's funny [Music] all right so number one is few futuristic and that's green yes but that's number three that's the domain major domains that all 34 uh strengths fall within yeah but I you're you're good you're good okay I'm sorry I'm so strategic all right futuristic grain strategic activator number two activator was that great orange influencing influencing yeah all right number three strategic which is green yes number four is a ranger which is I don't know this is the one I had to go back and run a ranger is executing orange okay okay and five is input green okay so you got no purple you're mostly strategic yeah so see the green see it on what I have left oh most of yours
150fell into the green so your strategic thinker and just one oh okay three of your five I believe three of your five words you're thinking the last one was one wow it's weird I don't look at mine they're even except for one yours are all the same two green two I'm sorry what were yours again uh well it's the purple got four but the others I had three greens three blues four purples they are primarily an executor and so I'm primarily thinking uh-huh you're primarily thinking okay yeah my top that was in the top 10 yeah Dr Bertha okay my top five context which surprised me that was my number one and that's strategic thinking yeah enjoy thinking about the past which I do I love history and understanding the present by thinking about the
151past or researching the historical pieces of that so it came out as my number one yeah strategic thinking is the domain analytical is number two like Mr Jordan 2 Mr Jordan and I are twins by the way we learned Mr Jordan is my new twin yes we are twins um analytical strategic thinking number three was relator and that's relationship building that was my um number three number four was learner which is strategic thinking and number five was discipline which is executed so my top my top ten were mostly strategic thinking um executing and relationship building those were my top three domains they're all important skills for a superintendent look at that so we got Sherwood Forest conversation was a category okay excellent thank you I'm not sure which ones mine are color-coded too but my
152top one was discipline then responsibility then Harmony then belief then developer so what was that execute mm-hmm responsibility responsibility is discipline executing responsibility executing Harmony uh influence uh Harmony is influencing uh belief is executing executing and developer executing no relationship building yeah but most of yours have so far have been in executing yeah gets things done makes action happen right uh my five was my top was Lerner which is think strategic thinking uh my second was analytical also strategic thinking uh third responsibility executing executing fourth achiever executing and belief executing oh so you're mainly executing strategic thinking right yep you had three in executing of your top five yep yes the execute same thing right gets things done make things happen yep Mr George all right uh number one was uh learner uh number two
153was strategic number three is uh individual individualization that's relationship building for four is intellection and number five is analytical so I think four of the five of our strategic in the one end so you had more you had one in relationship building and two or three in strategic thinking yeah one in relationship building I think all the rest were strategic you didn't have an executing out the execution was one of them uh learner strategic is um so you don't have your report you said right now everyone okay all right she'll send hers out in an email to you excellent excellent I hope you saw the value of that activity I think it is important for us are different yeah yeah and and you know it's funny because so look at the top of this the
154top of this thing it says team should be well rounded precisely because we as individuals or not right and so you actually want to have a team that has a reflection of all those different ways of thinking but you need to see them as strengths right right when you're making decisions you say okay like who's who you know what's what's the relationship aspect of this you have a person that will bring that forward you know what's the strategy we're going to do that's been that's the Strategic thinker how we execute that's the executor and then the influencers who do we need to involve stakeholder-wise which this plays in very well to what we're going to talk about in a little bit around you know creating coherence right and so know that everybody has these different
155ways of approaching problem solving through their strengths all right um okay so in your toolkit you also got a copy and I sent it as an email you got a copy of these Norms with the yellow highlights that reflect the language changes so what I want to do is I want to spend a little bit of time revisiting the north because my hope is that we will adopt them formally today but you'll notice that for each of the Norms that we there's there's some needed actions and what I want you to think about is how will you all accomplish those needed actions because they're not things that should wait until we're together right so some of these things we're gonna have to think about okay well if we have to identify smart goals so I'm
156going to walk you through a process but but our first uh task is to review these Norms with the changes that are highlighted in yellow and make a decision if you can live with it as it is and say yes this is this is tight enough or are there additional edits that we want to make hopefully you had your copy and you were able to make changes or write notes or whatever because now is the time for us to have that discussion make sense okay so the first one oops the first one was student centered um and we changed some language there I'm gonna leave that up and let you read it which we we added some of the language that you all mentioned um around social emotional learning which um I also put some
157resources in the folder around that for you too so you'll see the in yellow are the changes so take a look and tell me your thoughts Rodney so um is that as I reviewed these the and I think maybe it belongs here the one thing that I think has they got lost along the way is [Music] um making sure that we all have information at the same time so when I look under contributions where we have we will ask questions in advance of public meetings to ensure preparedness for student-centered discussions and seek relevant information there's to me there should be something um a process or and make sure we all have it you know there's there's I'm a little you know even though the learner thing says that I ask questions but the once we
158get the information I think it's important that everybody has that information so that we can have those discussions so uh I don't know if it's an addition to this but to me if they just said we will uh ensure preparedness for student-centered discussions somehow I just want to add the piece that says that I don't ask an individual question and I get information and everybody else doesn't have the benefit of of that so immediate action where I've got the terminal process and timeline for making requests for information data Etc if we flesh that out because I I kind of want to create another like a process document okay kind of match with these well once we get through all these needed action items so if we if when we outline what that looks like it's
159um here's the process for requesting information here's the way that it's shared out with everyone right like let's say you ask a question like Rodney has a specific question or he would like to see some data rather than Dr Birdsong going through people and getting that data only sent to Rodney it gets sent to everyone because we can assume that if it's a question for one it might be a question for all right okay so let me put that in the notes because I think that'll be one of our if we create like a separate I think we talked about that yeah process piece yeah that's why I had there that whole process and timeline for making requests but it sounds like it's also how will it be disseminated right all those things okay okay
160keep going well that that really was all I had I just felt that on that particular one that um it was a lot on the asking but not much on the receiving even though the first one says we will examine so that's other than that I'm comfortable with the Student Center one as it as it currently exists let me see here why you're looking for that yeah go ahead um so so I had a question about that same one that Mr Jordan just raised so and I think I I might have raised it um last time as well so one of one of the things that I have some hesitation about or at least um Wonder if we need to be explicit in this is that this does not mean that questions may not be
161asked in a work session or a meeting um because I don't want it to be that why didn't you ask that question before coming here today you know that what kinds of questions may be asked like these are questions of clarif clarifying questions versus um you know because I I worry too about the time that may be spent for the administration to answer you know Mr Jordan's question and then maybe I have a question that piggybacks on his question and then I can just imagine then what the administration may do behind the scenes to try to answer our questions but if we all collect collectively first have an understanding of what that question is and say oh do we you know we have this agreement like oh that's a good question let's try to get
162some more information I think that's a whole other you know what I mean that's a whole other level of Engagement when we're doing it in a meeting versus via email or however phone call you know um and that's the other thing if it's via phone call like you know we may not see that that documented Yeah question even being asked because I'm listening to you it sounds like if there are questions or data or additional information that would help inform decision making you want that ahead of time right right and of course clarification can still happen in the room yeah like what do you mean like what does this mean yeah so I think the things that require Dr Burson to go to cabinet members for data or that information that would be relevant to
163informing your conversation and decision making those things should happen in advance and we have to outline what that looks like but yeah to your point it doesn't negate the asking for clarification or having leaving room on the agenda for substantive discussion right right and and additional fact finding in the room yes all right let me I'm writing myself a little note here I don't know how we frame that but I think it'll be something that yeah keeping in mind right these are this is this is gonna be internal this is yours right this is how the war will operate I think at some point you know what the the early statement that we value student Excellence those things should go on the website those are the things that should be followers facing the process interactions
164contributions needed behaviors or things that are internal so they can be we can have flexibility around what that looks like you know right yeah right and that's exactly why I'm bringing it up because like our behaviors as we build our relationships and Trust I mean that's right now that is some of the behavior that we're experiencing is the you know why didn't you ask that before coming today you know or something like that so I think to be really clear about about that right now maybe it becomes commonplace later but I think right now being very clear about what we mean is important right yeah um so I don't know who Sam was up first thank you I'm sorry everyone is just going to get worse today so can you hear me yeah yeah um
165I agree with what Tanya's saying and that you need to walk in with the information that you need and and and uh and and deciding which one you can get an answer to First that works okay that gives you the background information is is great and that there are times that there are things you're going to need to ask within the thing I my one concern is that maybe there seems to needs to be some kind of time limit so that we don't go on hour after hour um to the point that other people lose interest yeah are you all using the process the agenda process because I think that this will help solve The discus versus decide right if if something's on the agenda and it's a decide a decide then you then you
166should be able to you know that that's going to be a decision Point has to be made is there what is the what is what do board members need in order to be ready for a decision if it's a discuss item you build in the time for the conversation which means you ask the clarifying questions then too but you deal within the time frame so I know we shared that time that sounds good I just want to make sure that we clarify on that because certainly there's many things that we can do by asking ahead little things that but they're also big things that do need to be discussed as Tanya was saying and that's perfectly even if it's not something that I feel needs to be discussed it doesn't mean it shouldn't be discussed
167with the majority of the board I just wanted to make sure that we limit how long we talk about it because a lot of times there's repetition so it needs to be done and I mean we seem to be moving that way anyhow but just so that that's mentioned also and maybe that's something we can be harder the harder information on if we look at it with both from both points of view and kind of find a a way in the middle that that is satisfying to everyone how do you all manage uh the time for public comments yeah as long as they follow the procedure keep that in mind right when you all are looking for ways to manage your own conversations not three different people right not not the three minutes but just
168a time limit just say all right we're going to devote X number of minutes to these questions and once we get to that have a way have a process for saying if there are questions that we do not address then we're going to do X but you all have to decide what that X is going to be yeah yeah and I was going to say I think as part of the the the process and as we discuss what our monitoring looks like that there may you know there may be some things and you all talked about it some time ago about how far in advance you may get something so I'm just making something up let's just say we're talking about uh High School construction project we may talk about the high school construction project
169for 45 minutes over three minutes three meetings it doesn't mean that we get it once and we have to speak to it for whatever it is uh two hours or whatever in one meeting and I think if we can look at that we can achieve both things we can keep the the work sessions or the meetings discussion meetings tight and we can build on the information it's not that we have to get the information discuss the information and act on the information in a two-week period if it doesn't call for that because it may be that as part of that conversation it's like oh you know what it would probably be beneficial if we had more information about blah blah blah and so then an action item that Dr Burson will walk away with would
170be that at the next meeting I'm going to bring whatever that missing piece was right because especially if it's an item that's not going for a decision and it's still an item that's for that's up for discussion all these things can be handled with the way the agenda is built right I think the other thing is once when we get to it you'll see that I'm trying to I'm going to try to have you really align your work and that monitoring calendar to strategic plan goals so it may be that when you're talking about resources for example and the goal in that one and what data points you need to you know so you would know ahead of time you know we're going to work on goal to initiative number one so we're gonna make
171some decisions we need we I'm gonna we're gonna make sure you have all the data around you know if it's a Capital Improvements thing all of these things that you're talking about are are driven by the way you build the agenda but also once you're clear on your board priorities right because because we shouldn't be talking about things that are not part of the better priorities absolutely and so as I walk you through some of these next steps it's really to get you to think about what are our priorities and then how will we monitor those priorities in every meeting okay so could we perhaps think about considering that that we maybe put a value on each topic for example the school we need to have discussions about what we're going to do with Mari
172and we do need to have discussions I mean that's the lengthy kind of thing so we so over time we could have an idea of how much time was really necessary and maybe that's an hour maybe it's an hour and a half for something that big and we could and then we'd say okay we'll do them on these next four dates or something I think he said three but part four would even be better for something that big and and then we split up the time like you said that's a great idea and then it could be number one number two and then we at the end of that there would be the last thing would be vote decision that's the date and we vote on that date so it doesn't come back around and
173then you know six months down the road we don't have a decision yeah yeah and I think that's what I want to see yeah it's it's all about just really tight agenda planning and sticking to the agenda but also running the agenda through the filter the things that we say are important right which is it you know is this student related is this Workforce related is this family caregiver and Community related and does it inform our board efficacy the things that we espouse as being our priorities um okay I captured all of that one final thing on that same um in that same area in advance of public meetings do we need to specify a time frame around that because technically 358 is in advance of the meeting that starts at four o'clock you know
174what I mean I'm being a little silly about that but just you know maybe that's something we need to think about especially if it's something that's going to take some time to put together and and provide and that that marries to my point that I think we need to not think of this as tied to a particular meeting is more about the principle of we're trying to make sure that when we are preparing for the public meeting right we have done certain things and so it's like like was just being said in terms of that agenda planning process we'll we'll kind of know that but I agree with you that I do think it would need to be clear that we're not necessarily talking about some 72-hour window before the next meeting necessarily exactly I
175mean I don't know if we would really need that if if the trusts were there like a board member would know you shouldn't send me something at two o'clock on the day we're getting ready to meet at four right because absolutely not sitting around reading emails all day you know so just and I would even say too I think a consideration for you all is the opening up of the agenda planning or have an agenda planning meeting with the agenda planning team and then share out the draft agenda with everybody else just for that additional you know input or something to consider right so that you're you you all are very clear on what the things we're going to be talking about and if there are things that need to be striked from the agenda
176that conversation has had had well in advance right so that's just something for you guys to think about you know chair and co-chair as you're thinking about agenda development both following the process and opening up that process right I think that would eliminate a lot of yeah I I I think if you've you gave us a tool I thought there was some sense that we would be willing to use the tool let's try the tool anything else students centered consider so you're willing to adopt these changes uh take them they won't be yellow when you see them next right and I'm gonna kind of draft out the needed actions and some of what you've suggested here in a separate document I'll work on that for you all but otherwise this works as is correct great
177progress the next one is Workforce centered and you'll see I changed some of the language here we talked about organizational culture that language being Incorporated and we wanted to clarify the process by which sharing concerns goes through especially a place of personnel matters that goes to the superintendent so if things come to the board we want to have a clear process for you know how you share that with Dr Birdsong and how you communicate to constituent that brought brought to your attention yes I will take this forward or you know that kind of thing but we want to make sure we have that uniform you know unified voice so anything here that you have suggestions or edits on and again look at the needed actions because those are the things that still need to happen
178in order for those for the process interactions and contributions to work uh question of clarity as I'm learning uh when we say we will commit to meaningful board member interaction with employees and staff to better understand needs and challenges and establish Trust um I just like the get a better sense of what that means so the board as a whole I I have some thoughts about that um I just want to make sure I'm understanding what that means to us and what I think and I want to hear from Dr birdson what it means to her because there's um as we've talked about previously to me it's almost like if we're saying that we may hear concerns just as we may hear them from the public and then we share those concerns that's one thing
179if we're saying that individual board members that we're encouraging us as individual board members to go and interact with in Poison staff I just think we need to be clear about what we what we mean yeah I think so too good point so you see I did have their identify and clarify a process for being informed or invited to school events because we had a hot conversation last time around yeah I was advised to that I didn't know about that that was on Saturday like so we need a process right which I think that's one of the things actually I think would go through Miss Tanner going forward but to your point one of the reasons why this even came up was during the strategic planning focus groups there was a couple of employee comments
180about I never even met a board member don't come to my school right in the spirit of US changing the narrative we want to make sure that they know who you are hooray and that they had meaningful interactions with you my meaningful it could be yes you're attending some of the events in their schools um and that they see you as a part of the community right so I think so that's that's the that's the narrative that I want to shift that we want employees to see that this board works on their behalf right that you have an entire Norm around being Workforce centered and they have to have relationship with you as well right one of the things that I noticed like I I watched Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools board meetings because I worked for
181them too right and they'll towards the end of the meetings they always do like a whip around you know and it'll be like I visited such and such school and I got to meet so and so students in sixth grade and got to read a book whatever cases but they always Center on how they engage with the community and I'd love to see you all be able to do that as well I think just the hearing that helps people know okay this my board members are aware of what's going on in my school they've been there because we want to move that narrative away from that whole you know they don't know what's going on in my building right um so I want you guys think of a process for that so now you're invited
182to different events it's Hit or Miss we probably need a tight process for that where they invite you through Miss Tanner or whatever whatever the case is she sends out communication to everybody there's a such and such event happening this Saturday at this school you all have some discussion around who's who's attending let's make sure we have representation if we can all go we all go if we can't all go we handle go I mean I obviously have lives right but I think that that creates an opportunity for when you are in meeting you can close the same thing I had the pleasure of attending the such and such Fair such interest school right that's meaningful engagement that that they feel like a board member values our events enough that they sent representation and I
183think it could also be valuable if it's across your Wards right you don't have to be only going to events and you know what I'm saying so the things I want you to think about like that's going to get us to this meaningful board member interaction with employees and staff that's kind of what I meant by that okay so I wonder said to that point I wonder um if we will commit to school visits and because the other the other piece is you know we've had protocols or around you know um direct communication with even you know Dr birdsong's team you know so what does that exactly mean like to me like that that is a bit left up to interpretation right so that's why yeah well I know and that's why so I hear
184what um what valda's saying we talked about that last time yeah you know like you know I see school visits is one thing and we have a protocol like currently like our old uh just for for now you know our previous protocols were you know we had one around school visits and then we had one around communication with um you know with Dr bertson's team like her her staff and that was separate so do we need to distinguish that here is a question I'm putting out to because the way I read this right now if I were to interpret this it is go ahead and build that relationship with Dr Paul Dr you know like I can communicate directly with are any of our Chiefs any you know our executive director what's the rule now
185like what's that it is that everything goes to the superintendent and then she can and the chicken yeah she can determine that and that works for you all correct I don't mean I don't know I personally think I I like the protocol that we have in place um if we could if I could just speak to both with the school visitations for example um to be clear the board members will reach out to me and say you know I've you know emailed principles such and such I have a visit planned on that date that just lets me know that they're going to be in the building that day from my perspective that works well that works well and it has worked well um you know as long as we're following that because you know some
186principals come back you know just wanted to let you know such and such came by I didn't know they were coming by so if we're consistent with that I I think you know that's a good practice to to continue as of all the teachers ahead of time I mean principles ahead of time yeah that's why that protocol in my opinion is good because it doesn't you know when a principal hears a board member is here regardless of what's going on they're going to feel the need to stop what they're doing so it's better to allow them the the courtesy and professionalism of calling or and scheduling something yes before you just show up at a school and that unless it gives you a really special yeah you go to there because they say well what
187about coming in and watching absolutely absolutely so that that as it relates to um School visitations in terms of communication as superintendent I don't believe there's anything that Dr Cataldo needs to know without without me knowing and so with the protocol in place now if there's a question or something then it it goes through me and then I determine who is best suited to answer that and it may be that we end up scheduling a two by two meeting with me and a chief or being a principal or or what have you and from my vantage point that has worked well so I I predict I like that protocol I just can't imagine what it is that you need to start to my staff about that you can't speak to me directly about yeah okay
188so could I say one thing on that I I agree with you I mean what you're saying I really do but sometimes when it's just a little thing it would take a matter okay for me it doesn't matter even if it's a little thing it may be a little thing to you but it may be not a little thing you know what I mean okay and also keep in mind that when a board member comes to a school right as a principal it changes the whole feeling of that day right you may have you know it's like as a teacher if a parent walks into your classroom and you don't know they're coming you're like okay why are they here what's going on right is it it makes you question things and it doesn't build
189trust part of what I understand you want to do with the community is build that trusting relationship but if you show up unannounced right that's going to make people feel like did I do something because again we go to that narrative what did I do versus oh they're here because you know we we've got a good relationship that's that's not what a person is principal doesn't know that I know then it puts them in an awkward situation whereby this person is here I'm sure they didn't tell you because I didn't know they were coming but I wanted to let you know because it's going to be talked about right so right I need some other considerations like more more globally is that if you want to create an organizational culture where the the paradigm shift
190that needs to happen is this whole trust and transparency piece right so what maybe one of the strategies you can think about in acting is I'm sure you visit schools pretty frequently there's no reason why you guys can't set up a schedule where you say I'm going to be with Dr Birdsong and visit this school this school this school this week and then next week as she walks around with Rodney and they visit a couple of schools what you what you do is you you're you're picking apart this notion of when the superintendent and the board member come it's a big deal you're like no we're actually just visiting all the schools we're making our rounds you take down that guard that people and then you create a culture where it's okay for the board
191member to come to the building it's okay and people don't stop what they're doing right um it takes time to get there but I think that there's you because you guys can have a strategy where you said all right we're gonna let's look at the calendar um my school visits in in January are going to be with with Mr Jordan my my March visits are going to be with Mr saying my April you see what I'm saying so then you're hitting all the schools they're seeing you and they see you with the colleague they see what the board member and you tell the schools ahead of time don't prepare anything for us we're just going to come we just want to see kids we just want to we're going to standard hallway with you yeah
192and it takes time to get to that place but like I worked in Frederick County Maryland schools and I will say it was there was some things that weren't great about it but but if a superintendent walked in because it was smaller superintendo walked in or you know one of the Chiefs walked in it wasn't like oh my God somebody's here was like oh come come with me let's walk I have my radio let's go you know I was I was a suits and sneakers kind of principal like I was always in tennis shoes but I know if I'm running around the building and it was like get in where you fit and come on let's walk together the staff began to see it as that's that's just normal that's no big deal we don't
193have to stop what we're doing it you know they're gonna walk around classrooms with us and they might ask a question or two or whatever and keep it moving so I say you all can come up with a strategy for how you infiltrate right and I think it's as simple as let's do visits together you know yeah but I feel like even in this conversation we're reverting back to the school visits piece but I think which I think we're all on the same page and have been practicing that pretty pretty well yeah right like you know but it's a piece about talking to um you know um the you know the Chiefs like you know if there's I think to miss campson's Point like what if there was a question and a presentation about data
194or something you know like how how should we what is the process that we should use to to handle that kind of question again the question comes to me and I mean that's what we're currently doing I'm asking like moving forward is that working for all of us is is what well you know I I think that there's um so one when I my original thing was because it said board member not board I think that almost what you were just describing in terms of whatever it is that we do that it is what we do you know from if it's in our board Norms this is what we're going to do it um if we're gonna have I don't know listening sessions we're going to do community engagement sessions if we're going to do
195Town Hall meetings it's something all of us are doing together strategically a board engagement strategy right right now that doesn't mean that individuals can't do their things in the context of these Norms I think we should be as one in whatever strategy that we're taking the other side of it and this is something that during my time on the board I raise with every board and every superintendent is when the administration side it has to go both ways so when we're when we're told to come to you and not to your Chiefs then your Chiefs need to know don't just go to an individual board member because if you go to one individual board member and you and then you must hopefully you have been assigned to go to Every board member otherwise the system
196breaks down and so I observe where conversations take place between individuals and I think we need to make sure as as a part of this that is being worked on on both sides of the equation yeah okay and so it's an understanding then that Chiefs go to Dr Birdsong first you know and then that again creates a place where people feel like okay I know I'm gonna get the response that get a response but it's also done in a way that we're not going outside of the protocol and breaking down the trust that we're trying to establish and the transparency right okay I caught that all right I got it um um other other edits or other considerations that we need to note so in the action items we have identify and clarify the process
197for being informed or invited to school events create a process or pathway for Gathering input from staff develop a template for talking points to be shared in the one voice we language and ensure board priorities and compensation and established tactics Etc um that you have those things underway so the example I gave is is there a compensation study currently underway right because those are the things you should be focused on if we're saying oh we want to make sure that we're prioritizing attractive retaining and developing and fairly compensating as our as our Norm then you need to be thinking about what are the things that we need to be doing as a board right to ensure that so it might be that you say okay well what are we currently paying how is it competitive
198to others right like so you are studying right the thing that you say is going to get you to that that value proposition so it might be okay then we need to we need to commission a compensation study and then you will get the compensation study we devote some time to conversation around that are we competitive with with surrounding districts but I'm just making this stuff up right you know so that's your discussion that's your board your board level discussion you try to go a key performance indicator by 2027 we want to be competitive with all districts nearby right so you're setting a goal that becomes your work right this these are our Norms but the actual what is our day-to-day comes from these right and so that's why I gave you the example about
199the compensation study because if we say we want to make sure that people are fairly compensated then what's the boards working ensuring that that happens right amen down at the bottom with the needed action did I miss something or did we talk about the talking points to be shared in one voice which to me sounds like a really good idea yeah and yeah I mean yeah that's something I think we is that something that we're all in agreement of developing some way so the things that are under the needed actions what I want to do is some of those things I'm going to build for you right so I'm gonna I'm gonna come up with a template for for talking points and that kind of thing but some of this stuff is things you have
200to do you have to make a decision about so what I what it must be kind of adopt these what I'm going to create for you all is this action items list and we're going to need people to put their names next to some of these things right so they're all happening so it's not like we wait till once a month governance training it might be that okay Miss McCain says she's going to work on the process for being invited to school event she's going to work with Miss Hannah on that and present that to the team here's what we came up with we did a little research blah blah blah right it might be somebody else says oh I'm going to I said I would do it but you know develop this template as
201a draft and bring it back to the team for input right much in the same way you guys have you know committee work these action items are things that you all are going to have to kind of move forward because they're going to be the things that help us to implement the norm yeah I have a favor to ask in that context so you had us do an exercise or maybe a couple of exercises around what's board work and superintendent work my job your job our job yeah so if there are things in these needed action that don't belong to us yep I hope we don't get assigned you will not okay remember each of these needed actions are the things that this Board needs right to enact upon the the norm right so you
202all need a career process for Gathering input you will need a clear process for developing a template that's why it has to be decisions that you all make together right these are these are going to be discussions and decisions that are made in a committee of all right but the charge is that if you are assigned one of the action items you're bringing it to the group as a draft not like oh here's the temple we have to use right it's even as I propose these things to you right I'm like here's an option right you all have to make a decision as a board yes we're going to go with this as our talking point template right that'll be something that you guys like Miss Tanner will then use it right it'll be something
203that you will operationalize we need to be able we need our we need to be able to speak to XYZ what's happening in our district here's our template for filling out our our talking points document we we all help inform what that document looks like you know it's a Google form whatever and then we know that if we're talking about I don't know Capital Improvements at a certain school we have talking points about that a lot of these things are going to feel like another thing right like more work but you'll find that in time once they become operationalized they're gonna they will eliminate a lot of the things that cause consternation right so yeah it's going to be a pain the first time you have to come up with talking points around something I
204don't know and I don't even know what's coming up like there may be something that's coming up that you're going to want to have a unified High School yeah to have a unified message around it that could be our first our first time coming up with our talking points you know around that so yeah yeah so I will Circle back to you actually because I'm gonna I want to create I'm gonna draft the template for you all but I like it to be grounded in a real issue so maybe you and I can have a common conversation you can say here's the next thing that I know we're going to all need to have unified voice on give me some background let me do a little homework let me find out more about it right
205so that that talking points template is it has a little FAQ right you want to have a space for frequently ask questions you want to have those responses right so I'll I can draft something for you and if we can use a real issue and maybe even in the room fill out that template together right oh we need to make sure we say this yes let's add that we need to make sure we say that right that's what she that's what the habit I want you all to create is that no one's handing you talking points and saying go say this and you're like well I don't want to say that I don't believe in that right but if we have a template it becomes a a item that you all do in the meeting
206here's something we all need to be level set on how we're going to communicate this let's do our talking point template together you know what our community over time too because as new things came up some would fall off and the new ones would be added so it'd be kind of an ongoing process but it's the investment in the process that you're also creating by doing it you're like okay we know that this is part of our work and we're gonna we're gonna make sure it's done correctly this is good all right I got that on my to-do list okay so Workforce centered with these other accommodations we're ready to adopt this one okay I'm okay with it and I and you know that language about positive organizational culture that's that's intentional and I think
207because that's going to be on the forward-facing piece because I think what you want to be establishing as a board is that right like you have responsibility for the organization's culture we spend a lot of time talking about the culture of the board but ultimately you want to be able to impact the the culture of the organization so is it a is it an organization that is focused on employees experiences parents experiences students experiences right that's that's a culture piece you know they say what does it say what they say strategy strategy culture e strategy for dinner right I think I don't know I made it up I think it hurts we can do all the strategizing in the world right but if the culture is one that does not receive it that's right right
208then then we'll be spinning our wheels and so ultimately these things are designed to create that to understand the culture you can't implement the strategy exactly exactly okay so frustrate it yeah see so culture does e-strategy for dinner I don't think I made that up I think somebody did say that okay so Workforce Center we're going to adopt this one as well again knowing that there's some needed actions that need to happen but I'll work on that excellent next one was family caregiver and Community I renamed that one because we had some conversation around like family looks different right and so family caregiver and Community centered the norm itself is that we're going to Value we value our families our stakeholders and Community Partners and ensure that our governance efforts prioritize musical engagement and collaboration
209and I added the in this service of Norfolk public school students right and so we want to Center on that language the one change is similar to the other one it's the we will share the highlighted in yellow we'll share concerns from the community and constituents with the superintendent and maintain neutrality and confidence in her handling of concerns and so you'll see in the action needed um one of the you know processes there was to kind of create that pathway hold on um so similar similar needed actions right uh clarify the process for being informed we got that clarify the process for reaching board members create a process or pathway for Gathering input from the community right so that's that calendar of listening and learning kind of sessions right that's something that you guys can
210again same thing it can be done collaboratively and you can ensure that there's coverage across um different Awards and it could be that sometimes there's partnership opportunities where you know more than one board member is is an award that's not their own whatever the case is um establish a community engagement strategy so what are going to be the topics where will there be joint or the whole board what is the whole engagement opportunities Outreach beyond the Civic leagues that came up in their conversation develop a template for the talking points we thought it was from the last one too develop a written and published protocol on hierarchy for sharing concerns before coming to the board and superintendent so that's the one that's to address that contribution do we have is there a there probably isn't
211one yet but we need to come up with something where um so it's not just to pick up the phone and tell Dr Bird song here's what's happening in such and such place it could be that are you talking about community members or who are you talking about how they share their concerns yes okay so if we have a uh um a way of putting it in writing um which is I think there's some we need to think about that right because the foia but I also feel like like there needs to be a more formal way so right now it's probably like I pick up the phone I call Dr bird song I tell her here's something I'm hearing that's bubbling up right here I'm saying share the concern right with the superintendent stay
212neutral keep it confidential and trust that she's going to handle oh you're under contribution side okay okay yeah the yellow that's yeah yeah what we're doing yeah that's what they do so so but it's not in writing it's just like a pick up the phone so I usually forward them on yeah so it depends so I can just tell you what I do so if I have uh you know I'm opening up for a critique but if I have a community concern if I know it involves confidential student information I try to give Dr birthstone a write-up and I'll write on the subject line confidential student information so that she knows and if one day there's a for you they know right that's what it has or if it's or if it's confidential personnel but
213I try to um listen to the constituent and I will I will say to them even before they get started if you're going to say this to me I'm going to share this with a superintendent are you comfortable because I want them to know if you're not comfortable with that process you need to be aware of that and um so what I try to do is take my notes and write Dr bursong an email because at least for me I think that's a passive thing where she then can read it and usually what she'll do at some point she'll read it and she'll get back to me and she'll say we're on it I feel like if I call her it forces her to immediately respond to me and I want her to have more
214flexibility I appreciate it in a passive way than feeling like yeah you know because if I call her then I think it invokes like immediate reactions I see I like the process you just outlined and it's probably different from person to person and that's what we want to level set on a process not here's what I do here's what Carlos does here's what right and and to your point right the reason why I'm suggesting that it'd be like an email or whatever because then she can write back it's been addressed or that kind of thing and you've got a kind of a paper trail to say that right and so so I think that that's where that's where I was going with that that the sharing of concerns from the community and from constituents to
215the superintendent needs a process so it's not all different ways and I have here that you have confidence in her handling of the concern but that could be as simple as her writing back and saying we're on it or have a meeting scheduled or I'm going to visit that location on Tuesday and that's that's it but we've got a paper trail does that make sense right so I wasn't sure if you know because of foia to your point right that I mean they're gonna they can fly whatever they want but I do feel like like that part of that process needs to be that there's like a written record I I heard this concern I took it to superintendent superintendent acknowledged receipt and then has ended a quick follow-up on resolution right feedback on feedback
216and that's our process and for me that works and that's my experience with the board they will in writing to the email and copy it to talk directly to me and in the in the what it'll usually say is thank you for sharing your concerns I am copying Dr Birdsong our superintendent with this information so she can have you contacted by the person who can give you the help something like that pretty much yeah so we agree that that's the process I agree and just for someone who can take those calls daily shows history so if you have to reflect back on the incident and parents because we had you know parents said we talked to you know uh often so there's a paper trail and there's also history there yes I think this process
217yeah that's why I was suggesting it because I think that yes you can be foyered but also I think this it's a protection right yes that concern is brought to our attention on such and such date here's how it was handled you've got that paper trail you can go back to okay uh and do we need do you need a template for that or is it just a forwarding of the emails and that kind of thing that that works fine yeah it works for me Samsung uses that I'm forwarding it yeah yeah so it goes to her and I my name is Sarah is having sent it on and and it but it actually is addressed to the person that has a concern and that's why I always do it as a I'm copying this
218too right and and it also sounds like you do a summary document if it was a if it was a phone call to say in our conversation on such such a date we talked about this I'm forwarding that information too so that so because it might not be you're letting me know the parent or whoever it is know that it's it's going it's going to the right to the superintendent right yeah I I do the same thing you know make sure you're telling me this uh you know confirming that this is going to go you know you're out are you asking me to send this along yes and I think I think that's one of the things you can even think about level setting on is some of those those phrases and language thank you
219for sharing this concern per our phone conversation I'm elevating this I'm sharing this with ours with superintendent Bert song who is who is in copy on this email right so use those phrases so that there's consistent language that comes from you all right okay perfect all right that was easy so this one is so we've got it we've got some some guidance here I also had um Dr Gabriel yeah go ahead um under the process we will incorporate student public comment and invite student representatives to work sessions I um I really applaud our board for um initiating a process to have a student board member and I think that we have had we've had some phenomenal representatives and we glean a lot from their perspective but I don't think our process for incorporating their feedback
220is the best that it can be right now and I think that we need to work on what that process is because you know I'm a board member here but I also take full responsibility for the fact that we are also in charge of our students and I know Dr Birdsong takes this very very seriously but there's certain situations where I think it's not necessary for them to be a part of certain conversations and I don't want them to I don't want to put them in a situation where um they don't know what they don't know they don't know what they don't know you know a confidential matter uh something where they might say something and it gets taken out of context and I'm very protective of them in that sense I want them to
221be able to share their thoughts and but I think that we need to develop a better process with that and so I'm not ready for them to come to work sessions yet because I need to have a better understanding as to you know purpose place what are they doing and and all of that guidance I want their feedback but I just I'm I'm concerned about that although the one we have now really does make very nice little speeches when we're when we ask for her information at the end yeah and so it doesn't mean he's not board me not regular board meetings she doesn't come to everyone we have two a month the the work session and the business meeting she attends the business both of them attend the business meetings yes so I I'd
222like to add I appreciate that feedback and and so from my perspective I I like that um our board representatives are at our our business meeting um there are a couple things I do worry about um I know uh the students that serve on on the board they're high Achievers and they're doing a million things and so I I wouldn't want to pressure them into coming to like work sessions you know because of their time and and and I know with our current board representative you know when I've met with her one-on-one I mean her schedule is like crazy but if we tell her she needs to be here she's going to make it happen so I'm not sure that them coming to work sessions is a real good use of their their time I
223also think we need to be very careful about um allowing the students to make comments on things that they may not know all of the information about um because we did have a a recent situation whereby the student made some comments about her school um that were proceeded that's not necessarily 100 percent accurate and then kind of Blindsided her principle and and so you can imagine that that you know just the position that put the principle in and the position that it put her in and with especially what she not knowing the big picture um of course we um we appreciate their input and feedback but for me as superintendent and I even shared this with her I'm very protective of her almost feel like I'm her mom while she's here um while I believe
224she's so she's exceptionally brilliant um she is going to be the next president of the United States I really believe that but she's also 18 years old she's also a student who doesn't know what she doesn't know and something she may say she may not even know that what she's saying is not fully accurate and so I know there are some things from me working with her that she's very interested in doing and um I've talked to she used to have regular meetings with our chief schools officer who is now retired and and so she's been meeting with um the secondary schools uh executive director around what her work looks like within our schools so I think a good opera it would be a wonderful opportunity to have her come back and talk about those
225things that she's passionate about as opposed to the board as an heated discussion about whatever and then put her on the spot to respond because she's going to want to respond because she is a high achiever she's very she's very intellectual she's brilliant but again she doesn't know what she doesn't know and I feel very protective of her I'm wondering if that can also be part of the agenda development process we say which of these items would how could we be better informed if we had student voice right so you might it might just be like it might be based on topic oh we need to as we build the agenda this would be a great topic for us to explore whether our student board member she attends that meeting yeah but I also think
226it's worth reaching out to the student board member to see because we don't know what kind of conversations they might be having with their own with their own peers because what we may think is not appropriate for them they may be like well we've already been talking about that right and we need to talk about it we need to be there which is why we're meeting with her yeah yeah I saw a bunch of hands over here I don't know which order they came in so I'm gonna yeah so I I'm glad that that topic came up because um you know in 2016 we passed this policy to include a student Court rep and that's um been such a great action that we've taken and I say action that we've taken because um you know
227I think to Dr Gabriel's point I don't think we've fulfilled that as best as we can um in terms of using their voice and and everyone being on the same page as to how we do that um and I know two years ago I know I asked to look at our policy again and to see okay well how can we enhance and build upon what we're currently doing so that we can better use student voice how do we use it where do we use it how do we capture it you know so that we're hearing it in the board meeting um and using it to inform our decision-making process um you know some of you know I think some of the argument about you they don't know what we what they don't know could be
228also said about those of us who aren't in education as well you know because we're not in the classroom every day I know teachers say that about us sometimes when they're at home watching our meetings I know they're like well you don't really know what it's like you know or principles will say well I would like for you to walk in my shoes you know because they don't know you know they know we don't know um um what we don't know so it's it's it's true and maybe one of the things you know before we we say you know taking this out like is there training that could could go into like like we have board member training there is actually you know their student board member training which um I know vsba has done
229and you know maybe that's um something to look at and so that we all learn how to participate in our board meetings and that's something that we can have our board Representatives now and going forward participate in because I think there has been interest in participating in work sessions was she onboarded by the way like what was it was there an onboarding process for the student yeah we had an internal I don't know not with like the board but through the administration yes okay and I think that's another and that's great I mean we know that it happens but what is like I personally don't even know what that looks like and I think if they can have their own process that we can talk about and develop well that's in in collaboration with one
230another and I think that would be that's you know I think that would be great that we do have a conversation about what that looks like are there are there items that um to your point you know on the agenda item what's coming down the pipe that we can ask you know can we get our student board rep to go talk to students exactly in advance of the meeting think about how powerful that is right because we're talking about the academic calendar for instance what do our students think about you know the academic account like things like that I mean imagine her being able to come back and say I talked to 30 30 of my classmates and here's 10 of them said this 10 said like she's bringing you data right and sometimes it
231might be a different perspective we haven't even thought about that exactly yeah she's definitely an underutilized resource I put in my notes that we need to be thinking about how student voice can be part of the agenda filter um that we think about ways to it ways to invite her um that we need a process for involving her to help secure other student voice um so I kind of got most of that so we'll figure we need to kind of think it for a little bit in her professional development right along with along with ours so that's but anyways so um [Music] similar to my fellow learner I just pulled up the policy and I think there's I think the policy is clear um I think what may not be clear is so when we
232brought forward this policy around student rep the intention was that the student rep was uh had similar roles and responsibilities as an adult board member except as it says serves an advisory capacity and does not vote does not attend close meetings so that's confidential information and the alternate serves in the absence of the student rep to the school board the School Division provides the meeting agenda and other public materials to the student representative and Alternate advance of each open meeting the student representatives and Alternate do not have access to confidential information including student or Personnel records correct that not for confidential peace the student liaison representative or alternate our expected to attend all regular open meetings and complete assignments for research and data collection when requested by the school board I think that's clear I
233think I think what has what has happened over time and I think what I hear Dr Burson speaking to is if we had a student administrator program then I see the value of the superintendent the Chiefs the so forth working in that realm I think the value of the student rep is hearing hearing their voice and but in terms of what Ms Basin was just saying and we did this I think when we first started working with student reps is we trained them just like we supposed to trade ourselves so just as we teach that each board member may be Miss Buffalo is a is a clerk so when she's in the board meeting she's not supposed to speak as a clerk she's supposed to speak as a board member so if we tell student
234reps you are representing the student voice not your individual School voice if you're bringing concerns you're bringing concerns of the students representing the students not necessarily representing the students from the school in which you attend and I think if we can clarify that in the training then we won't we can avoid scenarios and not enough as perfect as we are did she get a does she get a board member email address she has her I think we I think I think we I don't think she does because I think in the past some inappropriate emails were being sent to our student Representatives yeah we went through so we decided that that may not be yeah you know it's yeah we have to work through that yeah but but my point is I think that we
235should treat a student reps to the board as board members absent of those things that that we know that they are not entitled to have otherwise I think we are we end up what's the word for capping we women we inhibit she's definitely going to utilize yeah and I think we need to bring that forward I think the policy says that and if we want to talk about some ways of operationalize it for the superintendent wants to bring forth some regulations dealing with it I think we can we can address that there but I think the policy is clear about what the expectations are and I think it's part of the selection process and the recommendation process if one can't do that then they know what the expectations are and we don't have to have
236you know we can we can be more uh supportive of student reps when we do work sessions so if it's a student rep from Lake Taylor enough to say we can't have work sessions from time to time out at Lake Taylor we don't have to necessarily as you say be rigid we can be Innovative here and you know when I read this at some point in time Dr bertson I thought that there was a a student committee or a student council that you had had it might have been prior to covid they'll have one she'll have one and recently met with them and and so there's attend those meetings there's a board I I facilitate those meetings by myself with children only it's a different role so I'm wondering though if that's an opportunity for
237her to attend those meetings as well build her facilitation skills right have her lead the meeting get voice yeah that's an opportunity for her yeah that was one I know I sent the recap from the cube conference but that was one of the things I really great session on elevating the student voice and it was interesting that this School Division like that they adopted a project so they had this project that they were working on with other students all year long as well as still attending meetings and so forth but it was even interesting that the students elected their person um so there was actually somebody that they felt that you know was elected by their body they met with like the council and I said well it's kind of I know Dr Birdsong has
238one but they went and facilitated and had boys so there was some interesting things I think that we're all talking about here that I think could really Elevate that program and it was a great example of um you know really the students come and saying hey we want to change this and teaching them well how do you go through this process of gathering information come back make a proposal and bring it to the board if I can't I think that one one thing I have felt that I like to see north public schools look at having strong student councils I think that process but I think that they agree with that I think the board rep process is uh you know is a different animal and I think from the board's perspective we need to
239address that but it's I did like Mr Clinton did you know did his things I did suit and counsel all the time and and they would have they would have Retreats and sessions and trainings and Citywide SCA and all of that and so that was a place where that voice could happen for students in every school building but I think the student Board of rep ly yes but I mean that's that's there's value in that I wrote down like maybe because I mean she's a senior I'm assuming right she's a yes so we've got till June to really be really reshape like her contribution right and so maybe it is that project-based approach where we say to her we really want it as a board we want to explore the value of student councils your
240charge right is going to be to she maybe she might even come with a great survey right that she can administer to all the schools and she can collect data in that way she can go speak at these places or do a zoom whatever the case is and they come to you and say Here's what I'm hearing here's what the streets are saying streets are talking and they said right but now you're giving her you're putting her purposeful exactly and it's exactly and that's what that she's working on right now in that role wants to have no matter who it is it's just purpose and contribution what's her project now she's working I know that we recently scheduled her to go to Booker T Washington High School for example she doesn't attend that school but
241her it's something that she's passionate about and if it's related to student mental health and some other things that she wants to do so because she was passionate about that we have um in working with Dr kimsey she's scheduled some visit to different high schools and the the principles or organizing groups of students for her to meet with so she can get some input and feedback and provide an update to the board right and then she'd be on the agenda she does have a perfect purpose yeah and something that she is passionate about and I wonder too does she have an opportunity to see how other student board members around the country works with us because both of them were there yeah Jordan as I mean our alternative uh alternate School Board rep as well
242all right good good good okay and then we got a little time it's 357. mind you so you know I was over prepare for these like we're on slide 28 out of guess how many slides 76. 76. but I don't care I'm like I I never want us to rush through we've had some really valuable conversations here I'm just excited so yeah I know I was always ambitious knowing that they'll they'll spill into our next time together that's fine okay so the board efficacy is the last one and then I want to do a quick preview of what we're going to be doing next time but um so I added the language here we talked about um active participation okay that was one of the suggestions taking ownership right so there was a couple of
243clarifiers that I added for you all so take a look at these is there anything that needs to be changed I think this is pretty thorough what it's asking us to do it takes us robust that's good it takes in things that were on our last one and then you can put some new stuff that's important to go and the actions items I had put because we had some conversation when we were leading around like well we don't want things to be in a Perpetual parking lot right and so we need a process to decide what things go in the parking lot it could be in the moment but it also has to go through the filter of does it tie to our priorities is it you know student centered or does it you know
244does should this carry over to the next agenda because we need more time more discussion or whatever so I want you to think about when there are things for example that come up and you say well um we're not ready to make a decision on it and there's more time it can be in the moment that you're proposed we need additional time for this item we're going to put our questions in the parking lot parking lot could be need to see more data or need to hear the impact to families whatever the case is knowing that it'll be moved to the next agenda or you know or whatever that action item that comes as a result of the questions would then be addressed that's why it goes in the parking lot so I don't want
245you to think of the parking lot as off topic let's put in the parking lot for whenever it's not bad it's it's let's add this to the parking lot or maybe something I didn't even hadn't dawned on you until you were in the moment and said huh you know this might impact what's happening at such and such school we should definitely put in the parking lot that we need to inquire about XYZ that make sense so I want you to think about the parking lot it's not not the place where things we don't like talking about go in perpetuity but there are things that are related to the agenda but that that they would throw us off time if we spent time if we if we if we shifted and spent time on just that
246it would it would take away from the agenda so we say we're going to put it in the parking lot with the understanding that the parking lot is something that you come back to right and you determine when you go back to it right because it may even be that when you when you do agenda planning via you say let's look at our parking lot right and and the the next agenda might be all parking lot parking lot items that needed to be moved to that and so that sometimes the parking lot shapes the next agenda you know and then the other piece I put was from Dr um from Mr Jordan need to clarify the role of the attorney Beyond consent and advise I don't have suggestions for that because I think that's a
247that's a different conversation so and you expressed your concern I think we I think that that's a a discussion that you all need to have as board members about like the the role the amount of input I I don't know just think we should have an agreement yeah like we will with any attorney so it clarifies the roles and so forth like that's more personnel pardon me do you think that might be more a Personnel discussion rather than something that goes in here I'm not following it's asking I'm not following what you're asking me I'm just when you were for the item about what his role should be it sounds like you were kind of saying beyond what was already there it just struck me as that it might be more of a something to
248discuss as a Personnel item oh yeah I'm just saying that there is no there's nothing there now so the policy just simply says that the board will hire the board May hire may have legal counsel but what a lot of school divisions do especially because they often use private counsel you have a Services agreement just like if you went to an attorney and say that's what I'm going to do for you and this is what's going to cost you and so I'm just saying that I think we should adopt the practice of having Clarity around the roles and responsibilities of the oh I'm not disappeared I think you're right on point I'm not wasn't disagreeing with you I just wasn't sure that this was where that went so is it so there's no there isn't
249an existing policy you're saying that other boards have a policy around the policy just that and it's basically the cites the state code that boards may have a legal attorney okay but it doesn't say what the roles are they leave that up to local divisions because it may vary I'm saying that in Norfolk we don't have anything that specifies or clarifies what the what it is so in Virginia Beach for example they adopted a uh an agreement between their city council and attorney and the school board that spelled out what expectations were so for example I remember one of the causes in there was if it seemed like it might be a conflict of interest between the the city and the in the school but we would talk about it So eventually they just moved
250away from having the City attorney as their attorney they moved that attorney inside and he worked for the scuba they were housed internally and I'm saying I just think that we need to have some conversation about spelling that out so that um so just as we've spent time talking about the superintendent's role in the board's role we're also clear about the legal counsel's role because in my opinion I think often there are things done that I think belong with the superintendent and then it I think it gets in the way so I just think we just need to clarify that so for that discussion would you be willing to look provide us with some of those policies from neighboring districts I think because I think that's where you start right we shouldn't be Reinventing the
251wheel yeah let's look at what some of our neighbors are doing yes um and then see if that meets our needs so as an action item when I I put this into a whole action item document I'm gonna put research surrounding uh neighboring boards uh policies or practices around the attorney because I think we start there all right other than that is there anything else on this one [Music] and you'll note too right so like that a lot of this is the behaviors pieces so our meat start means on time and people being present and prepared right value contributions of all members taking ownership right because these are a lot of those these are Behavior statements let me ask you a question is is part of this work and forgive me if you've already done
252that is there a uh a glossary of terminologies that that gets created I can do that but the reason and I don't and I'm not and I want to drop a bomb in anything but like when you start off each meeting and where I agree with you 100 and you talk about uh dismantling and rebuilding and you know institutional change and so forth one of the things that we had a conversation about in our in our group was I said I thought I needed to understand what that means because oftentimes we can all read the same statement and have a different interpretation so when I read dismantling I read it through the lens and frame of reference that I have somebody else may see it completely different so it just seems to me and that
253was why I thought whether it's in the goals or something can be defined but some of this terminology I think it would be good if we had a glossary or something so that if we are in the middle of discussion or if we are looking at this or if we're onboarding somebody else or if we have a student rep we can say this is what we mean this is the definition that we're there is almost what you did with the uh explaining the castle stuff okay all right I put that out of the notes all right I know we're at time but can I indulge you for a few more minutes just because I want to do a little bit of forecasting as to where I'm going to take you next which I kind of
254want to take you in this meeting but that didn't happen because four o'clock gets here like this um so first let me ask the question can we adopt these Norms as the working agreements and behavioral expectations for this board as they are now with those Corrections obviously knowing that we've got the action items that I'm going to put on one document for us but otherwise are we saying that these will be the Norms that we go forward with I'm fine may we put them on the on the business meeting when everybody is here versus doing it now but yes honestly I when I heard you say that it's more like we will put it towards a consent like we just get a general round here that we were moving on that's all now that we
255were officially adopting it today well that's that's why I asked for clarity I mean yes that's what she said hoping that we would adopt them I didn't know that Dr Martin wasn't going to be here right um because I do want us to like I want to put these Norms to bed right like I want us to say these are the Norms that we're agreeing to so maybe it may be the language and maybe it's not adopt maybe it's we I don't know our next meeting is on the 25th and I think that if there's General consent here then we just put it on the so that Dr Mark can be here and all of us can vote on it yeah no because I think it's important yeah yeah I don't think we should change
256them anymore we still agree to put them on their consent agenda yeah with the prepared to vote to include them for our record and that way all of us say we all agree this is what how we're going so we don't have six out of seven this is one of those items that needs everything exactly I agree okay I'm gonna send you guys will I'll send you the I'm gonna send you the cleaned up version of this for you guys to have your conversation on 125. um so you can adopt them on the 25th 25th right okay okay perfect um all right here's some things I want you to think about so we were gonna we're gonna start our next time together talking about how we create coherence and I had asked you to read
257the pelp coherence framework what I and we're going to obviously move this to the next agenda but what I want you to think about is as you read through it we're going to go through each of these areas because where I'm taking you with it I'm gonna save these slides for next time but where I'm taking you with it is that I want you to apply help to when we start to do strategic planning monitoring so in in your folder there's like a sample here where I just took a district initiative right to make something up and oh we're going to implement consistent K3 literacy curriculum and instructional practice that race achievement for all students we're going to as an activity with the board go through the Strategic plan and look at each of the
258areas of pelp around each of those goals so it'll look something like this right where I here's here's one of the goals for student Excellence right here's the first strategy so I literally just run out of the teacher planes these are screenshots we're gonna we're gonna as a board look and say if the initiative is to provide resources and training to apply culturally relevant curriculum instruction materials and teaching practices what would that require of us the culture how does the strategy align to what we say we believe what behaviors do we need from all staff and stakeholders to implement this strategy right what systems and structures do we need to help people to get their job done effectively and efficiently around this strategy what are the resources people need to effectively implement this strategy how
259do we allocate resources that are coherent with this strategy and how do we engage stakeholders to build ownership around this the reason why I want to take you through that is because right now the Strategic plan right it has in it it has you know the strategy and then it has the measures something happens between that between getting to the key performance indicator that's where your work sits your work is in what do we need to be monitoring have we ensured that we are addressing the culture the structure the systems the resources and stakeholders the pelp research says that unless you consider all those areas your strategy will not take hold right because if you leave any of those areas out if you don't consider the impact of stakeholders if you don't think about what
260resources you need to do it your strategy just becomes a tactic it's just the one more thing we said we're going to do right and what I want to ground you all in is that the work of this board is ensuring that we are always monitoring getting to that key performance indicator yeah what's that with the pulp framework so you're always looking at this instructions always yeah so we're going to talk about that each of these how do we make sure that whatever we talk about has impact to students and teachers in the way that they engage with content right that whole middle piece there um and so so that's where we're going we didn't get the chance to get there today but if you if you have if you need to go back and
261thoroughly study pelp we will start with Pelt next time because we're because I really want to ground Us in using help to frame our thinking you'll see here that for each of the each of the um I also put something on Castle in the in the folder for you all because you should look at that too because we want to make sure we're using Castle language but for each of the strategies I'm going to take us through this exercise of us thinking about like what do we need to be thinking about if we're if this is a strategist in our strategic plan and we drive the Strategic plan we've got to know what the culture is you know that's where you have influence and so I want to take us through that activity of thinking
262it through for each of these for each area does that make sense so what we'll be kind of doing over the next time yes exactly because then what we are I also want you guys to start thinking about doing right because we'll be long gone where you have us till May but I'm trying to build some habits right so I want you to think about every single board meeting we're going to focus on one right one particular strategy and we're gonna we're gonna unpack it we're gonna say what data do we need how are we monitoring this right so so getting you to think about it in this way with the pelp kind of logic model is just to start because then what you're also going to do is once you come up with your
263monitoring calendar you'll say oh for this for our meeting in April we're are going to do strategy one from Community right and and we're planning for that what data do we need right what surveys have we put out like what's you know and that's the conversation in the room so that's that helps you stay grounded in going back to the commitments around agenda development so it's going to be part of our priorities it's always going to be centered on students right we're going to take the time we're going to be able to know that we're focusing this meeting on this particular goal from our strategic plan and measuring whether or not how are we going to get to the key performance indicators that we the goals that we espouse make sense so that's where I'm
264taking you all that's kind of like our pathway yes you just reminded me of the the one thing that I wanted to mention on that last board efficacy and accountability and that was um for us to consider uh whether at the end of each meeting or whether it's yeah somehow I think we should capture uh action items for from each meeting oh I agree and make sure that that is disseminated so we get to the next meeting we are clear what we said we're going to do and then we can follow up as to whether or not we have done those things and yes start the meeting with the right with the with the action items but I think also in your agenda you include yes that's that this is what we want to do
265on that template that we share and and we'll have to Circle back to Dr Martin and Miss Buffalo um because on that template it was you know like what were the action items you start with feedback on feedback so last time we met we said we were going to do X Y and Z and people report out yes I for example with these action items these these needed actions if we eventually decide who's going to do what you'll be able to say I need to be on the agenda to share the surrounding districts policies on their use of the attorney you know because I was charged with bringing that forward right so we're going to divide up that work around those action items but you're always going to be charged with bringing it back to
266the group um so I do like that as a always always starting with the action closing out with action items right saying okay we agree at the end of this meeting I'm gonna do this you're going to do that bye and we do action items by you know item who's responsible and by when yes simple I could be on chart paper right and then the buy one could be by the next meeting or it could be by the next business meeting or by whatever right but people are clear when they walk out what they're charged with doing and then they come back to the meeting and we say here are the things we left off on hear things that were in the parking lot hear things are that you know we're going to discuss today
267whatever the case is so these are all organizational pieces that are going to help you get to that higher productivity all right um okay and that so that's our plan and then so we're gonna do palp next time my slides are already made sure you're gonna do felt we're gonna focus on the Strategic plan because you know one of the things I'm still clicking one of the things that we have to do as part of this work is you all still have to determine your board priorities I don't think you can say what the priorities are until we have that conversation about the things that need to happen right so that's that's one of our our up next vision and mission statement that needs to be revised I've been saying this for a long time
268but it's fine like it's okay because to me if you can clarify your priorities it may change what we're what we say is a division of this board so a lot of what we're doing now is going to inform some of these next step pieces so don't be perplexed about oh my gosh Division and mission statement are still on the website as they are that's okay I think a lot of what we're doing now is going to help inform that and then the big piece is that theory of action work um my my thinking was and I'm glad I didn't do it because I was actually going to put a um a theory of action template in the folder but I said we probably won't get to that so I'm going to hold but I
269am going to probably after our next meeting I want each person to develop a theory of action separately and then we're going to come together and we're going to create a board's theory of action so you're going to have a model for sentences but you know if we then right so we'll we're going to do that because that those there's two things that are here that have to be forward-faced well three things have to be forward-facing four priorities need to go on the website people need to be able to say here's what our board is working on right and and I feel like we're a little behind on that because it's January and I would have my Hope was that we would have been there by now so that needs to be forward-facing priorities need
270to be forward-facing the vision mission statement yes needs to be revised but we can hold on that but your theory of action for what you're going to do from 23 20 23 24 yeah that needs to be forward-facing so those are my priorities is board priorities and theory of action so in the next meeting we're going to go through and and do the alignment to the Strategic plan I'm gonna flesh out those action items I'm gonna incorporate some of what you said here but I do want you to be thinking about what's our theory of action and what are our priorities because that's going to be a big part of our our next steps okay all right thank you all right before we close out let's formally close out let's do a quick rip around
271three things you could pick one three concepts ideas that are most important for you guys to enact upon two things that you want to further explore that we've talked about today and one what next step that we should take in our debate team so pick one you gotta you don't have to do all all you have to do three two and one pick one and let's do a quick whip around whoever wants to read them again we got three concepts or ideas that are most important for you all to enact upon two concepts that you should further explore as a board like I already heard one of the things that further explores the whole use of use of the attorney right and then one next step um that you should take in your development so
272what you got all right oh the um what I'm getting here was about committees at some point we got to put that in there okay Concepts that are important for us to act from a process standpoint I think um a clear understanding and process for the agenda planning Concepts that we can further explore how to best incorporate student voice Next Step that we should take in our governance development is reflect back on today and how that will make us a better team going forward love it but one that's okay for once the next step we should take in our development I was a governance team I would still like to see more um information or questioning or something about our our responsibilities um to make sure that we have students that are doing what they
273need to do in other words I'd like to see something on it on more accountability for the board in relationship to Children's progress priorities basically yeah identify priorities identify board priorities right and and especially you know that that theory of action conversation if we when we develop a very cohesive theory of action because it's only you know three or four sentences that you all you see the clarity in that but also the community sees it they say oh our board is saying that if they focus I'm I'm putting words like because you know the reaction statements are if if we then we expect results You're expect to see so if if if we can master that and it's very clear both to you all and to the community that becomes your talking point right that
274becomes the here's here's what the board is very focused on we can't get to that theory of action until we first identify the priorities and looked at these different data pieces and that kind of thing so we're building to that point um it'll be there but I want you I want you to be thinking about what that looks like other others yeah uh I think we need to figure out a how we are going to align the budget process with the Strategic plan at whatever level that it is today we know it's more work to be done but at the end of the day I think if we say that whatever it is academic excellence that I think as the board discusses the budget that comes to us I think the budget should come to
275us that reflects that and I think the board should be able to eventually vote on a budget where we can see the connection between what we say we believe and Inspire and what we fund and budget so that's that's the that's the value of that resources piece right because then we're saying like what how do we put our money how do we put our money where our mouth is right um and so that's that that's the value of that that piece that's why pelp says that you can't have a strategy but then you have no way of funding it right and so each each time we say this is what we committed to we committed to expanding Behavioral Services interventions and strategies to students with the largest need well there's a dollar amount tied to
276that right that Constitution needs to happen at this table okay excellent I I second that and also I think for establishing board priorities I would have liked to have seen us do that so I think that's that's um primary yeah yeah that needs that needs to happen um I too think that we need to prioritize exploring student voice and how we're utilizing our board member student board member you know given that it's January as well um One Step as a governance team I think you know using using what we're learning here I mean we've been talking about it but I think the Clifton the the assessment that we took is helpful and knowing how we all kind of placed what's that yeah and appreciating and understanding and accepting that about each of us I think
277just if it has to go on our name tag or whatever you know I've seen that happen by the way but people have done that like they have their color right like so yeah like whatever you know just just remember you know it's it's not personal it's I I'm I'm asking questions you know or whatever but yeah I will say I I really do appreciate that you all have like allowed us to to let the process evolve right like remember early on I kept saying just trust a process like you know I I know when we first started it was like well what's gonna happen in governance training from week to week or month to month and what what we decided to do and what it's hopefully you see this right is that we develop
278this based on who you are based on what the needs of the group are right and and and so that being fluid around this and taking our time and being substantive about it I think there's greater value in it now you might feel like well it's it's January yeah but look how much progress we've made since July right I mean I think I've seen progress hopefully you all see it too and I think that it's it's in the taking of the time to do it in the way that you all need and not being locked into a certain protocol I think that's been helpful it's kind of the way that we we as a company like we always want to make sure that we are doing code development co-design we don't come in with the
279one size fits-all kind of process and I've seen the value of that even in this group right that we took two hours today focused on relationship building one might say oh my gosh we get to you know even me sitting here like okay I gotta get through my 76 live but I'm also recognized that yes I prepared 76 slides but I might only get to slide 28 and that's okay if we have the right conversations if you know we walk a little bit more clarity about what we're going to be doing and I see that happening so hopefully you guys see it as well um so I so I thank you for that I thank you for the time that you guys put in I thank you for the effort that continues to happen uh
280look for some follow-up emails for me around what we talked about today but you have a sense of where we're going with this and we are going to get dug in to the Strategic plan and what the board's work is and helping to both monitor you know to to create accountability around it because at the end of the day we got to get to these goals we got to get to the goals that we that we say are are of value right and you have a lot of power in making that happen so that's what we're gonna be doing you're stuck with us until May so we got a few more months to get this done thank you thank you all so much all right well thank you for coming and cross your fingers training
281and I see us all right yeah Adele loves to hit that so yeah all right thank you all