001[Music] once i have my readers on i can't soon [Applause] [Music] i called to order the special meeting of the governing board for the scottsdale unified school district it is thursday august 13 2020 and the time is 403 pm all rise vice president beckman will you please lead us in the pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you i will have a roll call starting on my right john michael greenberg sandy kravitz barbara predelbert patty beckman and allison beckham all five governing board members are present and we have a quorum i'll be introducing today's special meeting last year the district entered into a contract with the search for mcpherson and jacobson
002when seeking a new superintendent the contract included a follow-up session to be facilitated by mcpherson and jacobson so that the governing board could engage in a public discussion about the incoming superintendent's performance goals and priorities for the upcoming school year the meeting will be facilitated by dr steve joel who you should be familiar with as he was as he is the mcpherson and jacobson consultant in charge of the susd superintendent search last winter we appreciated dr joel's efforts and have been pleased with our chosen candidate dr scott menzel it has been an uncertain and unpredictable time to enter a new job especially a school district during the initial stages of the pandemic dr menzel your communication and leadership skills have been greatly appreciated as i mentioned today's discussion will be facilitated by dr steve joel
003who is joining us virtually from nebraska welcome dr joel thank you we will also have a recorder in our recorder thank you is gladys wagner the agenda includes an opportunity for dr menzel to provide an update and begin the discussion on his performance objectives each governing board member is asked to participate fully listen with respect and civility this is meant to be a conversational format our purpose today is to establish draft performance goals and establish next steps with the final objective of the governing board approving the goals dr joel i will turn the meeting over to you welcome to our first hybrid in-person virtual meeting thank you excellent very good um can you hear me okay yes you can excellent well i have to tell you i would much rather be there than here like
004you and everybody else i'm absolutely going stir crazy having left lincoln i think my wife and i maybe twice since march and that was just to go sit in driveways and see grandkids it's a really really challenging time right now for all of educators across the country and it's not unique to any one state or any one area i think it's tough for 20-year veterans that have been doing the job for a while and certainly a challenge for superintendents that are trying to launch a successful start to their journeys and their careers it's been a real pleasure working with you it's been a real pleasure having conversation with dr menzel over a series of months it appears that things are going in the right direction so the purpose of phase five is is really the
005the basis or guarantee and it's built around the premise that if boards and superintendents come together and identify performance priorities it creates a performance-based environment in which both the superintendent and the board can judge themselves at a given point and i'm well aware conversations with uh with allison that that three of you perhaps going to be cycling off the board in january and that the time that you're going to be working with dr menzel is fairly limited but nonetheless it's very very important work and so as the governing board that made the hire now it's it's your opportunity to to work with him to create what uh the priority workflow should be between now and let's say the end of december and then hopefully the uh this next board that will represent a different team
006will uh will take up some of that work and begin to look at what the rest of the year is so having said that um i have put together if you have my my slides i put together a variety of informational sources i don't intend to go over those but i i wouldn't ask and encourage you to look at those at your leisure it's about the relationship um every superintendent and every board that i've ever worked with when they come together in this uh type of format and really good things happen for your kids i mean at the end of the day that's that's the ultimate goal and you know i'm happy if you get a chance to look at it you ever want to have a conversation that's in there but it's how to
007make that relationship thrive it's what are the primary roles of the superintendent you know when when you as a board think about um how commensals work you know what are those things that are that are really standards for the profession the superintendent profession what are the roles of the board in terms of you know what what are the lanes the primary lanes of responsibility that the board has in terms of working with the superintendent it doesn't minimize conversation and or discussion and sometimes discourse but it really lends lends itself to the to the importance of that focus the things uh the next section is really the things that you can expect from your superintendent in terms of um behavior actions workflow those kinds of things i mean you've all figured out now that this pandemic
008is real stuff and and there's going to be a lot of decisions that can be made and those are going to be dissected by your staff and your students and your parents and your community and the every superintendent in america is going to have to figure out a way to live through this because it's an absolute no win and there's uh there's just there's just a lot of risk for people to turn away from public education during these times so um you can look at that you know what what can you should you expect to be superintendent and then i i also put in there you know what what ex what a fair expectation that the superintendent should have of the board and you know while you know every superintendent would love a unanimous vote
009on every single issue it's not possible and it doesn't happen anymore but it's really about what do you do during those times when there is some disagreement and you know decisions are made but the most important thing that you do as a board of director is that you evaluate the performance of superintendent that's going to be the uh responsibility and i would suggest to you that that before you before you turn over your uh your your file folders and and keys that you do offer dr menzel some constructive uh feedback before he goes based on the goals that we developed tonight um i put something in here about communications and affected superintendents you know something again that you might be interested in and then i compiled a list of this is probably not you know
010something that veterans school board members really appreciate seeing but just you know tips for board members and you know i think you know if you look at the landscape in the country right now the it's really really clear districts that have superintendent turnover on a pretty regular basis have major disconnects between administration and and boards i was talking with a superintendent on the east coast today who's just had it with pandemic and he's uh he's he's going to resign and we were just trying to talk through that and i left that conversation thinking of myself you know as a result of what we're all going through right now not to mention the budget difficulties that almost every state is experiencing challenges of public education and then the outcome of the election whichever way it goes
011is going to create for a very very stressful environment i i predicted i predict that there's going to be a lot of superintendent vacancies around the country because relationships are going to be maligned as a result of decisions and and decisions so again my intent was never to read any of that to you but at your leisure i'd say take a look at it concerns as a reminder for um for the importance of your work and for the importance of you and dr menzel to work as closely as you can to be mutually supportive so that's the end goal tonight is to create a draft set of performance expectations i'll work you through a little activity but first i i think it's important that we give dr menzel a few minutes to just kind of
012talk about his first 40 45 days and i had a chance to again read his entry plan it's as good as any entry plan i've seen of any superintendent going in um entry plans always sound good they look good they're they're uh they make sense but it isn't until you get into it that you realize that uh things could be a little bit different so let's turn it over to dr menzel and then give the board an opportunity to maybe ask some questions if you have them and then then we're going to go to work on mutual performance expectations dr menzel thank you dr joel appreciate that and thank you for setting the stage and good afternoon members of the governing board the first 45 days have been pretty eventful and and the first thing
013i want to say is thank you um because one of the things that you did when you hired me is provided an opportunity for me to spend some time between march 17th and june 30th and getting to know the community have in-depth conversations and engage so that it really did have the impact of helping flatten the learning curve i can't imagine what it would have been like if the first day i was engaging with the leadership team here was july 1st so so the first thing i want to say is that it's been longer than 45 days but i appreciate that because i i think well none of us knew exactly what path this pandemic would take us on we've been able to build relationships and hit the ground running as a result of some
014of the pre-work that was done i did distribute the reminder of of the the 90-day plan and to dr joel's point that was all done in an environment where we anticipated one thing and some of those are standard fare when you're starting a new superintendent position but there were four primary areas that i outlined of focus that i i thought were important first was and i mentioned this during the interviews as well conducting a listen and learn tour as a new superintendent coming in the top priority is to get to know the community understand what the hopes and aspirations are for the public education system part of that process is also understanding what the issues and challenges are where are the points of frustration every school district has points of pride and every school district
015has opportunities for growth and improvement and the only way that as a leader of of the organization you know those things is by spending a lot of time listening and less time talking in a covet environment that doesn't happen the same way it used to i mean normally we would convene town halls focus groups have coffee chats in different places and none of that's been possible in addition most of the time has been spent getting ready for the school year in this covet environment but as i mentioned one of the two tools that i thought was important to bring to the district was thought exchange and so that tool and and the reason why i include that in the listen and learn part of the report is it's an opportunity to get authentic feedback not
016just a survey where you're answering on a five-point scale but people get to share their ideas so our first thought exchange uh was about you know what are the issues and concerns related to covet and restarting school and we had 936 participants 977 different thoughts that were shared and 38 258 ratings so if you didn't participate in it individuals can sign up put their thought it's that their thoughts anonymous and the rating is anonymous but if you agree with the thought you give it five stars four stars if you disagree with the thought you can give it one or two stars and then it we're able to present a report that identifies you know what gained traction in our community in in that thought exchange and and i'm sorry i didn't print out a copy
017of all of that for everyone here but i can do it then the number one theme and we do have the report on our website but the number one theme that the large green bar here is um not safe to return the biggest concern and the thing that was rated highest was not safe to return the the second and third were enhanced distance learning because there were a lot of questions remember this was launched in early july a lot of questions about what does enhanced distance learning look like what does that mean and then a lot of concern about positive tests and what would we do so we will be launching more of these thought exchanges and part of the listen and learn tour as we think about planning for the future allow us to
018ask open-ended questions that elicit those responses as a substitute for what we would have done in an in-person environment we can also use other technology like zoom done a fair number of q and a's with a number of people you know we've done uh q a with all five learning communities plus the scottsdale online staff participated in in a couple of rotary meetings and there are a number of other groups where we've had those conversations so while it's not typical we've been able to do some things in in that regard and there's still 45 more days left to continue listening but that doesn't mean we stop listening on the 91st day that's got to be a part of our ongoing communication and connection with the community the second goal was more specifically around communication i've
019never been in an organization where it hasn't surfaced as an important issue for improvement and so here i want to highlight let's talk and i did give you a quick summary report of where we are you know we launched let's talk on july 7th when we had our first special meeting that night we had more than 300 dialogues that came in as of earlier this afternoon we had more than 2 300 dialogues that were submitted our customer satisfaction score on a 10-point scale is at it at 8. the national average is 8.2 what's really interesting about the survey results when we're scored by our customers is that we get a whole lot of tens and we get a fair number of ones i mean very strong opinions on both sides it and the ones are
020really instructive because for those who leave feedback i i can get an understanding of whether or not the one was because we were not responsive in some cases a dialogue was closed no response was given and i would expect the one sometimes people just didn't like the answer that's another reason to give a one and and so by diving into the data we're learning how we can improve our communication and our processes the other thing that i would point out here is dialogue age where it says 1.1 the national average is 1.8 and we've we were over two when we started so this was a new tool for everyone in scottsdale except me and so as we've been learning our way into the tool people have become quicker in responding we want to have a
021as you know one of our four core values is to be responsive and this tool is helping us do it and to be accountable for being responsive in a timely fashion you see there are 51 past due those are things that we monitor on a daily basis gladys and joanne help look at that and give a little nudge to the people who have been assigned the dialogue to remind them that it needs a response the second and third page just provides some demographic information so 85 percent of the people submitting dialogues are parents almost 10 percent are employees most of them come in as questions but we have actually received some really nice compliments some good suggestions that we can use most of the people find it through the landing page but we've got a
022few that are doing it through the customer app the other thing that we're able to do is we can forward emails that we get into the system so my experience has been you can get buried in email if you send the email to let's talk then it doesn't get lost and five days later you wake up at 2 a.m and say oh i forgot to respond because you have a way to track it so the tool itself does a lot of really good things for us and you can also see who the repeat customers are 86 percent are one-time customers but we have a few repeat then the last page shows you the ebb and flow of of dialogues as they come in and and you see and you don't see the the um july
0237th 8th and 9th which was our biggest spike first we started and lots of people were interested but you can see mid-july and then just before we started school where we had some some spikes in the number of people submitting dialogues so i think this is a good start it's only one of our communication tools but i think it's an important one in terms of getting to accountability we're also working on improving our weekly communication with our staff as well as the larger community and and that improvement process will be ongoing the third area was framed as contingency planning and so that was that was where my my crystal ball was maybe not as as prescient as it could have been because i was thinking more broadly and didn't anticipate the pandemic was going to
024have such an impact on this year so if i was writing the plan now knowing what i know that probably number one because it has consumed a significant amount of time and it is really the top priority and will remain so i think for some period of time and then the fourth area is data achievement and accountability and what i pointed out in the in the entry plan is that people talk about these concepts all the time but we don't always mean the same thing and so getting clarity around what we mean and clarity about having high expectations for all of our students and how we'll know that we're on the journey to get there so as you know i encouraged all the board members and and also all of cabinet to read mark tucker's
025book leading high performance school systems lessons from the world's best uh we need to benchmark ourselves not against just those who are around us in the valley but across the nation and around the world and so we need to in my mind part of that first 90 days is is setting the tone for high levels of expectation even in a pandemic when we talked with our staff we said that that kovid's not a reason to lower our expectations it may shift how we approach learning and we have some other challenges to address but we shouldn't lower our expectations for students because actually our students are pretty resilient and capable of of a whole lot more than sometimes we as adults give them credit for we just have to be prepared to shift in this environment
026to achieve those desired outcomes it may be in a different way the last thing i would point out because i know that we want to move on to the the planning for the goal setting this 90-day draft plan was before the killing of george floyd and uh had had that event happen in the subsequent protests i would have definitely called attention more specifically as you know even in my interviews i'm committed to diversity equity and inclusion it was elevated in a way that brought a sense of urgency that was not reflected in my plan and i think that's an oversight and i think it's really important for us to include it in our conversations going forward so with that i'm happy to answer any questions but that's a quick synopsis of the first 45 days
027[Music] does any do governing board members have a question regarding an update on the first 45 days uh yeah michael so moving forward because i take it that town halls will probably not be possible for for some time are you going to be hosting more virtual town halls with each learning community the parents and the students uh to the best of our abilities and i guess having multiple sets of them uh is that kind of where we're going moving forward on that front that would be my plan so you do you do those i was actually um texting with one of my former colleagues in michigan who has had zoom town hall meetings three nights in a row and had more than a thousand participants each night so to dr joel's point you know these
028are hot topics for people i like the idea if we can narrow into each of the learning communities as a target it can kind of help us in some respects to chunk it but yes both for internal and external stakeholders i envision that having those kinds of q a sessions and town hall meetings will be really helpful patty i'm glad you brought that up because it reminded me of something i wanted to ask um all the town halls are important but i would uh ask that we really pay a priority kind of attention to maybe revisiting the teen town halls via like zoom or virtual or whatever because those are going to be even more important than they ever have been right now i mean kind of gauging how our kids are doing it how
029they're feeling i think that's a really good point and the other thing that we confirmed with thought exchange is that we can launch a thought exchange with just the students um and so that gives us an option to still be anonymous in terms of who submits the thought and how it's rated so it doesn't create an unintended consequence but we can we can narrow some of those open-ended questions to get their feedback and and we're hopeful that in that environment we'll get more participation because it is using technology and it's a tool that none of them have used so maybe the novelty of it might encourage more participation as well and i also was going to be the other person that was going to bring up the town teen halls and just to be a
030reminder that we started with arcadia we went to saguaro desert mountain was the next one i would i personally would like to see that continue that it's desert mountain and then i believe oh gosh it was coronado and then chaparral i would think but i'm not going to assume anything because it is zoom it'll take less logistics so that maybe that we can have them instead of once every you know quarter semester maybe we could hit all five learning communities this year and possibly who knows it might be a good thing to do the first semester um since it is soon thank you sir thanks for being up patty and i don't know when it's appropriate to kind of dive into the formatting of that but you're talking about launching things specific to kids it
031may be interesting or a good idea to send something out before a teen town hall just to gauge levels of interest about where their challenges are et cetera kind of everyone has survey fatigue but something like that that kind of touches on the hot topics even that we can get our arms around before right so and i think there are a couple of vehicles to do that one we do have our student advisory board that will reconvene again and we we have students on our diversity equity and inclusion committee so we've got a couple of avenues to be able to engage students to think about what some of those might be and then we also may be able to use student government and some other vehicles to kind of elevate what the hot topics and
032issues of concern are well i'm glad you brought that up because i will tell you what i was thinking was that we would continue with the same format that we had because dr hirsch did attend at saguaro and she was already i believe engaged some of the students and so they might have been seniors but if they haven't you know saguaro used the the model of using the student government and so we can ask dr hirsch and that i think part of the beauty of the teen town halls is that the students actually took ownership in pretty much random and there's no reason that they couldn't continue with that and keep that model going unless there were problems with it and then in those you know meetings before the actual teen town hall they did
033just what you said brought up some of the concerns that they might that might be raised and to be prepared for them so um and i want to stay on agenda but this is something i think that we need to do sooner rather than later just because i really would like to hear from our students how this is going how they felt going into the year where their stress level is where the challenge for them specifically okay john michael um so you've also during this time period taken over i guess or taking over kind of the leadership for the diversity and equity committee um with that work and the updates have been done there and the surveying of students and using let's talk and all these functionalities that we now have i think it's really
034important or critical i should say that we that we do contact everyone throughout all students which i think is only really the only real real way to do it because a massive concern from the families and students that i received was kind of what i was saying that because the committee was formed the way it was formed it cut out a lot of people who didn't even know it was formed and didn't know how to share their views and i think getting that student input and getting that family input especially input from minorities across our campuses who deal with these you know perhaps have a very different experience you know we can look at our handover survey and say 70 percent of people say everything's great but that 30 percent might be a pretty targeted
035set of individuals who don't think things are okay or that there are issues so uh i think it's very clear i think you're already on this page just but but with everything that was said here really making sure that um our administration is reaching out to to everyone lots of advertising around that topic potentially reopening applications and allowing people to submit their name to come on to it because i think there's we just have such a rich community and they have so many great ideas and frankly concrete ideas for addressing uh issues that they have faced the students or their parents see that their own children are facing so i i think that's a real crucial element of all this is the teen town halls are great they were awesome i wish more students showed
036up i think perhaps the timing and the day chosen wasn't great but in addition to that i think really targeting these students and really targeting their families because i think we will be surprised about what we would learn from from a larger array thank you for that any other comments all right well dr joel how would you like to proceed as the facilitator all right well thank you so if you would uh take out your document and go to i think it'd be page 11. what we're going to try to accomplish two things in the time we have tonight one we're going to try to reach consensus collaborative consensus on a couple of goals um one or two goals and and that's going to take some combining and some clarifying kind of what we did
037with you when we were working on the the developing the performance objectives for the incoming superintendent and then we'll we'll look at evidence because this needs to be a performance-based a process we'll look at what evidence would you accept that in fact this this task this goal has been met now a couple of things i want you to keep in mind before i turn you live remember that for this to work it has to be mute these goals have to be mutual which means that i'll just give you an example um if if a goal were to generate to um cut the budget by 10 percent to re provide relief for property taxes i'm just pleased i'm just making this up then and what you have to be able to understand is that you have
038to support that goal right so when we talk about mutually supported what we talk about is mutual ownership and so whatever we come up with tonight i'm going to ask and tell you that that's what high-performing board and administrative teams do they focus on a goal they agree to the the evidence then what does it look like when it's done and then they agree to the the workflow which is really the primary responsibility the action plan if you will of the superintendent superintendent's cabinet and and what i'd like to be able to do i was talking to dr mendel today is once we develop this draft i'd like to worst method over the weekend get it back to you because we encourage our boards to adopt these publicly and that will um i mean that
039that will put everybody inside your district and outside your district at the stakeholder that'll put them in the game so they'll know that for the next five months this is going to be the priority work so questions on process or questions on you know what this what this means before i give you the assignment uh yes john michael oh well i i was just going to ask you said six months is this a are what we're focusing on half year goals or are they full year goals well i think it's um great question you know michael i i think it depends on your personal perspective um but i think for the most part you know it is you're going to have a whole new team of people in january if folks that are up or
040not re-running and so my conversations with both allison and dr mendel have been you know let's focus on between now and the end of this um fiscally or calendar year and then you know come back and revisit it with uh with the new board so it's really about what's the priority work between now and then my guess is that when we put this up on the um we put this up on the poster paper it it's going to be the kind of goals we're going to carry forward for the school year okay thank you very much yeah i appreciate that um dr joel i do want to have a clarification because i do know that dr menzel and i did speak and then i called you one of the things that came up that these
041were whether it was termed priority goals which is what i think we originally talked about as part of you know when we were talking about the search but actually when we talked about it they became more performance goals which meant they were tied to the contract which meant they actually had um the date of may 30th because the superintendent would have to meet those performance goals that were set to be able to achieve the performance pay that's set in the contract so that's one of the things i talked about you is we need to clarify that and have everybody be comfortable we might and maybe it's that we do some performance goals through may 30th that the new board would most likely just accept unless they wanted to come in in january february and change
042them which i guess maybe is their prerogative but hopefully they wouldn't given that the superintendent had been working six months already to achieve those but then maybe there are maybe some additional priorities that would be through maybe december 30th so that's just an option i know that throws a little kink and things but it is what we kind of talked about and we didn't have an opportunity to have the three of us speak and so i guess we could ask the board what they think and i will ask patty beckman has her hand up wouldn't it make sense to establish these goals today and revisit them with the the new board in january i mean i wouldn't expect that they would be vastly different either but respectfully and determine where we are in the process
043and allow dr menzel to you know discuss and and take us to where he is in the process and how he feels about moving forward with them but i would think you would want to revisit them with the whole new board majority if that is the case and if that is the desire of the new board i think that one thing is to remember that we do have a informal evaluation in december which we will be having in which we will be going over these so they'll have a very up-to-date because that will be towards the time that school closes and then that january typically that first week is when you have your on new board coming in and the old board is completely off so they will be most likely up to date on
044what the progress is since probably i'm not doing too much during the christmas break or winter break excuse me right and and i know they'll be up to date but my point is is there may be a goal in there that someone for whatever reason that's new on the board disagrees with and we would want to give dr mezzo the opportunity to either to discuss it and chime in about why he feels that it's a worthwhile goal to keep pursuing or listen to whatever board members brings up the potential objection to it i don't know i think that is the prerogative that the new board would you agree from your experience so i i would agree i would i think there are a couple of things that we're talking about one in the contract there's
045a date october 31st by which the board has to adopt the performance metrics that that supplemental compensation is and there's some statutory requirement in arizona in terms of what that might look like but the board's got some broad latitude that doesn't have to be what we do tonight or this afternoon we we do need to consider it before then and arguably of those metrics if they if they shift after they're set that just becomes kind of difficult because if you have a moving target it just raises some questions that's different than saying the board at this juncture will identify a few key performance objectives the most important things that you want me to spend my time on there's the routine day-to-day what the superintendent does we're not worried about that we're worried about what are
046the most important priorities because if you were to tell me it was um i don't want to even throw out something so that someone thinks that it's actually a possibility but there can be some things that so you want to build an athletic complex somewhere because i don't think that's anywhere on anybody's radar could be but but if if you were going to say something like that that would be very different than what i would think the priority is so so my guess is there's not going to be any major surprises but by identifying the prime priority objectives those are the things where i'll spend the bulk of my time in addition to doing the routine if they were something different or a surprise that would cause me to re reprioritize and to dr joel's
047point i need board support because right now 100 of my time is spent on addressing the covet situation and that just is the the reality but that doesn't mean there aren't other things that should be considered and so we should be talking about when do we begin to engage in some of those other things that are important for the district knowing that right now the priority is covered for obvious reasons but there are other things that are important too so the when do we engage in those and where are they on the priority list might be a way to frame our conversation about the objectives again michael yeah that i mean that's kind of that's one of the reasons why i asked because it's understandable if we wanted to set quarter lee or even biannual
048objectives that we would check up and then revise moving forward but my concern is that there are objectives that i believe in many ways objectives that we had intended on not with the anticipation of covet that are probably pretty important that we still start working on and chipping away at slowly because you know so much of our time is devoted to covet and making sure that our students are receiving the education they need that if we set something super small a small time frame it might make the objective somewhat meaningless i think like you can't set a really substantial jet objective specific for a six-month target and then any objective you were to set so i think if we set it as kind of thinking of year-long understanding that with the new board we would
049review those to see i mean hopefully their objectives that again as as dr joel pointed out are things that the candidates or whoever the new board members are support or they're the tweaking is very minor or just tweaking because the environment has changed and those goals are no longer achievable um i think that probably makes more sense than to think of it as like a small time frame we got to get this done if that makes sense so are you thinking of going ahead and working through some of these priorities that will become the performance goals because they're they are very different we've got performance goals right and in which performance pay is tied to and then we could have but your time has more short-term priorities yes i mean which are you thinking i'm
050not quite sure i think it's your line on that i think it's probably uh i think they are tied i think you set the the objectives what are our what are our objectives for the year what is it that we want to accomplish and that those are used as a way of evaluating the performance overall i think probably we would have to set separate performance goals though right at a different date i don't know if we could really although some of those are going to be brought up in this meeting right so it's almost well most well there's a possibility i suppose yeah there is a possibility i guess it really depends on what we mean by are we just saying that is that the performance has been satisfactory on the objectives or overall performance
051because i think the performance goals can be quite much more broad i mean it can be about the totality of the behavior and actions and direction and things done where you're relying on hey you know these were the three objectives here's the progress i made on them here's what went right here's what went wrong etc this is what i learned that isn't what you're measuring directly as a performance itself but you're saying look he's done all this work and he's and this shows you know this this and that and this is so he's performed well even if the objective was not accomplished or what have you so i i don't know it depends what it depends on what we what we think and i don't want to get bogged down i know dr joel's time
052is valuable but i obviously view objectives as a very specific set thing so versus from dr joel yes two observations so first every state and your every district has their own superintendent appraisal process right so this does not replace that what this does is it augments it with a performance component which is what you're going to develop today and and when you look at the time frame because you've got an october 30th deadline and by contract uh performance objective performance goals are are a part of the overall performance evaluation and compensation what you developed tonight really should and has to be representative of an entire year that that a new board could very well and i would encourage them to review with the superintendent once they're seated and they're comfortable to see if any revisions
053need to be made or maybe there's some things on there that they can check off and say we've accomplished so i think the work tonight is to really look at this thing this is your obligation i mean you're still you're still this is your this is your time to work with your superintendent to create that first set of performance priorities okay barbara i know i've eaten this drum before and we'll go ahead and beat it again is i think we should move forward especially tonight with a very clear understanding of there's goals and there's overall performance and then there is performance pay and check mark uh and i beat this drum before we should lay out a checklist of things did he accomplish this this and this and if so he gets this performance pay
054because one we all know it's a very small dollar amount really we talk about but it is state required so as long as we keep those lanes clear and and and i know in the future our future board will be grateful if when it comes to did he earn this performance pay it is a simple yes or no right no i think they'll be grateful for that yes they will but so barbara do you think today should be just the first set of those priorities and we will meet at a different time to discuss the actual performance pay and term checklist but it will just be uh clarifying the measurements or how they are achieved we just need to make sure those are clear so that it can be more or less i think personally
055tonight especially considering where our district is right now we'd be a little tone deaf if we didn't somewhat address the giant covet elephant in the room as far as our superintendent's goals for the next six months and that'd be overall and that no i would never tie that to a checklist for performance pay that's my personal opinion sandy do you have well i would agree i mean well i kind of just want to get down to the nuts and bolts of what it is that we're looking for moving forward covid throws a whole you know monkey wrench into this whole thing but doesn't mean that we stop educating our students so all right just we educate them differently in a different way are you i want to make sure that we're on the same page
056and then we're hearing the same thing yeah i think we are i think that the performance pay checklist first we've got time in the contract and we can revisit that i think identifying what the priorities are for my work i think there's there's some merit to saying some of these things are are year long they can be revisited but what are the things also that that we can identify meaningful progress toward even if it's not complete by the end of december because we've got that interim evaluation before we have the change of the board so i think it's a it's a both end we can we can think about the school year because that makes sense recognize that it will be revisited with the new board and we'll have an update in december so what
057would be those signals of progress toward that would meet the board's expectation once we've identified what the priority goals are and then we'll meet at a different time to go over the performance pay goals yes i think it's the performance performance goals that got us kind of that hiccup because that immediately ties it to excuse me immediately ties it to the superintendent contract when that term was used that is what immediately went to instead of uh priorities or just objectives all right so thank you for letting us walk through that i think we all have an understanding i've seen heads nod so dr jewell okay very good so here's uh if you turn to that uh top of page 11. so um i've turned it on this one and we've turned it performance objective so
058here's the question i'd like you to respond to just individually and give you i'll give you 10 minutes or so to do that and it is in addition to the day-to-day operation of the school district what are the priorities upon which you would like the superintendent to focus now this is very individual it's based on your own perspective and so i want you to i'd like you to keep it between one and three but before you start writing keep this in mind the second part of this is what is the evidence if you if we were if this group tonight were to adopt what you wrote what evidence would you like to see that would convince you that substantial progress is made toward that objective now we're not going to do that until we decide
059as a group you know where is the collaborative consensus so for now let's take 10 minutes and go ahead and just list through what you believe should be the focus area so wow hmm so everybody uh ready to go okay um so what i'd like to do is uh dr menzel is is gladys in the room she is okay um is there a place for her to do the recording i'm gonna be typing as uh director speak but i'm wondering if it wouldn't be a good idea to maybe have some uh some recording there okay yes we got a flip chart and markers so we should be good to go great so here's what i'd like to do allison if it's okay with you is um have you you can you can call on people
060i'd like to change up the rotation a little bit whoever goes first on their first one let somebody else go first on their second one and then to come up with the priority and then we'll put it up on the on the poster board i'll type it up and then give her just a brief description of why you've got that as a high priority and then we'll go to the second board director and then you can give us one that you've got and if it happens to be the same or you want to add to it um as long as the person who put it up there agrees that it doesn't take away from the specific meaning uh we'll we'll be good to go and i'll manage a lot from over here too so don't
061uh don't let this be confusing so um allison i'll let you decide who you can just call on whomever you'd like to go first oh geez and you're mean okay all right so i hope i understand this and and and so my priority performance objective one priority okay i'm gonna combine these two because they're go together establish an effective way to determine the need in our community for in-person instruction and develop a strategy using the department of health's metrics recently provided to bring those students back on campus with safety and a shared understanding of responsibility and expectations as the guiding framework i know that's really long i'm so sorry so what you're looking for let's just paraphrase it so that we can really put it into simple terms you're looking for an effective way to
062or to become more effective in terms of online instruction to determining those students in our community that need in-person instruction right now okay let's call it that way gladys determine effective means for students to experience we'll work on the language later experience um remote or online education is that does that catch it so like i'm saying the obviously let me see if i understand it so that was for discussing that in our next meeting tim so i was at that that's a that's that's barbara is suggesting that that we establish an effective way to determine the need for in-person instruction so to unpack the need there are some some students who don't have proper supervision at home there are some students who both parents work and so they need a place to go there are
063some who just really struggle in an online environment so i think put put a underscore need identify those students who need in-person instruction and then using the health metrics that have been discussed develop and implement a strategy to prioritize the return to learn in person focusing on those that have the greatest need is that what i heard yes wow you guys had a conversation before meeting that uh so it really is it an individualized approach to education based on what students need to be successful ultimately i think that's yeah a very broad way to look at it i i mean considering i took it the intent of the next five six months what's the priority that to me right now is a priority that it just we need to find a way to establish and
064find those students that are we're failing these these uh next few months that's that's my priority all right very good i think i have it and i i can actually see what lattice wrote you did a better job of capturing an idea i'm sorry about that um do we ask any questions in between or are we going to go through and just write down all five just go through and get them all recorded and then we'll come back and we'll clarify in question sandy kravitz um okay so our tagline or motto what everyone calls ensuring all individual learners reach their full potential so i don't know exactly how to craft what i'm feeling but i want to focus on academics special focus on improving outcomes for title 1 students we've implemented avid and discovery education
065for steam at two of our schools avid at two of our schools we are in the process of becoming a middle years ib program in mountainside and ib primary program at anasazi i would like to see something to the effect of where are we on the i guess the spectrum of implementing those programs and what are the outcomes that we are seeing to improve academics for for those students as well as our students in the middle uh what i call in the middle of just you know the students that take our regular courses i'm talking high school now and perhaps aren't stretching themselves so you know the students that are high performing students who take the honors and the ap classes they tend to always do well and be high performers the students who are
066special needs student they get special assistance as well but what are we doing for our students in the middle and for the students title one on the other programs that we're seeing what are the outcomes that we're seeing how are we helping those students how are we stretching our students so that they are competitive with their peers in other districts and other states um again i don't know that's that's i just spewed a lot of information sandy if i can ask a question are you talking about struggling students or are you talking all students all students students who are not reaching their full potential that's very aspirational but i think we it can be more than just an aspiration yeah i got it so reduce strategies and outcomes currently in place for all students that
067are not reaching their potential i mean i don't know if we need to put a percentage on that we'll see a gain of 20 percent among students on and i do not necessarily like to hook things to a test score but that's kind of what we are unfortunately left with we may not even have tests which is fine by me i just want to know that our students are learning and they when we graduate when we graduate a student from scottsdale from scottsdale unified school district that they have a strong academic background um i i would caution from putting statistics or metrics to any of these tonight because i you know i think right now again you've got you've got a brand new superintendent that's still trying to learn the the land and so it
068really for me what i hear you say is you've heard about a lot of things that have been implemented are they working and and if they are great and how do we bring them to scale and if they're not you know what are we going to do about it because all of our kids deserve the very best that we have so i'll work on the words on that one absolutely good one thank you patty beckham so you've started this and i know you have and you've been effective so far but i would like you to continue meeting with and identifying our community partners current ones that support them and identify some new ones given this environment we're likely to have a budget shortfall in the future so they can help us identify and support the
069areas of need especially as it relates to the learning gap etc and seo i'm going to have a gladys watchful so um if i may engage with community stakeholders and you said continue but i i think what i'll do is just um i think documental based on what he was saying earlier done a pretty good job of doing that but you want to see that continued um centered on the the fact that there's going to be some budget concerns coming up as well as you know i'm sure just returning students to school right not the stakeholders necessarily although community partners are stakeholders more than likely the partnerships that we have through asu and through the charros and through many of the different support groups that help they are asking what they can do and i'd
070like him to continue meeting with them and providing you know guidance and very straightforward you know metrics or whatever to say this is what you can do to help our students that are in this environment um engage with community partners to obtain feedback and suggestions concerning district challenges correct okay thank you i'm just giving gladys a moment to catch up before we move on to our speedway so don't worry we can be patient uh john michael um begin drafting five-year strategic plan by june 30th 2021 um question john michael um i i heard you did you say init you don't have a plan right now right or you probably have one that's rotating off we do not have one we initiate this five-year strategic planning process by june 30th uh well i mean it well
071and so first of all i would disagree that we have a strategic plan right now but i would say that initiating i think meeting with meeting with our partners and meeting with community and these listening are part of that process so i would view those as the what you what you have described as the evidence of that whereas this is the objective itself if that makes sense so i agree so i mean yeah we could call it initialize but i think we're already i think we've already started initiating that in my view okay unless all right yeah okay i i got it and you know again we'll i'll put a better word up there for it but there's an interest in a strategic plan comprehensive strategic planning okay and we'll come back and talk some
072more about these um okay there's one more and i kind of took to heart that the the the day-to-day operations in this environment of cobid is going to be doing what you're going to be doing um so i took it actually taken some of what has been said that the the data the student achievement and accountability piece that you spoke of in your big theme and that really is a priority for me and what i not just for me but from what i'm hearing from our community we know after reviewing our data that we have and it's on our website using the past arizona merits that academic achievement has not been what we would expect or like and i have the data here if we need to go into that um we know that because
073we weren't meeting the expectations of our community we lost over seven thousand in enrollment so enrollment decline is still something that is uh critical are not critical that enrollment decline is not critical but enrollment is especially because we are not in a growth demographic um and so given those two areas student achievement and accountability are my priorities one of the things i wanted to to look at is you are a veteran educational leader and i would be interested in finding out and this may go with the idea of a strategic plan but what actions and supports do we need to take now especially in light of covid because we do know that we had educational decline most likely in the spring semester and so we need to know what uh what we can do to
074support those academics starting i guess on last monday but so to me that is a priority but we need to look at it from a data and an accountability standpoint um i wanted to bring up one item because you you brought it up if i might just draw a little bit of a tangent and that is and actually i won't but i just don't want to forget it that one of the areas in the 90-day plan you talked about is that the leadership would come up with an assessment that we would have in august and so i don't want to forget that i would like to have dr menzel talk about that tonight in the i in the theme of student achievement data and accountability thank you so what i what i wrote for that
075and um i'll send these to gladys because i'm going to still need some help with barbara's i'm going to need to see what you right now it's just put kids back on campus when we can how about that as soon as we can um allison what i wrote was conduct a review of existing academic achievement and present recommendations for improving in all areas that works for me but immediately yesterday yes okay good all right or anybody else that wants to offer anything oh this is it well this is just the first the first this was the first are we gonna go around again and do a second one or do you want to talk about these first five first i i i think it's important to get them all up there right now so let's
076go get the second one and since i'm not supposed to start with the same person i will start with daddy patty beckman still digesting all of these too but um jumping off your academic piece i just wanted to challenge you to bring new innovative ideas and competitive you know thoughts that are going on across the nation to us because i think we've heard it from this board and our community a lot of times we fall into the same repetitive pattern but i know it's a broad thing but i would always welcome some new idea you've come from out of state and that's one of the things that we welcomed is not the same repetitive thought pattern and culture so i would really challenge you to bring that to us if you as you learn them
077sandy kravitz um i think one thing we need to have a plan for building utilization we need there may be some tough decisions that need to be made um we're rebuilding schools we have a combination school one of our locations right now we supposedly i thought we were supposed to have made a determination last spring about what the outcome of that was going to be but we haven't um and i'll just leave it at that and i'll speak to you more directly about my thoughts on that but i think we need to have a review of our building utilizations we know in some areas we have under capacity still okay john michael greenberg um create new organization chart by january 31st that's perfect sorry that's it i try and keep them short which year oh
0782021 i would hope got it barbara probert okay i think mine um jumps off board member kravitz um concern as well obviously yes facilities have been a huge discussion but as of right now too um enrollment obviously we have to look at it through a new lens and we don't know what's coming down i haven't as a board member i'll be honest i haven't even bothered asking what our enrollment numbers are because i can't imagine the roller coaster we've got the last two weeks and moving two weeks ahead of us so but but we will need to very soon take a deep dive into our enrollment what it looks like and start thinking creatively about how we project what the future years will what will come and how this pandemic will change possibly our enrollment
079for a while so i guess that's facility slash a clear new look at enrollment okay and i like your gold very much um so the my uh second goal is um on june 23 2020 the governing board approved policy gco evaluation of professional staff and members and in dr joel's responsibilities it reminded me that one of the responsibilities of the superintendent is to implement all policies that have been approved and so my next priority is that we implement this policy and assure the effectiveness of our evaluations i'm specifically interested in the evaluation of other administrators because in the policy it states the format of the evaluation system is developed under the superintendent's leadership and so i'm i and how will the government know it's fully developed and effectively implemented second i'm interested in the overall
080effectiveness of all of our evaluation processes and timing of our evaluations so they are completed and discussed before contracts are offered so really it's the implementation of policy gco evaluation of professional staff members allison just saw unclear because i knew you and i had a couple conversations on that the policy is already in place so the expectation would be that these appraisals evaluations are taking place a new policy was set um it was amended on june 23 2020 so that is why i'm looking to have that be a priority with everything else going on i don't want to get caught in may again and find out that it was not understood or implemented especially since the timing of our evaluations is so important okay so it's it's not you're not really looking for a review
081not anymore the implementation of the policy you're looking for implementation right on that or yes you're correct okay and what was the policy number again it's policy gco and can i clarify one other one other piece i heard you say with emphasis on the admin contracts before they come back before um contracts have been offered well actually all evaluations to make sure the timing is correct but we have a problem on the teacher evaluations because they won't be complete because we don't have the data that's required in those so you can do all the other components but they won't be finished before contracts are offered because the state doesn't give us and that's what i want part of to be evaluated and see if that's the best way if that's effective so i don't know
082yet well as i understand though we don't have an i think the state has established a certain part of teacher performance that's got to be the tied to student test data that's what we don't have we don't have latitude to do something other than that as i understand it in statute and we don't get the results of that until after contracts have to be issued but that's results are you talking about the tool that we use to evaluate or just well there's two things um one is in this new amendment that we made that it states that the that the superintendent's leadership is to develop the evaluation system so we need to make sure that that has been developed and it is being implemented because we don't know that the second piece is looking both
083as as for all staff is that evaluation tool that we use and can we evaluate prior to giving out a contract you're correct in that that my understanding is also that we have a kind of supplemental piece that is tied to test scores and that's due to payment but we have teachers that actually leave that is determined and they still get their pay so um i'm kind of looking at it just making sure that that evaluation of our teachers is an effective part of their overall evaluation when we issue contracts so if i if i'm hearing you correctly i think i can differentiate so i'm just make sure i understand there's an evaluation process of teachers there's a statutory requirement related to data as a component of that but what you're looking at is we
084recognize that there's the data component but are the other aspects of that evaluation system effective the the concern would be not so much a complete evaluation recognizing that that data component might be lagging but is the other component over which we do have control and can manage is that effective in determining um our teacher performing at a level that's acceptable all right is that fair correct okay happy beckman okay so i'm making sure i understand that because i know i agree with you it's essentially can we develop this or or look at this to where the majority if not all of the evaluation is done before issuing a contract we know that piece is out there but and we have had an issue with things not being done or looked at until a contract has
085been issued and if there is a way we'd like to look at this again and develop the way does that make sense i i have it i understand the nature of the problem that we're trying to solve dr joel yes i'm trying to capture this all right so what i wrote was uh ensure that policy gco evaluation is effectively implemented completed to degree possible prior to the issuance professional contract necessary offer suggestions for policy revisions in order to match up with expectations anybody i think we have one more set is that right did anybody oh did people write down a third oh yeah then i will spread michael can we give him a little break for goodness sake [Laughter] feels compelled then i will call on you young michael greenberg um design five initiatives addressing
086diversity equity and inclusion issues at susd by june 30th 2021 gladys could you just step to the left your left [Music] okay okay sandy kravitz um well i'm going to first ask you we have transportation already we are we will be discussing that or should i mention that as one of them because i've got two so i believe we are well so okay so one of mine is uh [Music] well this i guess i could put it under the umbrella of fiscal efficiencies or economic efficiencies and transportation would fall under that and also um this may be one that you've mentioned before so you can help me craft what i mean also under um fiscal efficiencies or economic efficiencies um having a better understanding or or i should say reduce the gap between what we
087budget for salaries and what we actually pay in salaries because every year do we have a carry a budget carry forward sorry where we say this is how much we spend in on salaries for teachers but then due to retirements turnover you know people leaving people coming in and they come in at different levels what we actually spend for salaries and what we actually budget maybe there could be a significant gap so if we can tighten that gap or reduce the gap content excuse me okay i got it [Music] paddy beckman i don't have another one i just have a question so please give me clarity again were these supposed to be for december for the year priorities or like because i'm hearing short-term stuff i'm very long-term stuff i want to be clear for
088people that are listening um what the expectation is and what has what we're trying to focus down to well and i believe what we kind of did was just throw out some ideas right now and dr joel's going to help us to clarify those and set them into the parameters that he's established i'm not trying to not answer your question but i'm gonna be it's kind of a messy process in a way to begin with with just throwing out priorities petty i think it's gonna vary based on how these get written you know for example i've got conduct i've got study develop bring forward you know i think there's going to be a timing mechanism for each one of those that's going to vary but i think we need to have the full conversation and
089kind of see how these get combined okay i'm hoping we end there i mean i know i know this conversation but i mean this comes together in the end that there's a concrete understanding and my point was only because i i completely agree and these are all great suggestions but we start with focusing on kobit over here and then we're developing plans so i just i'm we're far out so i just wanted to have an understanding of where our arms are going around from the time frame perspective so hopefully we'll get that out into the conversation that's the goal do we have them all anybody else like to add get some sleep in a while there's a goal for you i like that lay that out for you thank you barbara it's allowed can i
090um can i send you my word doc can i email that to you and um do you have a way that you can put it up on a screen or match it up with what you have i think we're pretty close why don't you flip the page over to uh the first page that you have okay i really simplified yours barbara your suggestion develop sound strategies for students returning to school all right and let well let me just be clear tonight for community whoever's listening i to me what we've learned these last few weeks is starting this monday day one there is a group of our students we are failing with our online with our edl and we know it's not gonna be perfect we know it's messy and we were waiting from the state
091that those are very real issues but now it seems critical that we figure out a way to determine those groups of students right now we are just losing and in this next month or two months however long edl lasts we're failing them and to me we need to start when you talk about return to learn you need to start with those students and and i may be jumping ahead but obviously what we've learned with the state we have red we have green we have yellow and the priority for those students who we're failing right now we need to look at that yellow category and find a way to make sure we're determining the needs of those students and we're figuring out how we can serve them on our campuses safely i hope that brings a
092little more clarity to it thank does okay and i think every district in the country is looking at that right now too so i think it's just a matter of reaching agreement on what the terminology is absolutely um okay so let me read these and while gladys is there we can just um you can see what she's got on her board great job gladys thank you and this is wonderful that i can actually read over your shoulder um so we'll just number these because we're going to be doing some combining and clarifying well that's even better thank you to the tech person so the first one is develop sound strategies for students returning to school safely and addressing the existing learning gaps brought on by the pandemic second one review strategies and outcomes currently in
093place for all students not reaching their potential third engage with community partners to obtain feedback and suggestions concerning district challenges fourth initiate a comprehensive five-year strategic planning process by june 30 2021. that's a big job too by the way and i'm sure if you haven't gone through a strategic planning process that takes every bit of a year and most would suggest 18 months six conduct a review of existing academic achievement and present recommendations for improvement in designated areas identified areas next one bring forward innovative strategies concerning improving the achievement of all school for all students i think the comment was dr mendel's experiences in michigan put him in position to maybe take the best of what michigan's doing and see how applicable it is to arizona in preparation for difficult financial challenges provide timely financial
094and facility planning updates next one is develop a new organizational chart by january 31 2021. next one is conduct a study of current and future enrollments as they relate to district planning the next one is ensure that policy gcl evaluation is effectively implemented and completed to the degree possible prior to the issuance of professional contracts if necessary offer suggestions for policy revision to align with expectations next one was the the if i got this right designed five initiatives addressing equity diversity and inclusion by june 30th 2021 and then the final one is reduce the gap between what is budgeted for contracted salaries and what is actually spent okay so um comments for questions on that so we've got let me see one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven four so we
095got 12 potential priorities that that you came up with these are all these are all high on your mind so i know dr menzel might be sitting there going surely i'm not going to have to produce evidence for all 12 of these quite a few of these are going to be ongoing work but again in fairness to superintendent and the work uh ahead let's see if we can't focus on one or two of these probably two that capture that that are that's going to get to the broadest number of of these concerns and i think it's really pretty clear that a lot of these are going to carry over into the next school year because whether you identify barbara is number one or not the reality of it is the work's going to have to
096be spent on what is it going to look like when students are coming back and there's going to be we're all going to get smacked in the head on that one because there's a lot of learning down so okay um so gladys we've got 10 there can you maybe put those up on a wall or so that so that directors can see them side by side and while they're doing that before we do any combining or clarifying would you like to talk about anything that's on that list any questions you have any any anything that you want to mention maybe make a better argument for what you put up here okay patty beckman um i just want to clarify something first a i thought it was a little bit more short term but just so
097we have clarity when i was talking about our community partners i didn't mean to get feedback what i was what i meant and maybe i didn't articulate it correctly was that we have many many communities partners that provide support in to our school district via funding or other means and they have been reaching out saying we know you're going to need help we know you're going to need dollars we know you're going to need tutoring we know you're going to need before and after care there are many avenues that they have said how can we help you dr menzel has been meeting with them and listening to them i'd like him to continue that because the need is only greater so it really wasn't getting reaching out and getting feedback from them it was him
098meeting with them and saying these are the concrete areas where you can help us either with dollars or something else okay so i'm going to change the wording on apps and secure item engage with community partners to obtain support concerning district challenge does that sound better to you patty yep thank you sandy kravitz um i just wanted to say that i think what i was saying with regard to academics meshes with what allison was saying allison was just better at articulating it so we can combine there was no discussion we didn't have any discussion about implementing a community survey which i know we've discussed or i should say surveying our community members who either have not chosen scottsdale unified school district or removed their children from scottsdale unified school district um and i don't know
099if that fits in anywhere or that's more of a short-term thing that i don't know if we want to make that a performance objective or not i'm interested in your feedback on that john michael and also i should say teachers too why do they choose godzilla why don't they why did the don't do those so that's important john michael i i agree i fully agree with that i think the reason i the reason i put forward the ones i put forward is because a lot of these in my mind are very much either day-to-day things that we're doing so for example establishing a system to evaluate need for students is absolutely critical i think we all agree with that that's that's a really good priority however we are having a meeting on the 18th to
100deal with to discuss that and our administrative team is already working on that with subcommittees and and there are other aspects and then on the other hand i feel that a number of these are things that fall within the broader objectives so for example in my view capacity so buildings whether schools need to be closed addressing enrollment all that those are all things in my view quite rightly fall under the work that is undertaken to develop a strategic plan you can't develop that without doing all that work so that so i guess it really depends if we want to focus on individual aspects of greater objectives or focus on create setting out those overall objectives and then inputting these elements as the evidence shown to to to get there to get to that point and
101i and i agree i did a strategic plan that's why i said begin drafting in a year i mean it's a very long process it's a one to two year process if you've read this book that substantiates that so i didn't say have it done just begin that that's what we're moving towards by the end of the year is really starting to finalize all that so that is that was how i perceive objectives and then the subsets are many of these things that you you have each pointed out as evidence as the key results to get there if that makes sense anybody just want to weigh in on anything um always like you now then your permission is let's go look at that list again there's 12 and what what can we combine that has
102similar meaning to create an overarching general objective because i think john michael said i think there are some strategies up there that you know certainly fall under some of those categories and i'll just interject here because i i was i was going to um just add to what john michael said i would agree with you i think the idea was just just let's put out everything that we hear and then we'll do that i am um and we could go individually one by one i will say i think that barbara brought up a point that i don't think maybe is ins and and i want to find out if you're if i'm if i'm hearing correctly it's not just the need for the in person it's actually making a pro almost a priority list because
103we can't we may not be able to take back everybody all at once we might have to be doing a hybrid and that i think what you were talking about was establishing effective a way of making a priority list based upon that student's need exactly because there is there are students out there that if you had a prior list would benefit greater by coming back sooner and so i think it's almost that hybrid model um that she's speaking up which then i would go to i would say that is something that i believe is being done but mr menzel or dr menzel would have to uh talk about it and i would say and yeah i have the benefit of having sat on um a particular committee where this was already discussed so i'm a
104little ahead um kind of in those concerns but i think it is critical um that i appreciate the clarification because that is exactly what i mean it's one thing to say we want our schools open everybody's saying that it is another thing to shift to a priority of we have to look at the groups of students right now as good or as good as it gets edl is and we we know their success stories and we know students are some of them are going to thrive just fine in it but we also know there's groups of students that can't for whatever reasons and if we're not right now identifying them and we just kind of wait until we are all back in person it's very scary to me the number of students we we won't
105get back and i don't even mean in the sense of back as students in enrollment i just mean back as as students who can even begin to reach their potential and so if we don't start to identify those right now and rather than just keep saying we want to come back we want to come back it there is a strategic plan to work on in prioritizing the students who need it the most and then finding a way to use our facilities to get them back safely so where they can learn so that's my goal is it helpful to find out if we are already doing that because if we are then would it be a priority that we would be i mean if if if we're already doing in our day-to-day operations within this covet
106umbrella then that would be one we would take off wouldn't it i mean yeah i think it's the difference between pv saying we won't come back to we're all in the green okay right and queen creek saying i think that i'm that's what i'm trying a little bit careful here guys michelle's not here we did not post for and i don't want our community to look at the agenda that we have tonight and not see any discussion about return or edl returning and all that kind of stuff and be upset because we didn't have it on the agenda i understand what you're saying that it should be a priority within that like that we identify the learning gap if you're saying in the kids that are falling behind but i i just caution that we
107don't get into any discussions tonight with regard to any plan that may be presented in metrics that's why i presented it as as a top priority goal right that's right that's why so the question is will we be discussing that on the 18th and is it a priority or is it something that we're first learning about so yes we will be discussing on the 18th it's on the agenda and will be discussed in depth uh and and uh it's a priority i i think the point of differentiation is to what extent do you believe that the covid challenge is going to be with us for the full school year and how much of the time and energy of the superintendent the leadership team is going to be consumed by that versus other priorities and if
108at the end of the year when you step back and evaluate my performance is it going to be based on how we navigated the coping crisis which has consumed a lot of time or is it going to be on something else that was secondary to that so that that if i'm forced to make a choice between dealing with the immediacy of covid and or the priorities as a superintendent my my goal is to meet the performance expectations that you as a board set so if you if you it's it's kind of a both end yes but it's if you don't make the the response in some capacity part of a priority goal um and you you set some other things out there i will attend to what you put out there and if then you're
109not happy with the covet response to dr joel's point earlier if it's important to the board we we own these priorities so then if you're saying that what we really should be talking about is the granite reef corridor versus covid response those are two very different topics and and that's that's why having clarity on the front end is important because we don't want to get to may and and then say well wait a second you you majored in the minor things instead of the major uh yes but we also are made this is where that confusion comes in these are some of these may end up being the performance schools but that's not what we're talking about today that's how i thought we established it to begin with so it could end up being but
110tonight we are talking about those shorter term priorities is that correct um john michael i it's actually that's pretty much my i entirely agree with that it's it's in part why i set very probably what will end up being one to two year 18 month goals as dr joel said because i don't i think it's pretty clear we probably won't have a massive change other than in arizona the rates might have decreased to a point at least especially an area where it is safe to return to school but covid will still be an issue and i agree that that was the separation that we're choosing i'm going to just say objectives and key results versus your performance objectives because again i know i beat on about this okr system but that's that is actually a
111very significant distinction um which this system kind of falls which is we can set an objective uh here in my view quite honestly which is okay we want you by you know the the end of june of next year to have these five or three or whatever these five new initiatives to deal with diversity inclusion issues on our campus as an example that's right and you could come back and say look uh here's the situation with kovid blah blah this is a really important very important objective and the key results i wasn't able we just weren't able to reach them because time management on this everything's going to have to be delayed so i want to continue that for the next school year i was only able to put forward one in the okr system
112which this pretty much follows and especially since we've separated performance objectives from just these objectives in my view that would not be something held against you nor would i want to hold that against you because the whole point is of that system of this system in my view is that we're setting out our priorities the hope is that we're accomplishing them to 60 to 70 percent but if we can't there's a reason why and if it's a reason that you know if the reason is i was very lazy which i doubt is going to feel the reason um you know that's a bad reason but if the reason is look kobit has extended far longer than we expected these objectives some of these some of the evidence in my view some of the evidence-based things
113like we did review the statistics on you know score results and we think we can improve it by this and we can bring in new initiatives some of those might be accomplished but the overarching objectives that are maybe year long or long maybe those do not get fully completed that's why i presented such broad ones because i just i don't i'm very worried if we set really tiny objectives like having a meeting on this issue that's an that's an evidentiary that's a fact that leads to the objective and i don't want to reverse that because then i feel that you do run into that risk of well i wasn't able to do this little thing and i wasn't able to do this so that's that's my view you know and i respect that i just
114i will say i don't think it's put just a meeting though i mean i think probably the shortest term one is number one because because that is an immediate need and it would have to be done in a very short term basis i and i'm glad it was brought up as a priority because i don't know that it's been publicly thought of as breaking it down to those particular students who are at a greater need to get back in the classroom maybe it has but we just haven't had the public obsession i believe that public discussion will be coming on the 18th but it still is a priority and i to me the question is and i think you go through each one and i'm i'm getting to your point because some of these will
115some of those do fall under the strategic plan but is that already being done and therefore it doesn't need to be one of these because it will be a short-term priority that might be fixed in the next 30 days i don't know that's why we're having the discussion everybody else might agree with you barbara that it needs to be a priority for that very reason so that's maybe what you think i completely agree with identifying the children the students that are at risk and are falling behind that we're going to lose as a priority i just wanted to caution us to have that discussion center around that and not to get into any of the reopening you know metrics or guidelines or data and because there is a committee and barbara in full disclosure is
116on it and i am on it and since we didn't have that on the agenda tonight you aren't on it so i didn't want anyone to accidentally go in there into that discussion i just wanted our priority discussion to center around what i think was your point which is those students and not to center around or accidentally go into a territory that we're going to be discussing on agenda tuesday night thank you andy kravitz i just wanted to remind some of us that back in the not so distant past when we were discussing goals etcetera we originally got on the board and this goes to your point about how will you be evaluated there was a discussion of showing what the superintendent was working on whether red and there were there was a graph showing
117red whether nothing's been done yellow in process and green completed so and the the idea behind that was to keep the board apprised of what was going on and that kind of fell by the wayside um recently so that the board didn't know what was occurring um so i think you know to your point about well we're working on covet are we working on the if we know that things are in process that you know that it may not have been completed but if it's in process we will at least have an understanding and that will work towards your your review can i suggest another way of maybe um framing this that that could help us so when i look at what you put up here there is a student achievement aspect of our focus
118that resonates through any number of these including the how are we going to prioritize students in need to our diversity equity inclusion conversation to so it seems to me that there is an emphasis on student achievement ensuring that each fulfills their full potential it's important for the district if you are a school district and you do not have an achievement goal then i don't know why you're in the school business so one i think the overarching umbrella would be student achievement there are a lot of specific indicators underneath that that can help us identify what do we need to know what are we doing about it what's working what's not working the even the valuation metric right because ultimately we know that teachers played the most important role outside of the family in terms of
119supporting student achievement so all of these things feed into an overarching student achievement goal so that would be one secondly we can't do the work of being a high performing public education system if we're not tending to the financial realities in front of us so if you're if your second area of focus is financial as an umbrella thing you can put some other pieces on there now you might not on michael's point you might not be able to get to everything but you have a structure for framing how do these two sides of the coin fit together if there's a third piece it's really setting out that long-term vision for where we're going so to me i i want to begin to create that destination picture of what scottsdale unified school district looks like 10
120years from now how do we ensure that we are high performing district that competes with anyone around the globe and and there's a long process to do that so this notion of getting started on the journey is important but to me maybe the way we avoid you know getting into the weeds and some of these others just is think about the academic and the financial is as two pieces of the core we can then talk about what's the evidence and then the third piece is really a commitment to starting on this journey just just a potential way of framing i agree i i think i think that makes a lot of sense and i agree and i think that one of the points bringing up is that strategic plan and that i think is a
121priority i do think it needs to start now but i actually think of it as being more of that performance goal because we know how long it takes but knowing it's going to be starting now because the gathering process needs to happen in the next six seven months because some of it possibly could happen and therefore when the new board comes on you're going to be kind of ahead of the game because you're going to have some of that data and information yeah i i think the dichotomy is is not problematic what i what i i will say is that um as board members we tend to ask for or we spend a lot of time discussing specific measurable objectively measurable objectives and results and what we end up doing in my view is often
122creating objectives and their key results that aren't measurable and then not very happy that they're not accomplished so if we talk about data driven decision making i don't know you know or or statistics dr joel actually said not to use statistics at this point in time just because it's so early in the game we have a brand new administration all that but what you would want eventually is to say increase you know this student body whatever that descriptions you know their performance on ames by 5 something that is measurable because we often then say well this isn't measurable well of course it's not measurable because we didn't set it up to be measurable so uh and that and i mean that's that's we all i mean that it's just kind of a routine we fall
123into that i want to avoid so in these objectives if we break them if we want to if we want to fast track this by saying okay look the key things are focus on academics focus on finance focus on strategic vision um it's okay if the i mean i can't hold up the board so if the majority if we're on the view that okay we're going to just set generic these are the areas and then we're going to toss these into them as the measurements um i would just system still during this time but you know there's so many reasons why performance could drop off at this time that is representative of the general trend of our district etc so like that without baselines and without specific measurements i find it really hard to just
124create objectives and their results in the way that we've done in the way that we've done it so i would hope that as we finish this process with dr joel that we keep that in mind and actually think of how can we frame this in a way that we can say oh okay so we're like this is something we're actually moving towards a goal a specific goal we're moving towards and this is how we're measuring it and my understanding is because there's two points to this and they are that we actually do the measurements and then actually there's an action plan that is set out that we know about is that correct dr joel so it's not just making you know having these priorities set there are two other components to it that actually answer
125uh michael's questions yeah you know one of the things that's clear to me is because you've not gone through a comprehensive strategic planning process you're trying to you're trying to do that now and when when you do go through of that process every year you will have goals updated with metrics and measurements and indicators and that will have broad-based community buy-in and that's going to be your that's going to be your your your guiding light for all the work going forward and you know so i really what i want to get you off of is is doing the strategic planning work today and really figure out you've got a first year superintendent who's got a lot of zeal a lot of energy wants to do the right thing and you know we drink it through
126a fire hose right now i mean i can just imagine what that's like and what what do you want this person that you just went through a very very um you went through a great process to to to get the right superintendent to focus on so that not only do you take care of the immediate needs you you then put yourself in position to think about long-term news and i do agree that you just don't have a strategic plan you've got to go through a comprehensive process that's going to be your organizational plan going forward and what you'll end up doing is quarterly you'll review your strategic plan and and you'll measure yourself on you know did you did you increase academic achievement for all students by two percent or three percent or graduation rate
127or enrollment trends and all of those things would be in your plan diversity inclusion and equity that'll be part of your strategic plan you're not going to get that done between now and and january 1st nor are you going to get it done between now and the end of the year and i do agree with dr mental i think there's three overarching themes that have emerged here and and that is to to work on planning to work on on um you know that your your coming back to school plan and then you know looking at you know your fiscal and your some of those realities so i think what you have up here quite frankly is very good stuff and i know documental is going to keep that in mind as he goes forward because
128these are these these are all action items but can we boil it down to two overarching focus areas that he can go to his teams with and basically say okay the priority work is that this is where we're going to have to on a monthly basis to give an update to the governing board on our progress in these areas so that's as you look at that list can you can you combine it can you agree with what dr menzel put out there that there basically are three strategic area so i'd like to hear from the board members somebody want to raise their hand first sandy kravitz well i think what dr menzel said he condensed our priorities to two things too uh you know major areas you know efficiencies and uh you know academics so
129i think we can put some of those they can be combined but but the though what we've come up with the 12 items fit under those two umbrellas thinking berber can you comment you don't have to well it's just again i i mean i am thoughtful with the idea of you know our purpose here tonight what are we saying to our community right now especially in this time to leave here tonight and say our priorities are fiscal responsibility and academics i i guess i mean obviously they are i like the details we've laid out i get it 12 that's that's a lot of goals that's plenty to focus on i um i guess i'm just not understanding the question are we trying to decide how to present it or or to narrow it down more
130from 12 to 3. i guess is my question dr joel i would say narrow it down to two or three overarching broad-based goals and then let uh dr menzel and his team come up with those action strategies to that that'll meet and will meet those goals and then you as a as a board of governors working with him provide timely updates on patty westman so i feel like what you said makes a lot of sense and narrowing it down to three to kind of jump off what you said with academics and fiscal responsibility absolutely but before that two barbarous point and i guess this could fall under academics but we have academics in general because we do educate we have a very big priority which is determining those that aren't being served well right now
131so i think that's almost a precursor academics to the academics so it would be points for me with from a priorities perspective is a determining those children that we aren't serving well right now two focusing on academics overall three fiscal responsibility to sandy's point etc and even to my point about reaching with the community partners to help us support those areas of need and that kind of goes back to and the fiscal responsibility as well serving the academic need and then finally those drive into creating a plan so that's kind of how i see this conversation being molded because i agree with you on michael that is that's that has to be one of the biggest priorities because these all fall underneath that if if i may just with the i if if we want
132to do that i'm i'm very happy to do that um and and put those three up the categories that dr mensel put forward and then allow them to move these types of things within them and do that i just the the reason why the covit issue is not something that i put up as an objective is because we have to do that that isn't like we don't have to do a strategic plan because we've not done one for decades so uh you know like we we have to perform well on dr menzel to dr mensa's point i don't want to distract from that with certain things at the same time i don't see the point really in spending much more time on this topic if what we really want to do is just set objectives
133that are all that are either already being worked on or are definitely on the radar i don't think there's a single administrator in our district who is not very cognizant of the fact that we have many students for whom edl is not a sufficient option who aren't also students at need under the governor's definition of needing to you know just a place to be a safe place to be i don't i don't think that that is being ignored and it seems like based on comments made that is being looked at already you know as are as far as i was aware the gaps in education caused by the last semester losing pretty much most of last semester and starting here i believe our teachers are working on that so it's up i i don't really
134have a dog in the fight really at this point because i've you know i'm very clear about these objectives and how they all mold into what dr menzel's been talking about but if we're going to set key objectives that are beyond that that go beyond academics this that and focus on i think they can probably do that on their own i don't know if we really need as dr joel said i don't really think we need to go beyond this if we're all on board of saying okay objective is academics objective is fiscal responsibility objective is vision planning that's fine i it's just the covet thing is is being i mean that's their day-to-day that is what they do day to day so i don't know if setting i guess it's a difference between saying
135in my mind do i want to set something that isn't necessarily the day-to-day but is a long-term thing versus just setting something that's day-to-day i mean i would imagine that the exit surveys and the entrance surveys all these things we've been talking about for years are things that we are looking into and have made big strides on i mean the let's talk and all this are really great new programs introduced and i've heard really good feedback on about them so you know we are working on a lot of these aspects patty beckman well and that's a you know i hear your point and that's why when we originally started this dr joel i was a little bit confused because your question did say in addition to the day-to-day operation so there was an assumption on
136my part when i started drafting or what i was going to say is what okay i know what a superintendent and leadership team is supposed to be doing every single day what as a board member could i see that they could do as an aside to that that would make us better so that's where my mind went and then beyond that was okay are we talking short term we're talking long term so it was a little bit unclear as far as i'm concerned about what we were trying to establish today i know everyone else wants to yeah that's i mean that's how i took it was in addition to because on a day to day we're working on all these covert related things but then you know we also do have if we're going to
137make any changes to the organizational chart you know that's maybe that is being done day to day i don't know i imagine that right now everyone is so much in the hustle of you know making sure everything's being covered all aspects that you know focus on the grander issues that we would have been focusing on were not for covid you know i don't know if that's been dropped off so maybe maybe if anything if dr menzel would like to propose two or three objectives to us as the overarching in a specific phrase and maybe we could say you know what that captures what we're looking for and go from there would that be is that a fair thing to do to see if okay just one moment if you don't mind before you answer that
138can we get some feedback patty beckman okay just one last thing because of all everybody else talk to your point though i have to go back to this cove thing for one more second just because i would have an assumption that that's something we would be doing every day too because he dr menzel did say 100 of his time is being focused on that but as a board member and a parent i have yet to hear or understand i'm assuming that that the get learning gaps will be addressed i'm assuming that we're trying to identify those kids by the executive order we have our camps going and whatnot but i haven't really heard it as a board member like what is our plan for identifying those gaps what financially are we going to be putting
139in place are we going to be bringing in tutors after school are we going to be doing more things like we do at coronado right now for like rise hour and that type of things to work with these kids i don't know what that plan is or if things of that plan are outside of our teachers working miracles i don't know what we're actually doing so i agree agree with you that i have an assumption that that should be in your day-to-day because that's your world right now i would like to understand and i think our community would like to understand too that if there are kids struggling and falling behind that we do have a plan that not only are we doing putting in place now while these kids are in edl or we're
140trying to identify them but that when they do return to campus that they're going to have significant support to identify where they are and meet them there and catch them up so that's my last thing and i'll just fault that because part of what i was speaking about is even though we say we're working on student achievement i've been three and a half years and i've been waiting for those conversations for how do we measure it because what we've known is is that if you look at our data that is presented to us which is arizona merits it shows that when you're in elementary school we're doing really well and you fall down in middle school and by the time you hit high school you're 40 to 50 percent of the kids that were failing
141that aren't passing it and so we are passing kids out of scottsdale's unified school district that aren't meeting that we're not meeting their needs to be career and college ready and i it is a priority for us especially until to start meeting those needs to start identifying them start you know understanding and identifying the data that we need that growth data because it's probably not just the district aggregate number it's really the individual because therefore we're identifying those kids that we really need to shore up and give more support to and how are we doing that so it is part of its communication but part of it is to identifying those data points those growth points how many kids is it so that we can start to see that we are not failing so many
142of our kids so that's why it's a priority for me and it is different from what we've had may i interject for just a second is it isn't it fair though to give your superintendent an opportunity to gain a better understanding of the things that you put up on the board tonight so that as opposed to what you believe to be true and i'm please don't be disrespected by this and i i get what allison just said about three and a half years and i've just not gotten what i need out of this so there's a sense of urgency but you hired a superintendent a superintendent where that was one of the priorities that he told us to go find somebody that knows how to be an instructional leader and so isn't it not fair
143to give him an opportunity to i'll just use the word audit but develop a comprehensive understanding of what the data is you can't do that in 45 days you can't do that 90 days and and and you definitely can't do it when you're trying to trying to work through a pandemic and so i really like the idea of a broad overarching goal that is you know immerse yourself in gaining an understanding of where we stand academically for all students that we can become and i heard dr mendel paid before the the a world-class school district as good as anybody in america or the world for that matter but you know the goal isn't get there and be and get the designation the goal is to learn about it understand it so that you can begin
144bringing some some forceful strategies to the table the same thing about fiscal responsibility my guess is that from the from the minute he came well i know when we were when i was doing the recruiting and i said there's a real concern there about loss of students and the financial impact that's going to have on the long-term budget and as it plays out in facilities but i'm not sure that in 45 days you can really get a grasp for that i think you need to give your superintendent some time to do that and then you know that and you need a strategic plan you cannot keep operating by the seat of your pants i mean the reality of it is you're you're a you're a special interest group away from a policy and you can't
145you can't live that way you have to have a plan you have to control your future and that plan has to be flexible and fluid so i really do like the idea based on what you're saying is create three let's create three overarching goals and and understand that the pandemic is priority one for everybody including you what is it going to look like when you're back being functional and i'm not saying you're not functional but you know there's a lot of concern out there with regard what is it going to look like so i mean can i does that help if i frame it up that way and then what would you expect as a board of directors is for documental to give you updates now you're doing some of the work right now and
146you'll see it in evidence in action but put it on your monthly board meeting agenda update on district priorities where are we you know your community has a real desire to need to know that but but really every one of them when we work with first year soups and boards these are broad and overarching and then you're too they get a lot more specific now you have a strategic plan now you can put the indicators and the action plans for goals on how you're going to get there and you can measure your effectiveness by that does that help if we look at it yes i think that perspective is um important to hear especially i'll say for me once again because what happens is i think at least i can speak for myself and i
147believe the board also we have confidence in dr munzel that's why we hired him and i can say in the the 45 days that he's been here and prior to that um i have only heard positive comments and confidence in his abilities especially his communication skills which i know are so appreciated and will only help to calm some of the passion that you hear and some of the frustration that you hear i think that when you ask for this type of a conversation it's going to get messy it's going to get passionate because we care so much for our students and our community and it's not reflective of your abilities or how we see the superintendent coming into work but i do think it's important to hear hear the details of those priorities otherwise they
148get misinterpreted and so i am thankful that we can have these discussions we also have to remember we never get to talk to each other outside this room so when we're here this is if we're going to have real authentic conversation we need to be able to be comfortable and be able to share and i think that that's what you hear also and so i appreciate the perspective but i think there's a there's also perspective on our side given the fact that we don't get to meet and have these discussions very often and we're appreciative of them and then i'm just going to follow up i don't know that there is any disagreement with the strategic plan i know i'm in full support of it i've heard from two other board members and i've seen
149shaking heads um it the strategic plan that was put in place even though it's not enforced and it's not looked at was through 2020. so it was a natural time to go into the next strategic plan and i don't think anybody is is not in favor but i don't want to speak there barbara and i do want to add that too because yes you're correct it was years ago there was a tremendous amount i've had for a strategic plan and then there was the last four or five however many years i think shifted away from a strategic plan as it was done and then and instead focused on a big culture shift in susd and i don't want to discount that i don't want to act like nothing has happened in years we've taken a
150wild ride yes these last few years but we also had some huge culture shifts around data around assessment of our students and what they know also a huge culture shift in accepting that we needed to look at where we really were and who we really are as susd and we had a lot of challenges in doing that work and so i just don't want to discount all the the work especially around data and assessment and um you know even evaluations of our staff and teachers and evaluations of ourself as a district where we really are and looking in a mirror um that was difficult painful work and i just don't want to dismiss it as we haven't done anything so thank you john michael so do you should we now just being cognizant of the
151time should we um combine some of these or do we want to give dr mensel the opportunity to put forward maybe two or three that that he thinks um and his in his understanding addresses a number of these if unless that's putting you on the spot and you don't want to do that being cognizant of the fact that covet is such a big issue on the day to day what what might you like to see since it does have to be mutual between all of us that you know we're all in this together would that be an appropriate thing dr joel or do you not recommend that do you think that's a bad idea i don't want to step on on anyone's process here no i you know it's that's an option certainly i mean
152i can work with dr mendel and i can work together kind of capture the essence of this and give it to you as a giraffe at some point where you know you can look at it um you know i i think yeah that's certainly okay i will tell you in a lot of districts you know that the board president and the superintendent sit down and you know create the draft and a lot of times it's a lot easier to come to some kind of consensus we'll do whatever but i i do you know i do appreciate the conversation i do appreciate where you are this space and time and it's you know this is difficult work i mean there's just no question about it and i'd like to tell you a lot's gonna get done
153this year but you know education in america right now is dealing with the biggest priority ever and you know until we get that under control it's going to be really hard to focus on um a lot of those other things now i'm talking learning gaps are important because that's a part of that pandemic recovery plan so no i think if the board if the board is willing if you want to do that i mean that would make we could make a run at that i think there's enough information here if i was you said to me combine them i could combine them so um i'll just do a quick out loud reflection on on some of what we have and how i i'm hearing it now i think some of it fits so addressing the
154needs of our students in terms of an academic priority and and being very clear about how we're going to do that in a covet environment so the focus is still centering our students and what their needs are to achieve their full potential our reality which we always have to start from is now influenced by a global pandemic and so how are we going to attend to our commitment to ensure every student achieves their full potential in this environment and there are a lot of moving parts and pieces but it is a part of our overall academic goal so so to me that's not incompatible and then to sandy's point on the focus on academics emphasis on these other programs i actually want to look at those programs and ask the question how are they operating
155in a covet environment and does that really maybe it's not a problem with avid does avid um work in in a virtual environment what shifts or adjustments have been made and then we ultimately have to ask the question how do we know azmerit was shelved last year what are the data points that we're going to use to identify student growth because it's really growth over some static metric and we have got kids all along the continuum we have a graduating class of 2021. what are we doing to make sure they're prepared for their next step whatever that is that's part of our core work as an organization what becomes a part of the goal i think for the superintendent is how are we going to navigate those questions in this environment and and on the
156financial front it's the same kind of thing we don't know what the impacts of covet are going to be on our enrollment both those that are coming back in person and those that are online now who may stay online and what's the long-term impact but we have to be prepared for it we have to have those conversations we have to talk about um if then kinds of statements so i think when i look at almost all these things i i see the tie to the broad overarching goal but absent starting on the on the road to where we're going um those are just still routine to me the the the bigger picture the more compelling thing for scottsdale unified is what do we want to become and how do we create a clear and compelling
157destination picture for where we'll be so that we can work towards that from our current reality so we can be accomplishing both the immediacy and i made a note when i i think about some of the comments i've heard there's a certain triage element to the work that we do we know we've got systems that are broken that you point i can talk to each one of you and you say that's not working it hasn't been working there's a certain triage that we can do short term to attend to that and i'm thinking specifically about contracts that are given before evaluations are finished and then frustration there's a triage response to that to make sure we address it and then there's the long term what's the most effective evaluation strategy to ensure peak performance by
158every person who works at scottsdale unified both are important right we got to make sure that we don't keep moving people along if they're not performing to our standards and we should be saying well what is the best evaluation system long term to ensure high levels of performance from everyone that works in the organization the second one's going to take longer than the first one so there's a triage element so for me i'm always trying to figure out what's the both end what are the things that address you know known concerns that we can do short term while recognizing that to build the systems of the future it's going to hinge on clarity on where we're going and then working backwards from that so that's that's sort of how i'm processing what i'm hearing thank
159you dr joel i i just took the liberty while dr mendez was talking here's what i wrote down so to react to this in addition to the day-to-day duties develop an understanding of the needs of our students to fulfill their highest potential during and following the cobit pandemic environment i think that gets to everyone to me would get every one of your academic concerns right not going to be easy work but it's there secondly initiate the process of long-range planning to develop scottsdale unified into the most impactful and effective district for all students in the country country seems a little limited any comments i know i kind of pulled the any comments how do you feel about those as a start of the wordsmithing to narrow these down did i say bueller [Laughter] i i
160i'm fine with those as first year objectives daddy supports okay so what we can do is uh start with those and then we'll be sending the draft out because we won't be making any i'm sorry i apologize we won't be making any decisions tonight um so that we can we can look at those and then that gives everybody a chance to you know go back think about it and um yeah michael i don't i don't see any reason why these 12 concepts when because they will shorten them and make them into something when they're put underneath they'll just be plugged in underneath you know as as parts of the measurement um and that way you know it's all wrapped up and what we can get to logically and i think you know student metrics and
161reviewing what we what data we do have right that's something that will very likely be if it's not all i assume in large part it's already being reviewed and has been reviewed but even more of it will be you know putting these strategies together i think we just toss them into those buckets and that's what we say for the year what we get to we get to why didn't we get to certain things why we did get to certain things what did we achieve and learn from them that's a really good way of starting off am i correct dr joel two that it when we establish those the next steps are on your established performance objectives it's you go through kind of the evaluation procedures you put together um kind of an action plan so
162the easiest one you can think of is the strategic plan you start to put together the calendar for making that happen right and so we're going to be getting progress reports on these objectives and then so we're going to be seeing those measurements as you have focus groups over zoom per se and we'll know that we had those so you can kind of check off that that we're that we're progressing is that correct right and you know as part of your evaluation of documental one of the recommendations you always make supertenant is keep a binder of all the work that you're doing and uh the authentic evidence that you know you you've tended to these things this has been a priority so i mean that can be captured in several ways no you you need
163to you know if you agree that we're close on these two and then ensure that there are timely updates on the work i mean the gift that you give your first year superintendent is a chance to go in you know eyes wide open learn about the nuances learn about the stuff that's in the broom closet i mean you know you're i'm sure he's been he's received lots of advice and information remember and if you adopt these two i think you're giving him that invitation to go out and start having some some good conversations with people and maybe even courageous conversation because i think you were pretty clear today as you were when we initiated the search process there's a lot of work to be done here i mean i don't remember who it was it
164might have been allison i remember one time you said to me in one of our meetings there was a time where everybody wanted to send their kids to scottsdale unified that it was it was the place and i don't remember how long ago was 1978. what is it why isn't that the way it is i mean we heard that from your stakeholder groups internal and external so you know to me as a superintendent i know this word documental conference this is a golden opportunity to come to a place and really hit a reset button and and do the work that he's been trained to do and he wants to do but boy this pandemic just got in the way it it did and i think too that probably what you're learning is that even though
165we have patients underneath we don't show it all the time and so that's something to remember also um and i i i agree with what you just said so here's what i would suggest give me a chance to process this i'll i'll be in touch with um dr mangel and and and allison and and we'll we'll get you something that you know maybe you can consider at your two day board meeting would that be fair to to have a follow-up conversation on i'm not trying to press your timeline at all i just want to make sure that there's a product uh dr menzel and i did talk about that we were thinking more september one because we do have so much going on so if that's acceptable that gives everybody else a little breathing room
166too to look at the drafts because they still have to go through their board books anything else you need from me at this point in in terms of this i mean i'm i'll we'll go to work on this right now and you know ultimately we'll ask you to approve them and you know to hold yourselves and dr mendel accountable for making sure that these are broadly communicated and you know one of the things that that has always worked with not only myself but any superintendent i work with is once the board takes action you know this is when you're visiting schools dr menzel you're talking to community groups this is this is your jumping off point these are the things that you've agreed and i think um you know people begin to pay attention you
167engage in some of that long range short length uh short and long range planning and you'll captivate people's attention i mean we we had so much community feedback going through this search process that um there's a lot of work there but it it can all be streamlined to accomplish what it is that i know each one of you wants to accomplish and so the future is indeed bright it's been a real pleasure working with you i mean i this has been a successful search for me and in a lot of ways and without question you you you land at the right person at the right time to take you to the next level we we feel that way also want to thank you for taking on kind of solely this second attempt at the search
168we appreciated it as president this past six months i appreciate the opportunity that you've provided with your time and your energy to talk through a lot of things so thank you very much i want to give an opportunity to the other board members if they have anything they want to say before dr joel signs off i think we all echo that statement thank you thank you thank you and we wish you luck in nebraska and in lincoln um we know it's tough everywhere so god be with you if you want to feel good about what's what's not happening yet scottsdale uh google lincoln and and see what i mean these are real challenges with reopening schools and there is no right decision i mean we've had protests in our parking lots it's just been it's
169been tough and it's been there done that minimize what what it represents anyway real pleasure good luck i stand part of our contract with you is i'll be working um as in any way that dr menzel needs a phone call conversation think through uh an issue and you know if i can come back down there and help you with anything i'm more than happy to do it i think your future's bright go get it work together to do that your kids are going to be the ultimate beneficiary so with that i'll uh i'll sign off and then i'll get my information off to document okay all right thank you very much thank you dr joel okay i'll give uh board members an opportunity again before we adjourn the meeting and dr denzel if you have
170anything you'd like to say so i just want to thank you for your time i was two and a half hours in it's important to have a conversation and put things on the table and to see where people are coming from and so i i look forward i know that we'll bring something back as a starting point and i'm glad we have until september 1st to do some massaging of it because we have important topics for tuesday thank you you're all right thank you if that then i will adjourn these glasses on again never get used to it all right i moved to during the special meeting of the governing board do i have a second second board member kravitz seconds all in favor aye aye motion passes 5-0 this special meeting the governing board
171on august 13 2020 is adjourned at 6 35 pm thank you you