School Committee Superintendent Interviews

001All right, we'll call this meeting of the real regional school committee to order. Please stand for the allegiance to the flag of the United States of America nationis for all. Okay, thanks everybody. We're here tonight for scheduled interviews for our interim superintendent position. Um, Trace Novik is going to help us organize them and bring them in. We each have a packet with the questions. So, we'll stick to those questions. I believe they're assigned. So, we'll each read one or two. Uh, Megan is not with us tonight. She has a personal issue. Uh, so she's not with us tonight. So, any questions that are assigned to Megan, I'll just read myself. All right. Mr. Chair, your first candidate. Good evening. Thank you. Hi. How are you? Good. She's Donna Flity. Donna Flareity. Yes. I was debating

002whether I should come around and shake all of your hands, but in light of the fact that the was going through our building, I you would probably prefer that I didn't do that. Perfect. Thank you. Uh okay. Uh so we all uh as you probably know, we voted on some questions to ask you. We have a list of them. You're just going to go around read them and feel free to answer how you wish. Sure, that sounds great. All right. I'll start with why are you interested in this position and this district? Sure, that's a great question. Um, for me, I really love I I got to know the community um through my work at Except um I was just telling the story that we do a lot of external professional development and we travel

003around um for groups of teachers and SPE directors and what have you. So, we've been holding our um new SPE directors institute over at the Haven. So, I had the opportunity to drive around the community and see what it looked like. And it just looked like such a wonderful place. It reminded me of the town that I raised my children in, which was a nice small town. We were also part of a regional school district as well. Um, during my time here, I served um six years as a school committee member and five years on the finance committee member. So, I understand sort of the playing push and pull of being in a regional school district. Um, but what I really like about it is the opportunity within a small, you know, town, you have

004the opportunity to really immerse yourself into the community and really get into the schools, get to know the students, get to know the teachers, get to know the principles. You have a total of three schools. Makes it, you know, just delightfully manageable. Um I think there's about 1100 students that you have as well which really makes it easy to get to know students on a one-on-one basis and be able to go in at lunchtime and see the students and you know have those conversations to see how their days are going. So a lot of that appeals to me as well as um I really do like the structure of you know having a selectman having the finance committee that speaks to me as to how you can work together and collaborate. You know, I know

005also that you have a fire um building that you need as well as needing a senior center and some other issues on your um budgets during what we call the fiscal cliff in education these days as I'm sure you're well aware of. So really, you know, the play of all of that and knowing what the community's needs are and understanding the community and the culture and being able to be a part of all of that, it's um it's exciting to me. All right. Thank you. Uh Lisa, would you like to ask the next question, please? Sure. How do you build strong relationships with parents, teachers, your admin team, counsel board, um finance committee, capital committee, and the school committee, just a handful of people. Um so I would obviously start with an entry plan. I

006would um define what the questions would be that I would want to ask people so that I could quickly get up to speed on what the town initiatives are, the school's initiatives, and then I would schedule certainly one-on- ones with each of you. So I could ask you what are your dreams, hopes, what do you see for the future of the school, the weaknesses that you would want to um work on, as well as what you're proud of most about both school and your towns of Brooklyn and Boilston. Um, I would do the same in meeting with u my admin team, central office team and the principles. I would want to meet with each of them oneonone, really kind of get a way of knowing them. Um, see what their needs are. I've noticed in

007your um the strategic plan that you're ending now that you really have a lot of initiatives in a short period of time. So, I wonder the impact of that on the principles and on the teachers. all good things because we want our students to have positive outcomes, right? We're all here for the sake of our students and their future and they can't do it without us. But, you know, what does that mean for our staff and how can we help them to continue to be more successful? Um, I would also meet with teacher groups as well. I would want to meet with the union president and understand what they're doing. Have ongoing meetings with everybody. Um certainly I would apply that same to the select board, finance committee, capital committee. Um again, you've got a

008lot going on in both towns and how do we balance all that? Um, so the only way to do that is really having that rapport and getting to know people and understand what what is the culture of the town and what is the culture of the town politics in Berlin, which could be very different than Boilstead, and what their needs are and how does that apply to the culture that we have here in the school district as well, you know, and even with your separate elementary schools, although we're still one school district, you still have very unique cultures um and identities within those elementary schools as well. So really teasing all of that out and being able to immerse myself in that and understand, you know, who the people are and what their needs are

009in that sense. Um once I gathered all that information, that would be a wonderful opportunity to sort of form a committee and set the direction. Look at where you are in your strategic plan now, where we're going to go. um have a full committee um including parents, community members, school committee members, administrators, teachers, and students as well because we want to engage our older students in all of that and see what do they think they're living every single day in our school district. So what do they think about that? What are the changes that they would like to see in our strategic plan? Um further what I would do what I do presently is I do one-on- ones once a week with my central office staff and then I do um twice a month I

010meet with my entire leadership team. We do a variety of things from mentoring, professional development as well as really digging in deep with regards to what we need to do um for our students, for our schools, for our teachers as well. Um, we all know that uh there's more and more difficulty in finding teachers that have the license that we need to put in front of our students. So some of what we do is go out and make relationships with Bridgewater State College, Mass Community College, so that we're taking our pair of professionals and our teachers and we're collaborating with the university and colleges in order to make programs for them to attend so that we can help them and guide them along the way into getting their licenses. So really we talk a lot

011about that during those two meetings a month and they're usually a full um morning each month uh twice a month and some of it is a professional development. So for example, a lot of my administrators really needed to understand budgeting. You know, we work at the collaborative. We don't have a budget that we receive on July one like a school district does, but we have a profit and expense budget, which means it's like running a small business. So we really need to go out and make our money. Um we have no entitlement grants, so we're very active in getting um competitive grants. But basically they needed to understand that and they needed to understand their budget. So really looking at what their needs are and fulfilling those needs as well. Next question uh was for

012Megan but Megan's not here tonight. So what are your greatest strengths and weaknesses as a leader? Okay. Um we all have them. We all know that. So I I think one of my greatest strengths if I thought about it would be um my tenacity. I really when I see a problem or I see something that I think needs to be done for example you know we needed license teaches what are we doing right how can we help with that situation it's really getting out there and problem solving collaborating and setting up a plan and action that we can um work together to get to the end of that um I would also say that um I'm a servant leader so I really look at um students needs parents needs, uh, staff needs, community needs. Um,

013how can I help? What skills do I have that I can apply to bring resolution and solve some of the problems or issues or celebrate all of the good things that we're doing because we certainly do a lot of the things that we don't want to lose and we want to make sure people know that. And how are we advertising that um, as well to our community so they do understand where their tax dollars are going. So, I love that work and I love doing that. I love mentoring people. Um, I've mentored any number of um teachers to become administrators, whether it be principal or um special education director and superintendent. So, that's something that I find beneficial with regards to um like I said, leadership. As far as my weaknesses go, I I think

014one of my weaknesses can be um because I am very um oriented on getting the job done and what are we doing and how are we achieving it that I really have high standards for myself and I really like deadlines and I like people to hit their mark and you know when we have our strategic plan and we're looking at what our initiatives are for the year I have my team create um a half for the year and this is probably my engineering um background coming in but uh we do a map and we work back it's like where do we need to be at all the different places in order to hit our mark at the end so one thing that can sometimes frustrate me that I have to think about how can we

015work on is if somebody's you know not meeting their deadlines and they're falling behind and really sitting down and having those conversations with them what do you need how can we help you um what do we need to take off your plate So really looking at it that way, but I'm very deadline oriented and projectoriented and I want to get things done for kids and for the community. How will you handle the balance of respecting longtime employees of the district's experience and familiarity with how things have always been done with new ideas, changes, and perspectives? and that's not an uncommon occurrence. And so I think when I look at that and I think about it, I think a lot of times what happens is if you're a longtime employee and it doesn't matter where you

016are, right, it could be at the Berlin Boilstead Regional School District or it, you know, could be working at IBM or wherever. Um, you want to feel that you're valued. You want to feel that the work that you've done has meaning and means something to people. You want to feel that in the case of, you know, we're working with children and that's what matters. It's not widgets. It's not producing, you know, computers or something like that. We're working with children. And you want to know that the work you've done over the many years that you've been here is respected, has positive outcomes, and you want people to reflect on that and let you know that. And I think sometimes what I've seen in my experience is that when people hear, you know, about a new

017initiative or, you know, if things are changing that their work is no longer valued, that they're no longer valued and they take it rather personally. Um, and that's we understand that, right? That's understandable. So, the question is how do you how do you deal with that? What's the goound to make people appreciate, you know, that we know the work that you've done and how important it is? And I think it's really getting in there um getting on the ground floor and understanding what their culture is. You know, why is this important to them? Um, what part do they play in that? What do they think about the potential new initiatives? What can we do to make them feel comfortable? What does a roll out look like for a new initiative? Have we planned it properly?

018Have we considered a timeline for it? Does it make sense for our staff? What are the steps we need to do in between the here's a great idea, Jessie's asking us to do this, so let's get over here and do it. What happens in between and how long is that going to take? And I think in order to make it respectful, in order to have it roll out properly, we really need to involve all the constituents in it and have task force. So that would be including our teachers in that, some of our administrators, inviting parents and students in that to really have the conversations, piloting some things so that they have a voice. They want to know that their voice matters and that they can have a voice in what's happening. I mean, after

019all, if we don't have happy, productive teachers in our classroom, we're going to see that with our children, right? So, we need to value our teachers. We need to value our pair of professionals and our related support staff. Um and but we do that by applauding and celebrating all of their achievements and then bringing them into the new initiatives that we are looking at. I think I would also say um so we've had um a couple new initiatives that we've done at the Except Collaborative. So we've seen it change since the pandemic. our biggest um initiative that we have our programs for students with disabilities and we've had a shift a huge shift in the six years that I've been there from most of our students initially were students who had multiple disabilities who had

020intellectual impairments who had autism in in since the pandemic our is 80% of our students are students who are marching towards a general education diploma who's going to go on to either you know service or college or the workforce. Um, and they deserve a right to the same general curriculum that everybody else has. Well, when I got there, we didn't have that because we didn't have those students. But now we have these students with significant trauma, with significant behavioral, emotional challenges, but who are very bright students who deserve the same as every other student um in the Commonwealth. So what we did is we um rolled out two huge initiatives. One was reading and literacy because all students deserve to read and they had lost a lot of instruction between both the pandemic and the

021fact because of some of their behaviors they were out of class and they missed instruction. So we wanted to make sure they felt safe, secure and they could access that instruction. Um, and the other piece was the SEAL initiatives because again, this is what our students need right now and it's a mandate by the way. So, we have to do that through Jessie. But, um, so it was good stuff. So, we went out, we um achieved some competitive grants for both of those areas. So, we received almost $2 million in competitive grants in order to fund all of that. But, we really took a step back and thought about teaches and and said, "What do we need to do to make you feel comfortable?" Because the first thing you hear is, "Well, we've never done

022that before. We've never had to teach the general curriculum." You're right, but you didn't have these students or, you know, we didn't have these issues before. So, really working with them and having a lot of training sessions in regards to um they were shifting with the students that they were working with. So, we really needed to bring professional development in to talk about um what does a student who has trauma look like and how do we respond? And it's very different than a student who has autism or you know multiple disability. Um same thing with uh looking at social emotional aspects because kids respond in very different ways and a student who's high functioning autism responds very differently than you know a student who's all inward. So we really had to start from the ground

023floor and start working with professional development with them from there and then build up and then start having them piloting the different curriculums both for the SEAL and for the reading and literacy initiatives. We brought a coach in for the readings to help them with teaching reading. Um we did data teams and worked on teaching them how to do data. They were great at behavioral data. we really had to focus on the academic data then because it was a whole different um group of students. So really taking a look at um what they had done and really trying to bring along those people who had been at the collaborative 20 and 25 years that you know were some of the people that were pushing back the most but really saying we value the work that

024you're doing and we still had room for people who did need to um instruct students who had autism or multiple disabilities and you know maybe this is the place for you. And so really letting people have that option and opportunity to sort of move around to where it made sense for them but that they were still a valued member of our community. But you know and again I think sometimes it's just what am I losing you know and do people respect me and really looking at that and making sure that we understand that you know our teachers and our staff are people too and that you know we really need to value them and value the work that they've done and show them that we care what you do is important and we respect that.

025Thank you. Jess, would you mind asking the next question? No. We have flu in this district as well. So I apologize. Um so how could you create an environment where staff felt safe to approach you with problems? So as I said my leadership style is that of a servant leader. Um I always have an open door policy. I've always whether I when I was an assistant principal sped director I've always had an open door policy. I try and find ways of integrating myself in the classroom. I will go down and help with, you know, on a rough day, I'll go down and I'll insert myself. I'll teach a lesson. Um, really show them that what they do, I'll do because it's, you know, for the sake of the students and we want the students to

026progress and we want students to feel safe and want to come there. So, it's really showing them that we're all in this together. Um, and then they feel comfortable with me. when it with pandemic hit, one thing I found that was very beneficial um was every Wednesday and I continue it today is every Wednesday from usually about 3 to 4:00 I have an open Zoom meeting so anybody can join that open Zoom meeting and they can have a conversation with me. Um they can ask me about certain things. I've had, you know, a couple of my life skills teachers talk to me about getting a new refrigerator for their classroom all the way to just talking about what fun things people have planned to do over vacation or, you know, over the weekend or something

027and all kinds of things in between. We've talked about some of the initiatives we've rolled out. We've talked about what plans might be as we progress forward, you know, as we're restructuring things. So really, I leave it open for anyone to come in for an hour and we just have a conversation. Some people will pop on for five minutes. Some people stay the whole time. I have some people who show up pretty regularly and other people who've only shown up once or twice, but it's there for them and it gives them an opportunity to really get to know me as a person as well as themselves. And because our um facility is spread out a bit like most collaboratives, it allows people um out in midway to be able to participate as well. So um

028I also do, you know, building visits, program visits. Um we do walkthroughs where we get to know, you know, the students and the staff. I greet every Monday. I greet at one building or another students coming in for the week. Um so I I think it's just really being a person, you know, being vulnerable. When we opened school this year, I shared a story about um one of my brothers like we talked about the why. I wanted people to think about, you know, why do we do this work, right? Why are we here? Working with students and in collaborative sometimes, you know, days can be incredibly difficult. Um so why are we here? Why do we keep coming back? So, I really wanted to share with them my why. Um, so I think being vulnerable

029in front of your staff and sharing personal information and letting them get to know you as a person is just so beneficial. So, I really kind of shared how my wife really centered on um I come from a big family. There's seven of us, seven siblings um and my oldest brother and you know, he had his struggles in life and really kind of shared about that. he passed away about a year and a half ago and really wanted to kind of talk about his story and how that really changed the trajectory of what I thought my career would be. You know, I started off in engineering. Um, love math, love numbers, you know, wanted to do that. Um, but then I had a lot of wise and a lot of curiosity and, you know, how

030are we all from the same family and yet this is happening and that is happening. So, I really wanted to understand that. So went back to school and you know got my masters in special ed and elementary ed and then wanted to know more and shifted my career um just so I could understand that and how I could apply that to life and really you know be a positive um person in the lives of a lot of children a lot of students. So I I think being vulnerable is just so important and just being, you know, a typical person, going to football games, going to events, going to spelling bees, you know, all of those pieces where they can come see you cheering on Fear the Deer, you know that there you are and wearing

031your green. And so I think it's important and I do I have kids who come and see me or they'll ask you know their principal if you know they're having a little trouble and you know I want to see Miss Donna. I want to talk to her about this problem which is kind of fun. So it's nice. Um but yeah thank you. Um another question from Megan. So how do you handle conflict situations within the school district? There's always lots of conflict situations in school districts. Um, and again, I think the uh important part is we need to form relationships. That's, you know, key and utmost of importance is forming positive relationships and rapport with um all of the people in the school district. Really getting to know people, understanding their values, understanding the culture.

032Again, each of your buildings has a different culture. I'm sure your admin team has a different culture. your principles probably band together and have their own culture. I know that when I was in that position, we did that because, you know, only so many people understand that role thoroughly. Um, so really looking at, you know, what is it that people are striving for and what is it that they want? So, I talked a little bit about how I we've done some schooling with my leadership team with regards to budgeting, right? Um, what does the budget look like? what is your piece of the pie? You know, how do you manage your piece of the pie and how does that impact this? So, and the reason for that is because oftentimes, and I'm just using the

033budgeting as an example. The reason for that is, you know, people look at a $25 million budget and say, I know you have $150 in there to get me fill in the blank, whatever that is. We don't. And here's why we don't. Right? So what does that look like? You know, when you have in principles are wonderful at protecting their people, you know, and giving them what they need because again, happy teachers, happy kids, positive outcomes for everybody. Um, same thing in special education. We know that kids could do better if, you know, fill in the blank. So how do we balance all of that? And I find that often um the conflict does center around, you know, what we need for our kids and advocating for our kids and how do we successfully manage

034that with all of the different people that we know are here for such good reasons, you know, for the outcomes of our students, you know. So how do we um work with those people so that they understand and give them an opportunity to sort of look at the big picture as well and have those hard and difficult conversations. So you know collaboration is key, positive rapport is key, education is key, what people need to understand and learn and know about. Um but then ultimately as well somebody has to make those hard decisions as well right at some point in time. you know, as the superintendent, as the executive director, I make that decision. You know, if it's going to be this or this or how we're going to distribute things, and it really needs to

035be in the best interest of what we're doing for kids. We really need to go back and take a look at our strategic plan. What did we say that we were going to do this year? How are we achieving those outcomes and those initiatives? Where are we at? Are we measuring it properly? what do we need to bolster this initiative and do we need to shift funds or do we need to shift people or you know what the conflict is. Um if we go back to your question with regards to new initiatives um how do we keep peace with the teachers? Are we giving them properly what they need in order to do their jobs functionally? So really taking a look at that and considering you know what is in the best interest overall with

036the district. And if I took that another step further and I started thinking about the community as well. We have two communities as well as our district community. Um you really have to apply very similar logic and strategic planning and building relationships and report with your select man and your finance committee and your capital committee. You need to visit your seniors because you need them to also understand, you know, this is our strategic plan. This is why we're doing what we do. This is why we're asking for what we're asking for. You know, here's the results we're hoping for. Here's the standards that the state is requiring of us. And here is the portrait of a graduate that we want to see for our students. So really without that level of understanding um people are

037just going to kind of fall back and you know we've all heard it you know schools get the biggest chunk of the budget. Yes we do. We have the most people we're serving the entire population of the students within our town but um it impacts the town. You want them to be successful. You want them to come back and to have their jobs and to settle in your towns and just keep that town and community going with happy people. So, you know, it's all tied together. Um, so I think that uh yeah, so in in so far as dealing with conflicts, I think it really it's the building blocks that you start with, right? The rapport, the relationships, the understanding of the community, the understanding of the cultures, which can be very different in different

038areas. Then how do you apply that and how do you provide knowledge and education to people about what our mission and vision is for our children? Thank you. Uh, next to me. So, uh, could you speak to your skills and experience in the budget process? Uh, you just did a little bit, but please address your experience specifically with regional school budgets. Okay. Sure. Sure. I have um have a lot of experience in the budget process in a variety of different settings, which I found to be quite beneficial in regards to, you know, problem solving and really being able to take a look at a budget and think about how we can resolve it. Um as as I had told you when I was on the school committee um in the regional district that I was

039in two small towns um I also sat on the finance committee and I have to say that's some of the best education I ever had in my life. It really being on the school committee made me truly understand how schools function. Um I had no idea. I was a teacher at the time. I had no idea. But it really opened up my eyes to, you know, the balancing, the planning, um, the difficult decisions that school committee members have to make with regards to policies and procedures and, you know, what your specific roles are within the community as well. Um, and then I took that. So I did that in my first year and then my second year I was the finance liaison from the school committee, but I was an active full member of the

040finance committee and that in itself as well. So, I was able to take that knowledge I had developed about the school budget and understanding all the different aspects of it. Um, and I was able to bring that up to another level and truly start understanding all of the different needs and wants of all of the different town departments. You know, the fire department wants another station. The seniors have been fighting for a center for 10 years. the police are looking to bring in two more police officers because they don't have anybody during certain times of the night. Um all of those different aspects in the balancing of it all. Taking a look at um what a bond is. understanding that in when you're building or when you're adding to your HVAC or your roofing and

041you know what are all the different pieces that you need to know in order to formulate a strategic plan for your town, a 10-year plan really you're looking at um for a town because of the tax base and all of that. Um so that was terrific. the aspect of that then sitting at the table as school committee member um of a regional school committee was really balancing. So my town was smaller that I lived in. We didn't have um a lot of business. So it was really on the backs of the people living there. You know they um when the taxes went up it was really they property taxes. There's no sales tax in New Hampshire. So it's all goes to property taxes. So it's a little bit different structure. Whereas the other town was

042small in itself, it had a whole lot of business in it. So they could afford or ask or look for a larger increase of renovating the vocational center or you know whatever it is that they wanted. So it was really working on that balance with my fellow school committee members from the other town as well as the members on that town as to understand that the different places were all in and you know bringing in what our towns needed as well to really come to some um general consensus with regard to what we're going to ask for for the budget and what that was going to look like for each town. Each town voted their separate budget but there was still an implication across the board for both. And I know you understand that because

043you're in the same situation. So, but um so we have that as far as you know when I was in Battle Creek, Michigan and I was the um director of student services of Battle Creek Michigan as a city and my department alone had a budget of $50 million. So really balancing that budget and looking at all the different we had four high schools, we had six middle schools. It was really quite large. um we had a very high um population of students with disabilities. So managing that whole budget gave me a good opportunity to really take a look at a larger overarching budget and how to manage that and prioritize as well. And again, circle back to what are is our district plan and what are our priorities and initiatives for this year while balancing

044those unexpected district placements or busing situations that you might have. Um, as far as, you know, and that's the same with the other opportunities that I've had when I was the director of student services or the assistant superintendent. Um, working as an assistant principal, I understood how you really are looking for your own building, your own people, and that budget is the most important piece to you. Um, so I I feel like I can appreciate that and I can understand that perspective as well. As an executive director, I had mentioned earlier that we don't receive like our budget on July 1st and then we manage our budget. um we have to generate a revenue, we have to bring in competitive grants. That's how we have our budget. So we propose a budget, work collaboratively with

045my central office senior team. We propose a budget starting we would be starting our budget um couple few months because we have the budget approved by December of the year. So we have to propose our initiatives um by October. So it's really thinking in terms of being a business person and really having to balance that and really having to look at it. And you know, it's a very similar application to what you have to do with regards to a budgeted school district and particularly in a regional district. You really have to take a look and watch your money and see where you're at each month and ensure that you know your percentages aren't going over or you're not exceeding in any particular area and really resetting and reggrounding and bringing ideas and bringing that information

046to the school committee so that they're fully aware as well and that they can forward and make some decisions with regard to what we think are the best initiatives or directions that we have to do. Um so I do I have a lot of um experience in budgeting and presenting budgets at town meetings and presenting budgets to finance committees um quotes of directors all of that. Thank you. Uh Lori, last but not least, would you take the last question? So So my question's long, but the good news is the answer is probably short and it gives your your voice a rest. Um but it's I need to kind of tell a little background. So, we're currently in the middle of a big shift. Our current interim superintendent has had to do much more than just

047his superintendent duties. Um, he's trying to make sense of last year's budget and finding things like job descriptions and professional practices that need updating or creating as just some simply don't exist. There were two rural districts that kind of came together. Um, he typically works well beyond 7 p.m. on weekdays, attends town meetings in both Burland and Boilston that often run until 9 or 10, and he often spends weekends in central office. Do you feel you are equipped to continue his work? Would you be able to dedicate as much time um to turning our district around so we could attract a full-time superintendent next year? Short answer, yes. No. Um I think that anybody who's sitting in a superintendent seat, an executive director seat, that is the expectation like you understand what the work is.

048You understand there's a lot of work. Um in a collaborative, we wear many many hats. You know, I've been serving as the director of student services as well as the executive director sometime. I take a huge role in the finances. Huge role in the finances. Um, we work I work seven days a week now in this job. Um, I think it's just it's important that you have the finger on the pulse of what's happening in your district, in your collaborative. Um, you want to make sure that you're meeting the needs of your community as well. You know, we've developed some parent programs and parent support groups as well to bring our parents in. Um, so that requires some night work. We've done we've created cooking classes for some of our life skills students and students

049on the spectrum so that we can bring those students in. Um, give them skills that they need as well as at the same time then we give our parents a break by doing a workshop for them. We had I think last month the workshop was um physical education for your students because you know they need to be physically fit too. So really doing a lot of that weekend and night work. You know I talked about you know it's important to see the superintendent at the football games or the girls basketball games. It's important to go to the plays and show the kids and the parents that you care about what's happening with their children. You care about what's happening with them as well. you know, and I've flipped pkades at, you know, the Rotary Club

050and all of those different activities, too. So, I mean, honestly, it's really just an expectation when you sign up for this type of position, and you know that going in. I hope you know that going in. So, um, because you've done all the work and, you know, to perceive that where, you know, even assistant superintendent are there all the time and so, so, yes. Thank you. Go. All right. Thank you. Uh, that's our final list of questions, Tracy. Yes. So, um, I'm gonna walk you out a couple more interviews and you'll hear from me one way or the other plan is to make decisions. Speaking of late nights, thanks everybody. Give me a minute or two. Sure. And I'll have your next candidate. Yep. Okay. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask. Yep. And

051you already have another pass. All right. Uh for those watching at home, um I don't know how the video is coming across. We did have a problem with the camera earlier today. It apparently broke. Uh it's that camera in particular was 11 years old. Someone said 2014, right? Yeah. So 11 year old camera. So that broke. So fortunately, one of the employees here had a camera. So we're using that tonight. I'm not sure how good it's going compared to the previous, but uh I don't know if that's going to fit into the budget or not for a new camera. We'll have to see. But hopefully we got something going. So yeah, we'll watch something. But it's not the same video quality you're used to. Or maybe it's better because it looks like a newer camera.

052Now he's shaking his head now. It's definitely not better. All right. Well, that's the story. And Mr. Here is Dr. Sure. How are you? I'm doing well, thank you. Good, thanks. So, we're just going to do the same. Um, we have a list of questions. Uh, I think you have there as well. So, I'll just take turns reading through them. Okay. Um, So, first up, why are you interested in this position in this district? I think it would be an absolute joy to do this position. Um, I come from Hopkin, which is 30 minutes away, so the drive is absolutely wonderful. It cuts down on my commuting time. Um, plus I'm looking at the district as um I have been in a regional um for 20 over two decades and being in a regional you

053learn everything about the nuances of regional that really are different than being a part of municipalities and so I have learned about the importance of the role of the superintendent in bringing all of the communities together. I had three communities that were a part of that. Um, and I think I would absolutely delight um in in having two communities. I loved the work. I loved being uh visible and present and accessible. I was able to build strong relationships and and clearly it was I was very much at home in the regional. And I will also share that uh the name of the district was King Phillip which you probably have already seen from my resume. Uh but the interesting story behind King Phillip I always like to know um the a little bit of the

054history of the school and the name and King Phillip was actually an Anglo-Saxon name and for Metac who was a Wampenog chief. Um, but I noticed that your high, your middle high school, um, also has a Native American Indian chief name, too. Um, and so I thought that that was kind of fun for me. So, uh, my also the other perk, um, I was the students, uh, enrollment, uh, was about 2,000 and this also would be a delight because it's a little smaller. Um, and I think that uh the but the pro the problems or the challenges that come with running any school district are still there and they would be very engaging for me to work with and collaborate with the people in Berlin and Boils. Um, so I would love that. And I

055think additionally um or I I think um I took the day off. This is the first vacation day I have had in like a year and I I really wanted to do a nice job in my presentation at this interview because I would really like to be here. So um so I took the day off and I have thought about things and I'm prepared um and I really um I enjoyed my day and it was also nice that it was so wonderful outside but on my way here it kind of started to rain. So, so um there many factors in terms of why I would enjoy being here and this is I I feel like I'm an exceptional fit uh based on my background and not only am I just regional schools but I have

056so many other aspects of what I could bring to the district like I'm I have strengths in engineering I have strengths in education I have you know any kind of I have multiple certifications ations at both the teaching level and multiple certifications across the admin level. So I would also be a good coach for anybody and be able to recognize any challenges that we might need to confront. Thank you. Uh Lisa, um how do you build strong relationships with parents, teachers, your admin team, town select board, finance committees, capital committee, and the school committee? Okay. I saw that question and I listened to your video and I thought, you know what, that's like an entry plan type of question, you know, and and I actually prepared something. Um so, um this is how I would

057manage all of those relationships. Oh, sure. I would love that. And so um as not to lose focus um and I highlighted some aspects of this entry course um and I certainly um have strong strength in building relationships. And so um first I would actually like to start with how I might build a relationship with you all on the school committee. And um basically um I would want to have trust, open communication and be able to share the leadership because there are things that we all would need to work together on. Uh I I would be very open to conducting individual meetings whether they're virtual or in person at any time whenever we feel that that's necessary. I'd also like to get to know you as people. Um so that would be good. Um, good

058for me. I and good for you. Um, in in terms of regular communication, I would enjoy like sending you a Friday a Friday weekly email every Friday. These this is the state of things that are going on in the district. I want to keep you well informed. uh and um in terms of collaborating um collaboration I'm a I'm a really frequent collaborator and I look to shape district goals, policies and priorities through retreats or workshops. I'd also love a no surprise on both sides rule and if there's something that I don't know please feel free to share it and likewise if there is a crisis that happens at the school I also would get actively in touch with you right away as soon as as able to do so. Okay. Uh so um let's see

059and then I in terms of um communicating um basically we look at also um some training and professional development but I always like to talk about uh groups uh with what they think they need because it does no good to provide anybody professional development that they don't want. Uh so um I always like to listen and hear what people's needs are. Then um I've been actively invol involved with select boards, town leadership and fincoms. Um and so you know there's a part of getting to know the culture in the town, right? And so as I would extend myself to be open to and invitations to have them come to our meetings and set up virtual meetings on a monthly basis. Um, I would have specific agendas so that they could get to know the school

060and uh, like specific agendas, you know, could certainly include like a facility director update because that is often essential if you're going to be working on capital planning projects. I've had the pleasure this year of working on several capital planning projects. In fact, I actually uh served as um interim facilities director because we lost our facilities director and we could we didn't have we weren't able through the interviewing process to find the right fit. I had an engineering background. It was a light lift. So, I did it. And in addition to my current job, I've also taken on in other as a as a regional school district person um for uh another dual job role. I took on the um assistant superintendent and middle school principal simultaneously before it became a permanent position and then

061I assumed that role permanently. Um, so, um, I love to involve town people early in any type of budget because one of the things that's unique about regional schools is that while the school committee approves the budget, the both towns must vote to pass the budget um, at the town meeting. So I know that and I think it is smart to just you know start you know educating and collaborating as early on as possible. So um going on um I'm not going to read every single bullet because if you'd like to you can follow and ask me any question you would like. Um but um very quickly I love to be visible in schools. Um, and part of that visibility, one of the things that I had fun with when my music teacher said, "Hey,

062could you conduct a concert, be the guest conductor and work and conduct the finale?" I said, "Sure." And I did. Um, and I've also um been absolutely present for um high school pathways. that we one of our requirements um is that our students that pursue like a STEM pathway or a global studies pathway that they absolutely do like a final presentation a researchbased presentation where they were given feedback by some of our some of our um strongest teachers and also I would join in and also provide feedback and it was like watching uh the students give like a mini master's level project like they were at the high school level. It was really great. So looking at that, um I love to be in schools in classrooms. I've been making an attempt to visit every

063single classroom in the first 90 days. Okay. As I meet with people, um one of the things that I continue to try to find out and this has been fascinating. I do like I use a SWAB acronym which is it's almost funny but that SWAB is actually strength weaknesses opportunities and I don't like the T that's why I substituted for a B um and the B is barriers you know I just figured I feel that that's less threatening I can do that interview within like but casually informally I can do that within five minutes so and you find out a lot of information which can guide you forward and in your work with every single person. Um, also being that this is a school district, the the top responsibility, the top priority is while you're

064building while you're building relationships, you have to pay attention to the teaching and learning that's going on because that's why we're here. That's the first mission of a school to be one that is a place where students feel comfortable and learn and um and grow. So um also the last part of this would be um community and engaging families and I take that very seriously because kids can't learn unless they have strong teachers and strong adults behind them. And again, as I would get to know people, there just so many types of forms that you can do that really bring in people that get get me excited and get um the community excited. And so these are some of the things like ideas, topics that I would consider doing. And uh like it basically mean

065the superintendent. Well, that's just it. It's just me um without a preconceived agenda at all. And um you know, if they're parent and caregiver kinds of forums too, you can look at what what's really challenging people. Is the homework challenging? Is you know, do they need, you know, some sort of help um learning the new math program? So what what what do we need to do together to make that happen? Okay. Um and in terms of operation and um physical systems review again I have already shared that I have been an interim director of facilities for six months. While I did my current position, um, and I did my current position, I really felt that while I already had the business lensure, that I really needed myself more handson experience crafting a budget. Okay. So

066in terms of that, I've built additional relationships and I have specifically crafted a financial budget um for the town. We worked with select boards, fin um and all the staff in the school um to get it a $25.7 million budget, which was very respectable. Okay. Um so that is my fun. Um and um and really I I enjoy every minute. Um so um so um also in terms of the capital committee, I have had a significant amount of experiences developing a 10-year capital plan. uh in the absence of the facility director. I also got my um Massachusetts certified public purchasing official license this year, which makes me uh able to put together bids, contracts, anything and know the the laws and the legal aspect of that. Okay, thank you. So, sorry that was a long

067win, but it was a good it was a tour and I respect it on the on the um on the video. Someone said somebody's gonna need to um you know, maybe ask another part of that question or be reminded about. So, I just said, "Okay, just put it all down. You can take it, look at it, have fun with it, and I can also speak more about anything on that list." But perfect. Okay. All right. Thank you. Uh, next would be Megan. So, I'll take that. So, uh, what are your greatest strengths and weaknesses as a leader? Okay. I really spent the year developing my strength as a finance person and I have not been sorry. I have learned a significant amount and I also had always had a knack for working with spreadsheets. I

068found I'm extremely good in negotiations and in my in my my current position I was fortunate because this year we had two unsettled contracts which we are were able to resolve. I learned to test my own ability. Uh I can create models where I can simulate right on the spot what it is going to look like at different percentages. I have also been able to um really the pair of professionals who are looking at a restructure um like complete wipeout of what we've had in the past and create a new professional looking structure. So I can also do that at the drop of a hat, you know. So I I had I learned to test myself and challenge myself. So what was I would have considered before I started a weakness now and it's a

069strong strength. Um, I think my other strength is working collaboratively with teams to overcome barriers that lead to really good solutions and some are um some are um really um when there you talk barriers um in terms of really good solutions I found that we were able to recreate that was supposed to be the time I was supposed to walk in But anyway, the same thing. Yeah. So, um, in terms of strength, um, we, uh, took a middle school schedule and really had to get on a total recreation of it. Um, we had a big fiscal loss. Things didn't work anymore as they should have. And so, um, we sat down with the full middle school team and then said, "Hey, you know, how can we look at our data points? How can we make

070this better?" And we looked at things we wanted to change. We had a world language program we needed to make better because the students by the end of 8th grade were only getting threequarters of a year of world language. So, um, plus they were only getting one um one language. So, we separated into two um languages and we got them a full year. Um we also looked at um revising the eighth grade math program so that our students were better prepared by the time they got to be a se senior in high school to take calculus and um take calculus AB or BC which was excellent. We revised our intervention and enrichment programs so they all met at the same time and um therefore um we had kids that were always winning and we fixed

071a block. And so um we really came up with a far better solution than what had been in place that was sustained um for about 13 years successfully and survived any good budget cut that we had. And so I really felt like, you know, in terms of working on something, it was really a collaborative team effort. I led that team, but we emerged with better things than when we started. So, so that was really a good thing. Um, and so the last thing is that I really love to build capacity because I like to get to know people and it's not just about what they do during the day. I like to talk with them um and um really learn about what they feel they can do best and sometimes I see things that um

072they didn't necessarily see in themselves about what they can do best. So, I have encouraged people to get other certifications um and like I had an English teacher who never thought of teaching history, but I thought she'd be great and so I encouraged her to get uh the middle school uh lensure in humanities and she loves it. She's now teaching history and doing very well and loving every day. So um and I also in terms of building capacity looking at um in 2014 I saw the need um Javal Patrick um came out with a recommendation that schools should have uh school resource officers and we didn't have one. So I worked with uh the police chief and the um my then superintendent because I was a principal. I saw the need. um I reached out

073and recreated the position um but also um the position was created um in a unique way um so that um we I didn't want just a person that walked the beat around the school. I wanted somebody that was really engaged. the person did um did trainings for us on school safety and um we did an active shooter training which was actually that actually was a lot of preparation. They t the school resource officer talked directly to my staff to prepare them. Um because I didn't realize I knew it was important, but I didn't realize how much I had uh staff members that literally were thinking like they didn't want to do it. they didn't, you know, and so we gradually moved through the process and um she actually was absolutely excellent and she she actually

074was one of the people who wrote one of my letters of recommendation. So um so that was a fun journey. Um so um in terms of weaknesses as a leader I mean my weakness is that I really get almost but I think it's also a strength like you get too um I I get very engaged by problems. I do and so engaged that I think I sleep on them and they rotate in my brain and uh so um and and maybe that leads to a quicker solution. It definitely gives me less sleep but but I love to think. Okay. Uh thank you Beth. Would you take the next one please? How will you handle the balance of respecting longtime employees of the district's experience and familiarity with how things have always been done with new

075ideas, changes, and perspectives? You have to do this. You have to honor all of the experience because you will be going at things blind. And I really really um you know if you have to um one of the things that I um like to do sometimes is establish norms like with groups as they come in and I put the norms up on my office wall and if there's opportunity there's always opportunity but I really think you know it's it's you know one it's it's needs to be generated. The norms need to be generated by the group, but they need to value honoring past practice because anytime you sit with your union leadership board and they have some sort of a you know something that they want to discuss, it becomes very much well what is

076past practice? you know, let's tell you about past practice and let's um make sure like I would talk to my principles to make sure that we have a very solid past practice condition that will support whatever the union is wanting to talk about. So um so I believe strongly in that we and I can give you an example um and I can try and make it interesting. Um co-eing is are you all familiar with co-eing or should I explain it team teaching? It's yeah, it's where you balance a special educator and a general educator in the same classroom to um provide um assistance to all students. And if you're looking at the visual after they've been paired together for a while, um it should appear seamless. You wouldn't know who's the special educator and you

077wouldn't know who's the general educator. Um so um we were trying to address the gap between the and basically we were trying to increase the performance of our special education students which is always a challenge. So um so we learned um as we worked on the the past practice that um we tried the school had tried to do co-eing before at an earlier period people had been turned off and the re and by that and it almost became a barrier to the reintegration of it or practice and we looked at we looked at why it became a turnoff. Um because we had people that were a part of it. They had no common planning time between the special educator and the regular educator. It was always a match of convenience. When you work with somebody

078that intensely, you had better like them because otherwise you're going to end up in divorce, you know. Um so um there's that. And then um the other thing that um we learned was that um as they um so common plant match uh and then oh and there had been very little training and so what happened was the root of all this the general education teacher felt like the primary person in terms of the lead person and the special education teacher felt like playing that she was playing or he was playing second second place. And that wasn't really affirming for for the special education teacher and it perpetuated the the piece where there's some there's always some sort of tension between special ed and general ed. And um so once we put that together um what

079I did was I took a team that was interested in trying again. And so I took a team to see an a national expert that I knew was going to be wonderful and she was absolutely wonderful. Um then um so I had a core group of people that were interested. I looked and I actually called her up after the training and I said, "Ken, I need to really get a great person who can train." And um and she was in Florida and and so um we worked out a we worked out a situation where um I had to actually go virtually and teach some of her PhD classes in STEM, which I did. um we did that worship but she came um she had a daughter going to Boston College and she came um once

080a month and she did some trainings so that by the end of the year I had a core group of people who really could function with all the different there's six ways you can do co-eing and so um you know she was very good um and made them feel very comfortable she visited classes as we got this going and we made sure to recast the schedule so that it allowed for common planning time. So people chose their matches, they had better training and it was successful and people are so excited now to be doing this and the data showed that it is um boosting achievement for all students. So we looked at the specific strands on the um MCCAST map um and we noticed that the performance of all students was much better and stronger

081and we felt comfortable with it. So that was good. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Jess, please take How could you create an environment where staff felt safe to approach you with problems? You know, no staff member has never felt uncomfortable approaching me with a problem. I will say that. But it's part of who I am. Like I'm not um I like to be visible at the same time approachable and I choose to work when I don't have confidential things that I am doing. I choose to work. Laptop can come with me. um phone can come with me. I might choose a school library where I sit down and I get my work done. And I might choose a staff lounge where I get my work done. There are desks that we used to have in

082the hallway where our hallway teachers sat when they did their hallway duties. And so I really people thought I had assumed duty as a part of my job, but it was just really it was what I enjoyed doing. Like I enjoyed I could get my worked done and be visible and and people would approach me and say, "Wow, the administration is so supportive because I see you in the, you know, frequently." Um but the other thing is you have to provide to make sure that things keep moving. You have to have as a superintendent, you have to have several um groups um where you have a planned agenda where there are um and actually the Google agendas work great and um people um you have your central office leadership team, you have an instructional leadership

083team, you have a district leadership team which is like the like um you know the central office the PE the princ some of the principals and some of um the facilities director and um technology director and things like that and the groups the secret really is you can't just plan a meeting like happen stance with no agenda. You have to have an agenda but you the secret is really frequent meetings. Um um so you have those kinds of meetings at least every other week like in a month you might have two meetings and so people feel comfortable um the more that you have these frequent meetings talking and while there is a flow and an agenda about specific things that are important like one of our goals this year that we worked on was looking

084at five students and having teachers also look at five students that were not performing successfully and taking a look at what you could do to motivate change in those five students. So there's a a a method to this. It's consistent and it's it's frequent um and um and people will will come. And the other thing you have to do is be actionable and follow up on whatever is a concern. Um, for example, like in I will tell you in early August and I will not forget it. I had a custodian reach out to me and she said, "I'm really worried that I'm really not gonna," like she was the head custodian at the high school. She said, "I'm really worried I'm not going to get the school um opened for the teachers in good shape

085on time." And so I said, "Well, what what can we do together?" And so she said, "Well, let's" She said, "I'm been really short staffed all summer and you don't have manpower and I don't my equipment is broken." And I I you know, for like you know, scrubbing the floors and I I thought, "Okay, those and facilities director had said, "Don't talk, you know, report everything to me." But he wasn't really doing anything. And and so um so we fixed it. I said, "Would you I said, "What do you what are your suggestions?" She said, "I need some more people." And so we looked at hiring um a team to come in and do like three days worth of labor um for the custodial and we set goals. I calculated the square footage with her.

086Um it the the price tag on that ended up being $9,999. uh there's a reason for that in terms of what you know about um goods and service laws and what you can do when you bid out something. Um so anyway, they appreciate she appreciated that so much. The teachers were able to get in. We didn't have any stressors because school can't you can't say okay we're going to open a day late, we're going to open a week late because you have to have a certain number of days. Um and we had the calendar out it was published and so so anyway so that's like you know anytime you have things that you can be actionable and you need to just follow up right away and that's how we did it. Okay. Thank you. All

087right. Uh this is like a question that I will ask is how do you handle conflict situations within the school district? There is a conflict somewhere every day. you know, and some are really small. Um, but some are really large. And so, um, first of all, I'm very calm. You need to be always an active listener because there's always something that you need to hear more of the what why is someone so upset, right? And so I have always um valued also people's due process, you know, like you have to really hear and make a space for them to tell you what's what they think is the matter. Um so ultimately you make your decisions that are in the best interest of students and you make your decisions that are always in the best interest

088of the district too. So you have to have that balance. Um I would want to look at mandated trainings because in those trainings people commit and they acknowledge that they are familiar with harassment um and reporting for civil rights um what conditions go into those things, ethics um and so I would want to make sure also that the right that the staff members have you have to list who the staff members are that are responsible for those dates. And so, um, I would want to make sure that those procedures were in place and anybody that needed to do investigations or hear reports was trained. And if we didn't have somebody that was trained or feel like they needed, I' i'd bring them in for a refresher. I'd bring a legal consult in for a refresher.

089So again, I think it's all about people want to be heard. You really need to hear them and it doesn't always change what it is. Um and in many cases it it doesn't. But I dealt with anything from, you know, from a a cafeteria person claiming civil rights, um, harassment from the cafeteria manager to a student who I who uh, it seemed like he physically kind of made a choke choking cause a choking incident on a school bus to um, you know, and you know, I've dealt with everything that you could possibly imagine. So thank you. This one's back to me. So uh please speak to your skills and experiences in the budget process. Please address your experience with regional school budgets if applicable. Okay. I know you already spoke to a little bit but

090yes. All right. So let me tell you about um more of our challenge with three three districts. Um first of all I will tell you that I have we had three very different procedures at our three very different town meetings. Two of our um our regional agreement says that two out of the three towns needed to come to agreement. Um the two towns that were most um in uh basically we were not necessarily sure which way they were going to go. um met the same night with their town meeting in different towns at the same time. And so we had that um challenge. Um we had to split up our district team and one was at one town meeting and the other was at the other town meeting and we did this for six years

091and uh I still don't know if they've changed. I don't know. But that was not ever advantageous. The challenge of a regional school budget. First of all, school committee school committee can adopt, but they can't vote till it gets to town. The um other challenge is that the chapter 70 um funding formula um basically you have to um take a a percentage of that and each town has an assessment that they pay. Um and so you are smart if you start the networking with the financial committees um and um the town managers um very early on because you don't want to get you deep into a process and have someone tell you we're not going to approve more than you know 2.5%. Um, so while the chapter 70 amount is and I've also had the

092experience of being a municipality and I I did craft my budget in the municipality this year um but they don't have the type of the same type of assessments that are in the regional school district and also they um you know so they can feel free to um work with um they can work with that budget. Um, but the major revenue stream is is chapter 78 and that's become a little bit contentious lately because it's not keeping pace with the inflation and there are all sorts of groups um that have gone to meetings at the state house and there's a big meeting in Amherst um to address the need for a different funding formula more revisions to the existing funding formula. So, um the other parallel with municipal with municipalities and with regional school budgets

093is there two different um like there's an excess and deficiency fund for the regional school district. You can only maintain 5% of your budget in that excess and deficiency fund. And you can apply that to each region's off or each town's off you can use it to offset um each town's assessment in terms of the budget. Um so the other parallel in the municipality is the municipality has free cash. Um, and so that's, you know, so it's a little bit, I don't want to say it's easier in a municipality, but it really is easier because you have one budget, one town, you know, and one chapter, you know, one chapter 70 revenue stream. And so all you have to worry about is what the town manager says their funding event is and then how you

094pass the budget through um the fing pong and the select board and the school committee gets to vote on that budget. So regionals are really fun but they really are more complicated and people really need to understand the budget process. Thank you. Uh last but not least, Lori, please. So, my question is long, but it's not a very long answer for you. It gives you a little rest of your voice. Um, we are currently in the middle of a phase shift. Our current interim superintendent has had to do much more than just his superintendent duties. He's trying to make sense of last year's budget and finding things like job descriptions and professional practices that need updating or creating as some don't exist. He typically works well beyond 700 p.m. on weekdays, attends town meetings in

095both Berlin and Boilston that often run until 9 or 10, and he often spends weekends at central office. Do you feel you are equipped to continue his work? Would you be able to dedicate as much time to turning our district around so we could attract a full-time superintendent next year? So, absolutely yes. Okay. And um you know in in fact I I certainly would invest um not only as an interim but I would apply for the full-time because I have additional years to go and would love to do the job fulltime permanent. Okay. Um so um you know you you gave some interesting examples um you know when you talk about job descriptions now that um I had that pleasure of updating every single job description from 1996 to move it forward to the present

096in my regional school district because yes there were an amazing number that um were not updated, not approved. I worked on every single one. The perk of that was not I I that I got to work with lots of people and on the update and that um by the time it was done, the HR director had a great resource to pull job descriptions from. I as a person learned a lot from what the different jobs did. um which um I thought I knew but you know as you're starting to go into the minutia of it um you really learn a lot about um and appreciate you grow more in your appreciation of what different jobs do um so I have had that experience and certainly I would be um nothing's ever quick but at least

097I would be well informed and you know what to look for um And I again I always like I always value you really don't want to go in and change things. You want to look at what's there and sometimes you have to look um really hard at what's there and sometimes you have to ask continued questions. And so I don't mind asking those continued questions. I don't mind looking hard at what's really there. And I I I got to tell you, I was driving home after a school committee meeting that I had this year and it was like 12 12:15 a.m. So I like I have a very supportive family. My son is going to college next year and my husband is very supportive. knows like you know it's it's but I will say this

098job would really um it would give me one extra hour a day that I might be able to either choose to reinvest back in the work or I might be able to choose to be able to do some family things. So um so this would be very much a great fe fit for me. So thank you. Thank you. Excuse. Thank you. Sorry. It's okay. That's that's our last question. So, thank you very much for coming in. Thank you very much. I I really appreciate getting to meet you all. We'll have our third interview ready to go. Thank you. Thank you. [Music] I'm sure Just the best. Thank you. proper preparations. You think it's easy? Okay. Good evening. Yeah. Kyle, Kyle, you good? Yeah. All right. All right. Mr. Alexander, thank you for coming in. We

099have a list of questions that each of us will ask you. We've asked the other two, so I'll just start, please. Why are you interested in this position in this district? So, um, if you you don't mind, I I know that most you know my resume and my but if I could just give a little bit of an opening and then tie that into um that first question. Um, I know I heard partly conversation was people haven't excuse me haven't seen my resume. So, I want to make sure it's important. I I go over my experience as an educational leader. Um, been doing this job for about 35 years now in education. um started out as a speech and language pathologist, left there and became a teacher at the elementary level. Um from there I

100was asked to be the assistant principal at Resto Magneton School, truly inner city school nestled between two lowincome housing projects, probably one of the lowest performing schools in the state and now one of the highest performing schools in the state. Uh it's based on Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligence. So we're using that whole right brain. Um I was there for 13 years. Um you still look it's still one of the highest performing um schools in the state of Massachusetts. From there um I was asked to become the principal city discovery school 700 pupil school by Wingle. Um so that was definitely a challenge but a rewarding experience as well too. It was an expanded learning day school. What that means is you started that day at 810 and we ended at 410 every day.

101Um it was a grant that we wrote and we're able to um be able to get for having longer days for our students. Um after that I was asked by a superintendent to become the director of curriculum and professional learning for Western public schools where I started about 25,000 students and about 3,000 um about 3,000 staff. And what that was was overseeing MCCAST advanced placement all the curriculum went from prek to grade six. All of that was part of the job of being that. Um also teacher certification and reertification. Um so it was definitely a rewarding experience. I did that uh for about three years before I became the superintendent um in Camden Moham regional school district. I was there for about six years as a superintendent. I retired. Um I was retired for probably

102a little over a month before I became um the director of admissions at a private federated Cath private Catholic um school. Definitely a a different experience, but it was great to be able to work with families and admissions students to that. um sitting there doing my job at better when I got a call from that chair saying would you apply for the job of interim superintendent of schools for for and that was literally my first day was sometime in August 24th right around that um had a few days to transition with the previous superintendent and then just hit hit the job running um so I have been here for a little over seven months as the interim superintendent of schools so so why to you know why am I interested in this position? Um I

103I go back to the title of being an intram right? Um I've hid in principles. I hide in assistant principal. I hide even in interim teachers though we call them long terms subs and what I've hired them in the past. The number one thing we said to them is just keep the flow. That's your number one job. Um when we're hiring that's not the message I heard when I came here as as interim superintendent. There were things that needed to be worked on right away. One of them was the budget. I knew that loud and clear when I came in here. The other one was processes and procedures. We had some legal things going on and my mission was to try to heal between the two towns in the school. Those are my jobs. Not

104telling you anything that you you don't know, but our budget was in sort of disarray right when I came here. We had no director of finance. We had no treasurer that was retiring. There was no there was a payroll person and a council person that weren't able to do the job. I'll I'll leave it at that. So within a short period of time, I had to get those people in place. We were in trouble financially, right? I came into a a first pay role, right? And everyone has heard the story that went on. I was here a little week. We paid some people our first round of teachers. Others we didn't pay. Others, we paid the full salary for the entire year. We paid. We had bills that weren't paid. All those things had to

105take place. I went to pay a bill. We didn't pay our postage through the summer. So I wasn't even going to have postage. Our garbage wasn't being picked up. So that was a priority. It truly was. Please don't misunderstand. Also, we have this Department of Education saying we're we're concerned. We're we're we're troubled. We think we're going to be looking at a one 12th budget for you. People fully understand what that means. If that means they give us an allowance, I'm not being careless about that, but that's what it is. Every month they say, "Here's your money. We're going to proportion that." That's not a a best way to to run a district. certainly not a best way to be able to pay our staff and recruit high quality teachers. World too. Since then, um

106we were able to hire a full-time director of finance operation, hire a payroll person, hire an account payable person to be able to get people to move their positions in the middle of the year, especially in education, is a tough thing to do. So, people believe in the work that we're doing right now. And we're getting into a good spot. Do we still have work to do? We absolutely do. No questions. We're still finding things that we still need to make right. And that's the number one thing we all there's a joke that superintendents say. It's not really a good joke, but it's a joke that says if your curriculum director makes mistake, you'll get yourself in a little bit of trouble. But if your business person makes mistake, get yourself arrested, right? And so

107that's why we always need to make sure that that's the foundation of our district as well, too. The other part, we had some legal issues. We we solved those and moved on. Healing between the towns, working on that, right? We're seeing you're hearing from both towns and saying we want this to we like the work that's been done so far by Al and his team. We want that work to continue both in in Berlin and Boston. So when you ask me, you know, the question is why are you interested? I want to continue to work. That's my job as an inm superintendent. No doubt about it. I've done this job. I've retired from this job. My job is to get it so that the next person that comes on board is going to say this

108is a great school district. these things are in place because these are the things that have to be in place. This is a really good school district and I really enjoy doing it. But my number one thing is to get this ready so when you post this job for a permanent superintendent who will be in a spot that someone will come in that will be able to do this job and do it really really well. That's my job. That's my goal to make sure that takes place. Thank you. Uh Lisa, would you ask the next question? How would you build strong relationships with parents, teachers, your admin team, council at board, finance committee, capital committee, and the school committee? Sure. That's a pretty lot lot of that question. Um, it's all about relationships and all

109about having those conversation and honest relationships. Some of those are are working really well, right? I've been here eight months. There are certainly others that I need to be working on, but there are certain priority other things I had to be working on. Like I just talked to you about the budget. But when I talk to you about those building those relationships, I'm at those select board meetings. I'm at those capital meetings. I'm at those Wley School meetings providing information. They're seeing me there asking me questions about that. Those relationships have started to develop more and more, right? They see me, they know I'm available, they ask questions. We're really trying to get that transparency thing taken care of. Our admin team, yes, I meet weekly with them. Not always, sometimes, right? Sometimes it's bi-weekly.

110We meet bi-weekly as an admin team as well, too. Do I need to get better at that? Absolutely. That's a job that I continue to work on. And most in superintendent, that's be the number one job, build those relationships. But many times, our meetings when I'm meeting with Adam are very structured agendas because we have to take care of the budget. We have to take care of a number of things have processes and procedures in place but those relationships develop over time and certainly if you seeming for me to be the intro for next year as well too certainly that'll be one of my priorities I'll be working on is fostering those relationships and continue to foster those relationships but I I I just push back a little bit on that one part of that

111question. The part that's missing in there is is students, right? We ask that question about everybody else but not students. That's why we're here. That's why we're sitting in this job every day for our kids in our schools. That that's the number one thing. And what I can proudly say is when I walk through these schools, students know I am. I'm involved in what's taking place with them. Whether it be at the championship Super Bowl game, whether it be scoop and ice cream here, whether we at the play on the weekends, whether walking through the Carters, the the kids saying, "Are you heading to the family field right now, Mr. Gan?" They know who I am. And those relationships with students are so important. and and those are the things that I cultivate as well

112too. I think it's extremely important that we don't forget about our students because they're our number one reason why we do this job each and every day as well. Thank you. Uh this is Megan's question that I'll ask. What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses as a leader? Humble question. Greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses depending of course who you get asked what you're asking me. My greatest strengths and weaknesses um compassion and hard work. Um, I think those are my greatest strengths. Um, I I love the work I'm doing as you can tell whether it be, you know, working with students, whether working with a private Catholic school, working as a superintendent, I I I love this work. Compassionate hard work. Those are the two things I also look for when I'm hiring an employee.

113You got to have compassion, hard work. Anything else I can teach you? I can teach you. We can get professional learning for you. We can work with you. We can get you mentors. We can model. You either have that compassion or I have that work ethic or you don't. And I don't think anyone can ever question my compassion and my hard work for this job. So I think those are my my strengths. My weaknesses again depending on who get asked but I I I my number one weakness is probably sometimes I'm just moving too fast. There are a lot of things we got to get done and sometimes they want instant gratification, instant answers from us whether it be a parent, a student, a teacher, right? um principles select board. I'm on the phone daily

114with Kristen Rubin from from Berlin or April in the in the like they want answers, right? We need to move right and sometimes they just move a little bit too fast, right? And my job is to slow down a little but people want answers and and there's the superintendent, but there's no assistant superintendent. There's no human resource. It's it's me, right? So sometimes we look at the answers and sometimes they move too quick and sometimes they make a mistake. We do. And if there's ever a profession where we can make a mistake, it's this job. It's this field. We're supposed to be teaching our kids it's okay to make mistakes as long as you learn from these mistakes. But instead of reading books about the anxious generation because we're making our kids so nervous about

115what what it looks like to be perfect on social media. We shouldn't lead by examples like it's okay to make a mistake as long as you'll learn from them. I have someone gave this to me 20 years ago and this is the paper still and this is the quote they gave me is not the mistakes that define us but the choices that we make after we send them but that's what education should be all about. That's what this job is all about. So sometimes I make a mistake. It's only because I'm moving too fast sometimes. And that's one thing I have to get better at and work on that. And so if you ask me my weaknesses, my my intention is always good. I put my head in my pillow every night and say I

116did the very best I could do each and every day. But sometimes I have to say to people, you know what? So those are my strengths. Those are my weaknesses as well too. Thank you. Uh Beth, please. How will you handle the balance of respecting longtime employees of the district's experience and familiarity with how things have always been with new ideas, changes, and perspectives? Great question. We don't do as well as we should do in memorializing things. We have some great experienced teachers, John Campbell, experienced principal. We have directors that are experienced and been here a long time. It it's sort of a joke, but not really. say where where can I see that? Where is it memorialized? Right? And and we call it sort of the folklore because it's there. We just don't have

117it memorialized. What we're doing today is is tomorrow's history. Right? We need to memorialize what we're doing and put it somewhere. So we have policies and procedures. So I don't want anyone 5 years from now to say tell me what the interim superintendent how we how do we understand this? Because it's not memorialized for terms of hiring for payable. Like we, anyone that's been to the central office, we have cabinets go along. Cabinets go along, final cabinets, unbelievable, but no process and procedures. So, finally, we have an account payable system where Arnold and Patty are doing incredible work there. But we finally have a system where you got to have a requisition. You got to have a purchase on it. Here's how it's been paid. And guess what? We're putting it all electronic. So, we

118don't have to have all this cabinet, which really don't know what's in what cabinet, right? We have it all there. We still don't know where it is. We got to get procedures in place and that's where we're memorializing the the good work that happened with that. We brought and I can say this pretty confidently for the first time all our secretaries together brought them upstairs to central office Patty and I brought them in brought him Chinese food brought him lunch and said tell us what's working what you've done for year after year and what still needs to be done and that's the work we're doing now. And I would say to you they think the work that we're doing right now in memorializing it isn't important systems and processes in place and that's the work

119we need to do to memorialize the past and get a good future. Thank you. Uh Jess, would you please ask the next question? How could you create an environment where staff felt safe to approach you with problems? So that's something you got to figure out together. I think that's something that takes time, right? And I I would say to you, I try that each and every day, right? My principles and directors know they can text me day or night. They email me day and night. Um they also know that I I don't do a good job in terms of doing that as well too. Sometimes I'm emailing them, text them late at night, which is probably not really a good thing, but that's certainly something that evolved. Certainly something that if I'm in the role

120of the interim superintendent for next year, I'll be working on that as well too. That takes time, right, and trust and be able to have those organic conversations. Again, when I meet with my admin, when we meet, it's all we got to take care of this, this, this, and this, and this. I've been here a little over seven months and trying to get that district in place. So sure, I need to develop more spending more time in talking and getting those things done. But I also would say our officials and directors say we need this to be operating and working as well too. We need this to be taking place as well too. So will I work on that? Yes. Do I need to continue to work on that? Yes. Is it two ways? Absolutely.

121And do I need to get better at that? I But that will hopefully happen over time. And that takes time to build the trust and build relationships as well too. Uh, thank you. This is a a mega time question, so I'll ask it. How do you handle conflict situations within the school district? So, we have a district of 1,116 students. We have a district of 238 employees. We are a human resourced job, right? We deal with humans all day long. If you don't think for a second we have conflict every single day, you're mistaken. Some are here, some are here. My very first day, as Nicole will attest to, I had parents lining up on my door saying, "We want to talk about this, this, this, this this negotiations meeting, there's dealing with conflict over

122there." Again, swamps. 99.9% of the time, you don't know what's going You don't know about those conflicts because I'm resolving them by listening and learning from them, right? That's my job as part of that as well too to handle those conflicts and be able to get them resolved so that people walk away happily. Again, most of them you don't know about at all, but there are whether it be a parent with a teacher, a parent with a principal, a principal with a principal, teacher with a teacher, student, all of them working with the union, working with all those parties involved to make sure we resolve those conflicts the best we can. But one of the things you're going to hear me say is we need some sort of HR. We have Patty Spunberg who's incredible

123work, but she's also payroll trying to get everyone paid, trying to figure out our bills for the past, but we add on HR to her title as well, too. But I'll be presenting school later on after hopefully we see where our budget's going to be and what needs to be at that meeting May 5th. But we need to be able to get maybe some sort of consult consult with each, right? We have that many people that walk through this building, their buildings every single day, right? We need a system in place that we could just check on and get some help. We're having Katie Mol come in and give us some professional winning as well too with all our principles and directors as well too. We need to make sure because we make big mistakes

124that can get us in some trouble sometimes. But please know there's conflict every day and that's part of my job of dealing with it. The other part about it is after it leaves the principles building then it's me. There's no assistant superintendent. There's no other people that are there. So it goes directly to me. So that's part of my job that I do that every day, but majority of the time you're just not aware of them because we handle them. But I try my very best to listen and learn and learn every single day. Hopefully come a way that we're all feeling okay about this conflict and we can move on. We're human who are a human resource environment. We have this many people working here each. Uh thank you. So could you speak to

125your skills and experiences in the budget process? Please address your experience with regional school budgets if applicable. So I not sorry it's not time to put a joke there. Sorry about that. So I was superintendent in Hannah Wil for six years with a regional school district very similar to Wilson. Um I as I've come on board here I've certainly that has probably been my priority is getting our our district and trade in place. We have a regional school district that's very complicated. The formula is very complicated. I think people still understanding it. It's only been a period of time. I know it's not a favorable response, but I'd say we need to revisit the regional agreement. The complications of budgetarily is sort of confusing, right? People want to give money for capital. People want to

126give money for different areas of the budget, but how does that impact the relationship where it's hot as well to the chair, right? The regional agreement is very very complicated. Um, but it involves the budget. And I I will say all day long, I am very fortunate to have a director of finance that is great. I have a great finance world, but it's also my responsibility as a superintendent to make sure I understand that and know that to be able to have those conversations when I'm walking through the parking lot today and April stops and talks to me, right? When I'm when I'm at the town meetings, when I'm at different events, when when I'm going to get my coffee at Dunkin Donuts and the gentleman says to me, "Hey, talk to me about this

127budget right now." Superintendent again, you know, it's a cursive. wearing a bow tie as well cuz I think they identify me more with that. But I need to be able to have that conversation. But I also need to have that conversation when the towns come back and say you got to cut a million dollars, right? That's not a numbers game. That's the job of the superintendent needs to know that budget. So I can sit down and say instead of just saying I'm cutting my cutting music, I'm cutting phys and that's done with it. You need to know a budget, understand it, and be able to really dissect it and make sure you're doing the right cuts because it's getting you're affecting people's it's HR, right? You're affecting people's livelihoods. So, you not only be need

128to be able to understand that budget the numbers wise, but you got to understand the overall impact of it, the curriculum that goes along with that, making reductions, right? All of that. And if people want to give money, where's the best way to use that money and what's the thing that's going to have the least impact on students? Every cut we make is impacting our students. But as a superintendent understands the budget and understands curriculum, those are important conversations. Aaron and I, Patty and Arnold, every day, every day about 10 12 times we're meeting just to talk about this budget, see where we're going. Any little move we make, how's that going to affect and how's that going to affect our students? That's my job. So I I understand the budget, but there's a bigger

129piece of it. You got to understand the whole dynamics of being a superintendent, understanding the all the facets of that as well, too. When you have to add some additional grind funding, which we always hope that will happen, but when that money comes in, where are we going to best use that money? We have to make cuts, we are going to make those cuts as well. So I I have experienced that. Um and I've also had the experience, as you can know, the hiring people, right? So, we're sitting in an interview hiring director of finances. You got to know what questions to ask. You better know the correct answers as well, too. Sometimes you can sort of fake things, right? Right. I sit in a calculus BC class. I pray for the teacher to come

130back in as I'm coming from the bathroom because a kid askked me a question. Calculus BC way out of my lane, right? And I'm okay. I own that. But I better know the finances because that's the foundation of our school district. We need to make sure of that. That's the foundation. Everything else is based on that. I have to be able to be sure I have the things that teachers need so they can have it in their classrooms to provide for our kids. And also, how's that equitable across auditions from both Boston, Berlin, and how's it? Thank you. Uh Lori, last but not least, please would you ask number eight? Okay, so my question is long. This doesn't require a long answer. Be a little rest. Um you're gonna It may be familiar. We are

131currently in the middle of a big shift. Our current interim superintendent has had to do much more than just his superintendent duties. He is trying to make sense of last year's budget and finding things like job descriptions and professional practices that need updating or creating as some don't exist. Typically works well beyond 7 p.m. on weekdays, attends town meetings in both Burland and Boilston that often run until 9 or 10, and he often spends weekends in central office. Do you feel that you are equipped to continue his work? Would you be able to dedicate as much time to turning our district around so we could attract a full-time superintendent next year? I looked in the mirror as a kid like looking looking pretty old that lately. Um but so my goal as an interim is

132to get this district in a place where the superintendent can come in and work smarter. That's that's my job to start every morning. Finally, we have a flag outside of the central office of the police station. Every morning I go up there and I put that flag up. Right. We finally have a flag out there. It's like which we should. And every day at the end of the day, which I'll leave after I come here, I'll go back and forget. I am not a a senator. I am not a Conor office superintendent. I am not. And if that's what you're looking for, I'm not your guy, right? There are some of my colleagues that are Conor office superintendent. What that means, they go in their office. Office is always in the corner when you're superintendent

133for some reason. And they get their work done and and good for them. But that's not the work that I I like doing. Does that work need to get done? Yes. Do I need to get those things in place? But I I love being in schools. I stop my morning in schools. I apologize to Nicole over and over again. She tries to manage me the best she can by staying in the central office. I call her. True story. Yesterday afternoon, she picks up the phone. There's about 10 kids behind me like yelling. I change your schedule. We want the superintendent to be at this event at 10:00 this morning, which I got to but to rearrange everything out there because that's where I need to be, right? I need to be in schools. I need

134to be at the events. I need to be there. So that's where I should be doing. That's how I really see the work that should be getting done each and every day, right? So I'm trying to get that those things that required for me, but I got to get this district in place. All this work still needs to be done. All of this. And that's my goal for next year is to get it in place so our next superintendent comes on board can work smarter on harder. We have professional learning done, right? We're ready for our calendar for next year. What we're working on this book, UDL now, and I give Sally and the team credit. The author is Katie Novak. Not guess who our guest speaker is for the beginning of next year. Katie

135Novak. We're going to have high quality professional learning for next year. We got the author of this book coming to our district to to talk to our teachers about universal design for learning. Incredible. And that's it. All this work still needs to be done looking at projections and our enrollment. That's my job still as a superintendent. All the things about being in schools, I love it. That's the best part of my job. I'd be lying to it. I enjoy it. I love scooping ice cream with the kids. I love going up to the different events. I love going to the basketball games. I love writing notes afterwards and saying, "Congratulations. Great job. Let have a little breakfast for the teams as well, too. All of that is important. Really is important. But all this still

136needs to be done. All of this right here. This is our MCAST scores for just for Berlin W for the last five years. This is the stuff I'm looking at when I go back in the weekends and look at how we can improve these schools, how we compared to other districts. This is something that we get that we really got to look at and we're not. This is the work I still need to do all the time. So yes, I'm trying to get this all in place. We need it. We need a strategic plan, right? All of this needs to get in place. So yes, I'm hoping that that I have it all in place. So next superintendent will come in and say we're good. We got these things in place and we memorialize them

137as well, too. So I am working hard to get it all done because that's what he charged me to do as the interim superintendent, not to just keep the ship afloat to get these things in place. So when you're out posting that job for the next superintendent and they're going to come back and say we're ready. The one goal I want to have for next year is the same thing that took place when I left campaign where the superintendent got up there during the summer meeting and said I want to thank superintendent G for leaving me a district. That's my goal. That's my only goal besides all of this for next year to make sure that I have this district in place that superintendent can come and say this is the place I want to

138be. This is the place I want to work. So, I'm putting the time into it now because hopefully it will pay play down the road and I'm putting it in so it's more relaxed and so we'll have these things in place. I'm digging into the data. We're looking at our enrollment projections. We're looking at the roles and clarity of of principles and administrators. We have professional learning. We're going to be reading another book which I have for all school committee next year is is this book. It's a phenomenal phenomenal book. I have one for each one of you. Spirit work, right? It talks about collaboration and we've talked about that and that's one thing I haven't done this year with you guys is have a book study which I promise you but I purchased all

139these books so we have them and the best way to get transparency which everyone seems to be asking us for is collaboration and communication equals transparency. So a great way for us to start as as a district. So if I get these things in place we'll be ready for the next superintendent to come in here and be president. That's my goal. All right. Thank you very much. That was our final question. Can I get a closing? You want Do you have a closing? I do. That's okay. This has been one of the most um rewarding jobs I've had um in seven and a half, eight months. But it's also probably one of the hardest jobs I ever had. But I enjoyed it tremendously and my work will continue to get it ready for the next

140superintendent come forward. I I thank you for the opportunity to work with you. This school has been been wonderful, right? They've been supportive. They have been working with me. I've been very very fortunate and I can honestly say that and I'm saying that publicly and I've worked with quite a few schools. I've been very thankful. Got a great staff. We got great admin. We got great students. We want to be able to get this ready for the next superintendent to come on board. My job is to create a culture and and I know it falls a lot of me. You know, difficult conversations happen. Last Monday was probably a difficult conversation. I think a lot of you are on board on that conversation that took place in Boston. I understand that. But that's part of

141my job. But one thing I I do need to apologize for is during that conversation some questions arose about people that were high in the central office. Appreciate Mike that you you stood up and said something about that. We talk about climate and culture. That was a tough culture and climate if you didn't walk in on Tuesday morning, right? The staff that works there. Every single person in this district, their job is to provide a high quality education, whether it be parents, finance, payroll, teachers, students, school, everyone in this room. Our job is to make sure that we're providing a high quality education, retaining that as well too. But it's all of us that need to be doing this, right? Climbing the culture falls on me as a superintendent. But I would say it falls

142on all of us because it's all of our jobs. I go back to the autobiography of John F. Kennedy that you've probably heard me say this story before. He's walking through NASA. He sees someone pushing a room. He says, "What is your job here?" And the gentleman chairman says, "My number one job is get a man." every single person that works either at central office, as an administrator, as a teacher, as a parent, as school committee, as select boards fin capital. Our number one job is provide a high quality education for our kids. But we all need to do it together. I know I'm the face of the district and I I'll take that all day long, but I also need us to work together to this because that's all of our jobs right now.

143So, thank you for the opportunity. I I hope I answered all your questions. Thank you. All right, Tracy, I know you got to walk Mr. Gam out, but do you have anything to advise us before we start deliberating or um I mean I can pop him I can walk him right out and pop right back in. Um I mean there's a couple of different processes that you can make. Um one that I think I would recommend is that each of you name your top candidates take a minute to look through your stuff first. Um more even heat than just someone make a motion. Um, also of course you are deliberating in public is always good thing to remember being recorded so you Thank you. I don't know. All right. Thanks, J. We'll go through our

144notes and we'll be back. Sure. Yeah. Take your seat. Thank you everybody. Enjoy getting Turtle All right. Um, Tracy suggested that maybe we would go around and just if we have a top candidate in mind, uh, we narrow it down that way. So, I have a list here. I'm going to go around the table. Um, no particular order other than uh I think uh experience or longevity on the school committee is how I listed names. So we'll start with Lori. So I it's it's a really hard decision because they're all very qualified and they all bring different gifts to the table. Um my first pick would be Mr. G based on what we've witnessed and where he is in his work. Okay. Next I think is uh Jess. Well, golly gee, that's a hard decision.

145Um, you know, I think can I explain before I decide? Uh, I think right now we're just trying to get a just a top. Do you have a top candidate? And then see if we come up with any commonalities there. eliminate one. Who who would be your top? I don't know. I think Dr. Susan Gillson and and Al Gam are are neck and neck in terms of what could be given to the district long term. Okay. Uh next would be Lisa. Um, Al Ganam is my top choice because he's done so many great things here already and I think we're lucky to have him and we'd be lucky to keep him for another year. All right, Miss um my top choice is Alec Ganam. Same reasons. I think he's done a great job. I went

146back and watched the meeting we decided to do in the interim and the biggest thing that came up was stability, stability, stability and keeping Al is stability. I did like Dr. Gilson a lot though very engaging person but Al is my number one. Uh I would agree. Uh so it does look like Al uh is a majority top choice. Um in order to discuss deliberate we should have a motion. Sorry. Is there a motion to hire any of the candidates? I'd like to make a motion to hire Mr. Albert Num as the interim superintendent for the 202526 school year. That's Lori. Is there a second? Second, Lisa. Thank you. All right. All right. So, the motion on the floor that we will discuss and deliberate and then vote on is to hire Al Ganam as

147the interim superintendent for next year. Does anyone have anything they'd like to say? I I think one of the things that Al brings to the table is the repaired relationships within the towns. And I think that's really really important. I think um there's a lot that goes into selecting someone, but the repair work that he has done um and the confidence that the boards have in him, I think to your point, the stability um that I think that's that's really important. Um and I I also feel bad that we didn't mention anyone um Miss Flity who I also really So I throw that in. And and also I feel like he really is setting a lot of things straight, you know, which is part of, you know, the the relationship building, but like he's like

148looking through just like so many different conversations where he's like identifying, you know, ways that we're spending too much money where we could save money or, you know, just like really streamlining everything and um just yeah, like he was saying, memorializing everything, documenting everything and just making it more efficient and effective. Anyone else? Um, I think when we entered into doing an interview for a second year, we were my main concerns were we competing about districts that were having superintendents of 25 years retire. Um, and I was concerned that we wouldn't gain good candidates for a long-term solution. Um, I think Al has done an amazing amount of work and honestly, I don't understand why he wants to continue because it's an incredibly hard thing and the hours that he puts in um are inconceivable

149to human life. Um, you know, but I think the goal we gave the interim superintendent last year was to to pick us up out of a situation and he did just that. Um, and I think you know the attractive thing Dr. Susan Gillson's, you know, she gave us this entry plan and I think it would benefit everyone if we were to set goals just like we would for a superintendent. Um, so if there's something that people are not happy with or we need to go in a different direction, there are measurable stop points in these goals that we can address things um before they get out of hand. So, You're up. I just my preference for Al has to do with the fact that he has no goals beyond this year. His goal is he

150has an end date. There's no like he can't stay longer. I that's appealing to me that he wants to he has a goal for this year and his goal is to get us a really great permanent superintendent next year. And I appreciate somebody who's willing to do that because I can't I don't question their motives and I just think we're going to have a great opportunity next year. I'd also when I went back and watched the video, we talked about what the timeline is going to look up look like for hiring for the next one. And I'm very concerned about switching superintendent, interim superintendent so late in the game because how are they going to the goal was for the the next interim to transition the new permanent superintendent and we talked about possibly hiring

151someone like January. So, we're going to hire someone to start September 1st and then they're going to be the one transitioning that person. I I would prefer it to be someone who knows this district much better. So, that's my feeling. Yeah. Um, so everybody had a chance to speak. I'd like to say some things, too. I I don't disagree with anything that any of you said. Um, Megan's not here tonight, but I think we need to thank Megan for bringing Al to us. Um, you know, I think it's probably the best thing that she's done for the district is bring Al to us. Last summer, Al discussed it in his interview. We were in a mess. the previous superintendent uh you know we all know the struggles we had with the budget through the town

152meeting the special town meeting uh leaving um going off telling Megan you know she's going to retire uh couple weeks before school started I can't imagine the the work that Megan had to do to go out as the chair at the time and you know the the pressure the stress that that was on her she reached out to Tracy Tracy helped quite a bit uh but Megan really did the bulk of the work to bring Al into this district. I remember talking to her at the time, the first thing I said to her, she gave me the name and the first thing I said to her like, "Megan, this guy's got an ethics complaint right there. It's like Google. It's like the first thing that comes up." And she said, "No, trust me. I've had

153a conversation with him. Just trust me. Just trust me. I'm begging you. Just please have a conversation with them and see what you think." So, I did. And I listened to her. I had a conversation with him and then we got two applicants for that job. Uh, and we chose L. And uh, I really I think we all need to give credit to Megan for for doing that for us. That was really good. Um, but yeah, I agree what Beth said, stability, right? You know, have someone in here for four months and then they're still trying to figure out what's going on before they have to transition to someone else. So, uh, yeah. Um, Jess, your comments about the the outline that she gave us Yeah. was great. No complaints. Um, I just uh, you

154know, I think for consistency sake and stability um, you know, I think I think is the best. I mean, he came in the team that he's built in central office like he mentioned as as well. again he came into a situation where like basically rebuilt from the ground up. There was nobody in there, bills weren't being paid, paychecks weren't going out. Um, not just simple things like, you know, I don't know if you work, but if you are expecting your pay to come in and you have your bills set up to go out and then you don't get your pay or you get the wrong pay, that's kind of a problem. And that's what he walked into. as an executive, he has to, you know, he has people that he's worked with in the past,

155so he brings them in and gets things functioning functioning again. That's what you do with that level. They were able to come in, no training. They knew what they were doing. Absolute professionals walked in and within a few months, yeah, we got a lot of problems, but they started solving them one by one by one, prioritizing, getting things solved. And all I've heard from around the district was yes, they've been doing great. I got paid. Fantastic. I can I can get my bills paid. Uh I know we had some issues last week. We got a lot of emails as a committee. Uh well, we got I should say we got one email multiple times. It seemed like a lot of copy and paste going on uh pointing out some flaws, but then we also got

156emails in favor. Um, I spoke to a lot of people in Berlin who they're a little more hesitant maybe to to write into us, put things in writing, but speaking to them, um, had nothing but good things to say about the change that has been going on. So, um, yeah, I I think I agree with everything you guys have said, um, if anybody has any last thoughts to to say and then we'll vote on this current motion. I I would like to say one thing. I um I was able to attend that meeting on Monday night through Google Meet and I know one of the criticisms of Al which was interesting because I have a really opposite stance on that was that he brought in his own people. To me that's a credit to Al.

157When you have really competent good people who can come in and straighten out a situation and they're willing to come and work with him that says that they have respect for his ethics, the way that he runs things. And so I think um we've been we've been lucky to have him and to have the people that he's brought in because it's it's a it's a it's a machine that's working out there and they're like the staff has said how grateful they are for the central office staff um like the teachers and that's a wonderful thing to hear because normally you don't hear that but they've been so appreciative because so many things have been out here now in such a short period of time. Anybody else? Any final comments? I think we we give him

158that mission too, like bring in a competent team to help solve this issue. And so, you know, I know with the ethics complaint that looks suspicious, but that's exactly what we charged him to do and he did it and he brought us out of a a bad situation. So, you know, I think interims have a lot of work to do and we still have miles to travel. And I also want to say that I just think it's so impressive what he and Al have done with the budget, you know, because it's probably like one of the worst budgets ever because it's like below level, but also um you know, there's cost increases and because of his like organization and experience and communication and hard work, you know, making sure that he listens and you know,

159communicates everything to all of the different communities in in the town that everybody respects him and respects um Aaron and like he he has generated so much respect despite it be you know coming from where we were last year and then also that this budget kind of stinks but um but people still really respect him and and he has healed a lot of the a lot of the issues because of his work and his approach. Thank you Beth. Do you have anything? I just want to say I was talking to Al at one point and I'm probably saying it wrong but I think he was talking he said that candandor is is kindness and being candid with people is being kind to them and I think sometimes people aren't used to that level of candandor

160and they it it rubs them in the wrong way and so I think there's a little bit of that and I think he also deserves people to be candid with him too. you he's learning he can't fix it if you don't address what your complaint is. And then and my feeling of the last week is that I hadn't heard anything negative until last week. So it was really hard for me to take that all in where it's like we want let's fix it along the way. Let's all be candid. Let's all if you see something say something. And if you don't like how something's being done, let's be upfront and honest about it. And we can all work on fixing it. We can all work on being more transparent. There's room for us all to

161grow. Create an open environment. Yeah. Yes. All right. Um Yeah. I mean, obviously Al is the incumbent. He has a leg up on everyone because we have experience with him. I want to make it clear that this is not any negative knock on any of the other candidates. Um, I also I think I forgot to mention um it's not listed on the agenda, but last week we did uh we did vote to invite four candidates to come interview. One of those candidates did choose to take a position elsewhere, so that's why they weren't here tonight, just in case anybody was wondering. I want to put that out there. Um, but are we ready to vote? So, we're voting on the motion to hire Al Ganam as the interim superintendent for next year. Uh, we will

162just do a roll call vote to be official and I will go in the same order. Lori I Jess I uh Lisa I Beth I and I was I as well. So that motion passes. We will hire Alan. Sub uh probably should have said subject to negotiations. Subject to negotiations. Yeah. Subject to negotiations on his contract, but uh all right. Uh that is the last item on our agenda today. Could I please have a motion to adjourn this meeting? So second. Yes. Okay. All in favor? I. Anyone guess? All right, we're adjourned. Thank you very much. And just so you know, I'll contact the finalist unless anybody wants to, but I'll contact the finalist. Although the one you just hired is in family, so I told them they didn't touch. Please let them know that

163it was