001e e e call call this meeting to order item 1.1 roll call we've got trusty Emerson trusty Jeff and trusty Underwood we are missing trusty um clerk Duncan tonight he is out of state uh for business um and he will be back with us unfortunately not next Tuesday but for our next meeting all righty we're going to go ahead and move to item two organization welcome and Pledge of Allegiance Jeremy would you please lead us right I pledge Ali to the flag the United States of America to the repblic for which stands one nation God indivisible with liy and justice for all awesome awesome welcome thank you guys for being here on a random Tuesday outside of our ordinary and our special guests that we're going to be presenting tonight um we just I just
002want to let you guys know that this me meeting is being audio and video recorded um and we'll go ahead and move to item 2.2 approval of the special meeting agenda do I have a motion I'll move to approve we have a first second we have a first by trusty Jeff and a second by truste like um all in favor say I I I all oppose hearing none motion passes unanimously item three information discussion items I'd like to welcome our plaster County Office of Education um and our superintendent Gail garalina moika and her team thank you guys for being here tonight item 3.1 go ahead and take it away go ahead and tap okay it is all right now I'm on okay thank you perfect thank you Sarah all right um welcome well thank you
003very much um as Miss bade said my name is Gail garalina mooham the plaster County Superintendent of Schools and tonight I have two individuals with me um I have Dr Colleen Slattery who's my assistant superintendent of Human Resources who has assisted me in many of the superintendent searches and then online I have uh Scott Leman who is the retired superintendent of the western plaster Unified School District who I have asked to assist me with this search um coming up here as well unfortunately my um my work and my personal travel uh in the month of April and May is not conducive to sit with you to do interviews and so I needed to enlist the help of Scott Leman uh to take my Place uh when you actually do uh conduct your interviews so with
004that I will start um with you know superintendence what finding a district superintendent is a very um important aspect um it's probably one of the most important decisions that you guys will do as trustees is hiring your next superintendent um they're going to work with you to shape the district's mission and vision um they work um collaboratively with the stakeholders your staff they are out in the community and are the spokesperson serving as Community ambassadors um and they really set the tone for for the district and the students and so um it's a really important vital job um sometimes in our small districts the the boards will say do we need a superintendent can we just get by with a a a principal and I said actually by law you actually do need a superintendent
005so um it's one of the requirements so as that is um where we he this evening it's important to note that uh right now there are more uh openings for superintendents than there are for qualified individuals um in California the average tenure for a district superintendent is 2.9 years and I've heard recently that that might have dropped and it might be as low as 2.7 meaning that across the state of California the average time that a superintendent spends working as a superintendent in a school district is less than three years um and you can see that prior to the pandemic there were the turnover rate was around 11% each year and after the pandemic we're averaging about 20% superintendent um turnover some local data that I accumulated was in the last 5 years we have
00616 school districts in the last five years we have had 19 superintendent changes in our County three districts have had three superintendent changes in three years and three districts have had two superintendent changes in 5 years excuse me five years um and only four out of 16 of our school district superintendents have stayed longer than 5 years so this is something where um it's not uncommon in our County um to to have a opening at at the level of the superintendent um we are a desirable County there are people that want to come here but realizing that it's important that um as we are moving through this process that it's a professional process it's a confidential process um all of those things will help add to the caliber of the high quality candidates which is
007who you want to attract into this position so key qualities that a school board is looking to recruit a superintendent um is the stability of the board members the stability of the District budget um continuing academic progress and the stability of your relationship with your employees these are and your previous successes with your superintendent these are all things that highquality uh candidates are really going to pay attent attention to and do their research on um skilled uh desired qualities and skills that boards seek in a superintendent is educational leadership strong communication if you don't have strong communicators we're going to be running into problem after problem a strategic Vision collaborative decision- making and strong values and integrity and I always tell people so the job of the superintendent you can learn but you can't learn
008integrity and you can't learn judgment and if you don't have those as a highly qual you're not a high highly qualified candidate for the superintendent position so this search typically takes between four and six months um I'm assuming that you want to hire so that this person will start in July 1 I'm assuming and if you tell me tonight oh no no we're fine with an October 1st date I need to know that so um that that changes a little bit of our timeline but if we look at this right now um if you do are searching for a July 1 date we would have the application close um probably late March early April now that I look at that it's probably going to be April not not March because we're at right now March
00911th so it would be uh in April that we would have this position closed we would probably post for three weeks 3 to four weeks depending upon where we are able to get our advertisements in the AXA edal publication uh late April early May is scheduled to do interviews typically with superintendent interviews those are um Saturday and Sunday where Saturdays um you choose the eight people that you would like to interview you meet on a Saturday it's closed session um Scott Leman will be with you to help guide you through that process and you interview your candidates and you decide which are the two or three candidates you want to bring back for uh Sunday's um final interview which tends to be a little bit more casual um again it's in close session at that
010time as well um at that point once you've made your uh selection um we will turn it over to your attorney who will then work with the board president on drafting a contract for approval to bring at your next regular scheduled board meeting it's important as a state law was passed a couple of years ago that superintendent contracts need to be approved at regular board meetings not at special board meetings so you have two board meetings a month so you have a little bit more flexibility um to go ahead and either have that um on the agenda um in early May or in miday or whenever your May board meetings are um and we want to make sure that we could do it in June as well but I think you would probably want to
011move quicker rather than slower in this particular area but once you chose somebody you're able to bring them on so tonight a couple of things that we need to talk about is I need to know your time frame of when you want to um interview I saw on your board agenda item you chose two weekends I believe it was the last weekend in April and the first weekend in May um as your two weekends that's great um those are typically when interviews happen um and we also need to know um the level of community input that you would like to see in the superintendent search and there's three main ways in which you can have Community input you can do focus groups of key Partners so for example you could say we want to hear
012from our um teachers we want to hear from classified we want to hear from our managers we want to hear from our ptc's um we want to hear from our boosters who are the constituencies that you would like to choose from to bring together that you know Colleen and I and Scott could facilitate a focus group to get an idea of what do they think their next superintendent should possess what skills what's more important is it more important to have high school experience or would you be open to somebody who was a seasoned superintendent who you know was a superintendent of a K8 I mean so what what is the priority of the community um focused interviews you could say Okay Gail we want you to go talk to um all the feeder School superintendents
013and and we want you to talk to uh the chamber CEO and the president of lions and rotary and we would say okay and we would hold focused interviews with those individuals or we can uh administer a survey um to all of those people uh all those individuals and those groups as well to gather information once we gather information we will compile that into a report and we will give that to you to put on your board meeting agenda as an information item to you and to your community that basically says this is the priority these are the type of qualities and experience and skills that we are seeking in our new superintendent and you can use that when it comes down to making a decision about who you want to interview and who you
014want to hire into your position so just this shows you some of our previous searches that we've done we do a a graphic professionally designed job announcement that we sent across the state and we run ads in our local uh AXA Association of California school administrators publication ed cow so um and I saw this on your agenda and this is what we talked to Jessica about I believe last week is first we need to look at your job description and when was the last time that your job description was updated and you want may want to look at that and make some changes so I'm seeing this on the agenda so I'm assuming that you looked at the job description and was like hm okay last time it was updated um we need to change
015these and so um and I know that I think Colleen provided uh Roseville joint Union High School District as a sample they updated their uh job description prior to their search in 2021 you need to have a conversation about do you want to have a traditional versus a non-traditional candidate a traditional candidate is somebody who um basically has an administrative service credential they're a certificated teacher um a non-traditional candidate is somebody who doesn't have um a administrative credential um many times when you have boards that are in like some sort of fiscal distress the idea of having like a CBO uh an assistant superintendent of business come in to be the superintendent is quite desired so I will say that in California even though you required to have a superintendent you are not required to
016have a superintendent that has an administrative service credential however we are Educators and we uh provide education to students and more often than not super boards do select superintendents that have an administrative credential but that that would be something that we would want to hear uh we can put that in our job uh posting if whether or not you're interested in a non-traditional candidate and I'm going to turn to Colleen real quick did they pointed out that it was a required administr of credential or suggested preferred preferred so you left a you in your job description allowed a little bit of flexibility internal candidates applicants do you think that you're going to have internal candidates in applicants it's helpful for me to know because then I'm going to have a conversation with them one of
017them will be hey candidate a you work in the district you're going to get an email from us that says welcome to this focus group please sit down by law they can't participate in that focus group so it's I need to know if you think there's going to be an an internal candidate and I will go to them and I will say hey um great but please don't participate in this um and then Colleen and I have started the process that before we do any um focus groups with staff members um we do ask them if anybody is interested in applying that they need to leave um they need to leave because they can't be here so that help that also helps us so it's just a second layer of um of protection to make
018sure that we're not hiring somebody that has put input into what they feel should be the next superintendent and their we're going to say me are all of my wonderful qualities P prior experience um you know you're in a kind of a little sweet spot right here with 4,000 kids you might get somebody with prior district superintendent experience and is that important to you would you rather have somebody who was uh a director and an assistant superintendent in a high school district or would you prefer somebody who who had superintendent experience in maybe a unified school district what is important to you that is something that we need to know as well and the graduate degree do you want graduate degree master's degree or even a doctorate degree preferred or required so criteria for our
019initial screening um we're going to run the Ed join posting off of our account um and all the applicants are going to make their application to our Edge join um I will go through those Colleen will go through those Scott will go through those and the three of us will come up and we'll say we actually think out of these 30 applicants we think these eight are really high quality candidates but here's the thing I'm going to give you all 30 applications and so that when you look at those applications you can say hm I think I like candidate number six well in addition to pre-screening I'm going to have conversations with um my colleagues around the state about the applicants to kind of do an initial reference check so it may be we have
020a candidate who has gone from job to job to job um maybe there's been some allegations of sexual harassment that has popped up at two of their job positions well that's not going to come through on a that's not going to come through on an application so when I sit down and you're going to say well Gail how come you didn't like candidate number six and I was going to I'll say that candidate has had to leave two jobs because there were allegations of sexual harassment and then you need to figure out what you want to do moving forward with that candidate um I will say that most of the time when Colleen and I do review these we hit our top eight or with maybe one exception of one candidate are always the same
021um and I but there are times when um we have boards that say no no no I like the six out of eight but I want to add this one person in and so long as the majority of the board is in favor of that we can add that one person in so I'm in charge Gail okay there we go it's important to note that the board is the only entity that will hire the superintendent um another thing that and and I say that because um one option that many boards take is they have a community interview panel on that Saturday so maybe at 9:00 in the morning you all come here and Scott's here with you and we have the six candidates that we're going to interview the seven candidates you're going to interview
022you may have wanted a community panel to interview the seven as well and that interview Community interview panel May consist of representatives from your collective bargaining teams it might be representatives from your management team it may be representatives from the from the city of Auburn it may be representatives from um the rotary and the nonprofits the boosters the school you may ask a student to be on that panel that Community input panel is going to interview them and they're going to interview them at like 8:30 in the morning they'll do their first interview with the community input panel they'll be done and then they'll come to the board panel however it's really important that the community input panel doesn't rank the candidates they don't say this is number one one this is number two this
023is number three because you're going to interview those candidates and you're going to find out information about candidate one two and three that the community input panel may not know you're going to know about reference checks you're going to know um a variety of things and what you don't want to do is hire what the community panel perceives as their third candidate because then you're having to explain or you're being forced to explain I would say don't explain but you're going to be asked to explain why you hired candidate number three and why didn't you handle why didn't you uh hire candidate one and two because at the end of the day the board hires the superintendent the community panel does not hire the superintendent um and so that's an important how we facilitate that
024is Colleen always sits with the community panel and she facilitates those interviews and at the end of their panel they give Colleen strengths and weakness es of each candidate and when she's done she comes into um our meeting when we are done with interviewing our candidates and Colleen shares strengths and weaknesses of those candidates to help you make an informed decision these interviews need to be structured um and have structured questions and they need to be conducted in a legal manner that's why you're asking us to do it we are facilitating a process that is leg um that is has the highest degree of confidentiality um that will Ure that we will have high quality interviews our candidates it's a big decision to make a decision to apply for a superintendent job sometimes superintendants have
025it in their contracts that they have to notify their board president if they're interviewing or if they're a finalist so super candidates don't take this EAS um this decision lightly um so it's important that it be treated professionally confidentially uh and legally so that everybody is respected um and that we can cond can be really conducive to um making sure that we find you the right individual typically the first questions the first day of questions are all standard yes you get to help select what questions you want asked in your panel and what questions you one in the community panel um and the second day on Sunday it's a little bit more conversational it's a little bit oops more back and forth so in addition we will have each member of the board and the
026community panel sign a confidentiality statement um like I said we will conduct initial reference check um the board president will then work with me to conduct final reference checks um and it's important that we all conduct ourselves in a very professional and ethical manner um the Board of Trustees and the community input panel so no discussion of confidential information outside of closed session no discussion on who applied if you at the raes on Auburn um in Auburn and somebody comes up to you and said oh I think my neighbor applied you're like oh okay great no like no I didn't see his application or yes I really was impressed by his application no conversation about who applied no independent reference checks so when you're doing the paper screening and you're like oh I've heard about
027that person they're a superintendent just 15 miles from here you know what I think I I think my brother-in-law works in that District I'm going to call my brother-in-law and ask him about this candidate no we're not doing that so no independent reference checks and no actions that would undermine the search at the end of the day the people who are going to apply are going to be high quality and they have to feel that there is trust and confidentiality and if there's something that breaks that then you're going to lose high quality applicants and that's the worst thing that could happen in this process you make an offer to your desired candidate you work with your legal counsel on um the contract um I can provide you some um some points on salary compensation
028and what's like comparable salaries for the surrounding in area you approve the contract on a regularly scheduled board meeting agenda and that contract is in Open Session okay and at the end of the day the board is expected to vote five to Z 5 on this on this contract and on this on the superintendent I just have to say I I did a search last year for a district that was going through some pains the the the board wasn't necessarily in lined and in tune with each other and I made this comment remember this when I made this comment and I said the board is expected to vote 5 to zero and there is literal laughter in the boardroom there were a lot of people at that board meeting and I was like no no
029no no no 5- Z we there was a 5 Z when it when it came down to it we got a 5- z contract so that's one thing that you want to shoot for is you want to make sure and if you have if it's between candidate A and B and you can live with candidate B may not be your candidate a but it's your candidate B then you need to join your board colleagues and vote Yes on that cont on that on that individual so um I'm assuming we're doing July one um if we're doing later I need to know that I need to know your date for your interviews I need to know the level of your community engagement that you desire and I need to know if you want to do a
030community input panel and if so who do you want to be on that Community input panel and then Colleen and I and Scott will manage that for you so that all you have to do is we're going to schedule a Clos session meeting um after the position closes and we're going to make binders of all the applications we're going to give you a window of a couple of days to come in um we're going to work with Desiree we're going to find a confidential area to store the applications and you're going to come in no more than two of you at a time and you're going to go through the binder and you're going to look through the applications and we're going to have you go through a process where you individually come up with
031like your top five candidates um and then we will schedule a closed session for you we will talk Colleen Scott and I will talk with you we'll give you our top six to eight we'll go around and we'll see because we may say candidates you may say hey David may say actually I have candidate one two and three and four on my list and Jessica may say so did I and Jeremy says so do I and Tom says so do I and Emerson so says so do I and I'm like okay well that's quick we now have four people that we're going to interview right so sometimes it goes it's actually quite um simp uh it's it moves quickly when there's clear Front Runners so um if you choose I would just say last but
032not least if you choose a community panel we don't recommend having more than 8 to nine on that panel um it starts to get unre Ry um and we would just recommend like sweet spots around uh 8 to 9 so last but not least your hiring process is a reflection of your agency candidates will either be impressed by the process or they Ste will steer clear and it's my hope for you that this is a beneficial process I know that we're going to get high quality candidates I already have had uh started to have conversations with individuals you will have high quality candidates and I think you're going to really enjoy the process of coming together and hiring your next superintendent for the plaster Union High School District and with that I will answer any
033questions Scott will answer any questions you may have and Colleen is here and she can answer any questions for you as well so thank you so much um while we're kind of um talking about giving some Direction with Community panels or Community input I feel like obviously in the agenda um later a little bit later on with our action items we'll kind of go in through the dates and and all of that but um what are your thoughts feelings on a community panel are you interested in a community panel have a couple thoughts please um how common are you you you referen like you've done this a dozen times how common are the community panels and is it just to to Garner feedback from the community it's overwhelmingly popular with boards I think maybe I've
034done one that hasn't asked for a community panel because they had already gone through a strategic uh plan process and they already had like 18 months of community feedback and so they felt like yeah no we feel like we're pretty in tune with our community but aside from that example most of them all of them have had a community panel David no I I will you hit your mic I'm sorry your microphone um I really have no questions at all U I hear what you're saying I know that um I've been involved in in uh our last superintendent and I hope we find a high quality person that's going to meet you know the the expectations of the community and of of our staff so I'm hopeful that it works out I do do think
035a community panel is important that uh people in the community can see that that uh we are transparent we're open we want to know uh your your thoughts but then as you said it comes down to what we want you know hopefully uh we can get that 50 vote I feel confident that you can yeah I feel confident that you can Jeremy um I like the idea of a community panel um especially as outlined on the latter part of the agenda there um I think that would be useful for us okay I agree I think um I think that that was our misstep last round that there was no Community involvement whatsoever and so it's really important for me this time around that we we have a very inclusive process um and that we bring
036you know our stakeholders in when obviously when it's appropriate and um and so I am in favor of a community panel um I I hear you when you say 8 to nine or it becomes crazy so um I would um support having a member of you know each of our main groups um on site so our teachers union a parent booster you know staff member teacher admin where are we at okay so if I do a teacher classif a manager uhuh you said booster some kind of parent advocate you want a student I would love a student I would love a student too so a student so you got five now so got a few more any ideas parent I think we should have two from each of those groups listed on the latter part
037of the agenda there two from the ATP two from the ca two administrators two parents two students that'll be a total of 10 okay you're pushing the envelope with 10 Colleen do you think you can handle 10 I can handle 10 I think it gets to be a little big so how about one student one student how does I'd be fine with one so the the interview so I hear I see exactly what you're looking at so if you're looking at the agenda item 4.2.2 kind of deep into there that Community panel is for the interview if we wanted to do that for the interview like the pre-interview that um superintendent gil g just said about that day this would be a separate panel correct because that would be an input panel so in inputs
038is separate than the community panel so the community panel if you chose um May 3rd and 4th um we would have the community panel which would be two teachers two classified two administrators two parents and right now I'm going to say two two students we have 10 total they would start interviewing at 8:30 the board candidate a would interview at 8:30 the board would then interview candidate a at 9:30 and so you're everybody is interviewing that day but if you wanted to do like a focus group where you said okay Gail we want you to um hold a focus group with all our certificated teachers oh okay we can do that or if you want to say we want to hold a community group of just um our school sites staff from our school sites
039um we could hold one we could hold one big one so however you want to but that's like focus group and what that's going to influence is the report that we're going to provide you um before you hire them um just basically summarizing what the community thinks is important okay and you don't have to do that yeah you don't have to do that you don't have to seek um support or input prior so you don't have to do a survey or focused interviews or or a focus group you don't have to do any of that those are typical sure um but if you're like no I'm just do an interview panel and that's all the community input that's fine too so um I spoke with trusty Duncan um and we had kind of glossed over
040it about the possibility of a survey um and we feel pretty confident that we could put together a survey of our own um in order to kind of cut cost a little bit um how would that work if we facilitated and created a it would make me nervous it would make me nervous um because we want to make sure we're asking legal questions and we're asking it in a way in which um you're getting enough input and feedback to make an informed decision I will say I've never had a board that wanted to do their own survey so um it would it would give me cause to pause now if you have questions that you want to ask we can very much incorporate those into our surveys that we've used in the past if you
041want to say I want to talk about how they feel um about um Statewide testing and the use of data in our classrooms and how it can inform instruction um we're like okay we can write a question for that or we you can write the question and we're like okay we think that that's a Bonafide question I think you have to be careful with how many questions you ask um whether or not the information is going to be kept confidentially you know what I mean if you have an outside entity doing it um there's a higher degree of confidentiality or at least the person who's feeling it out has a higher degree of confidentiality Colleen do you want to do you want to thank you yes I would totally agree with Gail when you're looking
042at that um we as a side note we do a culture survey with all of our staff every year at pcoe and that's a big thing about it being confidential Anonymous uh we will know the stakeholder groups if that's how you uh want to put that out but I think that would be a concern that would be a concern to me of if you were to do that who is looking at it how is it tracked who has access to that so um i' I'd worry yeah I have a question please when you guys are talking about the survey are you talking about how you come up with the questions for the applicants no the survey would be just a document that Colleen and I with input from the board if they want to ask
043certain questions that we would then send out to all um typically it's all staff um and um it could be like you want to send it out to your parents um just in regards to the search yeah what are some what are do you prefer to have somebody that has a superintendent experience do you want somebody that has a PHD or a graduate degree you know it's more specific well how do you feel do you want somebody who has a strong uh understanding of pedological research do you want I mean those are all very different different things um what we have is we've actually given three to four weeks to have people complete a s uh complete a survey and they will do it typically within four to five days um and you do not
044get a higher response rate if you have it opened longer so there's some things that we've learned um the trick of the trade to kind of hone in on our um process we would be open to suggestions in areas um of adding those questions but I I I would I would caution the board from from doing it themselves eles at at this point I think we're charging like what $1,000 dollar for a survey I think the protection that you have having us do it um is probably money will spent in the in the Dozen searches that you've done how many how many times do you conduct a survey almost every single time I think we've done everyone since I've seven years I've been at PC we've done every single one aside from the community panels
045and just um you know so's things like um typically Community focus groups are um something that boards are interested in um so sometimes we've done Community interest groups with um like with Roseville joint Union High School District I believe we did certificated teachers and then we did classified and then we did management um we did student board reps or did we do student leadership I remember we had students participating I don't know if it came from leadership students um you know the leadership classes in each of the high schools um the student board members um parents so that was probably five focus groups those are actually the most intensive I mean the and I would say okay at this point if you want us to do five focus groups um we need to get on
046that like tomorrow um so and set that up so that that for us is a heavy list the um the survey not that heavy of a lift for us we're we're kind of right now in a in a little bit of a crunch in the sense that um as you can see in my presentation I was like oh we're going to do a paper screening at the end of March beginning of April and I was like oh no no no that's not happening at the end of March now that's happening in April so we're not behind the timeline but we don't have a lot of um leeway if that means so if we don't have a lot of leeway so some of the stuff needs to get turned around super quick yeah who had oh
047sorry go ahead utilized in selecting the people on the community panel what I usually do is I reach out to the union leadership the association leadership and I say the board has invited two of your members please forward two of your members so I have the union leadership select the two people so that would be your certificate and classified I would then forward an email to all of management um or work with desire to get an email to all of management and asking them to volunteer and if I had more than two then we take their names and then my assistant randomly chooses two people um same with parents and same with students um and then we notify everybody who put their names in whether or not they were selected or not see my sense
048is there's going to be a lot of uh parents that will want to be on that panel so then I'm trying to understand how the selection process is usually made you put all the names in a in a a cup let say there's 12 people and you pull out two or you could say we want you to reach out to our school site council members and only ask our School site council members or only you know a one parent can be from a booster so you can limit and give us an idea without having without getting a direction from you of how you'd like to limit that that's how we'll just open it up to everybody but if you're like no no no just stick to School site counil people who are on School site
049council at all of our high schools would be like okay we'll use that as our group and hopefully we can come up with two people and I'm pretty sure we could at that point since you mentioned focus groups in addition you know I I really would prefer that we bring that there's communication prior to the interview process I feel like it's important that we gather some feedback before we're at the finish line or near the finish line so I I do think a survey is important based on the information that you shared where are your thoughts and feelings on on having PC perform a survey for us or would you prefer a focus group or both I think survey is very important uh gain Insight do we have access to past surveys um we have
050the past surveys and we will probably change it based upon input from from your board I'm assuming that you probably have an idea of some questions you want to ask so if you he was like was say Gail we want to ask these 10 questions Colleen and I would come back and we will use her her doctorate degree to formulated in such a way where we can get that um um out in a concise question with an opportunity for for good feedback so um we'll just need to turn that around that one I'm less worried about because like I said if we just make it available for a week the same amount of people are going to take the survey is are going to be the same amount of people if we make it available
051for a month so I'm not worried about that we can turn that around quickly focus groups if you want focus groups we need to get on that tomorrow yeah so and I would also just want to add the timeline setting those things out we could deploy but also setting a timeline that then we can I mean really go back and we're coding that data is what we're doing to look at that to prepare a report for you for whatever meeting will be in April I would imagine and so wanting that and then that information in that report assuming you want to go with the community panel is given you will have seen it but the community panel will will have well it will be on your board meeting it will be on your board meeting
052agenda it's a public document so we would need time I know our staff we need time to so we do have kind of a an interest so we are actually down to one meeting a month except for in June where we have two okay um and so and we have an earlier meeting in April because of spring break so got all kinds of special timelines for you guys right now okay well we may have some special meetings yeah and I have a feeling that that may occur so just throwing that out there that yeah there's a chance that we're gonna have to and your May meeting is when do you um thir May 20th 20th okay that's actually great because that means that you have time to negotiate a contract with the individual and you
053don't have to worry about like a May sth yeah um Regular board meeting agenda so that's great I like to what uh trusty Underwood mentioned that there are probably multiple parents that would like to weigh in and and participate could could we gain more information more efficiently if you had a focus group for parents a f a focus group for classified I mean couldn't you cover the same ground that you would if you had a we could do two focus groups we could do a staff focus group certificated management classified M um and then we could do one for parents and community members that way we're having two um that's going to make us breathe a little bit easier as we leave this meeting um because that's only two dates that we have to find
054uh between the three of us and then facilitate those groups meetings so it's you know and we can think about how I mean we would have to discuss how we're going to like break down that data do you want it that would be hard to know if it was a classified versus a management employee that gave that feedback um but aside from that I mean that would be very easy to do like you said this is just going to influence the report that you're going to provide right I mean as opposed to a uh what was the uh the other term where you focused interviews where basically you tell me who to go interview and basically I sit with that person if you say Gail I want you to meet with all our feeder School
055superintendents so I go over to Auburn Union and I sit with Britney Meyer and have my questions and I say okay Britney what would you like to see at in the plaster Union High School District superintendent and I do that with every single one of your feeder districts or you can say you know um maybe go talk to the city manager the Auburn City Manager we want to hear from him I'm just thank you it just seems that like if you wanted to have a community panel I think you can get the same information from two focus groups one from classified and certificated and one with parents you might get more more feedback back if you had a focus group with parents you know what I'm saying if you had a couple from each site
056um so you're saying focused interviews or oh Focus so you're talking about 4:30 on a Thursday we're holding the staff one which is certificated classify in management and Colleen and I and Scott are going to go through a process to generate comments and feedback regarding what they want to see in their new superintendent um we can do that very easily for parents too as well parents and or community members if you want to open it up to community members inste I'm just trying to like bypass the redundancy of having like you know a a panel and two focus groups where you're going to probably have the same stakeholders in both you know what I'm saying yeah I don't know what do you guys think so I'm thinking um first quick question are the focus groups
057limited number-wise or is it open it's open okay um and my understanding of the community panel will it'll only be the day of the interview and they're providing their feedback of the candidates less of like what do you want in a candidate the panel would be going this is what we liked about candidate the panel the community panel on the day of the interview will be sitting down and Colleen will bring in candidate number one and count Colleen would have facilitated who's going to ask what question um they would Colleen's going to facilitate signing of the confidentiality statement um Colleen will be monitoring to make sure that all questions that are going to be asked you know you don't want to Allison say oh you know I um I was you know raised in um
058you know the Bay Area and I moved my family up here and my wife and I want to retire here we don't want a commun we don't want a panelist to say oh how many kids do you have and are you going to enroll them in our district Colleen's gonna say time out and Colleen's gonna shut that down so um but they're going to be asking preset questions that you're going to decide what questions the community panel is going to ask and at the end they're going to go through their notes and they're going to say candidate one I really like them I felt like they had great communication I really value communication as superintendent and somebody's going to say yeah but he didn't have high school experience and the survey said that we really
059want somebody with high school experience so that's the feedback that Colleen's going to get on the day of the interview that she will then bring in to close session to share with you when you're done with your interviews you know what would be helpful for me is when we have these focused groups and Community uh groups groups involved I'd like to see a videotape of those instead of just getting a summation or a summary of what information that would help me you know uh see and clarify something that might be not brought up in a summation have you ever done that we uh you're talking about the focus groups uh and and in the community groups when with interviews we're not goingon to we're not going to videotape interviews that's going to give Colleen you
060can't do that no you cannot do that that's not not IL that's legal not that is illegal so you can't videotape interviews but we and we've never used videotape we we've done Zoom um and we've dis we've discussed whether or not we would use zoom this time around um we've used zoom in the past where we say okay if you guys want to do a Community Focus Group here's the zoom link participate and then we facilitate it over zoom and then I've done it in person so that we'll have to figure out unless you are like no I want it to be in person okay well let's let's consider that um but aside from that we don't we don't videotape or record anything I would have concern over recording and this is me just off
061the top of my head but recording any sort of focus group or anything we have folks who won't be truthful won't they may not show up if they know or they may not say anything you it may hinder getting some of that it will in information that you want I think they might do more uh especially with some open-ended questions on a survey that goes out because it's Anonymous you know it might say I'm a parent and I can rate my all my qualities and all these great things that I want and then sit in my keyboard at home in my slippers write two paragraphs of how they and you'll get some good honest data from that where if it was just spoken that's just and it was recorded that would be a I think
062that would be it would be a chilling effect on the participants and they would probably choose not I mean this is what it's funny and I've been doing this a long time is I go into um searches like this and and the board members are saying you're going to get tons of parents you're going to get tons of parents and I'm like okay great I I'm ready for tons of parents and then I get six I get I get six and so um sometimes I think calling is correct sometimes it takes a lot for somebody to come and and offer an opinion in person if they can do it over Zoom or if they can fill out a survey they're going to you're going to get more unbridled um what they truly feel um than
063if um I don't think I've had more I don't think I've ever had a dozen Community parents show up I don't think I've ever had more than a dozen I know that I've had probably a dozen to 15 staff members um but not teachers or classified like if we break it up teachers and class classified unless the history has taught me I will get just a handful I'll get three or four classified I'll get four or five teachers I'll get maybe five to seven administrators depending on the size of your Administration um we typically don't get the numbers we won't be managing hundreds of people they just won't show up yeah my thoughts are especially based on your comments that you just made that if we are already going to be doing a survey with
064these stakeholder groups and you're saying already in your past experience you don't get a huge amount of um participation with those St same stakeholder groups when they do inperson meetings um I would be fine with just doing a survey hearing that that's how I I was feeling too it might just be easier to participate that way although you know initially I was like I think I want a focus group but hearing that yeah that historically there hasn't been par some good information you'll get some good information and if you have certain questions that you want us to ask I would encourage you to send to us and so we can incorporate that um in a way that is you know legal so we're not asking questions that gets out there and then we're coming to
065you and we're like um we have a problem um you're don't want to call your lawyer um so um but we are happy to look at those and incorporate those as Colleen said we do ask we do provide an opportunity for open-ended questions and people do go in and and provide um a lot of information on that and they feel you know that a survey is often a little bit more confidential than showing up on zoom and having yeah to say what you want to say so um but but I would also say doing a survey and having a community panel is high it is a good engagement of a good use of your community yeah it is a good use of your community are in the survey and I'm assuming this is a yes
066but I just have to ask are they identified are they like I'm a parent no in the survey do they go staff member we do ask typically but we can also do a kind of state yeah which is totally fine I'm just wondering if they have so that when we're looking at that feedback we're like okay this is a parent okay this is a you know we've done that in the past but we do option we do provide an option then to opt out of that question I would be interested to see if they're aligning or if they're not um you know when when you guys compile that data for us okay okay I think we're in agreement for a survey sounds like the focus group may not be as beneficial that's um and as
067we is is there any anything else as far as Direction goes at this point and then we'll jump into the action items I'm curious I'd love to see some surveys just to kind of like past surveys like what questions were asked just to as a new board member we changed what we did with auburn Union we did Auburn Union last we changed the survey so that they don't look the same so and I'm not 100% sure that's why I'm curious so we will ta yeah we will tailor we we will tailor it because like I said did it previously didn't love the survey that we used previously then I changed it last year and I was like oh do I like this this year there was some things that I liked about it some things
068I didn't but a high school district versus a ka yeah so we we we will I can show you them but we are open to asking more questions or different questions or you know specific questions for you could we potentially have um are you guys allowed to share the survey questions with us before so I think what we're at I don't think there's anything borrowing that I think think right now we're about a time so if you want to see that I would say authorize one or two of your Schoolboard members to look at it because if we have to do stuff that is all of you then we have to have a meeting yeah um and that's probably a little laborious for you so if you want to you can share over an email
069well I mean then then comes the um the concern of whether or not you're then sharing with each other I mean we're just trying to break down and make sure you guys don't have an accidental serial meeting um is basically what we're trying to do so if because if there's feedback so um and then at that point so what happens if you say Gail I don't like question number N I don't want you to ask it and David goes oh my God question number nine is brilliant you have to ask that then I don't really have I don't know what to do you know I have two different people so if you can appoint one or two people that I can call or get on a zoom and say this is what it looks like
070that will probably be the most efficient and quickest way to do it okay can I also um I just want to clarify um about us checking out the binders like once you know it closes um have you ever had a board that has come to pccoe to review it you guys have an office building in Auburn so um thank you for asking that so yes we have especially if you live in um the area so my Auburn office is in your attendance area so we can have you come um we will need to know we have I don't have a um receptionist at the front of my building so we will have to figure out how we are going to let people in so it may have to be by appointment only type of thing
071um but we can we can work that out um you can do your uh close session where you go through the binders you can do that in my office if you want to do that I was G ask as well you can even hold the interviews in the office because those are board meetings and your board meetings have to be kept within the jurisdiction with a really limited amount of time how you can when you can have board meetings outside your jurisdiction so if you choose to do that you can absolutely we we yeah we did that with with our last search with auburn so but we can't do that with Roseville joint well we got lucky so I was thinking you know what if if and when possible just to keep yeah the confidentiality
072and you know what I actually think that when uh this boort well maybe not this sport but the plaster Union High School District board hired George srai they held the interviews in my office at that time so that that has been a practice this board has exercised before but for the binders and Staffing we can have staff there to let yeah we can so just just to clarify the day of interviews that's where a panel would also be present the P um the community panel and the board panel and if you want to do that in my office we have the space to do that so usually the board sits in my library off of my office and then Colleen sits in the burns room with the community panel um that's and then the next
073day um we bring the top two to three candidates back and that will be in my office um with Scott or so yeah okay so we're in agreement with the community panel today the interview um and um and then just the survey so I think that that will be well um I think I would like to review the survey Tom certainly gave some input on the survey over the phone I'm sure he would appreciate being a part of that is there anyone else that had interest if if so you know I could about out of that caning two to review ad hoc yeah but I if there somebody has strong feeling about it that would like to participate I'm okay bowing out I I think Tom really does want to be a part of that
074um crafting that one of his Specialties it's fine okay okay so it looks like you and Tom okay um okay so we'll we'll um be in contact over that and all of the other good things and now we got to get into the how we're going to lay it out with our action items all right okay cool thank you guys so much we appreciate your time and all the good info okay we're gonna go ahead and no no don't leave this is this is where we're going to unpack it um okay so we're going to go ahead and move to item uh number 4.1 superintendent job description in your packet you have the draft that was attached um I have a couple of of comments questions and then there's like a separate little sheet of
075paper um after reviewing it was brought to my attention um our physical requirements G1 um I suggest potentially uh adjusting that either stopping at uh crouching or reaching and we strike the last several words we stop at reaching or we insert the paragraph that do kindly added to your um agenda and I go ahead and read that for you since you guys don't have it in front of you it says while performing the duties of this class employees are required to constantly sit or and or stand for periods of time talk or hear in person uh and by telephone use hands and fingers to touch handle uh feel or operate standard office equipment and reach with hands and arms employees are frequently required to stand and walk Bend and stoop and to grasp lift or
076move records documents or objects typically weighing less than 20 lbs specific Vision abilities required by this job include close vision and the ability to adjust focus seeing to read analyze and review complex staff development plans strategies and documents which was pulled from another PSD job description um which would take place of one or as your guys's Choice scratch it after reaching any feedback would you prefer the little paragraph or just cting the last um five words I like the paragraph as you've uh okay typed it out there thoughts or feelings Emerson trusty L um yeah is you're talking about line cross out that one and just add this paragraph cross out yeah item one or we could cross out the last five words yeah yeah we can replace it thank you press the Underwood yeah
077okay would you prefer to insert the paragraph um or scratch it sounds like we're in agreement to uh insert I'm okay with this yeah okay okay great perfect so we're going to go ahead and scratch item G1 and insert what I just read aloud um and just kind of random I was um if we go ahead and move to page three please Sarah okay actually we're going to keep moving um 26 of item three if we scroll up just a smidge I just wanted to ask because I'm not entirely sure what it's referring to um in 26 it it discusses uh report cards What specifically would that be and do we even so the school accountability report card isn't it's an annual update that we're required by a law to for our schools to update
078those are on our websites for all of our schools it gives demographics and um School accountability results and all those things not looking at that report card I'm just looking at reports okay just wanted to clarify okay and that was all I had do any of you guys have questions or thoughts on that uh technically we we didn't have an adopted superintendent job description so we requested some support and thank you guys for uh providing this example for us so we will officially have a job posting should this pass do I have a motion question yeah please the uh are we scratching that whole section g no just item one CU there's some there's some dup yeah it's a little bit duplicative yeah no I notic that as well just seemed a little bit easier
079to another option could would be we wanted to we could take the first portion of the um paragraph and stop at employees it would be the first sentence of the paragraph So it would end at and reach with hands and arms scratching the final couple sentences and then I think it would be less we done that and see have any thoughts on that trusty Emerson um so you're saying maybe just scratch the last four mhm letters words or cross that or scratch that part what she said oh from employees down or scratch from employees down make it less redundant yeah because it's covering all those other ones in the in the other yep points yeah I'm good with that okayy Underwood yeah he with okay all right so we're actually going to only keep sentence
080number one from the extra so it will read while performing the duties of this class employees are required to constantly sit and or stand for periods of time talk or hear iners and by telephone use hands and fingers to touch and handle feel or operate standard office equipment and reach with hands and arms period to replace item G1 okay any other questions all right do I have a motion I'll move to approve the draft superintendent job description as revised have a second I'll second we have a first by trusty Jeff and a second by trusty Lake to approve the superintendent job description item 4.1 with the amendment of item G1 um and inserting the sentence that I read prior any further questions or comments all in favor say I I I I all oppose hearing
081none motion passes unanimously item 4.2 superintendent search superintendent start date are we in agreement with a a July 1 date um as suggested please oh yep thank you uh July 1 is a typical start date for our new superintendent if you are looking at an alternative date say October 1st or January 1 we do run into a little bit of an issue and that issue is if the person that you are going to hire is potentially already under contract and they have to be released from their current employer in order to take the position now um different employers have different feelings on this I'm an employer that says you got a job congratulations um of course I'm going to release you um at a reasonable time so that you can take this position um some
082employers like to keep their individual around until the position till their position that they're vacating has been filled so if you want to do an October 1st date if you hire somebody whose current employer doesn't let them go until January 1st first you're really not in a position to to make a change so um at this point in time I feel we can get this search and I feel like we can get you know I think we'll probably get 25 to 30 applicants for you um so I think a July 1 start date is very doable um but you may have some barriers if you were to choose uh it later in the year so I just thought I would just offer that yeah I like the July One start yeah I do too and
083I feel confident as well that we're going to have a solid pool of applicants and and I don't want to shrink our pool by by extending the date and and potentially losing either them to another superintendent gig um or or because of our timeline so um the other side of that is you know what if we don't feel like we found them in the first pool and we want to extend our time a little bit but I I do feel confident that we're going to find the right person in this time frame so yeah I feel comfortable with moving forward with a July 1 date any thoughts sounds good okay trusty Underwood no I I think uh I feel very optimistic that this is going to go well I sure hope so yeah awesome okay
084well do we have a motion for a start date of July 1 okay great all right so um the goal will be for 2.1 we have a first by trusty Jeff a second by trusty Underwood that the superintendent start date would be July 1st 2025 any further questions or comments all in favor say I I I I'll oppos hearing none motion passes unanimously item 2.2 superintendent interview dates and structure I will say the while we have proposed interview dates um after conferring with uh trusty Duncan um he has some conflicts and the weekend that he doesn't have a conflict I'm out of the country so we are in a bit of a snafu here so everyone calendar here we go yeah throw out there that on Saturday April 26th is the Saturday that we have
085set aside for the CB committee yeah I heard I yep so Saturday April 26 so that weekend is out um I believe let me open this up here so I have on here um so I return on April 20th um trusty Duncan is available April 21st through the 25th which is not the ideal weekend it's a Monday through Friday um Additionally the following week he's available the 28th through the 2nd which I believe is a Thursday second's a Friday okay there's one of them that's a Thursday let me double check this yeah unfortunately in order to get everyone here which is the goal I I don't I don't want to be moving forward no I should have mentioned that in my um previous statement that yeah we want all five people so what we have
086done in the past is um it's not very common but we have done it is we hold interviews over two or three nights um so the the what's attractive about a Friday um I mean a Saturday Sunday is say you have an individual from San Diego who's going to apply right um they're gonna their interviews at one o'clock on Saturday they're going to fly up Saturday morning they're going to come to the interview they're going to get a hotel room they're going to stay Saturday night and they're going to hope that they get a second interview on Sunday so it really does accommodate like out of town applicants to only have them make the truck appear once be that as it may um there are times in which uh you could hold an interview on
087a Tuesday night um and a Wednesday night you the problem will be now your community panel because now your community panel is going to have to commit to both of those days as well because we don't want to have you know 10 people on the community panel on Tuesday and then all of a sudden six I mean that that would be that that's not going to be um great so we can do them at night and then hold you know the second interview um so you can do a Tuesday Wednesday and a Thursday um I'm looking at Scott leedman who has un um unhit his video and so um do you have any dates that you're not available because you're kind of my backup so MH cuz my calendar horrendous okay are you out of
088town Dr Slattery are you out of town I am I have okay so it doesn't look like so May 1 and second probably will not work would be I believe Tom is gone the week 7th through the 11th or or around that time okay um of May sorry let me pull this up but he's back the 12th and is available the 12th through the 15th I see that the PCA government's training is that evening so you guys are not available on M um well which one is it is it HR that's HR that's HR so yeah that's yours um so you said 12 through the 15th yeah the 12th through the 15th the 28th through the 2nd um April 28th through the 2 April 28 yeah or April 2st through the 25th we could do
089could we do the 28th and the 29th so let's let's let's be reasonable and realistic about how many we're going to um interview so let's let's use even numbers to make it easy say we're going to interview six so we can do three on Monday three on Tuesday and you figure out who you want to bring back on Wednesday you don't have to be there for that interview so your April 30th or your May 1 doesn't play into it did Scott just say the 30th was he's going to be back the 28th Scott yeah 27th I'm good okay so he could do so we could do Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday of that week what about the 28th 29th and the 1st you could do that 28th so 28th 29th and then the 1 so the
090May 1 that third whatever that third day would be would be would be the third interview yeah the third interview and so the only thing would be and and I would I would say is I have a very tough stance on applicants like if you want a job bad enough you're going to come up twice for it so if you have your San Diego applicant who interviews on the 28th and you want to bring them back on um the 1 then you must want this job right and and so that's I have I don't have a lot of um empathy for people who um if you want a superintendent job you're going to work around it um which is why we put the interview dates in are posting so that the applicat know and if
091they don't um because I don't when they call me I'm like oh I'm going to be in Cabo that weekend and I'm like okay thank you very much I mean I don't accommodate them so that sounds brutal but you can't accommodate so we could do Monday Tuesday take Wednesday off and then do Thursday just for clarification your uh suggestion of taking the 30th off was for purpose are you talking to me oh sorry oh you're good um want to clarify I I could do the 30 if I if I had to I do right now have at this point have a a class schedule but okay I need to switch it I could okay if it's possible I would prefer to do them back to back just so that the three days just especially if
092somebody's in from out of town just so that we start time are we talking finish it um Okay so say three so we'll start them I'm going going to we'll start them at 5:30 5:30 6 so so okay so another philosophy that Colleen and I have is you really don't want an hourong interview because you will know within the first five minutes of whether or not you're interested in seeing them again so we could keep the interviews I mean if you have to sit through if you have to S I mean it's painful sitting through those of you who have interviewed you have to sit through an interview with somebody that you're not interested for a whole hour that's that's painful at times so we we could cut the interviews like 30 minutes yeah we
093could go to 30 from 45 I mean we usually do 50 in an hour is to give a little time but we may not give as much time this time around the applicants may have to be very flexible have someone do an interview at 9 o' at night yeah I don't think that that if it ends there yeah so let's say okay let's say we start 5:30 interviews so 5:36 6:15 to 6:45 is number two 6:40 uh 7 o'clock to 7:30 is 3 we're we're finishing by 8:30 we're finishing by 8:30 right the board is yeah I I think you could do that but then if you did 28 and 29 um on the 29 we need a little more time because that's where you're going to determine bringing back right so so it' be
0948:30 and then at 830 just the board going later in close session discussing right okay right and what we've done what what we've done in the past is we used to do where Colleen would come in and she'd go through eight all the applicants and we would say okay and what we've kind of changed that now we've kind of said okay the board likes these three so give us strengths and weaknesses of these three and then at times you may have a board member to say yeah but you know that candidate number four I'm just curious what the community thought and Colleen was like Colleen will say they did not like that person right I mean so we can we can use your time effectively but it will be at 8:30 at night so um
095I'm just going to put that out there I mean you do have board some we I don't know how late your board meetings go 11 p.m. they're great really 11 excited okay you may want to pass a board by law which caps it at a certain time that's off topic if we end up having um any outof Town applicants that are going to be in that interview phase that we could try to encourage them to come in on the 20 second day of the interview I was actually thinking the same thing is saying okay if we have out of town applicants do would you give them the second date and if they choose to take the following day off or they can work remotely and then they can just stay here I was actually thinking
096the same thing that's a great idea yeah okay okay so Scott and Colleen I hear April 28th 29th and 30th and Jeremy you're G to change something to make that happen my apologies perfect okay perfect okay and they would begin at 5:30 but the second night we'd potentially be meeting a little bit earlier the second night or the third night well I thought um correct me if I'm wrong Colleen you said that we'd need a little bit more time on day two day two okay just at the end of it not not the start okay okay just making sure okay okay great okay does that work with everybody I know a few things that works for you yeah will work for me I think that's actually a really good time frame I was getting a
097little bit nervous the later in May that we were going one of the things that Colleen and I have experienced is every single search that we've done um we've had a candidate cancel in the last 24 hours it typically because they got another job so the later we go in May the more of a likelihood that will happen happen so by doing this at the end of April you still may get one candidate that's like oh I just took the job in um in Dublin and we'll be like okay congratulations and then we and I'll have you guys do a backup so just in case we can plug somebody in just to make sure okay great you want to do that so just just for clarification purposes on item two so our proposed interview dates
098at this point are projected 28 29 April 28th and 29th and May 3rd or excuse me and the April 30th I had written down the 1 so okay so 28 2930 and then the proposed interview structure um obviously we're adding a day three to our day one day two we've got a day three so our our day two listed currently will actually be our day three it'll be our final uh day final interviews with the board um but day two will just be kind of the same two bullets right so we're just going to add that okay like day one part two and day one right right okay okay so with that being said um do I have a motion for item 4.2.2 I will move um but if you can read it back to
099the oh yeah record so we have a motion on item 4.2.2 to um host interviews on April ail 28th 29th and 30th the proposed interview structure will be day one and day two with the bullets uh listed in the agenda and day three will be the final interviews with the board do I have a second I have second okay we have a first by trusty Jeff and a second by trusty Underwood any further questions clarifications all in favor say I I I I'll oppose oh I do we have an i i all in favor I I I I'll oppose hearing none motion passes unanimously all right with that being said um that's a wrap y'all um on a special board meeting um the public is welcome to comment on specifically the items on our special
100only do we have any public comment on any of the items that we just discussed all right all righty well with that being said I wanted to thank all of you guys for coming tonight I see we've got um a row and a and a part of a row of our students in the house are you in a government class right now I get some extra credit for being here ish okay good for you well hopefully it's interesting here not thank you Justin I appreciate your attendance tonight hopefully you had something to take away we're hiring the new leader of this district and so now you got a front row seat what that's going to look like so all righty with that being said item five adjournment do I have a motion second we've got
101a first by trusty Jeff and a second on on item 5.1 meeting adjournment all in favor say I I I'll oppose motion pass unanimously thank you guys good night [Music]