001Hello. Can you hear me? Testing. Testing the over one. I'm going to >> um can we do The pledge of allegiance. Please stand als one nation under God, indivisible, liberty, justice for all. >> Please remain seated. Motion of silence. Please. I'd like to keep in mind all the men and women in the armed services here and overseas, especially our own graduates. Thank you everybody for coming. This is a special meeting for a couple special items. Um we have uh from the Mass Association of School Committees a representative Alicia. I'm going to have uh Janice Ayella introduce her and give us a little bit of reason why she's here. Hello. We have um Alicia Min here from the MASC. Like Mr. Hayden said, she is the field director and search coordinator for the um overseas this
002district if we're interested. And she's going to be discussing discussing a few um items that Mr. Hayden Max to see if she could be here to answer any questions. She's going to go over some slides. You have a folder in front of you and um then some Q&A at the end of the presentation. Before Alicia speaks, uh I would ask everybody to please write down your questions and hold your questions until the end and she will answer anything we have to uh give her. Thank you. >> Thank you. Well, thank you for having me here today. Um as was said, my name is Alicia Malin. I'm the field director for the Northeast for MASC. I have a little bit above Boston all the way up towards Maine and New Hampshire. Um, I'm especially happy to
003be with you here today because I'm actually on the Nohova Tech school committee and I have a sophomore and a senior. So, it's nice to be in another VOTE school with a group of uh, VOTE school committee members. So, uh, what I'm going to walk you through today are the options for when you're going to have a superintendency vacancy. Um, you do have some options on the table. I will say that um, it is later in the year, but nobody needs to panic. It is not too late in the year. I think we just need to figure out how best you as a committee want to proceed. So, um, this is the MGL that governs superintendents and school committees. You don't have to read it word for word, but the upshot here is that school
004committees are empowered by the state to select, hopefully not terminate, and evaluate the superintendent. You are the only body that can do that. And the only employee that the school district, the school committee has is the superintendent. So, you are their only employer and they are your only employee and you employ them to take care of the district's day-to-day business. There are only two legal requirements in the state of Massachusetts for appointing a superintendent. The [clears throat] first one is that you have to appoint someone who either has or who can gain Massachusetts lensure as a superintendent. So, sometimes they're in the process with DESIE. They haven't quite finished it yet, but they are eligible for it. They're working on it. Sometimes they come from one of our neighboring New England states and they have
005lensure there, but they are eligible to gain lensure here. The second requirement is that the superintendent has to be appointed in a properly posted public meeting by a majority vote of the committee. Those are the only requirements. So, how we proceed forward is entirely up to the committee. So, we're going to talk about some of your options today. um when you become aware of your vacancy um if you are aware of it with lead time, we don't technically need to talk about a temporary or an interim superintendent. If we were in June, we would talking we would be talking about an interim. Um that's sort of for when it is so late in the school year you don't necessarily feel like you have enough time or if there were a really unfortunate event and you
006were surprised by your vacancy. What generally happens is one of two things. either there's a really strong internal candidate and the committee feels like this is someone who we could promote into the position. Remember the only requirements are the certification the lensure and the properly posted meeting by a majority if you have a really strong internal candidate and some districts do. I just did this in Gloucester. So, and by the way, welcome to my accent. I live in Westford now. I grew up in Dorchester. every once in a while it comes back. So I just did this in Glouester. They had a really strong internal candidate that they wanted to interview. So do not think that that process abdicates any responsibility for oversight from the school committee. They had a full process by which they
007had stakeholder groups do interviews. They did a public interview. They did feedback sessions with the community and then they after they interviewed that candidate, they voted on whether or not they were going to hire that candidate. So that is a possibility. If you are in the position where you don't necessarily have a super strong internal candidate or if you just feel like you really want to do a wider search and invite internal candidates to be part of it, there's a couple ways that you can do that. You can start with just an internal search. You can do a full external search and you can do either of those things with or without a search consultant. So, if you go through what we call the appointment process, which is the hiring um internal candidate who meets
008your criteria, um interested in the position, you can go through a process where you vet them and then vote whether or not you're going to promote them. That always includes stakeholder groups, input, reference checking, an actual application process. And then if there isn't an appointment at the end of that, you can very you can absolutely do an interim appointment or start a full search. If you did an appointment, the timeline would start with approximately all timelines that we talk about are approximate because we need to work with what's available for you. Um what's possible for you and what the uh field director's availabilities are. There are four field directors and we cover the entire state. So I have two more searches that are going to be kicking off very soon within the next couple of
009days. So, we need to work around everyone's schedules. So, approximately week number one, if you did an appointment, would be background and reference checking. Um, we could do that for you. You could do that yourselves. Um, we can be a a really good partner in something like that because we can give you sample questions. We can help you um figure out what your priorities for your district are. During the same time period, your committee would be developing questions for that final interview, and we can help with that as well. Um later on in the appointment timeline in the timeline for an appointment there would be meet and greets with student groups, parents, guardians, community members, faculty and then in the evening there would be a candidate interview with the full committee and you would have
010that like you would have a regular meeting. You would have an interview. You would come away from that take a few days. There would probably be a survey and then you would get feedback from the um meet and greets that you would had during the day and from a potential community survey and then you all would deliberate and vote. Um if you go with an external search, there are two options for an external or external. There are two options. You can conduct the search yourself. The way you would determine whether or not you want to conduct the search yourself is and there's a little bit more detail coming up on some more slides. The big difference between you conducting the search and us conducting the search, one is cost. Because if you do it yourself,
011we have no cost. Who sorry about that. Sorry the people at home. We have no cost technical services that we provide to you because you are members of our association. If you do that, if you run it yourself, you need to make sure that you have the appropriate staff that can do things like make sure things are posted. We will work with them in all of that, but the staff needs to be more involved. If you go with the um outside consultancy option, which could be us, it could be NZDC, it could there's a number of firms that do it. We are not the least expensive, but we are definitely not the most expensive. We come in at about 11,500. There are some that are less expensive than us, and you can pay all the
012way up into, you know, 35,000. It's up to you. Um either way, whether or not you hire us or someone else, we are still your member association. can still help you. So, if you did the search yourself, you save that money on the hiring the the search firm. Um, and then we can provide technical technical assistance. If you choose to work with either us or an outside firm, it can cost anywhere from about $9,000 to $35,000. And it may include a process where you have to go out for um for not go out for RFPs, but you have to seek out um price and bring it back to the committee and the committee has to vote etc. So all both of those options are on the table. If we're talking about no cost technical assistance,
013again you would want to assess your capacity to conduct your own search. That would be a lot of central office and school committee members digging in and working together. you would still get to post on our website. Um, we would still distribute your vacancy to other state school boards and associations. So, in every state there's a version of MASC. In every state there's a version of MASS, the superintendent's version of us. And then across the country there's national organizations. Um, we also would distribute your search materials. Again, still under no cost technical, we would distribute them to our mailing lists. We work very closely with MASS. As a matter of fact, Glenn Cooer, our d our executive director and I, we uh have been working for the last couple of years with their aspiring superintendent
014program, which is a really great resource for new superintendent. We would also um give you graphic design assistance. Now, coming from a tech, you may not necessarily [laughter] need that, but we would get we have an on on staff graphic designer who would help uh printer ready brochures. Not everyone prints them, but we make sure they're printer ready. Most of them are um they're online and we can provide you with an application form etc. And we would post your search survey for your focus groups. We would help you do that. We would also um recommend whether or not you would need paid advertising. Most of the advertising for superintendent positions nowadays is not paid. It goes up on our website, MASS's website, NASS, National Association of School Superintendent. It goes up on Schoolring, all of
015those places. Um, we design and place your media advertisements. If you're doing media advertisements, no matter what you end up doing, we can orient your search committee. So, when you have the group of people who are going to be doing the interviews, if you're doing an actual search, not the appointment, we will come in and orient them. Um, we will tell them all about their open meeting law obligations, their confidentiality obligations. We'll help them start thinking about their questions that they're going to ask. Um, we can assist you in preparing for site visits. And then we can be available to you via telephone. That really is my cell phone number at the end of the slides. We are available via telephone and via email. And then other services by request subject to the availability of
016staff. If there were additional things you needed beyond that, we could help. After that, the full cost search, which is 11,500. Um, that one is all of the above. Plus, we provide general consultation. Um, it includes, but it's not limited to advice concerning um developing your qualifications that you're looking for. Um, which uh which duties you want to list as the required duties of the superintendent. Um, we can also talk to you a little bit about compensation. We can ident help you identify your D districts and what compensation those superintendents are receiving. We would also after approval by the committee prepare and disseminate the notices of vacancy and brochures describing your system. We uh I know I sent and you have received thank you um some examples of the brochures and then we also prepare
017and after approval by the committee we disseminate the applications. We run the screening committee interviews and then we would be on site for the process of the finalist interviews. So essentially the really two big differences between no cost technical assistance and full cost search is money um spending the money having us onsite more often than not or not spending the money and have us be your technical backup with all of those things. I listed. So if we take a look really quick here, these are the um sample phasings for a full search. Please don't think about these in terms of like week one, week two. Some of these things overlap. When we're talking about phase one, what you're really doing right now is you're deciding what does our process need to look like. Do we
018want to talk about an internal? Do we want to do an internal sorry, an appointment? Do we want to do an internal search, an external search? Do we want to hire a firm? do we not want to hire a firm? All all of those things are sort of happening now. So phase one is all about um compiling your information, getting your um your brochures and your postings and your requirements together. Phase two is when we advertise your opening and then if uh we would coordinate if you hired us full we would coordinate the applications. What we do is we put them into a dropbox and your screening committee would get access to that dropbox. It's password protected because the screening committee um working with the applications that is done in executive session because the candidates
019before they are made finalists have um confidentiality um rights so that they are not public until they are finalists. So still in phase two we would help you with the reference checks. We would build um your candidate files for you. That's their applications, their um what do they call transcripts, their letters of recommendation. Phase three is when we help your screening committee identify the candidates. Um I should mention also if you do a full search back in phase one, we need to start working on appointing a screening committee for you. You can run the um run a survey of your districts to to gather volunteers. We can help you do that. Um, but when the when we hit phase three, the screening committee meets, they are oriented by MASC. We go through all of the
020applications together. We can talk about the criteria your district's looking for. They decide which candidates. So, say you had, we'll go with a a nice round number. You had 10 people apply. Then the screening committee says, "We want to interview seven people. We've talked. These are our top seven. We don't think those other three have the criteria. We would then work with the screening committee and they would come in and do interviews with the screening committee of those seven candidates and then the screening committee would decide okay we are going to send forward this number of people. The idea being that they have to send at least two because the screening committee cannot decide for you. Only you can decide who the superintendent is going to be. So if they send two one they're deciding
021for you. If they send two, that makes us a little nervous because what if someone's a finalist somewhere else or what if someone decides they don't want the job? Then you're back to one. You've made the decision. The sweet spot is three. Four if they feel very strong about four candidates. So that you have a wide range of people to choose from. Once the finalists are made public, and by the way, we communicate with the people who have not been chosen. Um that is throughout the entire process. You don't ever have to make that phone call. you guys get to make the phone calls where people are super excited to hear from you. Um, we will make all those other phone calls and once we get to the point where the finalists are public with
022a full paid search, we are then with you through when they come to visit your district generally during the day. That's staff and school committee members because you know your district best. You want the people who are your applicants to be meeting your staff, meeting your students, seeing your physical plant, and you're the best people to do that. We then come in in the afternoon and we help with community forums and we walk the candidate all the way through their interview that night. We help the school committee develop their questions. And then once you have decided hopefully at the end of that um and you've chosen a superintendent, we would come back after that. We very much recommend that anyone who has not been a superintendent um joins the new superintendent induction program through MASS,
023the NSIP program. They get a cohort. They follow them for three years. There's a mentor. They have meetings. They help them de develop their entry plan. And then we would work with you and your new superintendent. We would come out over the summer and do a roles and responsibilities, governance, talk about some operating protocols. That is open to you no matter what path you choose here. If you choose interim appointment, search, internal search, us yourselves, someone else. We will always come out and do governance workshops for you. You are always, no matter what, our members in our member organization. So, don't worry about that being off the table for any of your choices. That's always on the table to help you get off on the right foot with your new superintendent. So, that's everything I
024have. I just gave you a fire hose of information. So, questions. >> Are we ready? Can I have a show of hands, please? Whoever wants to ask a question. Uh, actually, I'll start off. I'm going to break the ice. >> Sure. Um, when you mentioned license certification for licenses for superintendent, KAGS is acceptable, right? The KAGS certification. >> So, I would need to take a look into that. Something else to consider is you're you have chapter 74 programs and your superintendent is a superintendent director. Correct. So, I would need to check and see what the certification was they actually need to hold. But once we're sure which certification they have to hold, that would be part of the decision as to whether or not that person could be um a superintendent. I would need to
025check on kegs. >> Okay. Um another question. Um how many superintendent positions are open right now? I understand we have quite a bit of competition as far as finding one. So, I would say there's competition, but you guys, again, you're in a unique position where you're you are a vocational technical school. You're not necessarily pulling from all of the other pools. I can tell you that I have two confirmed one, two, three, three more possibly in the Northeast. You're one of those. My colleagues in Western Mass, there's been, I think, six that we have run this year and we're not running all of them. And on the Cape in the Islands and South Boston, South Cape in the Islands, that's Sean Costello. He's up to 10. So, it is not insurmountable. The you would definitely
026get applicants, but again, you have a different pool that you're pulling from. So, all of those things that I just named um right now, you are my only vote that I'm talking to. So, different pool of people. >> Thank you. Any questions, Vice Chair? Uh first thank you for the presentation and nice to see you again. Um >> but uh my first question is related to because we are a vocational school and there's sort of separate licenses versus superintendent's license and the vocational license. If we as a committee when we're doing the um the search decide that we want to require a superintendent license but not a vocational cuz not there there is a pool of superintendent that have the superintendent's license but they don't have correct >> vocational licensing. >> They do. Yes. So
027actually what I'm going to do is I'm going to defer to your current superintendent as a superintendent director. Do you hold a secondary certification other than a Massachusetts certifi uh superintendent lensure? >> Well, I hold other certifications in not I mean not it for other uh comprehensive schools but I have my uh carpentry uh certification to teach carpentry in all the other levels of administration. I have about four certifications in in other areas. I I think the question is and I can't remember. I would have to check with the other field directors. Is there a secondary certification that a chapter 74 director would need? >> Director of >> the of their of your chapter 74 programs. >> Oh, that would be a CTE director. >> Okay. >> Yes. >> So that's that. There you go.
028You would need both of them then for a superintendent for a an in-house technical program. So there are some districts. So the reason I ask is I'm not entirely sure and I do want to double check um the background on that because at the regional technical vocational that I'm a part of we have a superintendent and then a principal and a director. So the superintendent is ostensibly just the superintendent but then there's the academic side of the house and the technical side of the house. So it's not a superintendent director, it's superintendent principal director. So I would need to check on that. And so because we during the search would we be able to frame it as a superintendent's position? >> It is 100% a superintendent but is a superintendent of a vocational technical. So
029we need to just double check what the certific um and so for you mentioned something about a pathway program for new superintendents. The >> there's a yes there's a program that's run through MASS called the new superintendent induction program. So, if you have someone that you end up hiring who has never been a superintendent before, they're not just dropped into the office and here you go. Congratulations. Go on your way. There's a group through the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendent who much like we train you, train superintendent. And what they do is every year they take everyone who was just assigned their first superintendency and they put them together in a cohort and they get a mentor. Sometimes it's Chris McGrath, Mary, you know, Mary Burke. There's all sorts of superintendents who do that and
030they mentor them through through their first three years. So, they help them with an entry plan. They walk them through what evaluations look like. They get them up to speed. And we love when superintendents come to charting the course. So, they're always welcome to come to Charting the Course and hear from your side of the house what um the training is. But yes, someone who has never been a superintendent is not suddenly on their own, here you go, hope you can swim. they get backup from MASS. There's also some really good organizations just for vocational superintendent. Um, and I'm thinking of MAVA and there's a couple others that they can also be a part of. >> Those are my questions so far. >> Excellent. I will get back to you on the certification question. I
031need to look that up. >> Okay. So, regarding the qualifications of a superintendent, >> do they not come from u a predetermined committee? So, there in the state of Massachusetts, there's superintendent lensure and they either have to be eligible for that or they have to have that. But the qualifications you're looking for, that would be something that we would get feedback from the community and then you all would weigh in on before we put together your brochure. What you're looking for is um you may require a certain level of education. You may require someone who has previous experience in vocational technical settings. You may require someone who um they do have those two certifications from the two sides of the house. So, you're going to determine what it is you're looking for. Massachusetts requires that
032you vote and that they have lenture. So everything else is what you want. Do you want someone who's been a classroom teacher? Do you want someone who's been a shop teacher? Those are the types of things you would put into your brochure and your application. >> Right. I mean, I find that extremely important. I mean, you know, I mean, I I wouldn't personally not want somebody inexperienced. >> Absolutely. But that's all something you would determine at every level of whatever you do. That's something that you determine, >> right? Okay. Thank you. >> Welcome. >> Any further questions? >> And in terms of the um the contract and the data that you folks pull for certain areas of schools and and the levels that we would be at. >> Um is that something that would be
033reviewed at the school committee level or the subcommittee? So that so when it comes time for you to negotiate the contract generally what we do is we will look at your dart districts your determined by the state the districts that are comparable to you. Sometimes they call you'll hear someone call them the market basket districts which cracks me up. Um but we will pull the districts that are comparable to you. We will do a little bit of research. Very often we reach out to MASS and ask them what the most recent salaries are for the superintendents in your dark districts. Um, sometimes we can do there is no one body that keeps all of the this is what all of their benefits are. We do have some model contracts. I would say when we are
034talking about negotiating the contract, knowing your dart district, knowing your budget and having a range of, you know, this is the range that we think that a superintendent coming into our district should be paid. Knowing the range of your districts will help you do that. And then most incoming superintendents negotiate their contracts based on what they're currently earning and what their current benefits are and then the the requirements for the setting they're about to go into. So we can help you with some of the baseline things. Your district legal counsel is actually going to be your point person on negotiating the contract. And I will say this, when you appoint a superintendent, it's a motion to appoint a superintendent contingent upon the negotiation of a successful contract. You're welcome. >> Any else? >> Yeah. Would
035you said you have samples of the benefits packages that >> we have salary ranges? We don't necessarily have samples of benefits packages. We can take a look at your DART districts and every district is required to put their superintendent's contract on their um web page. So, it is something we can dig into your dark districts and see if we can find. Here's the thing. The state only requires you to send your superintendent contracts. They don't chase anyone for contracts. And there are some districts that when you go to the state's website, none of those contracts, like some of them are from two or three years ago, some of them are from 5 years ago. So, there is not one place where we that houses all of those things. We can piece it together a little
036bit, but your district legal council, who's your legal counsel? >> One sec. Who is your legal counsel? Do you have Stoneman, Chandler, and Miller? >> Wayne Simmons >> is Do you know what firm he's from? >> I assume law. >> Yeah, that his own firm, but he used to work for Morris H. Okay. >> H. So, he's probably he's done this before. Your legal counsel will be your best um partner in that, but we can give you some background on it. >> Right. when when we're interviewing, will we know what the candidate might be already earning in their present position or is that like >> you could know that? Yes, you absolutely could know that. So, when we do interviews, um when the school comm when the screening committee receives the applications, they receive the
037name, the actual application, whether or not they are currently under contract for another district. You get all their references, there's an application they fill out for us, and then they give you their resume, they give you their letters of recommendation. So if they are currently employed somewhere as an administrator that's all public and we would be able to know that. Yes. >> Okay. Do we have to post a range? One word. >> We recommend you post a range. You can sometimes say salary will be negotiated based on experience etc. You can do that. But most superintendents applying for this would like to see a range. And I can tell you that most superintendents know what the range is for the market basket because they've looked it up themselves. just like any of us applying for
038any other job except the superintendents have to do it all in public every step of the way. Bless you all. It's it's a lot. So, but yes, they would they would probably prefer a range. But again, if you're looking at certain requirements and you get someone who maybe does not have all of the experience that you would like, maybe your negotiations start a little bit lower. So, >> thank you. >> You're welcome. Further questions vice chair. >> So um for the uh subcommittee you mentioned it as a it's a screening committee. So that would be the committee that so what is the recommended sort of format of that committee from the association and and who would appoint that committee? So, the school committee appoints the screening committee and you could do the research on that
039or you could have us do an online survey and we would you would send it out to your member districts and then we would put it together for you. It's much easier if the school committee let me back up. There's one of two ways you can proceed with a full search with us. You can create a search subcommittee and you can anoint that search subcommittee to do the work of the committee for you and bring things back every once in a while to the committee but do the work or you can appoint one person sometimes it's the chair sometimes it's the vice chair to work directly with me if either ways those happen when we're putting together the screening committee I always offer help for putting together the screening committee some districts do it themselves
040but I usually offer help you will do is you will solicit volunteers for a screening committee and we will ask them their relationship to the district. We're going to want them to identify all of the stakeholder groups they belong to. So, we're going to want to know um do they have kids in the district? Do they have kids who might be in the district? Do they have kids who have graduated? We're going to want to know are they staff? What staff are they? Are they academic? Are they technical? We want to have some central office people on there. You might even reach out to your towns and say, "Hey, does your finance director or does one of your select board members want to be part of this?" And what we do, I just did this
041in Littleton the other day. We sit down with all of those people and we find a group of people who meet as many of those stakeholder groups that you have identified as being necessary and we try and find people who this person checks this many boxes, this person checks one, but we have this person. We look at their experience. We put it together. We tr [laughter] my executive director would tell you that the screening committee I just put together in Littleton is too much because it's 19 people. I would never go bigger than that. It needs hopefully it should be an odd number because they will be voting a slate out to the full committee. Um, but I would say anywhere between seven and 15 is a good number of people, especially since it's a
042vocational technical. It's not multiple buildings across an entire one town. Um, and then again, we would want to make sure we checked as many boxes for stakeholder representatives. Um, if you have an active CPAC, a member of the CPAC would be great. If you have an active LPAC or MLP pack, a member from there would be great. We want to make sure we get cross-sections of as many of the stakeholder groups as possible. >> So, so for the um the screening committee would review all the candidates and they will send whatever the amount is that they decide. >> Yes. >> Which would be three or four. >> The school committee can ask the screening committee for a specific number. What I would usually recommend is I would say the school committee should ask the screening
043committee for if you feel super strongly about four, tell them that. But if you feel like you want them to use their judgment and say send us three or four and let us figure out in the room. Here's the thing about the screening committee. So they get all of those applications and you could have 10 people apply and three of them are fantastic. You can you can really see them leading this district. It's going to be great. if they start to have to talk themselves into a fourth candidate or a fifth candidate, you may end up in a situation where you're interviewing someone publicly that you would not necessarily be happy with. So, if you give the screening committee a little bit of wiggle room and say 32 to four, they can choose the best
044ones to move forward and they won't move them forward in a rank. They're literally going to give you a slate of the candidates that rose to the top. And there's a lot of ways that we do that within the screening committee. We can um we have sample rubrics we can talk about. We review the screening committee always gets your brochure. The screening committee also also always gets I should have had that coffee or maybe not. Um the screening committee also always gets um the survey feedback. They will know what your criteria are. They will be looking at um what it is the district and the descending districts have said they want and the screening committee will base their choices on that. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. >> Mr. >> Anyone from
045the school committee on the screening committee? >> You can do that. Yes. I would actually say it's probably a good idea to have at least one or two people. What's your quorum? Your >> seven. You're seven. So your quorum is five. >> Four. Oh, >> I can't do math today. So I would say no more than two because it has to be it's a the screening committee is a subcommittee for all intents and purposes. Whatever we want to call it, your screening committee is a subcommittee of the school committee. So you can't hit the quorum, but you can have a quorum of what would be a subcommittee. So I would say two. >> And would that eliminate that person or people from decision making? >> Nope. If you are on the screening committee as a
046school committee member when the when the three or four names go public as finalists at your sketch moment you start again you can't talk about what happened in executive session because it's confidential but you can bring your experience forward and maybe that helps you frame your questions but I would say two people two school committee members on the screening committee that's great also you guys know how meetings are supposed to run and a lot of the people that we get as volunteers are this is going to be the first time they've ever had to do committee work. So, it's helpful to have people in the room who understand the process along with them. So, >> cuz you could check off a lot of boxes, see how stakeholder >> you could. >> Yeah, you could. >>
047Absolutely. [laughter] >> Just put that in a plug there. And that's something that the school committee will decide once you figure out what your path is. And once if your path is to go forward with a full search, whether it's yours, whether you run it yourselves or whether we run it or whether another firm runs it, you will then decide which say two people are we going to send to the screening committee and they will most likely be my point of contact through most of the process. And I would say you should probably designate an administrator as a point of contact as well because I don't know how to post your meetings. I don't know what your buildings are. I don't know your schedule. We need someone got to stop doing that. We need someone
048from the district who would know those things. >> Good. Any further questions? Alicia, you're very well verssed even without the coffee. >> Thank you for your time. I do have one small question. >> Sure. When the three or four come to the school committee, >> if we can't agree on any of them, we say we don't like, >> do we send them back to the subcommittee to send us more or do we have to change the subcommittee for a new round? >> So, if you did not like the slate that the screening committee sent you, you could potentially say, "We need to go back to the screening committee. We want you to review your other choices. We don't want this slate." I would say at that point, if the people's names are public and you've
049voted not to hire them, that may be a failed search. At that point, it may not be that you send it back to the screening committee. If the screening committee sent you three and one dropped out and [clears throat] you got a little nervous, you could go back to the screening committee and ask for additional names. But I wouldn't necessarily send the whole slate back. And I'm also going to say this, if you hire us and you have a failed search, we do it again for free. I'm not >> somewhere. I just heard Glenn scream. >> Just wondering. >> Yeah. Here's the thing. When you get to that point where you have the finalists in front of you, you can get all the way up to having interviewed all of them. Say you had four
050of them. And if you're not happy with what's in front of you, you as the school committee are the ultimate decider. It is your responsibility by MGL to hire your superintendent. If you don't like the panel of people in front of you, then we go a different direction. You can say, "No, we're not going to hire this. This is we're going to restart the search in the fall. We'll have an interim in the in between. All of those options are available to you as a school committee. You are the only people who can hire the superintendent. >> Thank you. >> I'm sorry. Who's first? >> Yeah. >> Right. >> I think you're [laughter] >> Is this sort of an average that superintendent stay in a position in one district? because you said you have a
051lot of moving around of districts. >> So, here's the thing. It's sort of like um a vacancy will pop up in one area. I think this is why we have 10 searches on the Cape this year. Someone decided they were retiring. Someone went, "Ooh, look, an opening." And then they all sort of start moving around like chest pieces. It's far less common for vocational superintendent to move around that frequently. Vocational superintendent tend to stay in place for a lot longer. It's It's not >> I would know I know my superintendent I have to tell you I have I'm sorry the best superintendent in the entire state and she's been with us for I think it's eight years at this point and if she tries to leave I will hold the doors closed with my own
052body. It's a very specialized kind of superintendency. So they don't tend to move around a lot. They tend to stay put and make a home. So I would say it's far more common for other superintendents in your average K to2s, mostly towns, less so cities to move around more frequently. >> Okay. Do you just handle vocational schools or academic schools also? >> Both. So I handle both. Um my other two searches are Littleton and Reading. [snorts] Um so they are towns and basic searches there. Um I we as field directors we handle specific areas of the map not necessarily specific kinds of schools but since I am on a vocational technical I tend to do a lot of the interfacing with um division 8 which is the vocational technical division of school committee members as
053a part of MASC as a matter of fact the division chair Charlie Ellis is actually my school committee chair at Nshobetech I'm the secretary there so I tend to be reached out to a lot for vocationals But I was just talking to some of the other field directors earlier today. Um, and Sean did Bayath this past No. Yep. Sean did Bay Path this past year. Tracy did another one. So, we all do all of the kinds of searches. >> Thank you. >> Mhm. [laughter] >> Well, while you're thinking of it. >> Okay. While you're thinking of it, I'll say this. This is a lot of information to take in. And you have a whole bunch of paths that I just laid out for you. Take a few days, figure it out. That really is my
054email address and cell phone number. You can drop me an email. You can give me a call if you have questions. The next thing you're going to do is decide what your path is and I can come back and I can talk to you about that. We can talk on the phone. If you I know that we have some districts um that have used other firms other than us. Reach out to other vocational schools that have done this search recently. Ask them what they did. Gather your information and then we'll move forward with the path that you choose that is best for you. And again, we are your association no matter what. So, we're always going to be here to pick up the phone. And sometimes I'll have to answer the I'll have to get
055your message and call you back because I have 93 districts. So, [laughter] >> did you remember it? >> Last chance, Vice. >> Awesome. >> So, um you mentioned the three to four candidates. >> Um and so because we are we have a different structure. There's other school committees that have more members and there's more quorum. Um, in terms of voting for different candidates, I mean, let's say if we have four or three >> and there's no consensus across the hires, would that have to go through a revote or the candidates would have to or we would have to get additional candidates? >> So, any one of those options is available to you. Here's what I can tell you. I've seen committees have three people in front of them. Two rise to the top that most
056people want, and one of two things will happen. Either it will be a simple majority and one candidate will be chosen or it will not be a majority and they will talk about it and they may want to go away and come back and vote again. If you get to the night where you make your decision and the vote is in front of you and you have a split decision, then you can table to the next meeting. Everyone go back, come back, you can ask more questions, you can get more information. You don't necessarily have to restart the search. >> So we don't have to get additional candidates. You don't have to. You can come back and say, "We would like a little bit more time to think about this. We want to discuss and
057vote again at our next meeting." You can do that. It's all up to you. I would say this. Never let perfect be the enemy of good. When you're looking for a superintendent, you are looking for someone who is skilled, but you're also looking for someone who's going to sit at this table with you. How many times a month do you guys meet? Twice. someone who's going to sit at this table with you twice a month and be your partner in this. So, we're not looking for all of the boxes checked. We're working for someone. We're looking for someone you're going to build your working relationship with. So, if it really looks like you're going to end up deadlocked, I wouldn't go back for more candidates and muddy the water. I would I would recommend to
058you as your field director to restart the search because I don't ever want a superintendent to be in the position where they felt like they were I guess we'll take them because that's not going to start off your working relationship well. We want this to work out great for you. You're lovely but we don't want to have to repeat a search every year. So yeah. >> So that um the discussion around negotiation that is that in public or executive session? negotiating with the superintendent. Yeah, you always discuss contract negotiations in an executive session, >> but specifically around the the terms like that would be >> you discuss that in executive session. The su as soon as a superintendent gets hired, especially if they're a brand new one, they will get a call within 24 hours
059from MASS and they will be connected with legal counsel that can help them with their negotiations. You have your district council which can help. You will meet in executive session to talk about some terms. It's usually you've talked about that a little bit in the process of your application. Then you meet in executive session. You talk about your terms. Very often what happens is you designate one person to work with your legal counsel to negotiate with the superintendent and their legal counsel and then they bring it back to you in executive session. If you need to adjust some things and then you vote on just like any other contract, you negotiate it in executive session, you vote on it in public session. >> You're welcome. >> Yes. >> Yeah. Thank you. If if they're not
060from the Massachusetts area, but they apply, do they come here on their own or do we have to provide to get them here? >> So, that depends on where they're coming from. We don't see a lot of really outofstate um superintendent applying for vocational technicals. Um that is something we can talk about and we can negotiate as far as travel. More more often than not, if we have someone applying for a superintendency in Massachusetts, they're in New Hampshire. Wilmington just hired someone from Hudson, New Hampshire. Um, I think it was Hudson. So, they're from New Hampshire, they're from Maine, they're from Connecticut. They're relocating back here anyway, and they know they're at the end of their contract, and they're relocating, so they'll be here in the spring because they're buying a house, etc. We don't
061usually have schools, unless it's a massive city. We don't usually have school districts that are going to California to interview someone and coming back. Um, but I will look into exactly how that gets negotiated for you. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Alicia, this has been very helpful. >> Brought a lot to the table. >> Um, you seem very well spoken and we appreciate that. >> Sure. >> Uh, from the committee, we thank you for being here. Uh, Janice, thank you for all your hard work too. Thank you very much. We'll let you go. Any closing remarks? any warnings. >> I'm Do you want to hear the Boston accent a little more? >> I really did grow up in Dorchester. I will send this to you. Um the the slides I'm going to send
062them so that they can be distributed. You have everything else in your packets are the slides, but they're teenytiny. I tend to print them because people like to take notes. If you have any questions, that is where you find me. You can also that top number, that's our office. So, when you call our office's main number, you may not necessarily get me. I'm usually only in the Boston office like once a week, um, twice at most because I'm all over the field. But you will get, say, Glenn Coocher or you'll talk to Ann Marie Martin and there are other people in the office who can pop probably answer questions and you might get one of the other field directors. So, but let me know if you have any more questions and when you start to
063figure out where you want to land, let us know and we'll see what we can do for you. >> Thank you very much. very much. >> Have a good night. >> You too. >> Uh we have a couple other items on the agenda uh for this special meeting. Um I will have the superintendent tell us about uh a very interesting thing at the airport which was brought to our attention and we will need uh some votes on these. But then they have it in front of them too. [clears throat] >> Evening everybody. Um, I asked Tommy to put this on this uh meeting because there was an urgency to getting an answer on this. uh the person who owns the hanger uh was uh in a rush to uh sell it uh and not so
064much to sell it but to ensure that we would purchase it because he had two other buyers. So he gave us a very limited [snorts] time to make that decision and uh which is basically today. um the end date was today um or actually it was earlier than today but um convinced him that I needed a little time with the committee. So in any case um we uh started u putting things together on this. So, what that meant though is that um I contacted our uh attorney to uh make sure what the process would have to be. And it was similar to the last time we bought a hanger. The two key issues that were critical to us was number one, it had to be purchased from uh one of our cities or towns. And
065number two, uh it meant a change in our charter. So the fact that it um needed to have a a change in the charter uh is exactly the same change that we had the last time which outlines where um the because we had to lease the land cuz at the Lawrence airport and um the city of Lawrence only leased the land. The hanger you purchase the hanger. You own the hanger but you don't own the land. you just lease the land that the hanger's on. And so that's why it required a um a a change in the charter. Um so um knowing that um last week I was in every day trying to get this resolved and um pushing it into early this week in fact uh because he was not going to wait for
066us and we uh felt that it this hanger was that valuable. So what makes this hanger so valuable uh compared to the one we already own? the this new hanger is actually adjacent to the one we have. It's right next to the one we have. So, it's still part of the same Westside Hanger Association. There's three Rs, the new one and the one to the left to the left side of us. So, that made it a little bit simpler. Um and uh the fact that this hanger has uh bathroom facilities, it has air conditioning, a very high end air conditioning and heat system. Uh it's much larger. Uh it uh has more space in the back land. Uh it has um it's painted has better insulation. the wa the floors are painted and it has
067a small office loft in it already. Uh so it has all those things ours doesn't have. We bought ours uh for $300,000 at the time we bought it cuz it was the only hanger available and they rarely come up for sale. And so in order to get the program approved we had to have a hanger and this was the only one available. So, um we haven't done anything with that hanger, but we have allocated some funds to make some changes to it. So, we have to um we have to put heat and air conditioning in it. We have to put a bathroom in it and then upgrade uh classroom space and everything to it. This new hanger uh makes it easier for to have uh classroom space and it also allows us to bring more
068students out to the hanger than the other one would because there's more square footage. So, those are all the important factors about the new hanger. Uh the um the biggest challenge with the our existing hanger is that putting in a bathroom would require us to go to Sutton Street where I don't know at least 300 ft plus to get to Sutton Street which we'd have to put in a a sewer line in uh probably a a 6 or 8 in sewer line which would probably cost in the range of 3 to 350,000 was a rough estimate we got from an excavator. Um, and then, uh, upgrading heat, ventilation, air conditioning could run as much as 100,000, 50 to 100 depending on what type of system we put in uh, in the space. And then [snorts]
069adding um, uh, a loft of some sort for the classroom space uh, would have been an additional another 20,000 or so. So when you take all that into fact, all those facts into you're up 750,000. The new hanger is 975,000. So we're not, you know, we're looking at another couple hund 225 or so uh difference. Uh we could sell our existing hanger and recuperate that money back and put it back into this new hanger. Um and then uh that would lessen the the cost to us. So in any case, um the uh the value in terms of what we could do with it and how much it would improve the quality of the instruction in the program is huge and um thought that this was just a really a very fortunate uh opportunity. So, in
070terms of trying to determine what the value of the hanger was on the market, uh talked to uh Falcon Air, who has hangers and sells hangers and leases hangers, uh who recently uh finished building some hangers. Um [snorts] and uh it was appraised uh the new hanger was appraised by the owner. He's going to send me the appraisal was appraised for $1.25 million. Uh, and we're looking to buy it for $975. Our hanger um and that was Falcon Air had given me a value of $1.2 million when I had spoken to them. Um, they were there at the Lawrence airport and then uh valued ours at somewhere to what we paid for it but possibly up to $350,000. So, um, what I would need in order to make this happen. And so, oh, just to
071give you a little bit of history as well is so quickly reached out to all our cities and towns cuz after talking to our attorney, he said that uh we would have to um have our cities and towns approved, which I assumed we would have to. So for Methuan uh and Lawrence uh it wouldn't be as big a challenge as it would for Andover and North Andover because it would have to go to town meeting and to get a final vote on it. So that was a little [snorts] concerning. Uh so um we um reached out uh Lawrence I mean Andover, North Andover, Mthun all had meetings on January 5th. Um, so we quickly had to we put together some proposals of what we thought the vote should be um and uh brought it to
072the cities and towns, but we knew that the board of selectman meeting and the board of selectmen, we were looking for a favorable vote from the board of selectmen to bring it to town meeting. uh both Andover and North Andover were both very in favor and excited about the idea of us purchasing the H hanger and uh uh voted to submit favorable votes at town meeting. And then uh Mthuan was very very positive about it as well. Uh but they don't vote on the night you present something to them. So, it's coming. They're going to put it on their agenda for their next meeting and they're uh um I would say there wasn't a member on the city council that had any objections, but they were all very positive about it. So, they have they
073have to they would have to vote at their next meeting. So, it looks uh strong. So, then the biggest challenge was because we had to buy it from a city in town. I approached Lawrence to see if they would be in favor of purchasing this hanger again for us. And um and I asked the uh city clerk, you know, what the process was to get that approved. She said um that the mayor would have to approve it and then the city council would also have to approve it. So, bringing the request to the mayor, the mayor agreed uh to purchase it. Um they had free cash and he checked with his uh finance director and attorney and um the city council was willing to call a special meeting for on Tuesday after they were all
074just sworn in. They got sworn in Monday. They agreed to have a a meeting on Tuesday. At the meeting on Tuesday, um the mayor forward a memo to the president of city council saying uh they were in favor that the money was there. Uh and the other challenge was they have to hold on they have to own the hanger for 6 months. Five to well we we projected about 5 months after before town meeting. So uh that was something that had to be agreed upon also. So they uh sent the uh president of city council that they that was all set all in favor where the money was going to come from and uh that they could uh support that for 5 to 6 months. So I uh then went to city council meeting, presented
075to them and uh they voted on it. Um which is something they never do is vote the same night. Uh but they knew the urgency of it. I had the owner of the the seller of the hanger. Uh I put him on the line as well to try to convince him to try to give us more money, but he wouldn't I mean more time, but he wouldn't do it. So then the city council went ahead and voted to uh fund uh the hanger uh for us and hold it till uh town meetings were done. Uh and it was a 10 I think it was 10 to one 10 members yes one member was a no. Um, so that hurdle was uh overcome until 2 days later I got a call from the city clerk and
076she said there was a problem and I said what's the problem? She said the one member that didn't uh one more member had to approve the uh uh felt so it needed to be revoted on uh with the term that it was an emergency uh vote. So they agreed to do that. So, they're coming back Monday night to vote again under an emergency uh vote uh situation. So, once that's done, then uh the lawyers can I think the lawyers have already met with each other and the attorneys can then write up and finalize a purchase and sale. So, um nothing is cast in stone until Lawrence and Mthuan finish their vote. Um, so I would need the committee to vote to approve the purchase of the hanger. Um, I put some language from the city
077of Lawrence and to vote to allow a change of language in our charter. >> You want to touch on the fact that the uh the capital improvement committee has been aware of this? >> Yep. So, capital improvement committee did meet and approve the purchase of the hanger um to move forward with the p uh to bring it to full committee for a vote to purchase the hanger. At the time, we were thinking we would go we would probably uh purchase it out of capital improvement, but um um Melissa informed me that we had that we're it looks like we'll have an S uh uh END account a little over $2 million. It's not certified yet, but will be certified uh expected to be certified possibly the middle of January. Then that money would be available
078for us to utilize, but we won't need the money until the spring because we're not actually buying it till the spring. Uh so the funds are there both in capital. We could utilize capo or excess uh uh excess and deficiency fund. Uh either one is uh is doable. Uh I I think we would probably want to go with excess and deficiency funds once we'll bring it back to for uh where we're going to fund it once that's certified. We just have to wait till it's certified on that part. So I I really need a vote as to uh accept the purchase of the hanger from Lawrence and um and the uh sub lease subleasasing the land from Lawrence. And I think I have the language here. >> Yes. Emory motion. >> Make a motion. >>
079The motion I'm going to need two separate votes. The motion uh to vote for purchase of the hanger from the excess and deficiency first. >> Right here. >> Oh, okay. >> Okay. So, want to make a motion to for Greater Lawrence to buy the hanger at the Lawrence airport [clears throat] from the city of Lawrence for $975,000. $975,000. >> Do I have a second? >> Second from Mr. Jones. Any further discussion on that one? >> Discussion, >> please. Um, so, um, a few things. Uh, one is I was glad to hear about this about this project. I'm 100% in favor of it. Um, I think it's going to be an improvement to what we have with um, significant advantages that we didn't have with the other hanger. Um, my concern with with this coming to
080us was that I found out about this just a few days ago. Um, that's one. And two, um, I personally spoke to the city and they were surprised about it before you met with them. Um, and you know, given the fact that we just went through the process of getting a hanger and getting through that and inaugurating it in public, um, not too long ago, um, was sort of like I mean, I don't know, I felt shocked by the fact that this is how quick we're moving with this. Um, and that a committee met, capital improvement committee met. I don't know when that that committee met. Um, but whenever that committee met, I wasn't aware about this project overall. Um, and the fact that that we're finding out about this now, it's just concerning to
081me because it's not the first nor second or third thing that comes late to us or last minute in a rush. Um, and so I I ask that we don't continue this kind of uh transaction where we're getting things rushed last minute. We need to get things done quickly and smoothly or whatever it is that we need to do to get these things through. Um, but I just find it concerning that this is this is a there's a pattern of this happening. Um, and I don't want it to be a pattern that continues. Um, however, as I mentioned, I'm fully in favor of it. It's going to have significant advantages. Um, it's just the way that this was approached was not the way that I would have approached it or I would have recommended it
082uh in any way. Um, so that's all I have. >> Can I answer that? >> Um, two committee men are on the uh capital improvement. Um, we found out about this December 23rd. You would have been notified about this at the next meeting, which is the 26th or the 27th. The superintendent asked if we can put this on because it came about so fast. I don't think either one of us thought it would come up this fast, but it was just an opportunity that I didn't think we can pass up. So, I wanted to bring it before you, but it is noted that it came too fast. But the opportunity comes before us, we're putting it before you. So, whoever you want to blame. >> No, no, no. I don't I'm not putting blame on
083>> any I understand. It was too fast for me, too, until I understood [clears throat] how it came about. That's why we put it on. >> All set. >> No, I I understand. My my piece is not blame of any sort. I'm just telling you how >> the point is is that regardless whether it was rush or not, we just got a hanger. >> We inaugurated it. We publicly inaugurated. Now we're going back and yes, we're getting a better hanger. But the fact is that we're selling a hanger that we asked the four cities to approve for us that we approved that we agreed upon and now we're going back and doing a whole process again. But again, I'm I'm totally in favor of it. Hopefully, we'll make some money on the hanger we're selling.
084>> Mr. Mercedes. >> Well, um, my concern more comes when other towns are reaching out to me asking me what do I think about us buying this hanger cuz this happened a couple of weeks ago. People started reaching out or just waiting to hear when I was going to be informed. So obviously it looks very bad from from me to not even know that this conversation already uh superintendent is having with me and and Lawrence when we haven't even heard about the the pos the possibility of purchasing the hanger. So it really it makes me look like I'm not even part of the committee when they're telling me the suspending is talking to me and talking to Lawrence and I don't even know what they're talking about and I just got informed literally 3 days
085ago when I already knew >> but I didn't hear from the person that should have that I should have heard of cuz I'm I'm totally in blank. I'm I look like an idiot when they're asking me what do I think about us buying them. was like, "Uh, I don't know what you're talking about." And it seems, I mean, I I just I just think that what what I think is the there's a good um intention on on on on Mr. Superintendent, but I believe you need to uh address us before because I don't want to hear Muan calling me or Lawrence calling me to ask me stuff that I we haven't even discussed with him because it doesn't look good on on on us. So, I I really hope that, you know, that this doesn't
086happen. Um because I don't want to look like an idiot when somebody's asking me about stuff that I don't even know about that should have been informed before anybody else should know about. That's all. >> Agreed. Understandable, >> right? >> Would it help if after uh the the capital meetings if a memorandum just goes out to all the members of what transpired ahead of time? Even though it's not in sequence to the next meeting, >> it would have been brought before everybody for the next meeting. We had no idea this was coming so fast. I don't think you did. I certainly didn't. >> No, we figured we had time. >> When the opportunity presented itself to the superintendent, that's when he asked if we can put this on the special meeting and that's what we're
087doing. >> Question. I just want to uh address the concerns. Uh I absolutely agree with Edison in particular and Julio in terms of uh the communication not getting to you soon enough. Um, a lot of this this this did transpire quickly and the challenge for me was um when the attorney told me what we needed and uh trying to put it all together, I spent I don't know just about every minute I had between Christmas and New Year's trying to put this all together as fast as I could. And I did miss the point of not uh getting out the information to everyone in a timely manner. So that is on me. I take responsibility for that. And I thought about that uh yesterday and said to myself, well, I swore to myself and said,
088sometimes you got to kind of slow down and plan it out on paper what your steps are. But I didn't do that because I was uh anxious about each of the steps and trying to connect with many many people to make this each step happen. And uh and it never crossed my mind other than uh the people I had to reach out to to make sure everything was going to happen. And I knew we had this meeting. I reached out to Tom and uh didn't think through the idea that when this meeting was happened verse some of the other other meetings that had to happen quickly. So I do apologize for that. Doesn't help anything but I do apologize for that and we'll uh be very cognitive and more cautious in uh moving forward in
089the future. Anything else? >> Yes, >> Miss Ferris. >> Yes, >> Mr. Jones. >> Yes, >> Mr. Mahia. >> Yes, >> Mr. Mercedes. >> Yes, >> Mr. Tarbox. >> Yes, >> Mr. Hayden. >> Yes. Uh, can I get a motion on the uh >> Can I ask who made the Oh, I have it. Get >> second motion on the uh changing the charter to update the charter to be able to get the land off the competence uh rented from the city of Lawrence. Am I right? >> Yeah. Can >> I get a motion for that? >> It's all moved. I make a motion that we uh change the original charter uh so that we can lease the land for the airport. >> We just needed a second. [laughter] >> The motion. Yeah, I'll second it.
090>> Discussion, please. >> Discussion the uh through you. uh for the charter language is it the same as or the model of the language is the same from the 300,000. >> Yeah, same language as we had on the other chart on the other uh hanger >> but the difference in uh the size and the cost and everything is different. >> Uh for the next meeting, can we get um an amended version of the language of that piece? >> Sure. [clears throat] >> For this? >> Thank you. So, we're not we're not voting on selling the other hanger yet because we have to own we have to [clears throat] own this one before we can sell the other one. >> Yeah. So, whenever that amendment happens with this the charter y >> um we would want
091to see the amended language. >> The amended language. Yes. >> Anything further on discussion? [snorts] >> Mr. the T box, >> but then we didn't read the motion yet. >> Yeah, we did. >> We did the motion. We did second. >> Oh, you read the motion earlier, Am. >> Yeah, but we didn't actually read the motion, did we? >> He read it. >> Oh, he did. >> Oh, >> you did. >> At least the land vice chair. >> Yep. >> Seconded. Okay. >> First, I'll go with it. >> Thank you. Discussion is over. Can I follow up? Yes, please. >> Miss Bars. >> Yes. >> Mr. Jones? >> Yes. >> Mr. Mahia? >> Yes. >> Mr. Mercedes? >> Yes. >> Mr. Hayden? >> Yes. >> That concludes all our business. Um, I would like to
092ask, um, because it's so hard getting special meetings, uh, as far as the future searching committee for the superintendent, can we extend our meetings a little bit on our regular meetings or would you rather call a special meeting to do superintendent searches? >> Anybody have Are you going to leave it up to me? Well, uh I'm glad you asked because I I'm open to either. However, um I I I would ask that our meetings be either after 6 because I mean today I'm on vacation and obviously that's the only reason I'm why I'm here. Typically, I am pretty busy right up to 6:00. So, obviously, if there is a special meeting, I would like to request that I don't want to miss any meetings. I I want my vote to be here to be said.
093I want my voice to be heard. Um and I want to make my opinions and the only way I could do that is if we make the meetings on a time that I can be here. So not 3:00 on Friday. Definitely doesn't work for me. Um so with that said, I go with the group. I'm pretty open um to come in extend the time on that day that we're already here. But if the rest of the group finds that an special meeting is required, I'm also open as long as we do after six or Monday or Tuesday, which I I can do earlier time. >> Why don't we uh consider this and we'll do it at the meeting. Uh I believe it's the end of the month, the last week in the month, and we
094can decide if you want to do special meetings or if you want to extend our regular meetings. I just don't want to add too much onto our regular meetings. >> Correct. And like I said, I'm I'm >> We'll decide next. We'll do that in >> a couple weeks. Huh? >> That sounds good. >> Anybody has an opinion, they can form it. Can we uh please >> So, uh, quick question for Mass cuz they did our the presentation today. I'm assuming the next meeting we would need to vote on what direction we're heading in terms of a consultant in-house or these folks. Whether you want to do it at that meeting or former I would add that as I would add that as an item on us. We got to continue. >> No, no. I would
095add that as an item for the next meeting so that we can vote on it in that meeting >> to to decide the pathway. >> It's fine. >> Yeah, >> it's just to keep it moving because we're going to hit February and so >> anything further? Can I get a motion to adjurnn? >> Motion to adjurnn. Motion second. >> All those in favor? >> I >> opposed.