In-Person Special Meeting - Bridgeport Board of Education Monday, June 2

001in person special meeting of the board of education. Am I ready? Uh this is an inerson meeting of the um board of education. Uh it's Monday, June 2nd and the time is 6:39. We have a quorum. Um we're at Harding High School's library. In attendance, I'm Jennifer Perez, board chair. We have Joseph Sakalik, Marissa Estra Jimenez. Online we have Akisha Casmir, Andre Woodson, and Dr. Avery's joining us. Um, I'm gonna turn it over to Nick Caruso from Cape. Who was the third person online? Uh, Andre and Aisha. That's it. Andre and Aisha. So, there were two. Two online. Yeah. Good evening. This is number six. Yes. You made it. Yes. Yes. Um, good for you. I mean, you you had to sit here and go through all this work and I hope you found it

002beneficial. So far, you're going to find tonight very beneficial. I think Chris Hin, who has been involved with school boards and school districts uh for years, you can fill in some of the blanks for us, but I've seen him present um both on a national level at the trainers conference a few years ago as well as he's been at couple of KAPS events, I think, along the way. Um I'm going to leave it to Chris to fill in the blanks, but uh I think we're very fortunate to have him here. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Nick. Hello everyone. Hello. Hello. I'm gonna start by apologizing to the folks online who are going to be looking at my back most of the night. I'll try to say hello every now and then, but I appreciate the

003invitation to be here. Thank you so much for having me for number six of six sessions. Um, I hope tonight's going to be useful to you um to talk about communication. Sorry, I'm get myself in order here. Hey guys. Hey Rob. Hello. We have name plates today. Are you Robert Traver? I am. I'm Chris Warren. You are right here, my friend. Chris, thank you. So, thank you. First of all, I want to thank also Gabe, uh, Nick and Jody in particular for inviting me to be part of this conversation tonight and to work with you on communication. Um, a couple of just housekeeping things. One, I'm going to provide these slides after the evening. So, I'll give that give you the deck to to look at later on. Um, and also I'm going to sort

004of introduce myself more fully in a few minutes after we go through some other introductions so you know sort of a little bit more about my background and the lens through which I approach this work. Um, so tonight effective communication um, communication is a huge topic as you know and we could come at this from a lot of different ways. So, I spent some time over the last few weeks or so, especially working with Vic and Jody, sort of getting a handle on what you all are thinking, what you are working on, what you are struggling with, what you are aspiring to do and become. Um, and espec especially in the area of communication. Um, and to me, it's not just about sort of what the state thinks you should be doing or what Cape

005thinks you should be doing, but also what you yourselves are saying you want to work on in terms of communication. So I was fortunate to have um the self assessment from Nick that you all undertook and there are certainly going through those comments that you all provided about communication both the things where you feel like you've made progress as a team um and some areas where you still may need work whether it's within the board itself superintendent or between the board and the public and so on and so on. So tonight we're going to talk about each of those things in different forms um including as I just said thinking about communication within the board. Now as Nick was saying earlier before the meeting started you know this is something that some people do for

006a living. They really work on sort of team building and conflict resolution and all those things that all kinds of teams need whether it's in the workplace or the athletic field. Um, I've done some of that work and we're going to talk about some of those things tonight. Um, and the same for another aspect of communication, which is the relationship between the board and the superintendent and how communication either works or doesn't work in that relationship. Much more of my work is about the other side of the coin, which is about the relationship and the communication between the board and superintendent, meaning district leaders and your constituents, the people you serve, primarily families, staff, and the community, right? So, what does that communication look like? And you'll notice that these arrows that I've put between

007these different icons are two-way arrows. And that's intentional because, as you know, communication is not just what we provide, what we state, the stories we tell, but also thinking about two-way communication and how we hear back from people and how well do we listen or not how well do we listen at times. So, we're going to talk about that aspect of communication during the evening as well. Okay. Um, I'm going to run through the agenda really quickly just to give you an idea of sort of how the evening is going to flow. We're starting a little bit late, so I'm going to have to make up some time, but I will figure that out. Uh, we're going to do some introductions a moment. I can find a little bit more out a little bit more

008about each of you, about me. And I want to start off by talking a lot tonight about public confidence in public schools. I think this is a great incentive for communications work. sort of thinking about what is the public's level of confidence in our schools and our school board and what can we do to sort of strengthen and enhance that confidence so that people feel good about sending their kids to these schools about working for the district about investing in the district about paying taxes that support the district and so on. So public confidence is a really important piece of the puzzle. We're going to talk a lot about that tonight. some of the ways we're going to do that. I'm going to share with you some lessons that I've learned and I've passed along

009over the years from my my years working in the Boston public schools. We're going to engage in a small group exercise to talk more about public confidence and how that gets shaped. We're going to have a short break at some point. Um and then we're sort of send spend the second half of the evening talking about how to improve communication specifically from the board of education. How can you all do a better job communicating with your constituents about your work, about who you are, what you're working on, what you're trying to accomplish, and so on. So, at least some very tactical advice that you can put into action. And I promise you, we will wrap up as close to 9:30 as possible. Does that all sound good? Sounds like a plan. Excellent. I just want

010to let the record show Miss Medina join the meeting. Thank you, Mr. Medina. Nice to see you again again. Amen. Okay. So, introductions. Oh, yes. Taber as well. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. I miss I missed you, but you announced yourself. You did. I said I'm here. Hi. Sorry, I forgot to announce walking in. The record didn't show. I know the record show about five minutes ago, Mr. Traver joined the meeting. Thank you all for being here. Okay. So, what I would like to get do quickly is just go around the room and ask each of you to say really briefly your name, how many years you've been on the board of education, and in one sentence, why did you run for this office? I realize in some cases that may be a longer story, but

011I'm going to ask me really briefly. Just tell me in one sentence, why did you choose to run for the board of Okay, may I start with the chair? Yes. Um, Jennifer Perez. Um, been on the board for a year and a half. Um, I was actually appointed to this seat. Um, but, um, I really just I think like most people like just wanted to make some changes to the system that has not been kind to the citizens here of this town. Sorry, say that again, Jennifer. Just make changes to like a system that hasn't been good to us. Okay. The student. Great. Thank you. Do you want to welcome your other colle? Yes, Mr. Benahan has joined the meeting. Hello, I'm Chris. Dr. Rice. Oh, I am uh Dr. Avery. I'm the interim school

012superintendent and I've been in the district for almost two years now. Uh first year in the role of uh deputy superintendent. Uh in the last eight months, uh the interim school superintendent. Great. And I realize the question is a little different for you. Why did you choose to pursue district leadership on the administrative side? I retired in another state and after five years came out of retirement to take a deputy job to support the work of the incoming superintendent. Uh and I felt I had an opportunity to kind of make an impact in this community. Uh and that's why I'm here. Great. Thank you. Yes. Joseph Kbec, seven plus years. Um I initially ran for the board to fight against injustice and for school funding. What was this? What was the second part? And for

013school funding, right? Go ahead and end. Thank you. Uh Willie Medina. Um one year six months. Uh why did I run for office? Uh purpose. It was uh it was a plan. God's plan. Destiny. Thank you. Hi Marissa Stra Himenez and I have been in this role for four months. Um, and the reason why I decided to run for um, board member was because there were things that were being done that I didn't really appreciate or were not I didn't think that they were in the interest of children. So, I wanted a seat at the table to make sure we always focused on kids. Am I less than perfect but hopefully it's legible? Yes sir. Hi good afternoon. My name is Al Benales. I'm one of the board members. This is my secretary six years

014and I've been on the district for almost 20 years for my son start kindergarten until he graduated from B high school. So I was a pack and PTSO president pack and PTSO. Okay. as you know leader of each school and uh doing it for almost 20 years and after that when I done one of the high school parents teachers that community they told Mr. We need you as a board member because I'm a fighter for the kids, for the student, you know, funding the school, the right um all the stuff, you know, right? We need in public school. Thank you. Uh Rob Treyber, I uh was uh filled a vacancy in the spring of 23, so two and a half years ago. Um I was a parent activist in the 90s. I became a teacher

015in 2001 and was a union leader in the union. Um and uh after I got off the board, I an opening came up and I applied for it uh to continue fighting for improved schools in Bridgeport. Um thank you Tony. You want to Yeah. I'm so sorry. Yes, please. Aisha, Miss Casemir, sorry. Hello. My name is Akisha Casemir. I joined the board. I was appointed to the board January of 2023. Why did I run for this office? I've dedicated my personal and professional life to improving the quality of life of students, particularly African-American students, because they're the most vulnerable. Great. Thank you, Aisha. And then we have Mr. Woodson. Andre Woodson. Yes, please go ahead. Yes, Andre Woodson. Been on the board for a year and a half. and I ran for um just representation,

016just looking to see more people like myself in uh positions like this so we could uh help um make the Bridgeport schools better. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Mr. Woodson. Jody, you want to introduce ourselves and share any of your why? Well, this being my 19th meeting in Bridgeport tonight, um you probably know more about me than a lot of than my family, I would say that u the reason I enjoy coming back time and time again is because I genuinely care about this district. I care I've gotten to know most or all of you and really enjoy working with you. I like to think that we can help you aspire to greater things. And I I know from all the times we've talked I want to just point this out. Whenever I start a

017meeting, I usually ask why people run for the school board. In many places, it's I want to do it because I got a great education in my hometown and I want to give back. What I've heard here time and time again is we can't keep doing the stuff we've been doing to our kids and I want to make it better. So there's a greater sense of urgency I think for you and you feel it and you really are committed to doing something about it. And so I feel really good that I can in some small way help you do that. Great. Thank you, Jody. Thank you, Mr. Carson. Thank you. And I'm Jody Gooler. I I I was a um public school um educator. I taught I was taught English for many years and I

018was a director of English uh assistant assistant principal, sup principal, assistant superintendent, superintendent. I finished my last um 12 years in education as a superintendent. worked for for several different boards and through my relationship with my boards, I really understood how important boards of education are and and just valued the the the leadership boards in our state and K was always an organization that as a superintendent I relied on heavily in policy work and um governance work and um thrilled to be at CA now for two and a half years. Great. Thank you, Julie. So, I apologize that you've been asked this question before, but I think it never hurts to sort of continually remind ourselves about our why, why we do this work, why we serve. And what I find with boards of education

019in particular, maybe you do too, is that often people run for reasons um while they're campaigning. They said, "This is why I'm running. This is what I hope to accomplish." And sometimes they find out that the job is different than they might have thought it is. And you learn what the roles and responsibilities are of a board member. and perhaps more importantly what they aren't and sometimes you find out that things you may have run on are not things that are within your purview to change. Now that all being said you know that one of the most important jobs you have is to hire and evaluate and support the superintendent and it is that person's job to carry out many of those things. Sometimes people run because they want to improve special education or they

020want to change what is being taught in the classroom or how classrooms are taught or whatever those things may be that are very much someone else's job. And I'm sure a big part of your training has been learning what is your lane or what are your lanes and what are the lanes of Dr. Avery and his team. Um, and sometimes those things make us think differently about the role of board members. We're going to talk a lot more about that tonight as well. Okay. So told you I'd tell you a bit about myself and I say this in part so you understand sort of the lens that I approach this work where I'm coming from and my experience that I'm bringing to the table um and sharing with you. So I'll try to be as

021brief as I can. I will tell you that throughout my life what I've been most passionate about is all things to do with words, writing, language, reading, communication is a very natural place for me to land because it's what I'm passionate about. Um perhaps other kids were playing football in the street. I was in the basement creating my own newspaper. So that's the level of nerd we're talking about here. Um and I have carried that throughout my whole life. I think in part because I'm very passionate about storytelling and I believe that a lot of this work is about telling stories. Well, I'm we're going to come back to that theme often this tonight as well. Um after graduate school, I went to school, got degrees in writing and English. Um, after graduate school, my

022first job was working for the mayor of Boston. Now, we're talking sort of mid 90s here. I worked for then mayor Tom Manino. Some of you may remember that name from being mayor of Boston for a long time. I was a speech writer and a policy uh associate. Um, and got to learn a lot about what communication looks like in municipal government. After about three years of that, I wanted to make a change but stay in the administration. So I asked the mayor if I could become more involved in the schools. And at the time the mayor was really staking a lot of his tenure as mayor on improving the schools. You may know something about Boston public schools. We have a very rocky complicated history certainly in the national spotlight during desegregation or busing

023as often called in Boston in the 70s. very turbulent times and to some extent the sort of scars from everyone involved from th those years are very much alive and well still a lot of mistrust and come back to that as well but I was becoming more and more passionate about the work that the mayor and his team were doing in schools so I asked him if I could move over over to the school department as we called it what's a little different about Boston as you may know is that as of 1991 the mayor actually appoints the school board we call it the school committee um whereas are elected most places in Boston. The mayor appoints that body based on nominations that come from the community. Okay. So, he agreed to let me go

024across the street and work for the Boston school committee. I'm going to share some stories with you about that experience in a moment. Chris, I just want to point out that this board is partially elected and partially appointed. Oh, I didn't. No, no, that's No, I thought it was No, we in fact had a fight about it. A fight to maintain the elected. Okay. Elected. We just to clarify, we have some appointed board members because of resignations, right? Okay. Everybody's elected or there's a mistake when the vacancy occurs the board and the board of Okay. Yeah. Great. It's pause for a minute. Um, Miss Baptist Perez has also joined the call. So, she's great. Thank you. That's a member. Yes. Do you want to uh Hi, Miss Baptista. Miss Miss Baptiste Perez. Baptist Perez. If

025I could just ask you briefly, we started with introductions. If I could ask you to tell us your name, how long you've been on the board, and very briefly why you chose to run for that for this office. Is your microphone on? Can you see her her window? if the microphone's muted. I know she can not she's not on the screen. Somebody come back. Yeah. Okay. Great. Um, so what was this? Oh, so thank you for clarifying that about elected versus appointed. Um, I will say also this is a moving in Boston right now because there was also a vote recently, non-binding vote to ask people in Boston where they wanted to go back to elected school committee. people said they would like to, but it has to go through other processes, including the mayor

026asking the city council to approve it, ignoring the legislature. It's very complicated, and that process has not yet begun. So, as of now, we are still an appointed board, but that could change. Okay, I'm going to come back to that. I worked uh at BPS for about 12 years in various roles. I started by working for the board itself, working for the Boston school committee, then I worked for a couple of different superintendents as chief of staff. And my favorite of the jobs was I got to be the district's first chief communications officer where I got to really sort of reinvent the communications function for the district and shift us from a much more reactive mode. We're constantly putting out players and playing defense to a much more proactive role of trying to tell our

027story better, get out good news, get people to understand what we were working on and so on. I left that job in 2010 and for the past 15 years I've been working as consultant almost entirely in K12 education on all things communications. So I work primarily with school districts and educational nonprofits and associations like CABE and their counterparts in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, other places uh superintendent, school boards and so on. uh again on crisis communication, on messaging, on working with the press, community engagement, anything to do with communication. Sort of big fun bucket to be in. All right, that's me in a nutshell. But I want to dive a little deeper now. I just told you I'm a storyteller. So I'm going to tell you a story about those early years working for the Boston

028school committee. Um, I mentioned that the mayor uh was appointed to the school board and in 98 uh he had been mayor for about five years. Tomino had been mayor for about five years and he was really confident that we were making good progress in the schools. He had gone conducted a national search, bit the school committee to find our superintendent and found a renowned educator named Tom Paison who agreed to come to Boston and stay as long as they would have them to really turn things around. Uh a dynamic board chair with lots of experience in nonprofit and public boards agreed to be a chairperson. Uh the schools were really starting to improve. There was investment in facilities. Good things were happening. But the mayor said, "Our reputation's not catching up. People are still

029stuck in the notion of what Boston public schools were many years ago. We are far from perfect. We're not where we want to be. In fact, we're far from it. But we need people to understand where we're going and where we are now. So, I was excited to join the team to work specifically with the Boston School Committee to help sort of tell those stories better. I want to give you an idea of some of the things that we were struggling with as a board. Now, I bring this up tonight because I think there may be some parallels, but I don't want to suggest that this is a perfect parallel by any means. So, if things resonate with you and it sounds like it applies to Bridgeport, great. Some other things may not, that's okay,

030too. But I don't want you to think this is a sort of a one forone comparison. Some of the things that we were challenged that we were challenged with in terms of the school board. Again, I feel like the mayor had appointed seven really strong people. They came from different sectors. We have people from higher ed, people with expertise in early childhood, people with backgrounds in business and finance and right on down the line a really capable board, but most of them had never served on a board before, certainly not a big public board like the school committee. So, we had some work to do to get them sort of up to speed just as you are on roles, responsibilities, that sort of thing. Some other challenges we were facing, as I mentioned, just pervasive

031mistrust of the school district and its leaders that predated these individuals and the and the superintendent, just old baggage that people had. I won't go into too much detail about the drama, but under the 13 member elected committee, by all accounts, it was pretty much pandemonium. uh things really went south and there were huge budget deficits, lots of infighting on the board, uh lots of screaming matches, uh board meetings that often, uh resulted in assaults. Uh no one was proud of what was going on. Um and that was part of the reason the public finally said enough of this moving from that 13 member elected board to a seven member appointed board. So that mistrust stuck around. Um the board historically had been perceived as ineffective or irrelevant. Quite knew what the board's role was

032and whatever it was, they must not have been doing it well because the schools were not improving or so people thought. Certainly once we moved to an appointed board, part of the challenge was that these folks have not run for their seats. They've not been out campaigning or fundraising or doing any of the stuff that presumably all of you have had to do. So a lot of you did not know who the board members were. not just their names or their faces but what's their background what's their what are their qualifications uh why should I believe that they are right for this role um a lack of coherence within the board so again as I said people came from all different sectors lots of different backgrounds um and never having served on a board of

033education before they didn't quite know what the role was so people came at the job very differently and the chairperson in particular who I have the highest regard for did a lot of great work to try to get people understand what their roles were and how they could work together most effectively. Similarly, there was a lack of alignment between the board and the administration. A lot of our early work was getting those ducks in a row, getting people to understand not just what their role was and what the administration's role was, but how do we get those to complement one another? Add to the mix the third leg in our little stool being the mayor's office who's very, very involved. So, how do those three entities, the mayor, school committee, and the superintendent, his or

034her team, work together and stay in their lanes to get this job done? Those were our challenges. And I loved this challenge or these challenges because the work to me was very clear what we had to do. We had to go out and start telling the story about who this board is, who they are as individuals, and who they are as a body, what they've been charged to do, and how they're going to do it. So you take all these challenges and you just turn them around and you say, "Okay, how do we build trust? How do we change the perception that and make people understand that this board is going to be effective and relevant? How do we get them out there and get them known in the community? How do we promote coherence?

035How do we create alignment between the board and the administration? Big tasks. Some of these are specific to communications and some are more about sort of the team dynamics. And luckily, as I said, we had a chair who was very committed to and very skilled in in both of those. Okay. So, now we're ready to go out and communicate with the community about this board, the school committee. What is it that we want to tell them? What are the stories we want to tell? What are the messages we want to share and really make pervasive throughout the community? So here, while we're talking about roles and responsibilities, give you your little first pop quiz based on all that you've learned over the past five sessions and presumably before then. What are those roles and responsibilities?

036Is it not that different in Massachusetts than they are here in Connecticut? A lot of overlap. So just blurt them out. What are some of the roles and responsibilities of this the board of ed? Hire and evaluate the superintendent. Hire evaluated superintendent. Really important one. Therefore policies. Yeah. What was the first part? Set forth policies. Set forth policies. Great. Two big ones. What else? The family feud. Show me. Create a budget. What is it? Create a budget. Create a budget. Fiscal oversight. Right. Jennifer, is that what you're saying? I say adopt a budget. Adopt a budget. Yes. All those financial stewardship pieces. What else? We got four of the big ones. Couple more. Curriculum. Curriculum. How how much I don't know as much about it varies in math. How much involvement do you all have

037in curriculum? Do you actually adopt curriculum for each subject area? No, I don't think we adopt it. I mean, in my experience and being a parent also, the superintendent set forth and then it comes to the board to approve what curriculum and things like that. So, I think it was more the superintendent than than us. That consistent with and it's brought forth everything's brought forth for us to approval from textbooks, uh, new curriculum adoptions, new programs. that's got to come before us for approval. What are the adoption of the budget? All those things are should be responsible of the super and then and then paid for through the the means of the budget that was adopted. Absolutely. I think that's probably why it's I'd say sort of a gray area, not gray area, but that

038there's some ambiguity in math at least because of that. It's not as if the board says, "Oh, I think in seventh grade the math curriculum should look like this." That's way too much in the weeds, right? What are other responsibilities of the board that we haven't mentioned yet? We talked about Oh, I just gave one away. I think I think one of the things is it's the the progression of the goals to the community of where the district stands and that should come from the board based on the data that that super is giving them standing in front of that and when you tell your story that's who's telling the story because this is where we are and this is part of the why we're here is making sure that pro progress is being presented

039to the community you know as a board and whole. Absolutely. So that's certainly probably one of the most important roles that you all have. And I would argue that that is very much done usually in in concert with the superintendent and the community of setting that district direction, vision, mission. Where are we going? What are our goals? What's the overall direction here? Not necessarily how we going to get there in every school because that's the superintendent's job, but just what do we agree is our shared sense of purpose here and how what and what how are we going to measure our success toward those goals. Great. So that's one piece. You mentioned fiscal oversight, superintendent, hiring and evaluation policy. The only other one I would throw in is collective bargaining. Um, and again in mass

040at least different boards get involved in different levels with contract negotiations with employee groups, but it's certainly an important piece of the puzzle. Okay. So, as we thought about what we wanted to go out and tell in terms of stories to the community about the Boston school committee, we said, well, if these are the jobs we've been tasked to do, let's go talk about these jobs. what are we doing in these areas? Partially to get people to understand what our job is and what it isn't, but also to get people to understand where we are in each of these five topics and where we are going. And they're at different points of progression. That's okay. So, for example, district vision and mission, the superintendent and the school board work together to develop our five-year strategic

041plan called focus on children. And together we communicated about that a lot. What are our objectives in this plan? What are our goals? What are we trying to accomplish? All that good stuff. And the superintendent and his team put the meat on the bones. That wasn't the school committee's job to say, how are we going to get there? That was the administration's job. All that the goals and the plan were a big part of our content, our messages in this communication. Right? Same for the fiscal oversight, a big piece of the puzzle. So, we recognize that the board historically had not done a great job of getting the public to understand how this all works. What the heck is our budget besides this enormous number? What's in there? How do we get there? How do

042we decide what school X gets and what school Y gets? What are the formulas behind all that without getting too far into the weeds? What's the process by which the budget is created? what what um flexibility do individual schools have in terms of discretionary funds. Those kinds of things that parents wanted to know. Another huge piece of the puzzle in terms of the budget, of course, is facilities. And while it's not the school board's job to go build the schools, it is their job to allocate the resources to make those construction projects possible, right? So, we were doing a lot of that at the time, too, trying to turn around 125 buildings, most of which were very old and some of them very dilapidated. So, the school committee is really trying to invest in facilities

043as I know you are here as we can see from this gorgeous building that we're in. Other examples on the policy side, really important. The school committee recognized that some of our policies were extremely outdated and not working in schools. So, they took on a few big ones that were very controversial, but they recognized had to be done to build a strong foundation. So a promotion policy for example, there was a sense that our promotion policy was so weak that kids were just getting passed from one grade to another simply by showing up and they wanted to adopt more rigor. So rather controversial and a long arduous process, but we got a more strict promotion policy that said we need kids to demonstrate that they're ready to move from seventh grade to 8th and so

044on. Same for student assignment, which is sort of our intradist school choice program, code of contact. other really big policies they tackled in a matter of a few years because they've had to get done in order to lay the foundation the superintendent to do his job well. That all make sense with me so far? Awesome. Okay, those were our messages. What were some of the strategies? How are we going to get these messages out? How are we going to engage the community and try to tell these stories? Well, we had a few different strategies in place. I'm just going to name a few. one, it's really important and that's integration with with the district communications. So my job as the staff director essentially for the school committee was to think very much about the messaging

045and the communications for the school committee itself. But it was important that I didn't do that as an island. We had a communications department just as you do with John and Tim. So it was really important that we worked hand in hand together so that I could work with my counterpart in that office to make sure that we were telling the same story and I was just helping to amplify the school committee piece of that puzzle. Okay. Um and conversely she knew my counterpart that part of her responsibility in telling the district story was to be more intentional about telling the board's story as part of that. that there was no way to tell the story of the Boston public schools without also sort of saying what the board's role is, who they are and

046amplifying stories like important policy changes, budget process and so on. So it was very much not about separate but aligned strategies and communications and that's still true today. Uh we're going to talk later about sort of websites but that was a big piece of the puzzle too. We know that people go to websites to learn about things they don't understand. And our website was doing a terrible job of describing who our board is, what they do, what they don't do, and so on. So, a lot of the work was about changing that content. Uh, we created new a new newsletter specifically about the board, not about the district's work, but about what the board was up to. We created a VIP letter for the community leaders, excuse me. This was our board chair's idea. I

047thought it was rather brilliant. She pulled together maybe a hundred names, leaders from business community, higher ed, nonprofit, human services, elected officials, you name it. And she said, "Every other month, the superintendent and I are going to co-sign a letter to those 100 VIPs. And that letter is going to be about one topic that we think is important." And maybe it was something going on like the budget or one of these policies I described or the district vision, but she wanted to make sure that those hundred people who are movers and shakers and influencers had a different narrative than perhaps they were reading in the Boston Globe or the Boston Herald about what the heck was going on over BPS. I thought it was a rather brilliant strategy because they then would go tell those

048stories to their constituents in whatever sector they operated. Not a lot of work. But I think a big payoff for that one. Um, we wanted to, as I said, didn't necessarily know who our schoolboard members were. So, we said, "We've got to get you out in the community." So, we we developed a schedule and made sure that everyone saw part of their job as being out and about. So, we would get invitations in the school committee office to attend the play at this school or the potluck at that school or parent night. And typically, the same two people on the board would go to everything. They were great about it. But we said we've got to divide and conquer here. So we set an expectation that all seven members were going to sign up to

049to participate in different things in the community whether in schools or actually in the community too uh and get them out there to describe not just themselves but the board's work and what was going on in the district being much more intentional about their visibility. And then I want to share with you some things we did to really think differently about board meetings. And again, I got to give the chair all the credit for this because she really had a powerful vision. As I said, Lost School Committee meetings had a rather horrific reputation for being a three- ring circus. Um, not being terribly welcoming to the public, uh, not being terribly effective or efficient. Um, just a lot of screaming, not a lot of good decision-m going on. And the chair did a lot of

050great work behind the scenes to change that culture and to help members understand what a good meeting looked like. She ran a tight ship. Um, and meetings got better and better, but she also said, "Let's make sure the public feels welcome here." This could be an intimidating thing, as you may know, maybe less so now because you're on the board, but maybe you remember as a parent some of these things and not knowing what this agenda means, what the heck they're talking about some of the times, how any of it works, how decisions get made. So we wanted to be a lot more transparent about that and also a lot more welcoming to make sure that people knew that these were their meetings and they could feel welcome to come and learn or observe and

051in some cases speak or testify if they felt comfortable. We did some work first of all just on the school committee chamber as as superficial as that may sound it was not a very welcoming place. It was a rather dark uh depressing room with old broken chairs not a good sound system. Not the kind of place where you would say, "Wow, this is a really sharp, state-of-the-art kind of group." So, not a lot of money, but a little bit of investment to make that feel more comfortable, more welcoming, and more sort of professional. I think that was sort of the bottom line for a lot of this work. Also, we produced this simple booklet that I'll pass around. Simply called, "Welcome to a meeting of the Boston School Committee." Again, not a big investment here.

052talking about a little booklet, but it accomplished or attempted to accomplish a lot of what I described to you. Yes, it was about the meeting itself. So, you'll see in here a description of how do these meetings work? What does each item on the agenda look like? How does public comment work? What are the rules? Felt like as they were sitting there waiting for the meeting to start, they could flip through this and say, "Oh, okay. I know I have 30 seconds. I know I can submit testimony." Stuff that you wouldn't know if you just showed up, right? um the meeting schedule, uh those kinds of things, but also member bios, as silly as it sounds, you know, who are these seven people in front of me who are having this debate and the superintendent.

053So, just by having their photos and a little bio, it sounds like a small thing. It went a long way in people sort of understanding at least who these people were. Otherwise, they would have just seen a conversation and know only their name and face. Not what they do during the day, not what skills they bring to the table, but just those suits up there. Small effort, but I think the optics of it are also important. You'll see it in the the one I pass around. Questions about any of those strategies that I just outlined really quickly. Again, that's the tip of the iceber. We did so many different things, but I thought those might be a good sort of indication of flavor of the work we were doing. Questions about any of those steps?

054I don't have a question but I have a comment. Yeah, let's just say I laughed. I'm sorry if I laughing because you saw the book and that's very nice but right now with the situation we going that cost money because under way under the budget but all this information the bio and pictures we have in a website I know they working with that so we have the little and they're going to have a bio you know who's who in the website much better for parents go through that. Yeah absolutely and again keep in mind we're talking about the 1990s here so we're not cutting edge of technology. Yeah. So I think now you could even just even for people who are at the meeting even having a QR code to that page so that they

055know that if they're sitting there they're waiting there they can read about paper copies. Yes. Of course we have translated trans interpreters at the at the meeting that all that stuff is very important too. But your point is well taken. Thank you. That's good. Other comments questions about any of those strategies? Okay. Questions comments about anything I've told you about Boston? I know I gave you sort of a really quick rundown of a rather complex history. I just started saying some of those and I think out of the five points four of them were were mirror image of was in Bridgeport which one stuck talk about old baggage they they haven't stopped talking about it you know this board when I became a member of this board we're looking at five five six new members

056but they were still being uh characterized as the board from five six even years ago um board perceivement how they they they perceived there they were saying that you know the same thing, ineffective and irrelevant. It was like we wasn't known to doing the right thing because there was so much chaos uh lack of uh board coherence. We wasn't together last year until this year now that we have more more work being done together. Um and even I would say even the alignment with uh with the board and the administration it was a big you know understanding especially last year not so much this year more last year was very obvious this year is very minimum let's say if not you know there um but yeah so it was almost like a mirror I was

057like okay well thank you for sharing that and you know I I don't claim to know much about this board or this district by any means tried to give myself crash course over the last few weeks and months I guess as I said with a lot of help from Jody and Nick u but even from what I've read that some of that shines through that you described Mr. Ina of you know people all of you or some of you anyway acknowledging the progress in those areas. Yes. Yeah. I'd like to slightly disagree with my colleague over here. We yeah we are seemed that way in a long time. But um just for an example I'm I'm serving. I I'm the only one sitting here that's made budget cuts in the past. My first two years

058we made budget cuts. The community came out there and attacked us. They did not understand that we can only spend the money that we got. But we've done such a good job communicating that even when we went to the Capitol to advocate, they came up with us. Um, people that we had to vote to eliminate came and spoke to me and introduced themselves to me. Hi, I'm a librarian. He asked I'm like, I'm sorry I we had to we had to eliminate these positions due to the budget cut. Hopefully, we can get more money. And it was very cordial conversations. In 2017, that was not happening. So, we have done a better job of communicating. Something you do about something you're saying there's progress. Yeah. No, but I thought I think we made it a

059little bit more than that. That's great. And I you know, I want to clarify too what I said about people having some baggage from the past. That's not just some of that is very um legitimate because I said you know there were huge issues in the 70s where it all came to a head in terms of busing in terms of particularly the racial tension in Boston um and at the time very much sort of a black community and the white community in very separate schools and the white schools typically having more investments better results and the schools primarily attended by black children uh being in poorer neighborhoods and less highquality facilities and not wrong outcomes. So people said, "Yeah, busing may be over." Although we were still certainly desegregating and and that may be ancient

060history, but people said there are still some of those inequities and some of that racial tension still exists because some of those uh disparities still exist. So it's not wrong to be carrying some of that around if you if part of your reason for being on the board or being an advocate is because you believe that we haven't solved those problems yet as no district has. So, okay, I'm going to move us along. But I want to share with you, I think, one of the lessons that I took away from that period that has really carried me through all of my work. Um, and that is this. If you don't tell your story, what's the rest of the sentence? Someone else will. Someone else will, right? So, to me, it's not about sort of saying

061we're going to be the only ones telling this story. People are always going to be telling your their version of your story. My advice is just making sure that you are getting your version out there, telling it so well that it has credibility. Okay? So, a lot of what I'm going to share with you tonight is about this. It's about helping you do a better job of telling your story all day, every day in as many different ways as you can. All right. Um, I want to sort of pan out a little bit from Boston, from Bridgeport, and look uh at some national data. Couple of different polls just to give you some context and to make you feel perhaps a little bit less alone in all this. Um, the first poll is a poll

062that the Gallup organization has been doing for 25 years. And what they do is they talk to about a thousand they poll about a thousand Americans about a lot of different issues, not just education, but education and security and the economy and healthare. whatever it may be and to rank their sort of satisfaction with each of those sectors if you will. So this chart is probably hard to read but I can sort of walk you through it. Starting in 2001 right up through 2025 asking people about uh their satisfaction with the schools. Okay. They asked them what is how would you describe the quality of public education in the nation? Not in your town. This is not specific to the community that you were in if you were pulled, but just overall the nation's public

063schools. And what we see is you can see that red and yellow section growing over time. Back in 2001, it was here and it's growing and growing growing. By 2025, 73% of the respondents were either somewhat dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the quality of public education in the United States. You can see the green on the far left very satisfied remains kind of flat. People who feel like the quality of education are very satisfied didn't change much in those 25 years. What did change is the rise in people feeling more and more dissatisfied with our schools. Very sobering, right? Another poll, this one out of a conservative think tank called the Pacific Research Institute. Um not over time but just a snapshot in time. In this case, September of 2024, the one question they asked,

064how would you rate the overall performance of each of the following? Now, this one is about your district. So, they asked an individual, tell me about how you would rate the quality of the schools in your district and the school board in your district. Aha, now we're getting to it. So, they're not just rating the schools, but how are the folks who are governing those schools doing? In September 24 of 2024, 52% of voters rated their local public schools as excellent or good. So only a little more than half said excellent or good about the school themselves. Local school board, not quite as positive. 41% only four out of 10 people said my local school board is excellent or good. More than half rated them fair or poor. So first let's look at the local

065schools ratings. You can see here how that shakes out. And here we get a breakdown not just of the overall but how do we compare those results among people who have kids and people who don't have kids. Encouragingly people who have kids, people are actually experiencing the schools have a higher sense of satisfaction and a higher sense of the quality of the schools that their kids attend than people who don't have kids. So that I think is encouraging. How about if we shift to the school board again? So again look over here these percentages of people who rate the board itself excellent or good in their community and again not very strong numbers right again a little bit higher among those who have kids than those who don't have kids in the schools so that's

066positive but I say all this not to depress you but to see that we have our work to do and this again is why I believe so strongly in sort of focusing on public perception and satisfaction because I believe that is an indicator of the work that we're doing. Not that we're going to work only on people's satisfaction or or perception, but we got to do the work and hopefully doing the work well will improve those perceptions and satisfaction rates. Right? That all Sorry. Sorry, Sam. Does that all make sense? Questions or comments about any of those those polls I just shared? Yes. Yes, sir. Go ahead. Start. I think he's pointing to you. Um, yeah, I'm having trouble. The sun sets in my eye. Sorry. Um, yeah, we fixed that problem. That was at

067the height of the dysfunction. It's when the school district opened uh and one and a half weeks into the school year changed its schedule. I'm not sure I'm following you. I'm sorry. Well, you're talking about September 24. It's not your district. Oh, I thought you said it was our I'm sorry. No, this is a national poll where people were asked about their district. Oh, I probably I misunderstood you not. This is about your district. Meaning like if I if I was surveyed and I'm going, "Oh, okay. Well, that is interesting." I'm so sorry. One question public schools. The second question had to do with rate your own district. Someone in Kansas reading their I got you. Sorry. I'm being No, no, I misunderstood you. I said this is people rating your district. I I think

068I poorly. Yeah, that that could that could reflect our district. But I I think it's interesting that uh people who actually experience the school district who have a more favorable opinion and that's because I think the people outside the school district, they're respond they're responding to sound bites and newspapers, newspapers and news organizations, they sell ads and it doesn't it doesn't a national scholar or spelling be winner doesn't create the same ad as Google board goes at each other's throat. Fair enough. And we're not going to talk about that sort of disparity, too. I just want to be clear. Yes, the numbers are a little bit better for people who have kids, but these are not numbers to celebrate either. If not, even people who have kids are saying only 48% of them think that

069you're doing a you in general are doing an excellent or good job. So, that's it's I'd say incrementally better. Okay. All right. Now, I want to put you to work. We're going to do a little small group exercise uh to sort of unpack this a little bit, get sort of a little bit stronger sense of how people form these before you go. Sorry. Yes. the there I've been listening to the your your Galla poll through the the last poll and there is a a national debate. you you're you you're obviously given what you've done familiar with the national debate about public education that's been going on for three or four decades but certainly starting in the '9s that led to No Child Left Behind being created after the turn of the century that led to

070Race to the Top You know that has affected and it's the you know the the debate about private rivation of public education, the fight over privatization of public I that colors all of this um and as I've listened to you with the Gallup poll and with that that debate colors all of this um you know whether privatizing helps whether it doesn't help whether there's a problem or not a problem whether public education is is is good or a problem or problematic you know that all of that narrative and how you spin that story as you said is influenced by that but we are going to get to that very okay you I'll leave it at that no it's a great and I I would argue and I'm I'm sort of being careful about not trying

071to speculate about why those numbers change I think that that's one good theory I think there may be others about how has our culture changed and our narratives changed at the national level that may influence people's perception whether that reality matches the perception or not. Um, and some of these results, you can take a closer look at the Gallup results or the or the uh the Pacific one. Um, actually break it down in some cases by party affiliation or by uh age or gender or race. I forget the the exact breakdowns, but that may give you some different lenses too on what skews people's opinions one way or the other. So, perfect lead into this work. I want to break you into small groups to engage in a short exercise to look at this very

072question of how perception is shifted or is formed. So what I want you to do in the small groups is ask yourselves this question. What factors influence public opinion perception about any school district not just yours any school district? What is that list of things that shapes and influences whether people say this is a great school district or a terrible school district or somewhere in between? Now, I want you to think about all the constituents that make up the court of public opinion in this case. So, obviously there's the families, students you serve, the staff who work for you, but tell me who else who else is in that ecosystem? Who else are the constituents need to be thinking about in the broader sense of the word? Who else has opinions about our schools? Public

073officials. Public officials. Who else? Faith-based community. Yeah, faith. Any of those communities. Faith-based, higher ed, business communities. This the small groups or do you want setting the stage for the small groups? But I'm asking just who else are universities and colleges. Yeah, universities, colleges. Um, who else is looking into the quality of schools perhaps shopping around? Parents for schools. Parents, perspective parents, right? Yeah. So whether it's a, you know, you've got a three-year-old and you've got to decide real estate. I already live in Bridgeport. Do I want to stay here? Do I want to move? Or I want to send my kid to the public schools or somewhere else. What did you say, sir? Real estate. Real Realtors, right? We could have a whole session just about that. their their ability to sell people, oh,

074this is a great district or this is not. When I was shopping around for a condo in Boston, I was already working for the district and I purposely didn't tell my realtor what I did for a living and I asked him that question and he started trashing the schools and I was like, we got work to do and he makes it up. He told me later, right? Not good. So, who else who else is shopping around besides parents? Businesses. Businesses where funders, right? People can spend their money lots of different places and we want them to choose this but they're shopping around saying the place I really want to write a check. Who else? Big group out there. You're talking about businesses in terms of people selling product or people who are looking to establish

075where they build news media. Either one or employers for want to do business in news media. I'm thinking both of them and and just point on employers because if they have a big question about how's the quality of the graduates you're predicting I want to hire these media another audience too who else did you something Dr. Rick I just repeated media teachers teachers staff right so yes we talked about the people you already have people who already work for you we know what a competitive market this is right not just for teachers for principles for custodians par professionals school all I hear everywhere I go is it's tough out there we are having a hard time filling positions oh yeah so guess what it's a buyer market so if I'm a teacher especially in a

076hard to fill area I get to shop around and I'm gonna check out Bridgeport and whoever else is neighboring you to say I maybe I get to pick where I get to work what's the quality there what's why should I choose Bridgeport over some of the competitors and that's not always been the case but it certainly is now so that's another part of the the constituents okay so that's the assignment what are the factors just get a good long list I had um I had something to include on that last question please yes yeah um test scores okay I feel The test scores definitely influence public opinion and perception about a school district. Um, particularly reading and math. Great. So, I probably made this a little bit confusing. What we were doing first was just

077brainstorming who are the people we're talking about, who are the audiences, who are the people deciding what the quality of public opinion is, uh, the quality of the public schools are. Um, now we're going to shift into exactly what you're doing and come up with some of the factors that influence what people think about the quality of the public schools. So, test scores is one. in your small groups. I want you to get as many of those things down as you can. And on each of those factors, how much control does the board of ed have over this factor on a scale of one to five? So if you if you think the board of ed has absolutely no control whatsoever over that factor, you would give it a one. If you think you have

078a lot of control over that factor, you would give it a five. Oh, sorry. Or somewhere in between. So for example, the example your your colleague just shared test scores. It's complicated, but you might have a little debate in your group about how much influence does the board have in affecting test scores over time. Zero. Okay. I don't want you spend a lot of time in any one factor and having really long debates about that the numbering thing. That's less important than getting as many different things down as you can. Those may be either factors people consider or ways that people get information. So, for example, test scores is one thing. Another thing maybe just headlines about the district that may be about test scores that may be about anything. Um how do people get

079their information and what is it information about? Does everyone understand the assignment? Mhm. Great. So how many are we? Let's do let's do three small groups. The three of us can sort of move them up. Uh each take a group. Can I get you to count off by one two three? Starting over here. One two three. One, two, one, three. This is the easy part. Okay, great. So, can I get the ones to come over here? The two can be at this table and the threes over here. Folks at home, I don't think there's a way to get them in a group. Is that No. So, if you don't mind just working individually and jotting down some ideas about these questions you see on the screen, write down as many factors as you can think

080of. And for each scale of one to five, what is the influence of the bowl? You have a little worksheet that you can use in your small groups. Let's take about seven minutes with some ideas. Those are the ones. That's all for you. Thank you. You can take the two. All right. I'm sorry. Let's spend about seven minutes in your I know we start talking on some of this stuff and I do know he added it. No. I guess should we mute them or they just push that center I think All right, we're back on. I think we're going back. Are we going back back to our seats? Yes. Yes. Hey, where you want I'll be the speaker over there? I know, right? I want to hear your list, but here's the thing. I know

081some of these things are complicated and nuanced and you may want to sort of explain a lot. I'm ask you just to sort of bang out your list. Okay. No editorializing. Just tell me what's on your list and I'm gonna try and keep up. Uh ones you want to start um we said uh test we we we added in what um said but headlines. Yeah. Headlines. Hey, tell me your numbers next to Oh, sorry. Um we said four. Okay. Headlines from the news like news headlines. uh we said three um we have two categories for resources. So resources in terms of what we receive in terms of money funding and that's a one or two we put and then and then in terms of our spending we have control of that. Five. Okay. I had

082four. Four. Okay. Four or five. Uh board behaviors. Whose behaviors? Board behaviors. And that number is we we said we have controls that five. Yeah. Right. Um school conditions. Facility conditions. A three conditions meaning building condition. Yeah. Yeah. Um and then social media misinformation. Um two. We said two unless we're the ones spreading the misinformation. That's a little higher. Yeah. Who's doing the talking, right? Is that your whole list? Yeah. And then also I just want to point out that Miss Camemer also has her hand up. So great. We're g to come back to them. Thank you. Is that everybody for the That's our list. Awesome. Good work. How about the twos? Twos. We got test scores between one and two. We didn't agree, so put it on 1.5. Um, building conditions, we gave it

083three. Uh, internet connections, technology, we gave a three. Deaf attitudes, we gave a five. Who's attitude? Daff he said staff attitudes, we gave a five. Attitude. What do you mean by that? Like with the way staff presents themselves to the children and ah you gave that one number one. We gave it a five because we can we can model that behavior and create policy around that behavior as well. the press. We had a big disagreement about that. Ben has in terms of the number four between two and four. Building school climate for bullying and school clim climate. Four. We agreed school resources. One board behaviors. Five communication. Four. Elected officials two and privateeers one. What was the second mark? Private board of officials were to elected officials with two and the last one is privateeers

084of one. Privateeers privateeers people seeking to privatize public education. Two that was a one correct. Thank you. Good work. And where are the three? Got the three. Pet scores three financials or not finances uh four is that more on the receiving side or the spending side? Spending side. Okay. Uh technology books and supplies. Five um bus and transportation. Three superintendent and board relationship. for sorry I'm talking fast sorry involvement with the superintendent and board in the community well superintendent relations what number uh four and then involvement with the superintendent and board in the community five okay let's go to our friends online we'd like to go first you want to call them out then you can press I see Miss Cassim's Yeah. Uh, let me take it down. Um, yeah. So, they wanted me to

085be the speaker for the group. Um, the three of us that are online were actually in a chat group together and that's how we came up with our answers. Um, so, uh, test scores is a four. Um, the headlines, newspaper headlines, sound bites a one. Racial composition of teachers. Three. Racial composition of students. One. Racial composition of administration. Three. Economic opportunity in the city. Three. Yeah. And how the And how the city is viewed by Oh, excuse me. how the mayor of the city is viewed by the majority of city residents. We feel like that factors into the influence of public opinion and that would pretty much be one I mean individual we don't have individual control but collectively you know voting the person and of course but yeah that's what we have good work

086team online just these are great you guys are awesome anything that you're suddenly planning got my own ideas here. Um, what I haven't heard is quality of instruction, teaching and learning. How much do people actually base their opinions on what we're in the business of doing is actually teaching the kids? Thoughts about that? Does that seem like a legitimate? Yeah. What's the board's power over that, if you will? How much control do you have over the quality of teaching in your buildings as a board? Four. How? Four. I would I would say four to five. So as a board, what what levers does the board pull to make the quality instruction better? Well, for me, in so far as we have oversight of what the superintendent presents to us and approval of what the superintendent

087presents to us, we should have a four. Um, wasn't necessarily the case in the past year, but that was that should be Yeah, I think that's Yes, please. Yeah, I'm not as optimistic because there's some there's a lot of factors that are control beyond our control. We cannot have a stake education on a hamburger budget. Well, that's fair. Uh, and I think that's classrooms, uh, lack of instructional resources. Prior to the pandemic, we didn't have resources for computers and our students had like 1:5 ratio. Yeah, I think you're right. There's outside influencer. For sure. Part of me is wondering if the reason that didn't come up in any of your groups, the quality of instruction is because that is the whole enchilada, right? That is what we're all about. Compass the fight. You pull all

088your levers and you adopt the right policies and you get all the resources you need and you extend them well and you hire the right superintendent and he in turn hires all the right principles and that person hires all the best teachers that they can find and the curriculum's strong and the facilities are up to date. Then all of that should lead to the heart of the matter classroom instruction. Right? That was the lesson we got from my first superintendent in Boston. Everyone is in the business of improved teaching and learning. I don't care if you're a bus driver, a communications director, a teacher, a schoolboard member. Our job is to figure out what the classroom needs from us to do their job better. Briefly, which is why we split the resources from receiving and

089spending, you know, if we don't get them. Yes, that's the problem. You only work with what you and that's been the problem for decades is we're not getting the resources. Yes. And and you guys are out there fighting for more, which is awesome. All right. Some other things, extracurriculars. Um, what I didn't hear is especially parents, they're not just saying, "How good is the calculus program or the social studies, but how many sports do you offer? How well how good are those teams? Are they well resourced?" Um, can my kid who loves to dance get on stage if they're performing arts, the bait club, all this other stuff, all the other stuff that kids want to do. Does my ouch, I'm sorry. Yeah, it sounded like you were making a list of cuts. Oh jeez.

090again go touched on it with China and believe I think just safety in general it's a huge concern for a lot of people um about and one of the ways they measure the quality of schools is how safe is my kid or someone else's kid going to be other outcomes besides test scores I think there's lots of different ways we've measure outcomes graduation rates and lots of other things that are not necessarily just about the tests um that comes up when I do this exercise sometimes is just those crazy ranking systems u that Some folks put a lot of stock in the 10 best school districts in Connecticut, 15 best high schools in Massachusetts, the 100 best schools in the country. I happen to think a lot of those are not great indicators, but some

091people certainly hang their hat on them. Um, we covered a lot of the other ones. We're in the we're in the urban areas that wallow at the bottom. That that's not where we're Exactly. We'd like to get there, but till we get the resources, definitely more of a suburban dynamic, I Right. Um, and then curriculum. I think this is what comes up on a lot of national polls, but I didn't necessarily hear it around your tables about, okay, what's actually being taught in our schools? And is it the stuff I want my kid to be taught or is there other things that I wish he or she or they were getting? So, nice work. Tell me about just your quick reactions to this exercise in terms of thinking about the board's role in this and

092sort of some of these dilemmas about two, a three, a four things you sort of struggled with just sort of philosophically in this exercise. that came up in your conversations. Yeah. For group group three, as we were jotting down different ideas, everything went back to financials. Um, and kind of what Mr. Draper was just saying, really having the proper funding in order to give our kids proper resources and what they deserve. Good point. And I would argue I think that that is true for most things, but I think there are some other things that we have control over that are almost costneutral. For example, uh let's see, board behavior. No money there. Doesn't cost a thing to behave well, right? No money there. Um some of these other stuff, some say things are trickier and

093certainly having more resources makes it possible to do other things. I also know some very wellresourced school districts where people are not very satisfied. So money also isn't the answer to all these things. But your point is well taken. Okay, we're going to shift gears and then take a take a short break. Good job on this exercise. First of all, um and thank you folks online who are participating as well. Um I mentioned at the outset different types of communication. Um, a lot of our focus tonight is going to be on the the right side of this screen in terms of your communication, collective communication with your constituents, but I also want to just offer a few ideas about the left side of the screen and some of the dynamics between the board within the

094board and between the board and the superintendent and some things I've learned over the years working with a lot of different district leadership teams including boards of the first sort of comes from NSBA who a number of years ago put together their list of the 15 things schoolboard members can do to boost public confidence in public schools. This list has probably evolved over the years, but this is the copy I happen to have, and I'm struck by the ones that they list as the number one and number two things that schoolboard members can do, and you guys kind of touched on them in your brainstorming. Number one, show the public what good governance looks like. The NSBA is saying that is the number one thing a school board can do to boost public confidence is

095to say we know what good governance looks like and we're going to model it. That should boost your confidence in our ability to do this job well and to lead the district effectively. Number two, very similar. Model the behavior you want students and staff to emulate, especially during times of conflict. Powerful, right? What's the total cost of these two items together? Zero. Also, this is not go raise test scores, go double your budget, go whatever those things are. There are much longer games. These are things you could do tonight and tomorrow and every day thereafter. They're immediate. Okay. So, this is not me saying this. This is SBA's. And I think it resonates for me. How much of this resonates with each of you. Great. All right. So, let's look at some of those things.

096First of all, board of education meetings. I have said so many times throughout my career that these are business meetings, certainly first and foremost, but they are also communications moments and communications opportunities. And those opportunities can either be used to enhance and strengthen public confidence in the board of education and therefore the school district or they can detract from and undermine and negate public confidence in the board itself and the district you lead. You guys know this inherently do but it but certainly boards sometimes behave in ways at meetings that are not helpful to improving public confidence. So when people tune in to these meetings, they do so from home or actually come to the meeting, they yes are seeing some things that may or may not help them understand your role. What is it

097you are debating or discussing? What is it you are voting upon? What do I hear at the meeting about your district goals? Do I hear anything about your district goals? Do I hear anything about the direction of the district? Do I hear anything about your strategic plan? That's all one set of work is sort of the content, the stuff of the meeting. The other set of stuff that people use to form their opinion about you and by extension the district is how is this group behaving? Who are these people? Do they seem professional? Do they seem civil with one another? Are they asking good questions? Do they seem like they know their stuff? Do they seem like they know the job? How are they treating people who come up for public comment? All of that

098stuff, I would argue, may even have more influence on perception than that first set of stuff. But both are really important. So certainly think about that. Here's a photo from a schoolboard meeting in Kentucky. A real a real meeting that ran in the paper. I don't know if I feel like my kid is in good hands. This is I don't even know who is a board member here. If these are two board members, if one's a parent, one's a board member. Doesn't matter. This is not the behavior we want to model for our students to emulate. Right? This does not feel like a professional meeting where things are being discussed in a civil and productive way. Tell me what you see in this photo. What dynamic is this? Blame game. Yeah. What is it? The

099blame game. The blame game. Fingerpointing this at times. This might happen within a board where within a board two members might say, "Oh, don't blame me. I voted against that. Blame this one." Or, um, I wasn't around then. This one was around. She's the one to blame for that. Or between the board and the super and where the lines get drawn, they say this, you know, this is not on us. This is on the superintendent. Or the superintendent saying, "Don't look at me. I'm only going to work with what the board gives me." I get it. And sometimes you are going to disagree, but I would argue that no one in the public is going to be impressed by the blame game or really roll up their sleeve and say, "Well, let me figure it

100out. Let me see if the board is right or the super is right." They don't care. They see you guys as one big entity and they want you to figure it out for the sake of their kid. Right? I'll give you an example from my neck of the woods. A town near mine that like so many districts right now is just having a very brutal budget year. partially because of inflation and revenue not meeting that inflationary rate but also there's a sense that there was a mismanagement of the funds not in a corrupt way but just that they could have been managed better monitored better whatever it may be in this community I happened to know both the school board chair and the superintendent fairly well and each of them contacted me just sort of

101unofficially to ask about how to proceed with this growing crisis particularly the public perception about how this happened and why this happened. And each of them sort of wanted my permission to say, I think we need to go public. I think we need to get up and say, the school board chair saying, don't look at us. The superintendent knew about this crisis months ago and kept it to himself. Superintendent saying to me, I need to go public. I need to tell people that the board is asleep at the wheel, that they weren't doing their job, and don't blame me for this. Guess what my advice was to both of them? Any guesses? Don't go public. Don't go public. You're in this together. The public already knows there's a crisis. What they care least about is

102probably who's responsible for the crisis. What do they care most about? How are you going to fix the damn thing? Are we going to get out of this? Are you going to lay off a bunch of teachers to close the school? whatever it may be. What I think, and they didn't really need my advice to know this, we had we had an override vote coming up in this town, meaning that they had to go to the public and ask for a vote in order to increase the budget and get the millions of dollars that needed to prevent all those layoffs and school closures. And they recognized that the blame game was not going to help them with that override. Why? How what impact would that sort of bickering have on voters behavior? Yes. Voters aren't

103going to vote for giving you more money if they don't think you're capable of handling the money you get. The voters aren't going to vote for giving you more money if they don't think you're capable of handling the money you've got. Couldn't have said it better myself. So, at the end of the day, if you really care about getting as much money as you can and the kids, you put aside those differences and the worry about who's going to be blamed for what and you get the darn thing passed. And they did. Um, and they recognized that they had to present a united front. And what mattered less was who knew what and when, but more about how we're going to fix it. And that they did our articulate to the voters. Yes, we need

104to get this override, but here's how we're going to put different financial controls in. Here's how we're going to monitor the money better. We're going to do a better job, but we also need more money. Yes. H is this a recent is this a re very recent event with the expiration of COVID funds? Well, that was a factor, but I would say not a huge factor in this because the there's another layer to the blame game that goes outside the board and outside the superintendent, which goes to elected officials who have significantly underfunded our district for decades. And the first thing they want to do is they're not spending money, right? They wasted co money by putting in pl put putting in jobs that had to be eliminated later because they wanted to give crisis

105counseling to their children during the event. So they shouldn't have hired these people in the meantime because they knew they were just going to have to lay them off. They were irresponsible with their money because it couldn't be maintained. Absolutely. And and and that's that's the narrative that we got and it's called mismanagement. So if it's mismanagement is spending $1,000 on a pen. Yes. Your point is well taken and two two ways. one, this is not just a budget issue. We could I can give you game examples about a lot of things. Um, and I've worked for people who did a really good job of not engaging in this. Some people who found out the hard way that how the playing game does not pay off in the long run. Uh, the the other thing

106being that you're right, the fingerpointing extends far beyond this dynamic. And I think that's part of the reason the American public is so frustrated because all they hear is everyone saying, "Don't blame me. I'm just the president. Don't blame me. I'm just Congress. Don't blame me. I'm just the governor. What you need to blame is that one, this one. And people are tired of that. I would say I'm not getting into politics so much in the political climate that we're in in terms of people saying, "Where the heck does the buck stop and why does no one say, you know what, this is on me. I worked for a superintendent who was brilliant at that." We had a crisis of but late buses that would not go away. Chronically late buses. And she could have

107gotten in front of the media and said, "Don't blame me. It's the routing software. It's that bus company. It's the drivers. It's the Boston traffic. It's weather. And you know what she said? This is on me. I'm the superintendent. This is happening on my watch. It's unacceptable. Lost late buses are lost instructional time. I can't stand for it. I will go fix it. That's where the buck stops. Ben, I mean, I by saying we just what Mr. Sakava just said that sounds like playing in the blame game as well. That like by calling out like you know the elect officials saying this I think that's also us blaming them. I think it it continues the narrative. So I think I think it's just in terms of communication changing how we're communicating um the the problem,

108right? If they want to call us out and say it was mismanaged, okay, but us calling them out is us returning that blame. So if we can change the communication that we're sending out to the community, I think that's important, you know, and instead of, you know, obviously we know that that the if we got more money from the state that but if we change the narrative and say, you know, we can do this with X amount of money. I think that's the the the the piece there. Yeah, that's a really good point. And I don't want to make this sound like I don't want to keep going back and forth with it, but No, that's okay. Um, I think you raised a good point in that I'm not saying you could never sort of

109give people the context of who controls which piece of the puzzle. So, for example, I advised a lot of school districts this year about how to talk about your budget crisis. Yeah. And in some cases, it was making sure people understand that state funding for schools has done this and your bills have done this. That doesn't mean you're screaming at the governor and legislature. You could you're just also putting in context the check that was written to you and what you could do with it. I think that you have to sort of do that and move on and say, "Yeah, but at the end of the day, we've done all that we can to fight for the money we have. This is money we have. Here's how we're going to spend it." Um, so yes,

110I think there's a that's a real highwire act of not making it seem like you are blaming someone, but just putting something in context, right? Yeah. Real quick point about that. Um you highlighted one and two on the list but I believe three is very important as well to have um the facts and documented well put out there so people could understand that where the not the blame game the responsibility lies for the lack of part of the responsibility correct yeah that's always the key not this is someone else allocate respons we allocate resources they provide resources exactly yes well said okay move on to our next tip What's this woman doing? Keeping silent. Keeping silent. Really quickly, my advice to you and to all my clients and school districts and every organization is don't

111sit on bad news. I think it's human nature. We have a tendency to think, um, I'm just going to see if this ever gets out or this is going to get out, but maybe not yet. I'm going to wait a little while or maybe no one's ever going to. whatever it may be, I always say you're crazy. If you know they have bad news to deliver, whether it's bad news within the board, whether the superintendent has to tell the board, the board has to tell the superintendent, or you all have to tell the public, I always say get it out there. Whether it's about some mini scandal or a big budget problem or something else, we live in the information age. It is going to get out. You have two choices. You can get it

112out there and break that story or you can wait around and someone else is going to break it for you. And then the story is both the thing itself and when did you know? Yes. Who knew? How much did you know? And why didn't you tell us? Now you've got two firestorms to work with. So I always say get it out there. Do it early. Be widespread about it. Um sometimes people say, "Well, I brought it up at a board meeting." That's great, but not a lot of people watch board meetings. So, if you really want your community to know, don't just feel like you were covering your butt, but actually find ways to let people know about something important that you think they need to know so they can't later say, "Why didn't you

113tell me?" We could have a whole session just about this, but I'm going to move on. crisis. On a similar note, I think the public forms an impression, their reputation, all the stuff we've been talking about during crisis in particular, and they look at all of you and they say, "How did leadership handle this crisis or the superintendent, I don't care whom, did they do a good job managing the crisis? Did they do a job good job communicating about the crisis?" Uh, this was COVID for a lot of districts. Some districts came out of that really well. Even though it was a tough time, parents said they did a really good job with a difficult situation. Other districts, they said they really botched that. And I know the pandemic stunk, but they could have done

114things a lot better. Whatever it may be, if it's something that big or something small in a school, the question is, how will you handle the crisis? And in particular, for this audience, I would say, are you staying in your lane? Do you know which crises are board of education crises and which crises, sorry Dr. Erie, are all your problem and your team? And the board has to say, not that we don't care. Of course we care, but it's not ours to deal with. Some crises are yours to deal with. Which crises are those? Number one, budget. All the stuff that was in that puzzle piece, right? Mhm. The stuff that's your responsibility. If there's a crisis around that, those are your crises. The budget, the superintendent, uh policy crisis, collective bargaining crisis, whatever it

115may be, if it's in your lane, then the crisis is yours to deal with in partnership with the superintendent. If it's not, it's not your crisis. So, god forbid, if there's a fire in a school, there's a safety incident, it's Dr. Ay's problem. and you can support him and perhaps give him what he needs behind the scenes, but you're not out the ones in front. You're not the ones out in front talking to the public about that crisis or trying to solve it. Everyone good on that? And I just alluded to this, but I'm going to say it again because it bears repeating in all of these trainings. Staying in your lane. It's the hardest thing I think about being a board member, especially because we want to help people with all kinds of things

116they're worried about. and we see ourselves as ambassadors and advocates for our constituents. But what you didn't see in those puzzle pieces was special ed IEPs, my child's bus pickup spot, what was served for lunch yesterday, that incident in Mrs. Murphy's third grade classroom, those are not your lane. And the minute that you all getting into other people's lanes, especially the superintendent's lane or vice versa, the public starts to recognize that. And if you're tripping over one another and it's not clear who's on first and whose lane is what, public picks up on that pretty quickly. And what does that do? What have we been talking about all night? Communication. What else? What effect does that have on their perception of the school district overall? In charge. Who's in charge? And do they know? and

117who's in charge of what. It erodess public confidence. Exactly what we're trying not to do. Okay, this is the slide you've been waiting for. We're a little bit behind schedule, but not too bad. Um, I want to I promise I get us out of here at 9:30. So, why don't we take a quick say 8 minute just stretch bake bio break back in our seats at like 8:22. I know you don't know, dude. Is that our request for a five minute break? Yeah, back on the Are you on the two different schools that [Laughter] Thank you folks at home. Plant your money. Really? Oh, absolutely. The ECS is the main viable. We're back. Looked at me and said, "We're not on. We're on. We're live." We're back online. I know Dr. A's on a call,

118but otherwise great to see you call back. I'm glad no one fled the scene. That's a good sign. You don't mind picking my jacket off. It's a little warm in here, so get a little more casual and comfortable for part two. Thank you for your work so far. Uh it's been great seeing you all so engaged. So, thanks. Um we closed part one with a lot of tips for me about what not to do, some cautionary tales about danger that is not conducive, building confidence in the board. So I'm going to spend some time in the second half talking a lot more about what you can do and what you should do in order to be an effective board with respect to communication. Um so with that I want to revisit uh the agenda. Here

119we are. We just finished our b our break and we're going to talk about improving communication from and about the board of education. And here when I say the board of education I'm often meaning that partnership between the board of education and the superintendent the administration in general. Um and I'm still aiming for a 9:30 wrap-up. So, we're going to make up some time here. Um, I want to go back to the quote that I shared earlier that is sort of my touchstone. If you don't tell your story, someone else will. And in our next hour or so, we're going to spend time talking about specific strategies and tactics and ways that you as a board and district leadership can tell your story better. Meaning, the story of the board itself and by extension the

120story of the Bridgeport Public Schools. Okay. So, as you know, plenty of people are telling your story for you. You named some of them in our brainstorming about all the different groups that are out there. Everyone has an opinion about the schools. Um, some opinions are more informed than others. Some maybe have an opinion because they have a kid in the schools or they work in the schools or a grandkid or a neighbor or they're a reporter, they're elected official, and they all think they know something about the schools. Um, there are headlines out there that are telling stories about your district that maybe wouldn't necessarily be the stories that you want to tell. Doesn't mean these stories are untrue. Sometimes when we leave people to tell a story for us, they tell untruths or

121uh misinformation. And other times the things they tell are true. They just may not be the things that we want to lead with. So, how do we how do we tell our version of the story? One thing I want to caution you about with respect to some of these big headlines about things that are either about the board or the district that are sort of the big stories of the day, if you will. I know some districts will often say, "How do we offset this? We got to tell people about all the good stuff going on." Yes, this is happening and there are some issues with the budget and some have had some layoffs and the state is involved. But if we just tell enough stories about all those kids who are working hard and

122the teachers who are being creative and innovative and the successes, that'll be enough to offset this. I just don't agree fundamentally. What I do agree with is telling those stories. We got to get those out there. We've got to do a much better job of striking a better balance so that people do hear about those other things. But that doesn't mean we can ignore these stories. We've got to find ways also to tell our version of these stories. Again, not to say none of this is true or state doesn't know what it's talking about or here's the story of the budget, but at least getting your version out there. I think sometimes we have a tendency to say we just won't even talk about that as much. We'll talk about all the good stuff and

123the public will say that's fine. We all know that's not the case, but I get the impulse. Okay. So, communicating about the board of education and your work, what are the stories that you want to tell? Think back to the same puzzle pieces I showed you in part one and the stories that we chose to tell about the Boston School Committee. What are the stories we need to tell about you and your work in order for the public to understand the board's role, what you're working on, where you're going, where do we start in terms of some ideas for content. thinking about this. What are some of those stories? Yes. Oh, we we have been out front publicly fighting for more money. Right. The fiscal story. Yes. The public knows we're have to make some

124cuts, some layoffs, whatever it may be. They need to know that you aren't just sitting by saying, "Oh, well, that's a hand we were dealt. You are at the state house. You are fighting hard to get as much revenue for your kids as possible." Yes. Tell that story. There stories we need to tell yours. Yes. Oh, sorry. It's quite all right. Um I um I wanted to just take a step back for a second because in order to communicate to people about who you are as a board member, it's important for you to know yourself. self-nowledge like introspection to constantly do introspection admit that you know when you're wrong admit when you've been mistaken I think that especially in this community people will have a lot more respect for that type of of thinking and

125I think about how you talk about model the behavior that you want students and staff to emulate specifically during times of conflict I think when there's times of conflict like that shows exactly who you are. It shows exactly what you are made of. So, so that's all I wanted to say. Some really great points in there. Thank you for sharing that. And I think, you know, especially your first point really picks up some picks up on something we talked about in the first half and that is it's kind of like that question, where does the buck stop? I think it's a certain amount of comfort in saying we know we can do better. I personally can do better. We as a district can do better. I think sometimes because we are so used to trying

126to um defend that we have a hard time admitting that. Again, that same superintendent I was talking about a moment ago about the busing bus was being delayed was great about this. You know, I've worked for superintendents who when test scores come out, they would say, "Fifth grade math looks great. Let's lead with that. Uh we're doing well with high school literacy. Let's lead with that." And yes, the superintendent would do that as well, but she wasn't trying to downplay the other scores either. She would say, "Those science scores at the middle school level are embarrassing. Let's talk about what we're going to do about that in the press release or at the press conference and tell people this is not acceptable. We can do better. We're better than this. And here's the investment we're

127going to make in middle school science and here are our targets," whatever it may be. But I think it gets to your point about about sort of being comfortable enough in your own skin to say we own this and not just being defensive and constantly litigating and and trying to uh deflect um but sort of I think doing what people respect and that is uh a certain amount of ownership. Um and your second point is well taken to remind me what it was. Um, we talked about, um, modeling the behavior that you want students and staff to emulate, especially during times of conflict that just shows exactly what type of person you are, what you're made of. Absolutely. And I think sometimes it's also just about naming that, too. I think sometimes it's like um

128come from an Irish Catholic family, so we we specialize in this, but just start pretending it does, it's not happening. Just so we won't talk about that conflict. We'll never talk about it again. instead of just saying we know these are difficult times and we know people have different viewpoints about a lot of this stuff and some people may want X, some people may want Y, but we all want what's best for kids. How do we sort of work through that and just name it instead of pretending that it's not out there? So, thank you for sharing those points. Great. Um, the other thing I want to pick up from your comments is it also goes back to I think humanizing each of you. Yes, you are this board of education, but you are also

129individuals. Like I said about the Boston team, we want to go out of our way to say, did you know that Michelle Rainer leads a head start in Dorchester and she's been working with kids ages 0 to four her whole career. People need to know that to know that that's what she brings to her conversations at the board level about this work and the same for the other six members. So I think knowing yourself and us feeling comfortable as communicators telling your stories individually and collectively. Great. Thank you. other content that you think is worth sharing with the public to help them understand your roles, your journey that you're on? Yes sir. I would say the communication. Why communication? Why communication? If we don't communicate with them, how they going to communicate with us? One

130of the thing communication is the trust. And I never forget when gentleman's here remember when you say I believe. I still remember that. So yes, it's not the point you believe in me, believe yourself, come to me and I talk to you. But we need to break have that trust because for many years and everybody know this bridge was always a mess. Some people they don't trust. So we had to work very hard because when you don't trust somebody very hard to trust person back so we have to show them we're here communicate and most important thing and I always say this is respect. If you don't respect others don't, you know, it's not going to wear. You have to own your respect. So, absolutely. So, that's one of the big things is the communication.

131That's a great point. And I think sometimes, and I'm not referring to Bridgeport at all, but other places I've I've worked. Sometimes we think about, you know, where does the board interact with the public? Oh, that's how we have board meetings. And we're going to talk a little bit later about just how limited that particular vessel is for actual communication. Um, and what are the other ways that you can have the more communication that you're talking about that is truly an interaction between individuals that where you really get to know each other, demonstrate that respect? So, thanks for that. Yes. Yeah. I think um an important part of communicating about the work we're doing is um you put you threw up those headlines and they were very big is countering false narratives with facts with

132documentable facts. For for example, the governor came out and said he don't want to fund our schools because we wasted the money on too many high highly paid administrators. So I went into some data about his town of Greenwich and we actually had the same amount of central office administrators and they got one-third of the population. So that's that that that's part of our work. We're doing a lot more with less than the surrounding towns. And those are the kinds of things we've got to accentuate especially in a town like connect in a state like Connecticut where we basically have those things that you had within Boston with the different neighborhoods but we got different towns doing the same thing. Having your facts is definitely uncertain. What you don't want people to do is feel

133say they don't even know what they're talking they have their facts wrong their numbers wrong. One of the things I want to also highlight as content for you all is this work that you're doing. Um this is not small potatoes. the fact that you have now engaged in six lengthy professional development sessions. I'm working right now with the Holio public schools in Holio, Mass. As you may know, they've been in receiverhip for the past 10 years. State has basically taken over the district, being stripped of all of its powers for the past 10 years. They're about to get those powers back on July 1. They'll be the first district to regain come out of it receiverhip uh in the history of the Commonwealth under this model. What I'm working with them on is how to

134tell that story of them getting ready to get out of receiverhip and the work that they have done not unlike what you're doing although they've been doing it for the past two years and they part of their narrative is we've undergone more training as a board of education than any other school committee in the state. Most people they go through they're starting the course which is sort of our school committee 101 and then they're done and they're left to their own devices. We've been engaged in hundreds of hours of training. To me, that's a feather in your cap. You may not have liked how it came about, or you may not have wanted to do it. Maybe you don't want to be here tonight, but you should take credit for the fact that you have

135now, I hope, developed knowledge and skills that are going to make you better board members. Nick, I was just going to point out that it isn't just these six. I mean, I've worked with this board 11 times over the last two years. Um, and that's just me, and I know I'm not the only person that they work with. So, um, they're very dedicated. That's awesome. And I think it gets to the point, one of the points that our our colleague made online about sort of being honest about the fact that you're growing. We're all we're we're a learning organization as a school district. That's not just the kids. That's the adults, too, right? So, it's okay to say we didn't have all the answers before. We still don't. But guess what? We know that we

136could bring in some experts who can help us do a better job managing the money, setting policy, communicating with our constituents, whatever those things are. um talk about that journey and I think people will appreciate that. All right, really quickly, other sort of story ideas based on your roles and responsibility. I like the positive, too. What's that? Highlight the positive, too. The positive. Yeah. Some of the stuff that's going on in the board and the district, especially the stuff that you have the direct control over. To me, this stuff is sort of a checklist, right? These are the five big things and maybe a couple of others that are your responsibility. You might ask yourselves what kind of story have we told or are we telling in each of these five areas. One to help

137you help the public understand that these are our lanes. These are things we're supposed to be working on. How much do they know about the work that you are doing or plan to do in each of those five major roles? There's your content. That's what I was saying about the Boston school committee. We were very intentional in saying, you know what, I don't think the public knows didly do about our policies and how we go about debating policy, looking at policies nationally, getting input, doing the research. So, we tried to do a better job of telling that story. You could probably do the same for each of the five collective bargaining a little trickier. Um, but at least trying to tell the story so people know not just what your responsibilities are, but how you're

138carrying them out. So I won't believe the points but it's kind of these asking yourself these questions. What if you were to sit down and actually have a brainstorming session the 10 of you and say what are our roles and responsibilities as a BOE? Who are the individuals carrying out these responsibilities? How are you telling the story about the individuals around these tables and the expertise and the experience uh that you have that you bring to the table? How are you fill your obligations in these areas? What are our priorities moving forward? And that's something you're working on. Your goal setting. How are we learning to lead more effectively as I just described? What have we already accomplished? What progress have we made? Not just as a district, but as a board and thinking specifically

139about your course in this race. Okay. I think one of the most important things um and I know it's a work in progress is that district vision and mission. And the as you involve with that work and engage the community in setting that vision and being really clear about where this district is headed and the goals that you and Dr. Avery share and the team really articulating those in as many ways as possible just as this school is doing for example with its vision of the graduate that is the direction for this particular school. what what kind of graduates are we going to produce and what are the tools you need to be able to communicate about that vision once you have set you have set it and you can say the same about a

140lot of these other puzzle pieces too so we've talked about the messages we've just skimmed the surface of the messages the content now I want to shift gears a little bit talk about the channels okay what are all the different tools we have in our toolkit to disseminate those messages out in the community right so we have all the stories we want to tell How, when, and where do we want to tell them? Well, here are just a few. Your website, email communications, social media, just everyday conversations. We don't talk about this as much, but it's important. I believe in a small town and a big city and everything in between, it's when you run into someone in the supermarket and they say, "What's going on with that board of ed?" Is your response, oh

141my god, it is a or is it, we're doing some really good stuff. Let me tell you what we're up to. Is your sort of produce aisle speech, if you will, a lot of complaints and a lot of gloom and doom. If so, that's not instilling confidence. No. Or do you have some stories that you're ready to tell on the playground, in the proto aisle, wherever you may be on play on the playing field, um that say, "Wow, I didn't know that. That's that actually makes me feel better about these schools." But trust us, trust us. They stop us anywhere. I'm sure they anywhere. Part of the job, right? Any place, any place. I can put party, supermarket. If you got go to the bathroom, they stop us in the I'm telling you, asking any

142question. And I you then to sort of keep a tally in your mind when those you have those encounters. How often are you telling a positive story or how often are you saying reinforcing perhaps some of the negative perceptions of the district? Sorry to interrup you in that second. And I'm I agree with you, but I'm not agreeing one second at that part. Why? Because some people they would like to give the information when they know they're supposed to give it the positive way they try to give the negative way so the board look back and trust me I have that experience and when that person come to me tell me I heard this day I said that's not true I don't have the answer and my answer for them you can ask me he's

143here call Dr. every superintendent office they will give it the correct answer. Do not believe what people saying in the street because sometimes people dare not tell the truth. Yeah, your point's well taken and I'm I know you can't change other people's behavior. My point is we can change our own behavior. So perhaps you're going to have that conversation with someone and they're going to complain about something. They may have their mind made up about it. Maybe you have an alternative perspective to share on it. Maybe not. What I'm saying is maybe before they walk away from that you say that's thanks for telling me that. Did you know that X Y and Z or something else that at least creates some little something to offset that? They may not care. They may say, "Oh,

144what what does he know?" But at least you try. What troubles me is when board members, faculty, principles are actually part of the problem and are just fueling a public sense of lack of confidence because the stories they're telling out in the community just contribute to the despair and not to the hope. Jennifer, Mr. Camer. Oh, thank you. It's fine. Great job moderating, Miss Cassmer. Uh, let me take my hand out. So, a a perfect example of what you're talking about is um uh like the other night I had uh done a presentation at the Republican Town Committee. Um, and the last meeting that I had with them was in March. So when I went in March, I was just blindly writing down things that I felt like was important for them to know about

145the board of education and what was going on. And so I was really pleasantly surprised that I was only given 10 minutes, a 10-minute window of time, but by the time people started like asking me a whole bunch of questions that I was definitely able to answer, 40 minutes had went by and I was only allotted 10 minutes, but they just kept letting it go, you know, the meeting go. So, so this past Thursday, I had given them an update um on from the time in March when I was there up until that night and um you know it we talked about finances, we talked about goals and these were things that I pulled from all of the information from um you know on our portal and um you know from uh our CFO. I

146had just pulled together like really simple things to say, okay, this is what's going on. This is what was voted on. This was this was what was shot down. And you know, they had told me that I was the only like person that they have ever endorsed or the person that they ever supported that was a Republican that has ever came to their town committee and actually shared information with them, updates on the board of ed, and they were really concerned and they were engaged and so I felt really confident, you know, about the information that I was giving them because again, I wasn't making up this information. The information came from the CFO. I compared um the uh commissioner's goals versus Dr. Avery's goals that he had for us versus what the um the

147board itself, the goals and the vision, you know, that we're working on. So, uh I was really happy to be able to disseminate like all of this information that came from us collectively as a board, you know, that we voted on that we thought was important. And so I was really happy to hear that they said that I was the only person like in in the history of the Republican Town Committee that actually came there and shared that information with them. So I thought it was a good marriage into what it what it is that you were just talking about. It's perfect and thank you for sharing that example. Um and I think you know rather than each person having to do that individually as you did which is great. I like your sort of

148suggestion, maybe not suggestion too strong a word, but uh implication that wouldn't it be great if you all had a similar sheet of points to talk to use in the community? Uh just the facts, not necessarily your opinions about things, but like thinking about all the areas you're responsible for. What is the one thing you would say in a conversation with the Republican town committee or the uh safe neighborhoods group or whomever you're in front of about policy, about your budget situation, about uh the district vision? Um or are there 10 different versions of that floating around because I want you all on the same page in the way that you're describing. I also want to be clear that I'm not talking about being a polyiana here. I'm not saying that you need to walk

149around saying it's all wine and roses and everything's great in Bridgeport public schools and I don't know what you're talking about. It's all fine. It's fine. No, absolutely not. Of course, there are things you're going to work on, but there are there are ways of describing those things that can express some optimism and some hope. I sort of alluded to this earlier, but I'm going to go back to the Boston example yet again and tell you that our message back in the late 90s was not our schools are awesome. We have 125 outstanding schools. That would have been fiction. Our message was our schools are a heck of a lot better than you think. And it's not just Boston Latin School and Boston Arts Academy and 123 crappy schools. The fact of the matter is

150we have lots of schools at lots of different points on the continuum in terms of the quality, uh, the condition of the facilities, but we want you to come and take a closer look. Don't base your judgment about this district based on what you read in the papers, what you heard from your neighbor, or someone who went to this school in 1978. come and find out. That was our message and that's fact. That's not us saying everything's perfect. It's saying we think you'll be pleasantly surprised. That's not polyiana. That is inviting people to take an action that may surprise them. Really briefly, Joe, we're going to move on. Right. Abs. Absolutely. Uh these communication channels are kind of um kind of passive. A lot of us have been out there knocking on doors, communicating our

151policies, our procedures, what should be going right. And when when we were talking there was a time in the district some people were saying our kids are failures. Our kids are failing. Our kids are failing. And we were constantly pushing the narrative that our kids are more than test scores. Our kids are resilient. Our kids are awesome. And even though we have this financial difficulty, we can advocate. We could come together. We could we could overturn this because we the people, we have the power. And as we get to doors, as we get on our social media pages, which some people don't like some of my social media posts, but they're always backed up with facts, always backed up with documents saying this and reiterating this over and over and over again for the community.

152And that's exact great and that's exactly why I always include this icon. I think we think about communications in this day and age, we're so quick to think about all the technology tools. And to me, they're never going to replace the power of those face-to-face in-person conversations. Um, and your your examples are case in point. Move us along a few more channels. There's the media. We're not going to spend much time about this talking about this today. Uh but the media is certainly a channel that you can think about how to leverage best. Yes, they're going to cover some of the negative stuff, but how are you leveraging the media perhaps to tell different stories, including not just stories that are covered, but submitting guest opeds, getting people to write letters for the editor, some

153of the other ways that we can get content into newspapers and other media outlets that's not relying on reporters covering those stories. Um, and then of course we talked earlier about school schoolboard meetings themselves and how those are in of themselves communication channels. And I want you to walk into every one of those meetings with that in mind. Not just what are we discussing and debating and voting on tonight, but what impression are we giving the community if they tune in or here in the room with us? Are they going to walk away feeling better about us and the Bridgeport Public Schools or think, whoa, what was that? All right. So, I'm going to dive a little deeper into just a couple of these. one is your website and I know that you've got um

154an overhaul coming up, right? A work of you mentioned that there's some revamping being done which is great. In my research to try to learn about you all, I went to your website and didn't learn a whole heck of a lot. You've got your photos. Um you've got your contact information, which is great. Um I don't think people care about how you all voted for your officers over the years. And I say that not to get uh picky here, but again to think about what's the story we're trying to tell. Is that an important part of your story about how people voted on the officer ships? I would argue not. Yeah. So what are the things that we want people to know? I wanted to learn about who you all are, your individual backgrounds, who's

155a parent, what do you do for a living? I didn't get any of that. So something like that may be in the works. We do that. We talk about that. People ask a lot of questions. Trust me. Yeah. Yeah. Right. over there on the web. So based on what you know course of course based on what you heard me say earlier what we discussed earlier about um some of the content we want to share what would be your wish list what would it look like for us to revamp those pages specifically about the board of ed not the whole district what should people know about you and your work that could be added to your website as part of this redesign this all may be happening so I'm not making any assumptions well like you

156said our bio your bios what else goals the board goals we just finalized and putting those on the board page so that you know that's part of the board's responsibility is that goal set like we care we we know like something we they know we care we here for you and especially for the kid absolutely you know because they let they vote for they trust us so we're going to let them know like I always do I tell them I work for you let me so they trust me I want be sure they okay I'm going to take care of his kid great what other content would you want to see on these pages so people understand the board and it's in your job meetings. What when meetings, you know, and and um kind of

157our committee schedule and I know that's there, but you have to dig for it. You do. And I struggle with this with every district I work with, to be to be blunt. I go to those meeting pages hoping I will learn the kinds of things that are rising to the top, what's being debated, and what I see are agendas that just are just lists of things that don't really tell me a whole lot. Yes, someone has a comment. discuss really briefly, please one time. Yeah, I I'll make it brief. Um to your point that you're making, um I think that it would be a good idea for us to put up why we joined the board, the question that you asked us in the beginning of this to circle back to that. Um I think

158that that would be important too. Why are we here? Great. Love that little interview or Q&A with each board member that answers some of those questions. I agree. Some other thoughts I just look at your page. Um, there's not much here about educating the public about what the board's role is. Here we are educating all of you and make sure everyone's on the same page. But I what I rarely see on board of education pages is the board of education in Bridgeport in Milton Mass in protected Rhode Island are these five things. The public needs to know that and the homepage of your dis your board of education pages is a great place to put that. uh member bios district mission vision you talked about all that also you mentioned the goals but also your

159accomplishments people need to know over the past school year what the heck have you guys done we've passed these policies we have emerged from a difficult budget process in this way uh we have been through lots of training whatever that list is keep that front and center too so people can't say I have no idea what they do same points that we were talking about from the the list that your colleague shared about things you would say out in the community might be things that you also feature on your website. Okay, everyone's favorite topic, our next channel that we're could go down a rabbit hole, social media. It came up a little bit in your small group discussions about people's perceptions and some of you rightly pointed out they can be detrimental if it's what

160other people post on social that may be just inflammatory or pure fiction or downright nasty or social media can be a powerful tool for the district knowing that you have a presence uh that both John and Nick it sounds like manage in terms of telling stories about the district that may not otherwise be told and not get covered in the newspapers for example. So they can be both sort of pros and cons of social media. Certainly I always encourage districts to have a social media presence but again to use that tool not just to tell the district story but to tell the board story too especially in your case where you are making headlines and you feel like the state is coming after not just the district but also the board. What is that counternarrative

161that you can tell about the training you participated in about your goals about all this good work using all the channels at your disposal to tell both of those stories in concert with one another? Okay. I also have to use this moment to talk about social media and board behavior because we some several groups talked about where are we board behavior being a huge part of how people perceive certainly the board and the district as a whole. So, some of the advice I always give folks is one, anyone in the district, the district itself, individual board members, the superintendent, don't engage on social media in the comment section. I know it's tempting. Um, but there are always people who want to do it and they say, well, just that Sally said this about the high

162school and it's just not true. I couldn't let it go unchallenged. I had to jump into the comments and set the record straight. Goodbye. Good luck. you'll never come back because the minute you have one comment to make, you are down the rabbit hole, right? And then everyone expects you, oh, okay, she engages on social media, everyone expects you to answer questions, to get involved in debates. I strongly discourage you from doing so because it's a losing proposition. Certainly the behavior we talked about in terms of board of education meetings and how you interact with one another, with the superintendent, with your colleagues, and with the public, you want that to be of the highest professional level, too. And to be completely civil and appropriate um and free of any nastiness that makes someone have

163less confidence in you as a board member and in the board as a whole. Okay, I know. I know how it feels. And especially if you feel attacked by a constituent, it is just human nature to want to say, I got to defend myself. It's it's a fool's errand. It really is. And I know how hard it is for elected officials and non-elected officials alike. So, you can certainly have school committee uh social media presence. Uh I know especially people who are running for office, you may have an account that you know your re-election account. push out all the stories you want. Um, but don't engage on the comments. I I I just think it's there there's no advantage to doing so. You're not going to change anyone's mind on there. They're probably not going

164to change your mind. Just stay out of it. I will say some districts um in order to get around that or to deal with that problem are just turning off comments altogether. Uh that's an option on Facebook where you just disable comments. I always discourage that strategy, too. I think the optics on that are terrible. I think it says we don't want to hear from you. We just want to use this like a website and push out information, but please don't don't tell us what you think about this thing. Um to me, social media is just that. And by disabling comments, you are taking the social out of social media as painful as it is. We were pleasantly surprised in Boston because when Facebook sort of first hit the scene, I was one of the

165people saying, "We need an account. We need to get on social media." And my bosses all said, "Are you insane?" Why would you want to give the public one more place to beat us up? And I said, guess what? You're already getting beat up on. The question is, do you want to just sit on the sidelines and get beat up, or do you want us to have an account where we can start telling some stories, not go engage in that space and go toe-to-toe with your critics, but tell some of these other stories that we want to get out there the Globe and the Herald and four, five, and seven are not covering. Um, and we did. And at times it is challenging. There's no question. But I truly believe that the pros outweigh the

166cons. And we've been particularly encouraged that even though we don't engage online, there are others who will some will jump in, especially parents who will challenge one another and say, you know, that comment you made about the high school, it's simply not true. My kid's in 10th grade and she loves her classes and she's thriving in the violin or whatever it may be. Let them engage in all that and you can sit that out. I know it's hard, believe me. And it's it's tempting to just say we got to get in there, but it's just it's a a losing proposition. I'm going to move on because social media if I open the floor will never will never rebound. I know. I do want to share that I already said to both John and Sam. Yeah.

167Yep. Quickly. He was here earlier. Um, but I think you guys are doing a great job on social with the stories about the district and I I've been following you now on Facebook and Instagram and you're telling these great stories. I love this, you know, great photos from the math meet and here's your first year. These are great stories. Let's do the same thing with stories about the board. Uh, even those profiles we were just talking about, you could profile or remember whatever makes sense for you all. But how do we tell those stories too? Uh because what we can't do is assume as I said earlier that people are going to see this great stuff and say ah the board must be doing a great job. How else could we have a successful math

168meet or have the first year principal? The board must be crushing it. No, people do not make that connection. Nor should they because those there may or may not be a direct correlation. So we have to feed them that information about what what are the stories that tell us about the board itself and not just the great work that's happening. Uh, same with the newsletter. I think someone mentioned earlier, I love this newsletter. Um, how much is it used to tell stories about you all and the work that you're doing and how do we think about integrating both of that content? Okay. So, we could talk about each one of these things for a lot longer than I just did, but I sort of just want to give you a flavor of how you think

169about these channels and how do you leverage each of them and so many others with all that content that we started to brainstorm. I want to pause here and reiterate something that I tried to say a couple of times, but want to make sure it's really clear so that there's no misunderstanding. Bust the movie marquee proving the work of the board of education and communi improving communication from the board are both critical. I think sometimes someone could hear a presentation like this one or hear about a presentation like this one and say, "Oh, so the board got training in public relations and how to uh look better and how to sort of uh get better headlines." Some of those things are what I've talked about, but to me that is not the work. The work

170is twofold. It is one getting better at the work that we do and also telling the story of those improvement efforts. So let there be no mistake. This is not just about spin or anything else that people will try to dismiss in terms of talking about communications work. It's actually the work itself and they go hand in hand. Okay. Finally, um I want to just spend a few minutes talking as I mentioned earlier about two-way communication and recognizing I think sometimes when we think about communication, we think about all the channels that we have at our disposal to tell our story and push out news and information and highlights and good stuff. But what we haven't talked as much about is what uh Albert was mentioning earlier about that sort of conversation and the two-way

171communication. How do we, particularly as a board of education, truly create authentic opportunities to hear from our constituents? How do we create opportunities to hear from teachers, parents, students, partners, their ideas, their questions, their concerns, whatever that may be, other than that painfully limited board of education meeting, right? people may or may not have the personality type to want to get up and testify for three minutes on a given night or whatever the parameters are here. Uh that might not be everyone's style. If that is the only way that you're hearing from people, that's obviously very limited. Um and the produce aisle being the other. So what are the other ways that we can create opportunities to hear from our constituents and truly engage in ways that are not just sort of formal and and

172stiff? One of the things that we tried in Boston um that really I I love talking about because it was really very successful. One of our members had come from sort of a community uh organizing background and she was incredibly frustrated with the structure of meetings I think as as many members are because they are so rigid. It's a business meeting, so you're there to deal with new business and to vote on things and approve all kinds of, you know, grants and field trips, whatever else you're doing. And there's this little portion of the program for public comment in most places that, as we just said, is not give and take. Um, it is not dialogue. It is truly just the public saying a few words. And she said, I know we need to have

173that. Of course, we need to have that, but what can we supplement that with in order to have more authentic conversation with our constituents? And she promoted or conceived of this entire sort of format of community forums that she pitched to the chair and her colleagues and said, "I will organize these. I want to have a series over the course of the school year." I think it was maybe like six a year, like one every other month or something like that. Um, and she wanted to have them scattered around the city. It wasn't just everyone come to our board chamber. So, she had them in different neighborhoods and they were often co-hosted by a local group whether it was a you know a neighborhood group or a partner group and it was about a particular

174topic. So, one month might have been STEM education, another month may have been English learners or arts education. It wasn't something that was sort of on the table at the moment for a big decision. It wasn't a policy debate or uh something that was sort of up for a big moment, but just something that people cared about. And what she wanted to do was structure them in such a way that it wasn't this us them thing, but rather truly engaging the conversation. And one of her, I think, most significant ideas had to do with even just the way the room is set up. Mhm. So, I don't know about here, but this is how it looks in most places, including Boston. These blue dots are all of you. You're at the front of the room,

175sometimes quite literally elevated off the floor, right? Is that how it works here? Where are you? Where? Different locations. Yeah. Um there's this usually table or microphone stand where someone can come and make comments. And then there's the audience. These other dots are all teachers and parents and whoever from the community wants to come to a meeting. What what does this evoke for you? What does this layout sort of create in terms of dynamics? Us them. Us and them. Yeah. Separation. Separation. Don't cross this. Intimidating. What's What's intimidating about this? It's almost like Yeah. It's like us versus them. So, it's almost like you're going up as a parent almost to be judged by a bunch of board members. Yeah. A colleague describing her board chamber to this ornate old building in New England looks

176like a castle where they have and and the board is elevated and she said just that. She's like it's intimidating. You feel like you're like on Game of Thrones and you're going to, you know, meet the court. Uh and that's especially if you're not comfortable in those environments, it can be very intimidating. better. Just don't cross this line. Yeah. Don't cross this line. Cross this line. It's very It looks almost like militaristic. Yeah. As I told you before, it because so many years back it was no trust. Yeah. And they keep doing the same thing. Us the new board members, we trying to break that. It's not it's not we not go over nobody from that in our policy. We trying to let them know the parent and staff anymore. We here to listen to

177you. Yes. You know, we're trying little by little. that thought. We're going to get there. So, I'm not suggesting that this needs to be blown up in terms of the board meeting themselves. Board meetings have a certain purpose and function. They are business meetings, right? So, some of this makes sense that you all are there at a table trying to get your business done and the public is invited to observe, participate. Susan, this member I'm talking about, wasn't saying, "Let's throw that out altogether." She was saying, "What can we do on top of that to have more meaningful conversations?" So, in her forums, she said, "We're going to have them out in the community, as I said, in not just our spaces, not even just schools. We're going to have them in libraries, community centers,

178a church basement, whoever will have us, where people feel comfortable to come." So, it's less intimidating and not just that government building. Um, I want round tables. And look where these blue dots are now. All of you, you're scattered around. And every table has eight to 10 people. Um, and it's a mixture of board members, teachers, principles, parents, students, community members, whoever shows up. And guess what? The blue dots aren't the facilitators at that table. You aren't there as the the uh powers that be, imparting wisdom on the on the the folks. I think that's the other dynamic here. There's a sense of like, oh, we're coming to you and you have information to impart upon us. This was very much about I am at the table just like any one of you. There were

179facilitators and for every session Susan would s find people in the community to be facilitators and have a short training for them and they would serve at the table with guiding questions and appoint a notetaker based on the topic of that evening. and the board member's job or the superintendent's job or the assistant superintendent or whomever else was there was simply to participate and ideally to do more listening than talking. She made that very clear. I think it was a really good suggestion. You were not there to be the voice of expertise in the room. You're there to listen to people. And I can't even understate the impact of that that had the dynamic in the room that even the people you know who these people are come to every meeting and have to get

180up and yell and scream even they sort of didn't have their moment at the podium that was sort of grandstanding because they were just part of the conversation and the facilitators were skilled in sort of making sure everyone's voice was heard and no one could just sort of get drowned out or or dominate the conversation. um other lessons from this you know Susan made a really good effort to um aggregate what was heard so from every table coming back and sort of getting a sense of the themes that emerged and sharing them out more widely the website email other ways of saying even if you couldn't come we want you to hear what your peers said about this topic so there are lots of variations on this and I've seen other forms of this in

181lots of communities but I encourage you to think about whether something like that would work here. Do you guys do like anything like this now? Well, Dr. Avery's Dr. Actually set up like that. But I think the other for town hall Yeah. The other part is that that's one of the recommendations from the commissioner that that this board has to do some community forums on the goals and things, you know. So I think it's an opportunity to have a deeper conversation about but my ask of you is is there you know some type of format or small training that we can provide this team to be able to kind of move towards something like this you know absolutely and you're are you all about to engage engage in the strategic planning process or that's ongoing

182then no probably going to within the next year or so. Sure. I think that's often where this happens. Well, when districts engage in strategic planning, they they going to blow up this and say we need a different format and they've got lots of different meetings that are sort of structured differently and get input. Um, and there are organizations that facilitate that really well. And I you guys probably know some too. I believe that we have in our bylaws the requirement to do this that we've never done. It's one of those things that we have not done. So, it's it is written into our bylaws that we're supposed to be doing one or two a year. Um, and don't do another opportunity there, right? Yes. And I think we're all pretty well verssed of talking to

183our constituencies and if we're not by this point, we're actually in the wrong place. I could sit at the table with listening to talking to and talking and listening. Wait, you you are correct. Thank you for the correction. Um, yeah, we we we we do it naturally. A lot of us do. We went to uh some of us were at a barbecue the other day. The constituents there, they were talking to us. We going to fairs, festivals, carnivals, parades, and the communities, they're engaging with us and we're having those conversations. The only thing that's different about this is a little round table and I was going to say um it's the the listening piece. Something that's Dr. has been doing this past year is the community forums, but at every community forum, the board is

184getting up there and speaking. Yeah. Board members. And we want to hear the public. We hear about the border. We we know what the board know what wants and like that. But it's it's it's been a situation where every almost every community form, somebody from the board is getting up there to say something and it's like we're here for the people like to hear the constituents like we hear each other all the time and they hear us all the time. So let's hear them. And I think that's what we need to focus on when we do something like this. And you just said it. Um you know and and inviting the community partners that we have who are kind of doing this work in in the ground um on the ground already. we we we

185can kind of collaborate with them and different organizations around there. Use a church, use um a community hall and and and do this work. Um when I when I saw you present this the last time that like I was like this is I think I told you or somebody I was like I told somebody in the board like we need to do something like this and it other things happened so we haven't done it could mention this November December um I spoke on Saturday morning about the art of listening the whole session was about just sort of two communication just want to pick up one on one thing you said Jennifer I think it's a great point even that piece about like sharing some information at this forum so what some of these topics Susan

186and the team that we want to have some just information at the beginning of the form to set the stage so that everyone at least knows a little bit about what's happening in arts education or STEM education or college readiness or English learners for this district. Not a halfhour presentation, even just like 10 minutes so that people get sort of an overview of the topic. But guess what? Those presentations weren't made by the board or the superintendent or the district's director of EL's or STEM. They were all community personled. So like just like you said, a partner organization that knows what you're doing in STEM and perhaps is involved in your work in whatever that topic was. Let them get up and make that presentation. Perhaps developed in concert with your staff or whomever is

187the right folks, but we're so used to being the people doing the talking. How nice to relinquish that role a little bit and let people see you do some listening, right? Yeah, I definitely agree with the um listening part, but I just want to point out the we could be talking about two different things too because these are the superintendent forums where people we have not had a board of education forum. We are supposed to be out in the community developing the goals on what's it summer gray city schools pointed out that the board got to get out in the community got to do this and that where the superintendent where the superintendent no don't disrespect the superintendent is not leading those forms but us because we speak for the constituents and we know the

188community and what our people want and what they need more better to listen to them. Yes. And while I'm going to use that word listening a little more. Yeah. I I don't I don't when I when I say talk, it's always a two-way conversation in my head, but I do sitting as well. So, I didn't have that as one of the puzzle pieces in terms of roles and responsibilities, but that certainly is one of them is to sort of be the uh sort of liaison, if you will, for the community, create those opportunities for the community's voice to be heard. So, to me, it's not about whether the board's hosting it or Dr. Avery is hosting it. to me that the part of the power of the message is you hosting it together but it

189in co-hosting it with somebody else but more importantly you're there not to boast at all but rather to be a guest at that thing and you're again just sort of one of the people doing a lot more listening than talking. So I'm gonna try to model that right now. Someone else have a comment on this. So, time for thought. Um, and I'm happy to follow up with any of you if if you want a little bit more guidance on this. One other sort of strategy that a couple of you have have alluded to that I think is really powerful is just literally getting out in the community but not just sort of on a sort of ad hoc basis where oh Jennifer just happens to be going to the road race on Saturday and she's

190going to talk to people about what's going on and uh Marissa's going to this PTA meeting over at this school and she talked about it and it's h somewhat haphazard but being a little bit more organized about it. So, this district I worked with in Rhode Island uh was getting ready to get a bond trying to get a bond passed for a brand new high school. Huge, huge investment that they needed to get voter support for. So, I worked with them over the summer on a number of communication strategies and one of them was just getting them out in the community to talk to people about this particular project that was proposed. So, we equipped them with what we came to call the road show. Uh, it all fit into a duffel bag, but it's

191just literally this tablecloth, a retractable banner that disappears into a a bag. You guys have seen those some apparel. They already had the tent. We got some good um, you know, collateral material, print material about the proposed project. And we built a schedule for them for the whole summer. And this is a town that is busy in the summer. There's lots of parades and block parties and festivals and things out in the community. This wasn't come to us, come to our town hall and learn about the building project. This was them setting up shop wherever they could. And at first there was a little bit of eye rolling like h I got to give up part of my weekend to go do this. Like I've been working hard all week. I got to tell you

192they had a ball. Like these some of these are staff members, some are board members. And by the end of summer they were tripping over each other because they had too many people going to these things. You're thinking I'm like making this up but it's it was crazy. Yes. Some of the conversations were about the building project and they quickly found out that there was great support for that. People didn't have a lot of questions. They're like, "Oh yeah, I'm definitely voting yes for that." But they had questions about other things. They seen this great opportunity for interaction that wasn't a board meeting. It wasn't even as formal as a community forum. It was just a presence in the community. But again, we were deliberate about it. We said, "All right, here's the schedule. I

193had a spreadsheet going and who which three people are going to this one? Do you have the kit?" like really being intentional about it rather than just sort of hoping that someone's going to cover all these things. And there may be events going on that you don't even know about in certain sports to see or certain communities that maybe none of you have tithed in, different ethnic or linguistic minorities where you can find ways to bring people along who can be helpful with that community. Um, but again, being very intentional and thoughtful about it and if you don't already, investing in this kit that's not a lot of money, but creates a very, I think, solid look for you. um that reinforces your brand. Uh but most importantly, the brand of the board of education

194being willing out willing to be out in the community, especially partnering with staff, showing that partnership. Dr. Avery is not going to go to every one of those things, but maybe your deputy superintendent will or your principles or whomever the right people are to show that partnership. Questions about that? I I think it's a great idea. I think it's something that board does on their own. Like they go to the event that they're at other events. Everybody in the board is at an event every other day. Um the superintendent's office has events, but I don't think we're always like I think in the beginning you mentioned like a community calendar or something. Um so something like that would be helpful I think for us. That way, like you said, a few of us can sign

195up to be with the staff at a community resource fair or um at one of the parades. Um because we're already there, but if we're all together on, you know, at the table, you know, talking about the the positives, I think that's a great idea. Summer food sites, most have those like that's a great place to be. Yes. Sometime sometime we're together, sometime we separate. Yeah. But every time, you know, we separate, someone is over here, someone's over there, we call each other, listen, we here, they let you know, we got a calendar, then I invite them. So we always communicate each other and wherever we go we trying to see you know we help the parents yes we listen you know listen to parent you know any question or anything we let them if

196I don't we don't have the answer we let you know right away we let you know tomorrow we don't ignore them yes we let them know next day or something else Dr. Avery call the parent that's a good thing I I have to say I'm a witness anything and any parent want to know I give it to Dr. every one of us. He called it and that's the good thing in that big event like right now we haven't won a big one. We did it last year but this one's going to be much better because the the book back the book back I know the city's going to work with us on the board and you know and that's the people want to see working as at the team. Yes. All those back to school

197events open anything like that. Yes. Um and you you rais a good point of like making sure there's follow through. So if there are people who come to that table and say I do have an issue an an issue with this particular thing about my kid or my school you've got to be clear that as board you're not going to solve that but somebody at that table has to have a form or something to say yes we have it this go to Dr. bravery on Monday. Yes. Someone will call you back if they don't let you out call the parent date. Otherwise, there's really no trust. Great, great points. Okay, so we're in the home stretch here. Want to do some quick wrap up and reflection. I want to ask you two questions. First question

198is, what did you learn tonight that can strengthen your effectiveness on the board of education? And my second question is, what action steps do you plan to take to follow up on what you learned? I can answer the first one that uh we we we have to work a little much better to communicate more with the parents but we had to educate us first before we answer and we go out to talk with the people to be sure we give it the correct answer because we do one of us say something or do something wrong they're going to say the board education and trust me they know when they say board education doesn't means my name is there and I don't like that mistakes are Always before I give an answer, I like to search

199and find out first. So the parents, whoever community organization, they know what you know kind of answer. If I don't give the answer, I don't I don't know. I tell them where exactly what to go. Love it. Thank you. Somebody else answered the first question. What else did you learn tonight that you can can strengthen your effectiveness either individually or as a board as a whole? What are some of your other takeaways in terms of returning? Why you ask me? Well, for me, I mean, yeah, I can name a hundred things or anything, but I wanted to focus on something that it think, you know, we have more things in common than we realize as a board and and we get sometimes in our own way. And I'm seeing that and it for me personally,

200um, I like to be held accountable and I don't mind being held accountable, but I need to speak it out. I need to communicate uh more about it. Um, but then I need to learn how to make those boundaries because I'm sorry, I'm I'm here for one reason, and that's to make sure that every single child in our district reaches their god-given potential. And that's where my heart lies. Because when you talk about what keeps me up at night, I raised three daughters in this district and the schools look the same as when my daughter was first in preK and then the daycarees. Okay? And they've been advocating. So when I talked about why I became a board member, that's why my answer was as such because they put me in this seat more because

201of the work that I did in the community as an advocate for my kids in the PTSO in the pack and the you know uh all the those organizations you know um and I put my name in the hat five years after and you know and I'm here for them and for their children. Thank you for sharing that and I want to go back to the very first thing you said and that is that we all have more in common than we have difference or something to that effect. And my first thought when you said that was I'm willing to bet that you all share that aspiration that you just articulated. You all want every child in the school district to reach their full potential. Correct? Is there anyone who doesn't feel that way around

202this table? You wouldn't be here if that were the case. Just making sure. So we may have very strong disagreements about what it's going to take to realize that vision and you may have different ideas about the means. But Mr. Medina, my point is I think that if you all can keep your focus on that, the fact that you all share that north star, that's that's the goal we all share and and everything else we got to work out in order to make that happen. And the more we focus on the disagreements and what we don't see eye to eye on, the less likely we are to achieve that Northstar. So, thanks for sharing that. Yes, another learning. Um, so this kind of relates I I I do some professional developments um or I've done

203some this month and h that had to do with crisis communication. a lot of things you were talking about um today resonated with me from I did earlier this month and um you know as as board chair I know um I I wait for the reporters to come to me so they'll they'll ask me and I and then I'll respond and you know I I'll give the you know the safe answers as I think Joe Joe will you know do the others but um but I give the you know that and Um, and but I I I don't go and seek out and and tell them, "Oh, here, you know, here's the the sound bite or whatever." Um, or the the headlines you want. Um, I wait for them to come. So, like I think

204that more proactive going out there um as chair like the stuff we're doing like you know um I can shoot a text to say hey listen we we've got some good things going on and stuff like that. That's something I I guess that's also an action step for me is like kind of be more proactive in that sense as the chair. That's great. And just to clarify one thing, I'm not sure if this is what you were saying, Jennifer, but when I said don't sit on bad news, um I should have said tell your parents and your staff first, right? You may have to then either tell the press or react to the press's reaction to that news, but I I never want your parents or your staff to find out bad news from the

205press. Yeah. So I that may not be what you were saying, but I realize I didn't clarify that that when I say you've got to be the one to break bad news, it's not starting with newspaper or that evening news, it's with your parents and then deal with the fallout. But thank you for that learning. Other things you learned tonight or want to work on. Yes. I I'll I'll piggy back off of board chairs, you know, perspective. I think for me, you know, understanding and I mean I can you open my eyes to a number of different the way the to look at the communication piece in their entire district and then bringing the board into mix of that and telling that story because we don't do enough of that. We have a lot of

206positive things that we've tried to stay in front of the noise in the community over the last eight months. So they and I think we have two guys that do that does it. And so we I was really trying to do in my six months goal was just really communicate communicate communicate whatever we need to do. Get out there communicate community forums whatever we have to do just we were just pounding it. You know now I can step back a little bit and say okay did that work or not? I think it worked but now we have to kind of enhance it a little bit more by adding the story of the board. the board has worked hard, you know, I feel and there's been a big difference, you know, so how do we bring

207that to the forefront? So, some of the ideas that I've heard tonight was I'm able to kind of massage that and give them things to chew on and do, you know, in the middle of all of this, you know. So I think I think it'll be receptive to them and they were like, "Okay, he's trying to communicate." And again, I've tried to build my individual relationships with all of them to the best of my ability. I haven't gotten to all board members in a way to where it should be with all nine, but I can say I have 95% of of the board having that onetoone conversation with me, just having a conversation, right? More so than not. So, bringing all those pieces together. Um, I mean, we've had some really good experiences with the

208community engagement. The board has been there with me as well, but it what could we do different? The strengths are there and now we have to materialize with those strengths. And so, I think we're we're primed to do really good things if if we stay focused enough. We're looking at doing the goals. We're looking at making sure that we keep student achievement at the forefront of what we do. Let's talk about it. Why are we low in math? Why are we low in reading? What are we going to do differently in the work that we do? Because we're we're lean lean lean, but we have to be mean about the work that we're doing, right? And so when we do that, uh I think the community is going to buy into that because they know

209we don't have the funds. They know we hadn't had funds of the last 20 years. But what do we do with that? We're not gonna we're not gonna just stand behind. We don't have funds. We're gonna do what we can do with the little that we have and we're gonna maximize it, right? Uh and when we do that, what can someone say? They're trying their best. They're doing it. They're working for kids. We're putting the, you know, they're putting the positive things out there and it's going to be a win-win thing, right? And so that's all we have right now is us, right? And the kids have us. So let's maximize that, right? I love that. Those are some awesome points, Dr. Ed, and I want to just pick up on a couple of them.

210One, what strikes me about what you just described is sort of this intentionality in communications that I, as you could probably tell, I'm passionate about. The board is one piece of that, but I would say in all of your communications, thinking about not just what stories sort of come our way that we want to tell. That happens to be what's going on this week, something cool that we want to amplify, but also like where are the gaps in the narrative out in the community, the board being one of them, and what can we do to fill that gap? And there may be parts of your purview that fall into that too that have nothing to do with the board. Same for um you're describing you guys are doing the work. You're just out there like

211trying to get at it every step of the way saying all right not are we doing the work but are we communicating about this at the same time? Are we telling people we're doing this work or is a tree fall in the woods? There's all this great stuff going on. People don't even know that you're working on it and you don't want to wait till the end of the game to say here's the progress we're making. So, thank you for sharing all of that. Yes. Very fast. It's like a we the tree. The tree. Yes. Tree, the dirt, the root, you know, if that's not strong. Yes. The tree is not going to be strong. Amen. People think this going to be the branch. No, it's the dirt have to be, you know, good and

212the root and everything. And I can say as the board member, we have something different. We got data, we got financial, we got uh we got religion, we I got family, got union, and us together at the same time. reunion you know the people they don't understand and that's why we communicate very good with Dr. every you know we have something different we got passion something different and that's why we all work you know together at the same time but at the same time I have to say thank you to Kate you guys you know um do amazing job with us and I really appreciate that everything you know thank you every time you come here is help us to push us what we can do for Brisb public school I would love that thank

213you so much it's been a pleasure well said yeah me I'm gonna oh you me yeah I'm gonna um I did use the word I did say I used were talking and you pointed out the listening and think take a step back and think maybe I do have an implicit bias there and I'm going to be sure I take personal inventory in my conversations with the with the community. Love it. Thank you. You want to add what I wanted to add is and I'll speak for myself and then speak for with my colleagues. I mean through this and your question is what did I learn tonight that can strengthen our effectiveness as a board? You know, for me, I'm I'm going to say this, add to this, is I learned some of my weaknesses and

214some of our weaknesses because to be able to get stronger, you got to know where you're weak at. That way, you can act on that and strengthen that. And and I think that reverse, if you would, psychology will be that. I, you know, thing I I learned some of my weaknesses and some of our weaknesses and now we can, you know, build on that and collaborate to build on that. I love that. And that goes, I think, back to the point that our colleague made online about being self-reflective and honest with ourselves. Not not even weaknesses, just opportunities to grow. Like again, where where can I be better? Um, and maybe you're halfway in that journey, maybe you're threequarters of the way, but it's just a journey and there's no sort of being done. Yes.

215I was just thinking that you talk about biographies and the importance of knowing who the board members are, but there have been a lot of times where I've I've seen um the committee's work and the person who introduces the committee say that we have 127 years of collective experience on this board doing this work and I think you know you talk about elevator speeches maybe that's along with having individual biographies having an elevator speech about the collective um union of the board and what it provides to the community in terms of um 77 years of activism in the community. Um you know 126 years of experience with their own children going through the Bridgeport public school system that kind of a collective biography that it's powerful. Anybody at home? I know I've been neglecting you

216with my back to you. Jennifer's keeping good tabs on you and 90% gone. Okay. Um, any steps that people want to mention that you haven't had a chance to say? I have a question, please. It's a simple question. How do you feel? What you think about this boy? Oh, that's a tough question. Again, I wouldn't claim to know, you know, tonight. Great question. I'll tell you what observed tonight. You all are very engaged. I haven't seen anyone sort of just staring off into space or playing words with friends. Um, I have a sense that I can feel the passion in this room. Um, people have passion about different things, but I really do believe that you are all passionate about Bridgeport Public Schools and the kids and families that you serve. Um, I can sense

217that pretty quickly in a room like this, and there's no part of me that thinks you aren't invested in this work. Um, you aren't um hopeful that the future can be brighter and you know that you've got a role to play in that. I think trying to assess beyond that would be presumptuous on my part, but that's what I see. Thank you. Thanks for asking. Any action steps people want to amplify? Things you want to go back and next week and say can't do this. We're going to do it. There's so much I can't even start. I mean, again, you're talking, you're looking at somebody that it's a leader in the community for so many years. I have a whole congregation that is with me and follow me. I have other organizations that I'm members.

218So, when you talked about certain things, you know, how do we communicate with other people, I'm like, I'm in I I have so many hats. That's why I don't have a lot of hair, you know. Uh even in my line of work, what I do, you know, I'm I'm I'm with the community 90% of my time, you know. Um, and it's it's just what's next. You know, I I love the other one and I've saw it before about the roundts and everything and I know like Mr. Traver stated that it's in our, you know, things to do um and that we need should be doing and I and I'm interested in finding out how do we uh with our our chair um how do we accomplish that in this next, you know, journey that we

219have right now because that's a big one. I think um that is a huge one you know and again I can speak about some of the Catholics like I said we go to events and we bump into each other like and then we sometimes make plans somebody can't go to this event okay you go over there we'll go over here and we'll split up that way we have board members in in in location so there's a group here that's thing and it's growing I can't wait until next season thank you Jennifer I think um I think as like you know one of the reasons Well, we're going to do the forums throughout the summer. Um we we have um 50 of them throughout the summer. Um and one of the one of the reason I've

220held out on like doing the forums because I knew we're going to have this training. I was like, let's do this training first to make sure we do it right or you know like you know what I mean? Like we have good new ideas and we're not we get Yeah. Um, so I um in the next two, three months we'll be having at at least four forms that's going to be required by the state, but but then also I would like to not just end it in the summer, right? I I like the idea of having it spaced out throughout the year and sort of what what Dr. did with his forms up to do it as a board, you know, um where we we, you know, in the beginning of the school year do

221something and throughout the year um every quarter or something, you know, that's great to um come together as a board. I love that. I just want to um make one other sort of plug if you will. I've made a couple references tonight to John and Tim and I think it's important to think about the communications office role in this work. And I say that as someone who was in that role for a long time in Boston uh in the communications office and knowing how important it is to try to corral everything. Um and how do we figure out how the as Tim and and John and and the team under the direction of the superintendent are thinking about communications holistically as you said uh Dr. Avery, how do we sort of think of the board

222piece of that as a part of that puzzle and not something separate? So, I don't want you all going rogue having your own communication strategy that isn't aligned with what the district's trying to do. At the same time, I know these guys are already probably spread pretty thin like every other communications office in the world that I know. Um, so how do we think about sort of making sure that we can do this work in ways that it's manageable but moves the needle a little bit. Um, with that, I just want to thank you all so much for your time and I should have said at the very outset, thank you also for your service. And I don't say that lightly. Um, these are not glamorous jobs. They're not high-paying jobs. Um, I believe you

223do it for other reasons that are truly about kids and we need good people to step up these days. We always do um to take on these roles. I know you get your fair share of arrows coming your way. Um, so I encourage you to stay strong and keep doing the good work and I really applaud you for engaging in this training and all the growth that you're doing. Um, and I just want to thank you for your service and your attention tonight. So with that, I will turn it back to Jennifer and housekeeping you need to do. Thank you. Thank you all so much for I just want to back to we have um I sent you guys the goals that we came together with. Um the only thing is uh one of them

224I realized when we first wrote these it was back in I believe late February, early March um that we gave oursel a deadline for Dr. Aid to do a survey by May 19th and that's on here. We're obviously past that. So, I just want to see if we can um just together agree to say, you know, two weeks from today or I'll say two weeks. I I was going to say uh June 18th was my recommendation, which is the the last Wednesday of the school year. Um two weeks and two days from now. And that's for the thought exchange survey on um uh enhancing student achievement. So, that'll be for Dr. able to um receive recommendations from uh staff uh to the board to identify three key areas um to that focus on student achievement.

225Um and so if we can have adopt every two weeks to develop that and then we can you know administer the survey by June 18th and does that sound okay? Yeah. Yeah. Are we fine with that date? Yeah. Just thinking where are we supposed to be sending them questions or something like that? I can't I can't hear Joe. Oh, he was asking if uh we were supposed to send I don't think I did that either. Nobody did. He was asking if we're going to give Dr. Avery questions as well. That was for the strategic plan and vision. The vision. Oh, that's a that's a whole different thought. That's still come as well. Right. Bill needs to come as well. items. We're going to um uh in two weeks we'll have that survey ready for the

226the staff to um focus on three key areas and then um for board members um also make sure you're sending Dr. questions about the the survey for the vision and that's all in the um the board goals that were sent to you. So just take a look at that to remind yourself. But um I'll follow up with like a I know Danielle and I are working on a time or I should say Danielle, she's been helping out a lot with that. So working on a timeline to make sure we know the dates. so that we don't fall behind on anything. So, I'll kind of um more on that to make sure we have we have that, you know, in our calendars, I guess. Yeah, that's what I was going to mention. So, you make this

227fine with everybody that's two weeks and two days from now. I believe we have all uh I want to thank Nick and thank you guys. We'll get you for the 20th visit soon. Chester for the 51st time last week. So we have somewhere to we need a few more this year. Um so uh with that said uh is there a motion? Oh wait, Dr. And I think you guys will be giving the commissioner an update on this final training. I'm starting to meet with the commissioner probably every other every other week just to kind of make sure that we're um she wants to engage in the process of what we're doing and how we're continuing to moving through the district. Um and so I will give her a little feedback on how things are going.

228She did ask me about the training myself, you know, just from my perspective and the last one was here the communication piece which was I thought was going to be a big one anyway. So it's it's good. So, uh, I know that's Can you give a report? I think they have a another meeting with the state board next. Well, as far as us report, I just say we did the we did the training. Everybody was in attendance and that's really the and that we talked about, but he has a copy of the agenda. So, um, that's really extent of our reporting, but um, I follow I'm not sending a report to Yeah, I think they want they're more interested in your report at the board meeting as Okay. what they're taking as report. Yay. Um,

229is there a motion to adjurnn? So, move any second that. Okay. All in favor? I I All right. Uh we're