SHUSD Special Meeting of the Board 3/21/2022

001that's what i thought as i was coming up hi how are you good good thank you erica are you wanting to the interpreter to uh make the announcement as to how to access the interpreter uh the interpretation yes please if you um or see that i don't mind making that introduction our board president lisa pelosi will go ahead and introduce the both of you and then whoever would like to to provide the introduction that would be great and then i'll go ahead and move the both of you to the interpretation room sure uh i will do that i'm the one who's starting the first leg and then cedar is going to do the release so uh for the simultaneous interpretation so i will give the instructions in spanish excellent thank you so much thank you

002hi rich can i check your mic please do you mind speaking how are you can you hear me you sound fantastic thank you so much okay thank you so much okay great thank you derek okay here we go good afternoon i would like to call this meeting to order the time is 101 pm welcome to a hybrid special meeting of the board of trustees of the saint alina unified school district today is monday march 21st 2022 as permitted by the passage of assembly bill 361 and the adoption of resolution 21-29 today's meeting will be held in person and via zoom at this time i would like to introduce our spanish interpreters participating on zoom please welcome isidra menkos and claudia lindgren this afternoon i would like to allow our interpreters the opportunity to provide instructions

003to our spanish-speaking audience members who are viewing virtually espanol when i started [Music] thank you to both our interpreters for being with us this afternoon i am lisa pelosi board president and i would like to introduce my fellow trustees and district staff members by roll call please reply with present after your name is called board vice president mr julio olguin present clerk to the board mrs jeannie kerr president trustee mrs maria hough president and trustee mrs laura simon present also joining us is district is district staff executive assistant to the superintendent and governing board miss erica madrigal hello and our i.t systems analyst mr derek machado and lastly i would also like to introduce our consultants from leadership associates today dr blanca cavazos and mr rich thom who's joining us virtually uh via zoom we

004are delighted that you are joining us in person or watching us on zoom youtube or channel 27 a copy of this board meeting will be available on our website at www.saintholenaunified.org item 2a is the approval of the agenda is there a motion to approve the agenda for this special meeting as presented i'll make a motion to approve today's agenda is there a second i'll second as most are in favor of the motion i will request miss magical conduct a roll call vote please trustee simon aye trustee hogg aye trustee kerr aye trustee olguin aye president pelosi aye motion carried item three is the pledge of allegiance if you would stand and join me in the pledge of allegiance please i pledge allegiance to the fire of the united states of america and to the republic

005for which it stands one nation invisible with liberty and justice okay we're going to move on to item 4a which is our superintendent search process um at this point um we have the attachments that you see um i don't i guess i would ask for public comment correct erica i just like the members of the board to know that there is a public comment that was submitted via writing by the shta president brandon farrell that is attached to the board agenda and is available for board review at any time okay and as no one is present in our audience we will assume we have no public comment for that reason on this item i should say so at this point i'm going to turn this item over to dr cavazos and she will we'll take

006it from here great thank you and good afternoon if you look in your packet there is a form that says st elena unified school district and initial meeting discussion items and it has today's date that is the outline that we're going to be following for our discussion today and rich is actually going to facilitate the opening this session so rich thank you very much everybody hear me okay yes good i'm sorry i couldn't be there in person but you don't want me there i got this cold i i hope it's not cold but i don't think it's coped but in any case i thought better to protect all of us to for me to do this on zoom so i appreciate your understanding of that we'd like first of all to talk about the search

007process and there are various steps to that process first of which is our initial meeting then we'll talk a little bit about who we should be communicating with following that we'll talk about making sure that our admin staff is in communication with erica to make sure that anything that she needs to help us with she has specific guidelines on how to do that we'd like to get your email addresses to keep you abreast of what's going on as i mentioned in our presentation we want to make sure that our communication is early and often as the the old saying goes so that you're well aware of what we're doing um we want to talk about the stakeholder groups today and who you would like us to speak with in order to gain their opinion of

008what should be the characteristics qualities and experience of the next superintendent as well as anything else you want to add about what your criteria will be that will be the cornerstone upon which we build the excuse me the community input responses which will be very numerous all that will lead us to a position description from which we recruit and or validate anybody that applies that we haven't recruited to make sure that they fit that position description and we're going to ask you to take a look at that ultimately we want to post everything on your website all that you believe we should have on your website and then we have dates for our online survey as well and we'll mention those in the timeline in the timeline as you can see in number in number

009one down below we have those items and you can see them but i want to make sure we have you know when we're publishing this to accent pardon me when the stakeholder input sessions are what the date is for us to give you all applications and show you who we believe is the closest match based on your criteria talk about a date for interviews location for interviews and if you choose to a validation visit to visit the district of uh the person you select as your finalist because at the end of the interviews you're selecting just a finalist not a superintendent because you need to do that validation if you choose to to make sure that what you heard and saw on paper is the real deal and then of course the target date for

010offering employment which has to happen at you know the approval needs to happen at a regular board meeting um in our candidate recruitment we will you know certainly do it you know everywhere that we possibly can as we mentioned when we proposed our services to you we will give the candidate um a sheet from which they will put down what they believe they would like to get in terms of money now you will have given us parameters before that hopefully today if we have closed session i think that's agendized to be able to talk about more or less we can't specify a specific amount but we can get very close with regard to parameters excuse me we'd like everyone to see a copy of the current superintendent's contract we want to ask you in closed

011session if you have any questions and again in open session we want to talk about today qualities characters strengths experience challenges of the school district and questions regarding the process in all of our procedures dr cavazos anything to add to what i just mentioned no i i think you did a great job of just outlining what we're going to be covering this afternoon yeah good trustees anything any questions about this as we enter into our discussion this afternoon not at this time okay thank you so much i appreciate it and again thank you for understanding that um i you know i've got this i got this situation cold well hopefully you'll feel better soon i will feel better by tomorrow i am sure i am dedicated to healing myself today great lots of water lots

012of sleep you know that's what you need so um first of all could we talk about with whom we communicate when we're giving you feedback and that is updates on the search it is request for dates it's request for input from you it's how to disseminate the proposed position description how to let folks know how things are going keep you updated with regard to the dates and numbers of the online survey and how that's going to get the trustees email addresses i assume that's coming from erica but you can correct me if not but to begin with who would you like would you like us to communicate with a subcommittee with every board member or with the board president thank you so much thank you for that um oh and yes our email addresses are

013on the district website but we can certainly send those to you as well but you'll find all of them there yeah thank you um trustees and either from past experience or is there customarily is there a person that does step forward for that role generally what what has happened is it's usually the board president but it can be any of the board members or you can select a subcommittee if you will okay it really is sometimes we have questions we will be communicating with all of you as far as where we are in the process as we move along and as rich said earlier but sometimes we have a quick question that we need to ask you and um and that's where having somebody a smaller group um is is much more efficient okay certainly

014and i'm i'm i'm happy to be that person but i don't want to assume that that's what everybody wants so feel free to to chime in trustees if somebody else feels like they would like to be the point person i'm okay with that but i i am happy kind of thinking that it came with the title at the moment so um and if for some reason i'm not available then i just assume it would go to the vice president it might be you know there is going to be a few days in april i'm out of the state so perhaps if that presents a problem then trustee elgin could step in but is everybody comfortable with that yes yes okay okay perfect thank you for that very much uh and our executive assistant will be

015in touch with erica to make sure that all of the forms and procedures and how to post things is is clear to her so it doesn't cause her a great deal of work the biggest thing that we ask and maybe we can get that done today and that is who you want us to speak to in saint helena in terms of groups and and um individuals and we'll remind you whether there's a veterans group or faith-based group or anybody you feel is a key stakeholder we just don't have contact numbers for those people and we will ask erica and any other resources she has to provide us with that list and then we can invite people to participate in our stakeholder input or let's call it our community input not stakeholder that word is getting

016old isn't it stakeholder but our community input and we'll know who we're going to talk to so we'll ask her for that um and that goes right down to number five to input from you stakeholder groups and development of the position profile and if if you know we can get that done and you know the the we're going to suggest a couple of dates on the timeline for us to get that and maybe we can jump there right away so we can see if that works for the trustees can we post the timeline ms montreal can we put it on screen yeah so if you can um take a look we would if you can scroll down a bit now where it says consultants confer we would ask you if it's okay given the date

017today's the 22nd so if we can confer with staff and community that you have designated on march 28 and april 1. as you can see from the the line above we're asking if we after today we can post the online survey so that everybody that's a commuter and isn't able to come to see us on the dates of april 28 and april 1 have an opportunity to begin to respond now typically we'll get a lot of those so would that work for the trustees for us to do that uh staff and community input on april i'm sorry pardon me march 28 and april 1. so one my one quick thought that pops into my mind um because april one is a friday can you confirm when spring break starts for our school district absolutely it's

018the first week of april so i can go ahead and let me share our i can share our academic calendar here yeah let's take a look here so we're looking at this can you see our calendar right now yeah okay absolutely so our spring break begins on the fourth and it ends on the eighth so the april first date is actually i believe it's a minimum day it's the first day before yeah so so that was my concern if it's a minimum day i'm i'm concerned that we lose a lot of uh community input because people will leave for spring break um so ideally i would find an i i think we should find another date other than april 1st i mean even if it's march 31st the day before um but that maybe is

019too close together to the 28th i don't i just know we're going to lose momentum there once everybody goes away and coming right back on the 11th is pushing the timeline out another whole week right so we agree uh that's that's too close so um march 31st um unless erica because she's all-knowing um of all things is that march 31st anything within our school district as a entire community that we need to be aware of that parents may be pulled in different directions no actually i was just scheduling something on the 31st so i know that it's a it's a great day for events okay yeah um blanca how does that work for you i i have a conflict all day on the 31st how about the 30th blanca um those two days are already

020blocked so maybe we could do the 29th does that work okay that would be ideal does that work eric how does that work uh erica on your schedule and ladies and gentlemen of the board if we did 28 and 29 i'm thinking that should be okay we're um erica's just probably pulling up a few things on her laptop here to check out um right now that looks fine as far as dates let me check one other place okay one moment please and we would be scheduling zoom meetings with all of these different groups from basically morning and uh until evening depending on when they would be available okay and then we would be working directly with uh erica we'll provide a template with those dates and the time frames uh so that they they can

021confirm okay um and then so if for stakeholders or community members who don't have access to zoom they would just do uh they would do an either find access either to the online survey or com i mean how do we get how do we contact and get fake get those people involved and i think uh those those individuals if we needed to come for an in person okay meeting we'd have to schedule it beyond those okay dates and obviously the first year not work yeah we just what we've found in our searches since you know the on onset of zoom is that we tend to get a lot more people that are willing to to get on zoom than those that come in person but we are available to be there uh 28 and 29

022if that's the board's if we think in saint helena that would be the best way to get people and we can zoom from there as well um so we could do both on those two days yeah i just want to make sure that we're thinking of everybody um and so that people you know i i kind of like the idea of two back-to-back days as well i think it's probably it's helpful for your workload as well and i think once the dates are out i mean you know we can promote it and and get the push out there for the people but if if you guys so you're saying you would be here in person conducting zooms or your zooms are remote i'm just to clarify i will uh i will be there in person

023blanca you as well i i would need to be remote because of the other contents that i have okay okay so i'll be the i'll be the on the uh the person there and i will try also to uh you know maybe that evening see if i can arrange something with your dlac committee your spanish speaking group either that night or the next night the 29th so that we can make sure everybody's involved and any other special group that can't meet during the day we always want to have a community forum and that might work well on the 29th or the 28th depending on if we want to make sure that everyone who isn't scheduled for that input has the opportunity to come to a kind of a community meeting which i will be able

024to run great um at that point and we will by having one in person and one on zoom we'll catch everybody for sure okay and also uh if if there are if we're talking about dlac and elac if they or just other parents that feel more comfortable speaking spanish uh we could do one in person and and one online okay that's right would be perfect so um since we're both and we can uh when we get the contacts from erica we can call them and make sure that uh you know we've we get that delac elac president or respective presidents excuse me to um you know to set that up with their groups okay that's great i think i'm seeing a lot of nodding heads here that that the board cut likes that option at

025least offer that correct does that sound like i've okay okay so looks like the 28th and the 29th then erica will be our dates that sounds great thank you okay thank you and remember we're going to have that online survey correct and we will ask you um to ask your principals to really get the word out because as you well know and i and i know and blanca knows the um they have to kind of let people know because so many people play pay very close attention to what that principle says you know that's their point of contact to the school district when they say it's critically important that you participate they do so if we can get that that help somehow or we can get their phone numbers and we can you know ask

026them to to really be very proactive with that then we get a larger group of folks typically and it's critical because then you really it's one of the beauties of this search process that you're going to get not only input on a variety of questions which come back in a nice graph like did they want a budget specialist or three-quarters instruction and one-quarter budget or facilities management or great communicator whatever it is will show on the graph and the other side of it of it is that they get to there's a whole section of wide open comments so you get to hear what people have wanted to say and maybe aren't willing to come to a board meeting and say it so it's a great feedback mechanism and i know it's all going to be

027very positive for you but you know we always have folks that want to say something you know my child you know was withheld and were held back in second grade and it was it was bad or whatever but but you'll see that in writing which is wonderful you'll get all those comments and they really do help when you're screening candidates and determining who you want to interview and then who you choose ultimately as your finalist and also the fact that they participate in a zoo meeting or in person does not preclude them from also completing the online survey okay and at the end of each session that we have we encourage them to complete the online survey and also to let anyone else know that they can complete the online survey and where they can

028find it right we we also try to promote that each and every time we meet with groups okay thank you i had a quick question so please for clarification is the the survey and the session is is different so if i so if i were to go to the session community session is it essentially the survey is it two different things there are if you look in your packet uh mr olean you will find um the the actual survey looks like this and so when we meet with the groups we basically ask them the three questions about what qualities characteristics they they want to see which we will be doing the same thing with you shortly and then we ask them what they consider to be the strengths of the district and then what are

029the challenges that the new superintendent will need to address um what what the survey allows is that they can actually rank what they feel is most important and and so as you look at the survey you could see that there there's a little bit more in depth there than than what we the data that we get from the zoom meetings and that's why we also encourage them to to do both right thank you at the same time i don't think we as board members should be taking the survey right because we're trying to get the feedback from the community so would it be better that we ourselves do not participate in the survey i would suggest that because today we're going to try and get from all of you what your initial thoughts are you

030will see that document before any other and you can make any corrections send it back to us but as i said before that's kind of the foundation from which we look at everybody else's comments because you know as as an elected governing board you know you're the ones that are going to be selecting and be responsible for this new leader so we want to get that as much as we can today and you're absolutely correct that you want to hear what others have to say about about that hopefully there'll be somewhat of an echo chamber there i think they will be so the sir the online survey that's about let's see that's about nine so about 12 days of the survey that's it's available online correct yes correct okay um okay so that's good that

031covers past the zoom thing so is i is everybody comfortable with that length of time for an online survey okay all right great so i think those dates seem to be those are workable for the online survey and remember we have we're going to publish our emails we're going to publish our phone numbers if anybody has any interest in picking up the phone and calling and i we always get one or two that would prefer to do that sometimes our spanish-speaking folks would prefer to do that um you know they'll have many options to communicate with us we don't want to we don't want to leave anyone out sure the whole idea here is to make sure everyone you know is included in our input sessions one way or the other great okay great shall

032we go over the stakeholder groups at this point uh and rich and and find out which groups you want to include and then add any that are not this this is just a suggested these are examples these are not telling you this is what you need to do it's just to prompt your thinking right and everybody has that list that the samples they gave okay great um well i mean it's to me i look at it and it seems like it's a fairly comprehensive and exhaustive list um [Music] first before we did anybody want to add anything on to this list to consider maria um i would put the public schools foundation okay because i i thought that was number 22 and it says education foundations i wrote because i did right next to it

033st alina public schools foundation um anybody else no are there any uh veterans groups or faith-based groups that you want to include specific groups oh that's a good question i mean the american legion does provide multiple scholarships every year um i don't know i mean i think the up valley family center valley family center would be more yeah i think would be and i didn't know if that was like a bit considered a business partner or if it fell underneath um you know underneath like number 18 it could be i mean that is city stuff but it all i didn't know if that could also be but i i definitely think the up valley community center um okay is it community um or family up up valley family emily stanley center family center family yeah

034okay great thank you content great and certainly the boys and girls yes as well yeah i was gonna just say to suggest he'll look at the monrovia group because that's all the the monrovia group yeah that's pretty much all that i was going to agree with uh trustee olgain that also includes the adventist health the leadership there where we are partners um and then the city and the chamber as well and yeah and then also um the cia culinary school that's also part of our organization that's a great one would you say that again i'm i'm writing this down i got the city of saint helena i can provide all this information to you we have it in a distribution group it's the city of saint helena the saint helena st helena chamber of commerce

035we have the adventist health hospital cia which is the culinary institute of america cia yes correct good i'm glad you clarified that i don't know how to get a hold of the cia and then also the the senior center here in saint helena good night good great okay so if we keep thinking because the more specific that we have this the better job that we're going to be able to do for sure absolutely go ahead so one moment trustee couch um also i don't i know that um i don't know if it needs to be a separate group maybe they could be merged with some of the other groups is some of the uh representatives from preschool programs yeah well i was thinking well hulu we could is part of the monrovia group as preschool

036for all but we you're thinking somebody from the co-op specifically or or or um any of them you know he could be the directors of all the local preschools okay including the napa county office okay preschool yeah that's a good section yeah directors of preschool erica's with okay and then the um the county um child care center okay um would i be marianne that would be marianne okay um and then i mean other than what's the list in front of us is there anything on here that you want to exclude i mean you know or take off maybe they don't pertain to you yeah exactly is more i mean i was looking at like the our booster groups for you know performing arts and athletics what i'm what my brain is thinking granted i don't

037have first-hand knowledge any longer but i'm there's obviously a lot of parents that make up those boosters groups so um you know is that a is that just kind of are we crossing crossing over on that or do we just include everybody anyway i don't know i don't know the makeup of those groups any longer to know if there's outside you know if it's parents of alumni now or what it might be um i like including the boosters because i think those parents have a different role than say the parents who are who don't have that role have different insight okay the schools i would strongly suggest boosters groups because they're they do have a vested interest in one way or another in the school district sure yeah so we would need to add ffa

038to that yeah as well yeah thank you great absolutely um okay and then we said that the chamber chamber of commerce actually folds into the monrovia yeah so that folds in there um the dlac and the elac miss madrigal would you be able to pinpoint individuals that would leaders for those groups to help absolutely our social worker roxanna plancarte she has made some great relationships and connections with our dlac and eli group so i would use her as a resource to get that information out she's really great okay um and to clarify our parent group is the ptg right right which took me a year to figure out when we first moved here very good yeah i i wouldn't it makes sense to combine the ptg and the public schools foundation yes it would because

039there's crossover well at least there has been previously there's crossover membership in that but i i think we should just blend those together um and then like on the service club representatives rotary kiwanis obviously that's where the american legion would come in maria i think right yes and then um seroptimus because they do the dictionaries um and they have a lot of scholarships as well and yeah i would suggest the public library i don't think they're part of the monrovia but are they no i don't think oh okay so i would suggest um a question and that is you mentioned four groups uh rotary kiwanis or optimus um american legion an american legion okay i saw that the um the well i'm trying to think the the masons just recently um donated to so we

040might give to you right to give big so we might want to include them as well and they and then they've done the scholarship as well um is there a masonic yeah i think that's what they're called the masonic freemasons yeah okay great um okay um students any particular student group if we talk to high school people for example uh that would have some connection to saint helena or the work that you do you've got i would say all of our student council members we have um a very strong leadership class at the high school and there are and you know maybe even at the middle school i i think i would go so far as to include the middle school because that's where they start to grow those programs for high schools in middle

041school leadership so asb officers class officers um and then you know personally i don't know if the high school still has if they were doing like the um if there was a latino club was there a latino i know they were trying to create one but i would very much like to see if that club is still in existence and see if those students could also be targeted perfect got that you know there's the any um why don't we move to significant individuals one moment uh trustee kurgis had one other idea you know i apologize okay um i was also thinking about just the different clubs is there's the there's the unity club at rls so that's for our middle schoolers and then the um lgbtq correct um at um that the high school correct

042um and then i'm also and then as far as the masons the name of the lodge is the napa valley masonic lodge number 93 and i do have a contact there if anyone needs that great okay great thank you of course all those are all good additions absolutely um anybody else want to care to add anything or it's a big list how about theirs i'm sorry i'm sorry yeah i was thinking any individuals that are of significance to the trustees and the district it could be [Music] former board members or key philanthropists or a company that has donated a lot to to the uh to the district or any of those individuals so there's a lot of um major donors um we could look at since it's a current um uh project there is the

043funding group for the um for the hall of fame and the track so that's a large it's mr jim gamble yeah that's a large fundraising campaign led by mr gamble um and it's two two fundraising campaigns correct so beautiful and that's specifically for the hall of fame and the rls uh our rls middle school track renovation is that first name why am i drawing a blank roger mr roger trincaro would be another individual yes how do you spell his last name please t-r-i-n-c-h-e-r-o trincero got it i did it um and you know honestly at this point there may be people who will pop into our heads i've got to be honest um i you know i was thinking as i was preparing for the meeting thinking more about groups than focusing on individuals because there

044may be um you know there may be some former you know former board members to talk to um or past presidents of boosters or things like that so but we can always get back to you a little on that i mean we won't wait too long but if there's a couple of individuals could we reach out to you and let you know right and they can also be directed because for some of them it's going to be much much more convenient to hop online and participate so they could be directed uh we will be sharing with erica the schedule we'll be working on that jointly because she knows the groups and when they can meet or can't meet and they will likely be saying to her that's not a convenient time for us or this

045would be a better time for us and then we'll try to adjust that uh to meet their needs right and so we could uh if if you think of someone we can suggest to them oh you could meet at this time with let's say the business partnerships or wherever you think that they would feel the most comfortable sharing you could give them that link and and have them join us or if you know uh you'll have the schedule as well uh that rich will be meeting with certain groups then just plug them in there so there's we could do that very very easily yeah i just thought of somebody good i'm ready well maria go ahead i also think i don't know how we would reach out but we do have um many school sites

046that have a active and vocal neighbor neighborhood groups that people that live across the street from schools people yeah so reaching out maybe to some of those neighbors that have come to the school with um with concerns in the past i we do have a list of certain neighbors that of the of our school sites i don't know if that is we want to go down that road i don't know i'm just getting it out there we advertise that in the in the newspaper because i know a lot of the the group that she's talking about usually i'm not i mean am i gonna stereotype their older group but they that's primarily where they get the information from the salinas from the local newspaper and and some school districts actually just do a very quick

047ad that they put in the newspaper that says you know we can do a letter to the editor because that's those are always read and we can just sign and i can sign it as like board president same pl you can find the survey here um and i think that's probably the way to go because i initially that i totally agree but i think the people who reach out a lot times in those circumstances are calling because they have a challenge with the school district versus who's going to run the school district but but i do agree that we advertise it and i'm happy to put a little i can draw up a blurb and ask that it get put in next week once and saying this is when the survey will be live um

048and we can schedule go ahead rich i was going to say that's excellent but i'd like to read what we the 25 groups you've just added first of all blanca well i was going to give you one individual's name um and that's craig bond c-r-a-i-g b-o-n-d bond okay got it i have one more through the city and i think it still exists um probably mayor ellsworth would know um the multicultural group they have and they have a i think they have a pretty good reach in the community it's it's like a group of was that the one that zach used to was zapping his attention okay um they used to organize some multicultural events like two years ago and i think they're they were trying to bring that back to so i think ellsworth would

049know okay i have a quick question about the stakeholder meetings while all of these group are valid and important and every voice is necessary will there be ample time for the people that work directly with the superintendent the staff the principals the teachers to have multiple options to do the stakeholder meetings i really want to make sure that as many voices of those employees are heard and that's where we'll be working with with erica because sometimes we do you know the same i'll say the same group but we do them twice okay maybe offer you know where they can meet on monday at this time and tuesday at this time you know and and so that they will have other opportunities also to to participate can we ever offer like a like a free period

050of release period or i mean a free period during the school day or before the work or before the school day school day i mean is there something for us to think about right and i told them access it during the day not in the evening when that might not be the time that they can do it agree typically we've met with teachers at you know depending on whether dismissal is but 3 30 4 o'clock right in there so they're done with their day right i mean i think it just i just so what i think what what you hear what we're saying is we want to make sure there is an ample ample time for our staff for people who work in this building and for all of our campuses and whether or not

051they are they they know crystal clear that they can contact you directly they can email you they can call you i just we don't i don't want them to feel like we missed our one of both opportunities on two days to talk for a variety of reasons and that's always another option for okay so um generally i i'll just say um people love the survey okay that's that's usually the number one way for them to respond because they could do that at midnight right if if they choose second to that they they like the zoo meetings because they don't have to get dressed they don't have to travel okay um and then third is is the in-person meeting that kind of so you you generally will see the most participation in the surveys and then

052and then it just kind of okay drops just because that's the world we live in right now sure okay that's good is everybody comfortable with that yeah and you're gonna be here or rich is going to be here i will be there yeah and typically just so you you know the automatics are confidential employees classified employees certificated employees cabinet so your staff is always because they're there they will all most likely meet with me in groups so we'll definitely have central office and hopefully principals together in person and so and hopefully teachers as well but that's as blanca just said you know it depends on whether they want a meeting in person or zoom okay and many of them do like zoom and we'll get like 30 40 on a zoom call um but they

053all it's it's worked very well okay that's great so one more thing before we move on and i'm not certain how much the board knows about this but our executive cabinet will often host what we call faculty feedback lunches so there are periods of time where we can capture a specific group and we offer lunch to our teachers and so that's usually a nice little incentive so we would host a lunch there in their staff lounge and then we can of course host any of any of you there so that you can collect those responses and i'm happy to share that information when it might be a good day and time okay great that's very good i put that down that's great erica that's great and you know a group that that we really encourage

054to come and it's not typically the venue that they're that they're in and that is our custodial groups from the districts from the district office and from the schools right and uh just to make sure that they know how important they are to you and they really feel honored to be able to contribute to the you know the professional profile that you want absolutely your superintendent one one other i i know that um she might fall outside um of our because she's not employed by our district but our school resource officer should be good oh melissa brown yes yeah i figured well i was hoping that under like this when number 18 where it's like city council members city staff city police chiefs but you're right the sro should be there good good and i'm

055just looking at the calendar and i'm um so lisa as far as that uh letter that editor might need to go in tomorrow in order to be in on the on the thursday okay thursday star i i will write something up and and my editor over there will all have her uh review it and and erica uh serena has a draft um of what okay great but you can see okay i mean not what you can say but it's just it's already kind of drafted out and you can edit from there and personalize it okay that would be great thank you thank you serena if you're listening yeah do we have um one more group because i'm up to 29 i'd love to get up to 30. um some of those upper ones you can

056combine we only have one we only have one uh assistant principal yeah right so the principal yeah number six can get folded into number five okay great so with your permission i'll go ahead and read these you don't have to write them down because we'll be sending them back and erica will have them you mentioned a public school foundation american legion valley family center boys and girls club rich just it's up valley family center and i think the up is important okay up valley family center great boys and girls club the monrovia group which is preschool for all in all directors the city anyone we can reach from the city of saint helena chamber of commerce the cia senior center representatives from preschool which probably are closely tied to monrovia group county child care center

057marion boosters groups future farmers of america delac elac ptg and the public school foundation service clubs including rotary kiwanis soroptimists american legion masonic number three and the freemasons that's the same thing public library student council members and asb officers latino club the unity club the lgbtq club from the high school donors especially the funding group for the hall of fame rls middle school track jim gamble roger trinchero the school site neighborhood leaders craig bond the multicultural group the faculty feedback group school resource officers or officer and assistant principals and i think we also had rionda house which is the senior center okay how do you uh the rionda house r-i-a-n-d-a my spelling bee skills are not sharp here and there's there's another service club it's the international odd fellows and that's that's a pretty large

058club here in saint helena so that might be a good group as well yeah that's great and measure 30. yeah and rich you know some of what the month some of the groups that you listed actually fell under the monrovia group i know it got a little confusing the preschool for all director who happens to be trustee oguin here with us sits in on that monrovia group so um so maybe we can help you by you know we can send you the information of who falls under that monrovia group because some of the things that you read aren't necessarily separate from that they're in that group very good i like it where did the name monrovia come from we don't know yeah i played uh semi-pro baseball for the monrovia okay in l.a county great

059well i think that does it on this one i've got these down and erica i'll be in touch with you so we can get the specifics you know as trustee president said we uh we want to make sure that you know we don't duplicate too much here and i know i can see already a few duplications as were just mentioned so between serena and blanca and rich and you will get it all sorted out sounds great thank you thank you and blanca you want to move on on the agenda now yes so um we are i think we've covered the the groups uh so what we do once we gather this information is we actually will use it in addition to the information that we'll gather from you today to draft a job description and

060[Music] once we draft that job description we will share that back with you and have you make any adjustments that that you see are necessary before it gets posted on your website and and on ours as well um for the position description one of one of the aspects that we will need to put in their list in there is a description a narrative of the community and of the district generally you already have that written because you use that for recruitment or for describing that if you have an existing description that you would like for us to use just let us know or if erica if you can send that our way then we will include both of those what what you would like how you would like the community described and how you would

061like the district described in and there's plenty out there because because of other things that you do that require that um may i just stop you one moment erica do we have that information do you feel comfortable with what we have g would you like a trustee to help help with that i think possibly a trustee to review what we currently have would be excellent okay would somebody like to take that on okay and um since i'm volunteered i get to say one more group so actually i just thought of waves because okay yeah yeah okay so waves is our is the is the swim group that is um managing our pool oh yes our pool service that's w-a-v-e-s waves yes okay great and so just uh for the record that was trustee cow who

062volunteered to help with the descriptions thank you so much yeah yeah when you if you were an applicant for this job you'd first look at the advertisement and the date and all the closing date and then you'd look at what's the community like and what's the district like so those descriptions are critical before they even look at qualities and characteristics sure or i.e the job description position profile excuse me great thank you thank you okay and as i said uh we'll ask you to approve that draft before it gets posted we've already talked about the online survey dates and and you've approved those as far as axa publication that is already being publicized today so that should be in the edcal today and then on the 28th as well the reason that it is today

063is because axa there they also have a week off similar to the the spring break and if we waited it would really put us back in getting that information out so we felt that it was more important to get it out now than than to wait until they would publish again which would be after the spring break and that would really put us behind on recruiting candidates or having candidates take a look at it although i will share with you that people who are looking are going to be looking today they will be looking today and we will start getting people interested today okay it also after we finish this uh this meeting tomorrow we will be also posting it on our website and doing that email blast where or um it is an email

064blast uh where everyone the 900 people that are uh have signed up with us to get that information will be getting it as well uh so there it will be out there okay and we've already affirmed the dates for the stakeholder in input group and then we have if you look at our schedule for conferring with us and meeting to go over the applica the applications that we receive we have proposed april 28th does that work for you um again i would i mean for on on my personal calendar i already checked for my end that was it worked um i don't know i can't speak for the other trustees um how did that date works it works for me um erica on a on a capacity level for you and the district how does

065that look 28th oh it's on uh it's a thursday and that will be a closed session with you april 28th yes and it's closed session and allowing two and a half hours it may go under but we should allow two and a half hours correct okay and then we have proposed may 6th as a date for interviewing the candidates okay and generally what we'll do just to go back for a second is when we review the applications with you we will have already gone through and done all of the reference checking and we rich and i will actually go through each candidate we'll have talked to each candidate we'll have talked to all of their references we'll have talked to people that were not on their reference list as well in order to in essence

066vet these individuals we will then present to you different tiers of candidates if you will the first tier are the candidates that match the criteria that you have set the second tier are the ones that closely match the criteria the third are the ones that do not match the majority of the criteria those are the recommendations and and we'll discuss every single candidate with you and then from there you will select who you would like to actually interview we generally recommend between five and six candidates um and we go through a process where you get to vote as a individually on on who and we have that discussion with you etc uh so that's really what we will be doing in that closed session on april 28th is really going through the candidates and then

067you tell us who you would like to interview once you do that then we will set up the interviews the interview date with them that would be an all-day date um generally what we do is you would interview the uh the candidates in the morning and then generally would bring back the finalists in the afternoon the finalists are usually just two candidates that you want to bring in for a second interview during the first interview we will help you select the questions that you will be asking and so that's that's very scripted if you if you will the questions are very scripted you all know what the questions are you know who's going to ask which question etc the afternoon i'll call it the afternoon the second round is really a session where this is

068where you are asking all the questions that you want of the the candidates and so that is not scripted okay that is where you're going to follow up and if someone mentions something and you had some questions about that that's when you will be asking those questions of that candidate after we do and and rich and i will be available to help facilitate that in the sense that we will be bringing in the candidates we'll be escorting the the one that just that just finished we'll be escorting them out we'll be bringing them in we'll introduce them to you and then we will be in the room in case you have any questions or clarification that you want from us but that really is our role we then step back and allow you to conduct

069uh the interviews but we're there to support you in any way that that is uh necessary um so if you will look at that may 6th date and see if that is a date that can work for you it's good it's good for you and that works for me and then literally when you say all day we're talking like an eight to four or a nine to five we're talking about it's generally we will probably start at like 7 30 just to give you uh uh overview and orientation of what the what the day is going to be like and then we could go as late as five o'clock okay i'm blocking out the whole day then yes definitely block out the whole day because you want to have that rich discussion and you want

070to feel comfortable with your decision at the end of the day is that the same time for the 28th how much time you need the 28th will uh be about three hours that that's we're just going over the candidates that's rich and i and and you that are going over each of the applications and so we can fine-tune that for work you know with your schedules with family work things like that what might yes what might work out best erica will be so kind and send out a doodle for us for the 28th as far as a three-hour time frame as far as i i might suggest as far as venue for may 6th um don't you think that the harvest um in where we did it last time was very very appropriate yes yes

071it's a very appropriate yeah it's definitely you know that's a that was going to be my question is whether i think i we would should really consider doing being off site just for confidentiality of her and we would recommend it for exactly that reason okay okay and it allowed the way it was set up is that um there's an entrance and an exit at the opposite end of the so that the people that are waiting do not see the people great a they don't see them as they leave sure that's that's beautiful great okay one of the things that i'd like to mention about excuse me pardon me about april um 28th is it's very hard sometimes to just get the applications at that time and blanca you may have covered this i apologize but

072if whenever you if you want to see the if you want all the applications visible to you in a portal several days before we'll do that so that you can have time to look at those applications that's something we've established the last couple of years which seems to work for trustees that you have time to go through each one and as blanca mentioned we'll show you all the applications and then as she well articulated we'll tell you who we believe is the best match tier one tier two is next and then tier three and you will select whoever you want okay uh you can select if you decide to select from tier three that is your prerogative that that's okay you have full authority to do that these are just our recommendations and you may

073have your own reasons for wanting someone that we placed in tier three that's perfectly okay okay i i like that idea of the portal because it gives us additional time because sometimes it's just not enough time right when you're sitting for the three hours and you may have once you do that you may have some questions of us that that we can answer exactly that's what i was thinking as well so that would be great if we could see that ahead of time yep we noticed that when we did this before because someone can look really good on paper and then you would know something about them that that put them into the third tier and we would not know that unless we could talk to you yes and that's why it is a very

074much a closed session okay we can um you know respect their their privacy and and uh and the confidential confidentiality okay all right thank you and if if i may about the interview day typically people interview somewhere between four and six finalists um because if you look at breaks starting at eight o'clock with the first person uh an hour interview and then a break little break then another hour interview hour interview so you're done at about one o'clock with five maybe two o'clock with five people and then you deliberate and you bring back two and that's why the eight to five is so so very necessary yeah that makes sense um and then miss magical do you need help from us with an off-site venue organization no i think i can take care of the

075details okay great thank you thank you very much so i just i do want to ask a question so we actually if maybe jeannie you can correct me when we did our last interview we actually had three finalists um and i'm i'm wondering if there is a recommendation um uh whether it's two or three or should we be narrowing it down to two after our first interviews yeah i think i remembered it was three finalists yeah it's up to you okay yeah that's you know as time permits you would just have a shorter time to do the upfront personal conversation with them given the time frames okay and we don't want to keep you there all night the pool determines that because sometimes there are some very very clear finalists um and sometimes they're just

076so they're they're all clear they're all very tight you know where you you just really need to get to where you can distinguish between one and the other and so it it really is dependent on the pool and as rich said we can adjust that time accordingly if necessary okay okay any other questions at that point okay so um once once you have determined on on that may 6 once you have determined who the candidate who the finalist is you may choose to conduct a validation process where you can elect to visit them at their at their site that wherever they are currently working and meet with a number of different people generally the the candidate that is selected helps with setting that up you can also choose to do that via zoom if you

077wanted to [Music] connect with certain people they're on their site and one of the other ways that people are conducting validation the validation process is inviting that person to come here to saint elena and then you have different groups come in and meet them and speak with them ask them questions etc so there's a whole range of ways that you can conduct that validation visit or process but that really is your decision how you would like to do that okay thank you okay and um and then uh once all of that happens then at a regularly scheduled board meeting which is may 19th that's your your board meeting in may then that's when you would take official action to appoint that individual so that he or she may be ready to start on on july

0781st and ready to go so at this time if if all questions have been answered we'd like to ask you what you'd like to see in the next superintendent qualities characteristics experience and so forth um and from there we will begin to compile a list which you know we'll send it back to you if you want to add edit delete whatever you want to do from here this will just be our list blanca myself and the trustees and uh and certainly erica but whatever whatever you say today you can certainly modify at some point before we you know when we do a position description that's when it gets public but not when you're giving us your ideas about what you want to see in a superintendent okay um and so would you like us to

079go around and each like go up you know give five things and then circle back around how does how do you want however many you would like okay but but if we can start out and you can you can designate where we start okay by letting us know what the desired qualities characteristics or experiential background that you want that superintendent to have okay that's great and and rich is going to be taking notes okay um does every anybody have a list or anything that they would start then go right ahead trusty yogi and i actually uh name mine the sixties just that's that's a trademark right there okay so the first one is a communication so active listener empathetic second one is a collaboration open to new ideas forward thinking creative flexible third one is

080a community a relationship builder accessible gets to know the community the fourth one is a commitment it's a commitment to students families and staff for their success and well-being so i put leadership in that next one is consistency hard-working dedicated passionate continues to learn and grow to be the best leader possible and my last c is a culturally competent sensitive aware and celebrates diversity equity and inclusion and i didn't copy that off the internet i'm sorry i'm trying to type that out and uh can send you or i can either send it i can just send the six this well if you just say it again i think communication the first one is uh great communicator yeah collaboration okay next one is a community or relationship building right next one is commitment students family and

081staff yep next one is consistency and the last one is culturally competent right so uh communicator collaborator community relationship builder commitment to student family staff consistent in terms of you know being very you know not having different rules for different situations culturally competent great thank you anybody i mean i have some too but as anybody else um okay okay so i've got um bilingual would be a benefit um familiarity with basic aid district uh background in california education you know that would that's kind of ideal it's not necessarily uh you know a mandate but it's helpful um and let's see um i'd ideally a candidate would be committed to a long-term tenure um and let's see um [Music] well julio kind of covered a lot on that as well so minor um yeah okay i

082think yeah strong community relations but sorry my phone is buzzing and i'm gonna um and i think that's it for right now i'll let somebody else go okay thanks so though the couple that i'm thinking is um proven leadership at another district um so as a superintendent who lives close by and i'm not saying specifically here in saint helena because i know it's difficult to to to come into st helena but certainly close close by and not not a superintendent that is traveling down to southern california on the weekends to you know be with her family on the weekend so someone who when they're traveling home they're just they're close by um and then um a strong communicator just certainly like um trustee pelosi and um would you say that last one again i'm sorry

083uh a good communication a really good uh someone who has strong communication yeah um and i agree with bilingual um familiar with basic aid is important and i think that also with the um uh similar to trustee olgain consistency um just where the um treating um treating everyone in a consistent way and then in a professional way so definitely a professional person good so um it's hard to follow those because everyone's really hit almost everything but the two that i would be most i feel that as a small district we need someone with a very multifaceted expertise because a superintendent for a small district they really have to be competent in all areas so if so to maybe clarify more not someone who's just on the finance side not someone who's just on the curriculum

084side but well-rounded well-rounded that's my okay and um i another big requirement for me would be someone with a classroom experience and preferably also um site supervisor experience classroom experience as a teacher a teacher okay and a site administrator site administrator okay what you said the first comment i've got it i uh five years i was in little cardiff school district as i mentioned about 1200 kids as well it was 1100 children and you have to wear all the hats you have to have your tool belt on as well as your exactly your tie ready to go when you're done you know tightening the pipe so you're ready to lead the instructional group and then the board meeting you really do wear all hats yeah everything that was said i completely agree with and i

085um just to add on and i don't know how easy this is to spot during the interview process but um a superintendent who is does not micromanage that has faith and trust in their principles and um to collaborate and work with them um but not micromanage and i don't know how you know if you have some advice on how you weed through that but i know that that can from previous experience that can really create an environment and that that really has to do also with building leaders so you because someone that micromanages does not build leaders they build followers um and someone who builds leaders trusts people to do their job because they don't have time to do everybody else's job they they are busy doing their own and so um i i think

086that uh one of the ways that we get to that uh rich and myself will be as if that's one of your criteria and it is now uh is that when we follow up with references and non-references those are some of the things that that we will be looking for as well um because because there will be people um when we're talking to references there are key things that they say and and some of the things that that they will say is you know they helped me to become the the leader that i am today or they helped me to become you know principal because they gave me these responsibilities they so there are key things that we are are looking for or listening for as references and non-references are telling us about them and

087and there are also key phrases that people say when someone really is a micromanager that you you can you can sense it you can feel it um and and and that's the other reason that that validation is very key as well but but we will get to that as as we make those phone calls and and we talk to people from the district and people that maybe live in the community or have worked with them before in another district etc that will typically come out as as blanca said very clearly as we have these conversations with people um because they'll say the opposite is collaborative lets us do what we feel is best at our sights those kinds of things come across and then if they're poor communicators um and just send out the old

088directions via email so it does come out as we kind of ask folks stuff you know key questions yeah another thing that's popped into my head is and it it seems like it was stating the obvious but obviously a candidate should be student centered i mean it's about the whole child um and um and and basically somebody who has the vision to take santolina unified to the next step um i mean this can it's it's about the future right so it's about someone who's future forward thinking and you know keeping students first because that's why we're all here yes how about someone with experience with a similar demographic is that something that you would want to see yeah yeah yeah you and by that you mean the community makeup or the school population makeup or

089both yes especially the the school population that they've worked with students like yours sure yeah that's always a benefit i would think yep any any other characteristics and if you think about it later we can come back to that uh as well how about to uh what are the the strengths of the district what is it that you want to make sure that uh the candidates know this is what's really rocking and saying elena this is what's great about saint elena you'll love this as a superintendent coming in you're going to love these aspects aside from i know rich is going to talk about how beautiful it is i agree i agree 100 i think yeah we know that it's so beautiful i mean but aside from that as far as the district is concerned

090what i think the generosity of our community and i don't just mean financial generosity but generosity with time generosity with commitment generosity with involvement as well as financial generosity and i would also say that and our strengths are our employees and our students that's absolutely our strengths and although historically we've been fiscally sound and we are still uh we benefit from being a basic aid district without a doubt um but it's a strength but it's shifted a little bit our our you know because of of what's happened in our community in the last couple of years as well but i still do think that we have fiscal strength we we are very fortunate that we're able our pup per pupil spending is high um and you know um many other school districts that might be

091lacking for certain resources saint lina does not um and i think that's important that's a strength of ours definitely and we and then i think another thing is that we have a very uh competent executive cabinet in place and executive assistants as well so um so i think that's really important that people know know that yes because they want to know am i going to need to go in and clean up right and and and which is fair i mean if if that's what the situation were to be that would be fair but saying that you know these are these are assets you know really that's what we're talking about these are assets and that's a a tremendous asset that you can come in and you've got people that are going to support you moving

092the district forward i think that's a tremendous asset and we have you know we have great facilities um i think that's important we have a safe you know safe safe environment and community those are strengths um you know we we have an el cap in place we have all those i i think this is hard to like put into like a bullet point but one of the things that i i think that we as trustees find out when we go to csba conferences and we think we're you know we go in and we learn we take a session and we learn something it's like well we've been doing that for two years already or we've we've had that in place for four years um so i feel like we we do a lot of things

093well already so it again it's next level i think that the fact that we've been able to achieve so much that now we're able to focus on areas such as equity and wellness which are which are highlighted right now in our current lcap we have shown that we can we can overcome challenges that we have in the past with respect to certain curriculum issues that we had and and structures that the school district used to have so we um we've moved from uh um from a point where um we did have a lot of issues in math and we've we've overcome a lot of those challenges that we face in the past so we we have been able to move forward in a lot of areas we've made progress we haven't been stagnating we've made

094a lot of progress in the last few years so really forward not only forward thinking but forward moving district uh yeah i mean we have um you know we have particularly at the high school level i mean you know with the dual enrollment pa you know the pathways the career technical education um we have a lot of different pathways for our students for post-secondary you know life outside of of high school and i think those are that those are that's a strength without a doubt i don't want to toot our own horn too much but but um no we did have an i can't remember exactly how many years back it was but it was pre-pandemic and we had a wasp um review and the wasp team at the high school that came to our

095high school said that they had never been to a school where the students were so polite and and generally kind and respectful and and i i think that that speaks to our community and our students and our staff yes and and the environment that has been created to to foster that to continue to foster that yes and this is these are teams of people that that go all over the state and they they've seen they they were not they were not newbies they had seen a lot of schools you said respectful kind and good that is so great i would also say that one of our strengths is our community partnerships and we actually our partnerships are really important to us because they they they add a lot to our to our school community especially

096to with our students yeah great um i think another strength is um is the relationship tagging on that with preschools because that is uh that has increased engagement and that has been a strength of this district i also think while declining enrollment is an issue across the state actually um a strength that can it can be viewed as a strength is our teacher-to-student ratio yeah i would say so i think another strength are this um how the campuses are structured these little like micro climates of learning with the k235 etc i i i find that to be a strength and things are just popping into my head i guess this is the time to do it at a time when a lot of school districts are no longer able to do specials we really have

097a very robust arts and specials program at every one of our schools and i was going to say that particularly because of the pandemic um another strength is the amount of services that we are able to offer for our students as life is trying to get back to normal and you know there are programs and people in place too to help our students help them transition back yeah exactly um and anybody else and we can if you think of something else again we can come back and add that should we should we take a little break uh yeah if she if we we could just take a five-minute comfort break if everybody's okay with that okay thank you know oh my goodness superintendent wilson okay we're gonna uh reconvene here to our session so thank

098you um we can carry on there dr cavazo sweet to carry on with the yes and next step take notes until okay she steps back in but okay we're perfectly okay okay so then uh the the third question that we have for you is what challenges is this new superintendent going to have to deal with well i mean i think as we again just to mention post you know our endemic times we're still going student achievement in the achievement gap i think that's a real still a real challenge that exists um [Music] uh and i think you know it always remains a challenge and i know it's on it's always been a goal as well as you know increasing improving family parents student engagement i'll stop right there in case anybody else has some things

099to add to that i'll add a couple i think one of them just depending on the the candidate is whether they come from a larger district so i think the transition i mean i think there's some challenges to come into a small town and trying to find their place so i think that that'll that would potentially be a challenge and then another one i had um continuing our lcap goals if they weren't really part of forming them so like do they believe in those lcap goals or so that might be a challenge as well i'll leave those two [Music] so i have down similar to um trustee pelosi is kind of just a just a learning recovery kind of a plan and what what to do as we as we move forward after the pandemic

100um um there's certainly a um there's the the benefit of declining enrollment but also it's also a challenge uh declining enrollment isn't a challenge for our community um and then also um one of the things and i don't know whether it's a challenge or not but one thing that is what are our our next um superintendent may need to work on is the um uh moving um moving from the district of choice program into an of interdiscip an id idea that's what i've got right now those were two i had yes good job so um i just want to echo trusteel olgaine's comments because they were spot on and then the one that uh the one issue that we have um we have been a a district that has continually had revenue growth and now

101we are facing because of the fires we had we had stagnant revenue growth or and that is um maybe something that most and people coming from other districts would not have because either they're not dealing with a district of choice i mean i mean not dealing with a i'm sorry not dealing with a basic aid district um because most basic aid districts never have the um stagnation of income that we just went through because of the fires does that but so when a when we say someone coming from a basic district is helpful they also have to recognize that we are not in the same financial situation that we were in four years ago okay laura i would agree with all four of those okay yeah okay great um i would think another um another

102it's both an ass you know a strength and a challenge is you know we it is a small knit community uh a lot of people know each other um and people have very strong opinions about things and so it can be a challenge for a potential superintendent that you know to have to hear what everybody has to say because it is a you know engagement is good but people do like to share their um their opinions on things so that might be a challenge for somebody um and then you know again both uh strength and uh or end challenge is you know what what does the next five to ten years look like for santolini unified um you know what's technology look like how are we preparing our graduates for the you know post-secondary life

103um so those are challenges i mean you know they they can be goals as well but they are challenges and um you know always needing to find ways to further en engage all of our stakeholders and always particularly our latino community as well um and i don't know is would transportation be cons it's a challenge you know i i think about you know where you know we're in this challenge right now of finding drivers and our uh current staff has done an amazing job of consolidating routes and what but it has been a challenge and i have a feeling it might continue to be a challenge so yeah seems to be a challenge statewide yes okay right so that's what i have at the moment maybe well i'm just going to say it because it's

104true recognition that many of the loudest voices in our school community are not always the ones that represent the majority opinion and and that's really hard in a small community but we just have to i think that's something that always should be kept in the back of the mind that there are there's always going to be a group that advocates something and quite often the loudest voices in the room are not representing the majority of the of the um views of the community and i know we talked about the financial aspect but i'd say another challenge is keeping a balanced budget as we move forward um so that we can maintain our lovely facilities continue to pay our staff well um and and give our students everything that they need to every day so um

105that would be it's always a challenge i think even in the best of times so and that's where we need someone that's a visionary to kind of see what you know here we are today where do we want to be and how are we going to get there have i may i ask you a question have you ever broke the idea of larger class sizes um i i mean you can speak you have the most history you know i just want to say no um because i i believe that we it's it's something that's important to our entire community that we um that our class sizes are are smaller um it's but i don't think we've ever been at this board table and said you know we need to increase our class sizes we're not

106there yet no no i mean we and enrollment was even higher 10 years ago i mean and you know where but and it was still small if there was 18 students to a a first grade class or second grade class whatever um but there's a couple of different factors for why i think class sizes are the size they are right now and that was a conscious decision to keep our class sizes during pandemic and post and endemic times so i'm sorry but that could be a challenge um for a superintendent right where their um the conversation about maybe higher class sizes and what is the ideal and things exp especially at this point um and and like uh trustee pelosi said that's we we we specifically lowered our class sizes at the at the lower

107levels just because of the end of the the pen first the pandemic and now the end of the pandemic and so the next couple years that you know this that that may change you know as far as the class sizes and currently what is the average i know it's under 18. yeah i i'd say at the lower grades it's probably 13 to 15. yeah someone mentioned 14 just wondering if that's upper grades as well in high school no no i would say 6 through 12 is different uh i would say tk through 5 is i would say 14 is probably a good average that's beautiful well wouldn't everyone love to have that to be able to focus on each of those children each of the scholars or learners or whatever you call them yeah um

108i don't i i don't know if this is going to be a challenge or an asset but we are negotiating our labor contracts right now so they'll that superintendent will be coming into a situation where they were not part of labor negotiations so i mean in one in one sense um that work is not something they're going to have to deal with for a little while but at the other time at the other end they're going to be working with a contract that they had no input or it's good to know right and i also think a standard workplace challenge when a new leader comes in is just creating a creating cohesiveness on your team right but i i think that not because anything at the present exists otherwise it's just that's going to be

109a challenge for a new new person to come in with a well-oiled machine already in place and continue to you know have that collaboration on cohesion and then everybody being on the same page right got it okay okay um [Music] unless you have anything to add and you keep in mind you have a lot of time still okay before we finalize we get to where we draft the job description and then and before we finalize it so it's not like if you didn't speak now you can't speak again so okay so at this time the one thing that that we didn't cover rich and it just occurred to me while we took the break is the deadline for applications i understand that from serena that that deadline was going to need to change and she

110had a discussion with you about that okay um i think she was asking me whether if it if the board changes it she needs to know okay um i don't think there's any other reason okay um so we're we're okay okay and just to make sure that we're okay with that april 14th deadline um yeah i don't see any reason why not i mean and i apologize for jumping back i know that's okay during the break so i think we are ready to go into closed session so um let me uh before we do may i read these off to us knowing that you're going to be able to change them in the future or would you rather just see them in writing first i think um for time um purposes at the moment why

111don't we we do that in writing and if we could okay thank you great um can i ask our interpreters to please sign off at this time gracias so i'm going to go ahead and excuse myself let me ask you and then just we need is claudia needs to log off as well okay thank you okay are we okay great um okay we have reconvened to open session here at 304 p.m in connection with item 6a the board received information in provided direction we will now go to item 8a adjournment um is there a motion to adjourn the meeting i'll make a motion to adjourn today's meeting is there a second a second as most are in favor of the motion i will request that miss madrigal conduct a roll call vote please trustee simon

112is absent trustee hogg aye trustee kerr aye trustee olgame aye president pelosi aye motion carried the meeting has ended at 304 pm thank you everybody for your time today i really appreciate it thank you thank you very much we look forward to this really