Public Work Session June 11h 2022

001[Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] like to call this meeting to order welcome to the school city of hammond june 11 2022 public works session regarding strategic planning can we please stand and recite the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice thank you roll call trustee miller present trustee candelaria president trustee blake king here trustee murphy present and trustee zona also present all trustees accounted for superintendent miller morning and anyone watching this with this is a public work session on strategic planning meaning that there's no voting that's going to be happening here this is an

002open discussion about developing our three to five year strategic plan we had meetings last summer and we've reviewed that work and we have some community members that are going to be sharing with the board the result of of that work in the hope that we can have um some draft statements on mission vision core values and priorities so with that said we do have a moderate or someone to help us with the program dr brad balch from indiana state i'm going to go ahead and turn it over to you well good morning everyone and thank you so much for having me i don't know if that's working rich is that on thank you yes so good morning and thank you so much for having me back this culminates um the work of your external committee

003for phase one which focused on the development of a vision a mission a core set of beliefs and a priorities for your consideration plan so first a special thanks to our community attendance varied throughout based on busy personal and professional lives but at the end of the day everyone here had some level of attendance and a special thanks to anna lopez who made sure we had ample pizza sandwiches and other refreshments the way so just a quick review since it's been a bit since we've been together this is phase one that we're working on this is the what phase and we don't normally use terms like ownership but so the board doesn't necessarily own a what phase but they do take a lead role in that and so this lead role has to do with

004what is the district's dream which we call the vision statement what's the district's mission which is how we what are the core values or beliefs and those are the things that we aspire to and hold ourselves accountable and then what are the the basic core priorities there's an old adage that if um we have no priorities then everything isn't we try to get in on those core three to five things that we believe must focus its time and energy on most and that pretty well defines phase one oftentimes probably 85 percent of the districts i have the pleasure of working with will convene a community committee to help develop these direct statements which is what the board chose to do and so we've been working phase now for some time that leads us into phase

005two which is the how and while the superintendent may not own this he certainly takes a lead role using a codified vision mission core beliefs and priorities we begin to develop the measurable goal statements and outcomes we will work closely with the leadership team at the district level to develop committees across those goal statements and the goal committee's task is to address the priorities that you have adopted to back up for just a moment it would be my recommendation that once today concludes and you've landed on those phase one foundational statements i'd recommend that we push those out to your community a variety of stakeholders and solicit feedback from them before final adoption from this board and i can consolidate that survey feed for your consideration so and see here fidelity to the chain of

006command is awfully important sometimes when strategic plans are developed we develop them sort of in a flat organization where we're giving people time resources money to fulfill goal statements and if we don't stay true to that chain of command it's easy to lose control of who's doing what and so as we develop those goal statements and the key performance indicators and how we evaluate success i'm going to encourage strongly that we stay true to your organizational chart along the way we'll have opportunities to review drafts of those measurable outcomes so that it won't come to you as a single surprise but rather you'll be informed along the way i like to encourage the goal committees to actually present to you so that you have deeper understanding of the context by which they're working and usually

007this takes two to three months and then that would conclude phase two at that point we put phase one with phase two and you've got a complete strategic plan originally it was conceived that this be a 2022 through 2026 plan and i don't recommend anything more than four years right now three or three to five years is a nice range okay so these are the key components of a strategic plan districts will pick and choose whether they want to have an introductory or background statement or include their organizational structure when there's been recent changes or something is truly a cornerstone of your identity then those first three become more important sometimes districts choose to not include those first three at all okay we will get started with core beliefs so core beliefs are interesting to

008me and that they're bundled with your vision and your mission and priority statements as part of phase one but we wouldn't expect individuals in the community not connected directly to the school to aspire to those belief statements these belief statements are what we believe in and are willing to wake up and hold ourselves accountable to each and every day whether you be students faculty staff trustees it's those key stakeholders to the district that will not compromise those belief statements it gets at the heart of what it stands for but interestingly belief statements don't necessarily need proof it's just basic assumptions about what we believe in and who we are so i'll give you a moment to look at these belief statements and then i'm gonna invite my community colleagues to weigh in on their thoughts

009or any additional context this wasn't one of the ones you had changes in colleagues we didn't make any changes to beliefs we we added the word for all stakeholders on the measure the fourth one down measurable objective yes for all stakeholders mr president trustee blake king thank you what as i indicated earlier the last bullet point sits uh high with me when it says everyone giving their best effort while setting high standards for lifelong success i've indicated in several board meetings you know sometimes i feel we set the bar too low you know just 10 20 i think moving forward we need to set our standards at a at a higher percentage and if we miss it at least we'll get halfway there for our students because we know we're where our students are academically

010and it's not at the best so often times one percent or ten percent of zero the bar is not being raised very much so we just need to move that needle academically we can't move it accepting one percent two percent three percent of whatever increases community colleagues any comments that you'd like to make trustees as you're reviewing this list if there's any core value that you don't see represented like that be feedback we'd want to kind of hear if there's something as you review this you're like oh i was really thinking it might have this or that like that's this is the time to kind of bring that forward mr president trustee blake king and bullet 2 is extremely important open communication that builds trust and moving forward i personally feel that my voice is

011not getting out there so if we're going to accept this as a core belief we need to change uh how we do business in terms of uh four members excuse me been allowed to express not so much allowed but having the right to express themselves mr president trustee murphy um i was at part of the community committee meetings as was trustee blake king and i'm going to throw it back out to the community when we asked about open communications that build trust i think it was between the school and the teachers the schools and the community and making sure that we tell everybody what we're all about and what's going on so no finding out at the last minute that we're going to be doing this program or that program it's more about that type

012of open communications that was being discussed so the people who were there but basically again if a board member can't communicate its ideas to the community and bring it back it still is an issue that we need to address communication that builds trust and i'd also like to go back to the last bullet on there i don't think it's clear so when we say everyone giving their best who do we define as everyone so the first bullets i i think we nailed it we did a good job the committee did the last one on that one to me everyone is not clear and i don't know how to make that clear who are we saying is everyone i know i know we used the term all stakeholders before but it really is everybody who has

013anything to do with the district so we're talking about students we're talking about parents we're talking about educators we're talking about school board trustees we're talking about uh even the civil city in our support of what the school city is doing just every single person every single stakeholder that has anything to do with the future of our students giving their best effort and our students of course giving their best effort while setting high standards we just want to make sure that that everybody understands the role that they play in the education of our children um and making sure that like trustee blake king said earlier that we are setting very high standards for these students to achieve and not letting them get by uh just by hitting the the lowest bar um anybody else want

014to share anything else all right so so again when i first read that i'm thinking students we talk about everyone i'm not getting that group that you're talking about when you say everyone so i'm asking about rewording that so it's definitely clear that we're talking about everybody else making sure that we set those high standards for the students that it's definitely clear because one thing when you're on the committee and you discuss all this stuff you know the background well i know what that means but then when it transitions into the community they're like what are they talking about so that to me the first part of that bullet is not clear that we're talking about all the adults making sure they're ready to give this to our students what about i don't know that

015this bully addresses that but taking deleting that and just saying setting high standards for lifelong success well what about what about the fact that in the fourth bullet point we're using for all stakeholders could that apply right there yeah that's what i was thinking could we just switch everyone to all stakeholders that makes sense barry could a councilman could you take your mic off i mean take your when you speak please let's hold on it won't be picked up on the web recording if you don't use the mic thanks i would suggest adding students and all stakeholders because we do want to make sure that students themselves are setting high standards for themselves as well so i understand stakeholders might i think when i reach stakeholders i'm thinking people outside of students not a lot

016of times do i feel like students involve themselves or include themselves when they see the worst stakeholders even though they are and i think to the committee we believe they are but to your point i think we want to get as clear as possible so students and all stakeholders will be my suggestion i like that yeah i think that helps to define it better so it reads what okay it reads students and all stakeholders giving their best effort while setting high standards for lifelong success may i ask this question i'm just a little bit students setting high students and all stakeholders giving their best effort while setting high standards for lifelong success so we just all we did was replaced everyone with okay students and all stakeholders mr president trustee blake king could the um

017the community as represented today defined equity for all so we can be clear on that as well what were you thinking of equity for all so community colleagues we were talking this morning about the difference between equity and fairness and the questions been asked for clarify equity i guess an investment just so that everyone's clear when we use the word equity you know what were you where were you off the thought process moving forward we gonna have definitions as part of this okay and that was part of the conversation was we wanted to make sure that equity was not just in the standards and expectations but also in the resources that were provided for the students and also in terms of faculty staff parents are we being inclusive and considering that to make sure that

018we have equitable everything you know for lack of a better word right now for all involved yeah because one of the controversial things we talked about is sometimes you have schools that have more veteran teachers and you have other schools that don't and sometimes you have to take those veteran teachers and move them into those other schools to get that equity and someone when you have those involuntary transfers sometimes with that school that's not doing good you need to give them bonuses that's all part of the discussions that we were going through i know that gets into the weeds and the superintendent doesn't want to do that today but that's part of equity is making sure every school has as you said the faculty that they deserve and i think just adding on to that

019uh when i think about equity i think about giving every student every building every every educator what they need to be successful which might not be the same thing that somebody else needs so you have to meet them where they are and i think for our students in terms of their different learning abilities or learning styles or the way that we communicate with them it's finding exactly what they need to be successful providing them that and that could be completely different from johnny and sarah but you and we have to differentiate what that is to be able to to provide a sense of equity for the entire district mr president i believe the discussion also included having students to see people that look like them that was a big part of our discussion in terms

020of equity for all students need to see educators teachers janitors the whole unit looking like them mr president trustee miller i'm wondering if we can make the same sort of uh change in um the fourth uh belief statement where we talk about uh for all and we added for all stakeholders can we do the same that we did for the last and make it students and all students in stakeholders yeah i mean just for consistency and clarity she's suggesting that for the fourth bullet that we just add in the words students and stakeholders just like we did for the last bullet right for all students and stakeholders yeah that makes sense after equitable unfair the fourth one bullet number four no i think the fourth one is okay the last one's okay yeah right the

021the only the only um looking over this list for your consideration trustees the only core value that that i would personally like to see somewhere on here is respect like there is nothing about respect anywhere in these core values and to me that's a fundamental value that we would want everyone to have like whether they're a trustee a student a parent there's no respect reflected anywhere in here i'm okay with that but it's really the i don't know i don't want to water down equity exactly i say maybe in point two you could add it there open communication that builds trust and respect and mutual respect i like the mutual respect i i think it should be in everything that we do not just limited to communication because you want it by itself you wanted

022a bullet to point yeah it should be a separate point i think right i wanted to go back to the equity for all uh murphy when you mentioned about veteran teachers and that kind of thing more balanced with that i think we have to do a deep dig to find out why teachers are leaving why is it not more balanced what are our practices for example when we closed some of the elementary did those teachers follow their children or were they allowed to go anywhere we lost some veterans like that so we have to kind of take a look and dig deep at the central level on what's happening with equity especially with issues such as teachers i agree and that's in the draft priorities under retention of staff students that's a good point could

023you maybe say mutual respect for all persons or something like something throughout the or throughout the corporation or something something like that yeah throughout the entire encore corporation i think it's getting there i know today's a draft day i think that could probably use a little bit more wordsmithing but if you want to move on well just quickly because we the conversation we were having back here in the corner the chatter group um was that when we when you add entire cooperation it doesn't include any type of other entity outside of the corporation that you want to respect you know be respectful with so if there's the city if it's independent businesses or industries that are coming in so adding entire corporation is sort of it became very limiting i agree yes could could we

024you just the same thing we did for the first bullet just say mutual respect for all right that's why we were thinking that would be okay that's why we were thinking we would just add mutual respect to the equity line and i think we as the committee felt like it wouldn't lose any of the power or focus if you just add mutual respect to that first one so so barry if if i'm hearing you right you're actually saying that amongst yourselves you wouldn't have any issue with having the mutual respect be part of the first bullet correct okay because mutual respect and equity seem like they go hand in hand so that's why we thought maybe the first line well because equity goes at the heart of respecting someone for an individual understanding where they

025are and if you if you don't see them as individuals then you're not searching for equity to provide equity and you're not being respectful so that's where we see it as they the two go hand in hand i i don't know it's almost more powerful to keep it separate and the reason i'm thinking about it just talking to teachers recently the end of the school year you have an irate parent come in and just disrespects the teacher because they're upset because their child is not graduating or they didn't pass a test and i don't know putting that with the equity is going to do that that's one of the things that's missing is making and i know we're doing the mindfulness and all this stuff with our students but we still have a level of

026students and parents that are disrespectful of our teachers in our administration and by putting that together i don't know if it makes it as powerful what if you put mutual respect for all as your second bullet point i was gonna say it's the order that makes it seem stronger and it flows right from equity right into a mutual respect mr president i would also agree when we talk about parents that enter our building that that are belligerent it comes from because we are not setting any standards we have to set our standards high and let parents know in the beginning what we expect and what we don't expect of them when they enter our building so in essence i believe we're sort of we we just need to get tougher so to speak and set

027higher standards for anybody that comes in our building and is disruptive to our whole setting and um i've read in our books that schools do that you know district districts in other parts of the country they set their standards high for their parents they will not allow a parent to enter that building cussing and and just being irate we just have to set those kind of standards i mean i don't i'm not suggesting sending police or anything like that but once we set our standards high and let parents know in the very beginning we don't do that here at school city hammond we respect each other and i think that will bring some of that disrespect down to a level we can't hear you mrs torino you need consist consistency too if you're gonna do

028that so everybody has everybody so if you if you don't do that then and there's no consistency it's a mute point very good right is there any uh trustees is there any more feedback on the draft belief statements for i think they look good okay thank you oh thank you i could see all right the vision statement is the dream um i like to call it a movie of the mind when you read the draft vision statement i'd like you to be able to close your eyes and see what you could imagine what this vision looks like in an elementary or a middle school or a high school or anywhere in the district it usually lasts for the full life cycle of the strategic plan which is 2022 through 2026 and although it's our dream

029and what we aspire to get to it's best to write vision statements in present tense as if it's actually occurring we use some big sensory imagery wording in a vision statement and it's our hope that the key words and phrases are simple enough that we'd never have to stop and explain what we mean i'll give you a moment to look at the draft so we did revise this a little bit from the hard copy that you have so i would ask you to read the one on the screen so i'd invite my community colleagues to to react any thoughts you'd like to share with the trustees i'm sorry this this actually goes back to the belief statements uh one of the things that i feel i just want to call out is that from the

030conversation i'm hearing there's a lot of like parents and community needs to do this but also and i'm not pointing to finger anybody but i'm saying this the belief statements are all inclusive meaning that the same way we want the larger community to engage with the school city is the way that we're calling out the school city needs to engage with the community and i'm not like once again not pointing any fingers or anything like that i think there's room for improvement for all sides in terms of this and i didn't necessarily hear that in terms of the conversation that we were having so i just wanted to call that out to make sure that we are adopting these as belief statements for everyone i know we keep using that term all stakeholders but just

031wanted to make sure that that we're all in an agreement that this is is circulars it's all inclusive for anyone who has anything to do with the education of our students what would you think about adding somewhere in their power to be happy confident socially responsible respectful again i'm actually glad you took out happy because i wasn't happy with that when we did it but you know trying to be responsible with the product i like healthy much better than happy and our thought was that was a more inclusive term it could mean physical health mental health there's a lot of ways to interpret that mr president trustee blake king once again piggy piggybacking off what councilman tyler indicated again improving relationships we have to go beyond that even with our dei report from dr goodloe

032one of the bullets that we have not been hitting is community engagement so this draft vision statement must really send a powerful message that we are moving forward with strong community engagement improving relationships and it has to go beyond that you know in my opinion we need some language some vervets that really knocks it out the park that we are moving forward with community engagement some kind of way it has to be disapproving relationship to me doesn't get it okay if any of the community members could you maybe talk about the context of improving relations relationships because i believe some of this was the idea that we wanted to make sure that we emphasized that that we believe that through relationships from teacher to student principal to teacher parent to teacher like all of these

033that is one of the fundamental keys to how we're going to improve the district is that accurate yes that's accurate we even went as far as discussing partnerships with industry within and around the city partnering with the students partnering with the schools so when we talked about improving relationships it became a much longer statement as we start to spell out every single type of relationship connection that we would want to make sure it was improving which is why we sort of ended up on the general improving relationships um maybe it could be in strengthening relationships or something like that that could be a more powerful word if i'm understanding what trustee king is implying um but that was what it was we there were so many different connectors that we were like well we want

034to make sure this relationship is improved in that one that it just got to be extremely long and cumbersome so we were trying to make sure it was something that was very clear easy to understand and easy to adopt within the entire district okay i want to piggyback on relationships again we understand that because we're talking about it in here i don't know because when we say improving relationships who am i proving relationships with and i don't know if that's going to translate for the community and then i'm it's so tiny um grammar wise positive inclusive learning of violence that build builds all right but that's going back to improving relationships again i don't think if we throw that out there i think it was great thank you for changing that um it's much stronger

035than it was from the committee meeting i'm not sure that we need through continuously improving relationships up there and please don't add in community accounts engagement engagement yeah it's hard being over in the corner um so again i'm going to just throw it out there so we moved that other one changed it i don't know if that would do it here but to me i don't know if it'd definitely be clear if we threw that out to the community other than the if you go from we create positive i think that's excellent i think that part of it i love it it's just a little bit before it i'm questioning if that's clear so it tightens it down a bit in the vision the fewer the words the more powerful the statement so possibly just

036removing this maybe and and i was going to suggest that but it i want to also you know the committee believes that improving relationships is important to be part of it so this is a board and so i'm going to throw my two cents in and the rest of the board can you know to me that is just excellent when we create i don't know how the rest of the board feels i think again i can give the context in my understanding that you'll have the vision statement but that it'll go hand in hand with the mission and the beliefs that will be published and publicized together so the the goal would be for individuals to read it all as a holistic piece which will provide insight clarity and more detail to individual aspects of

037the plan and so in our committee meetings one of the conversations that we continued to have was at the time it was cove at the time you were talking about school consolidation there were a lot going on and the need for improving relationships between faculty and teachers and staff and parents and the community and the city it was important i think from the group that was here which was a very inclusive group to be a part of that group was like we have to make sure that improving relationships with something again this is the plan that you all adopt but that improving relationship is something that we've felt strongly enough about that it was the very beginning of the statement what what if we kind of merged the two um and i'm not married to

038any of it just yet but um we create positive and inclusive learning environments that build relationships and the ability of all scholars to be healthy like you know some some kind of hybrid of the two um i i think the relationship part is important um but i also agree with um what has been said about uh like the length of the statement you know and if it's a if there's a way to to kind of consolidate it a little bit um but i'm not i'm not committed anywhere just yet just as a thought rich can you blow that up more because i can't i don't know actually brad would have to do it he has to do it there he can't expand the screen he can't he just has to get out of edit mode

039no no i i understand that but i can't see it while he's editing oh so you want to roll down i mean if you want to move this way will that help at all or i might do that there's we can make room oh yeah maximize the whole thing and once again while we're doing this community engagement i'm still not seeing that in this piece i think improving relationships is one thing again our dei report that was one of the bullets we have not we have been have not done well with so um in order to be consistent because it's gone what's positive you're building relationships all of those can be inclusive under under positive you know i look i'm old school i don't spend a lot of time playing with words i'm an action

040person how we're going to do this but if you sit and i don't think we should start with a pronoun we haven't started with pronouns anywhere else create a positive and inclusive learning environment that builds on the ability of all scholars blah blah blah so under the positive and inclusive learning around what makes a positive environment how well do you communicate are you building relationships are we dealing with all the stakeholders those are given on the positive so if we have to name them abcd okay but uh move on people thank you doc where did you suggest relationship um environment i think environment that builds relationships and the ability of all scholars to be healthy confident other thoughts colleagues how are you resonating with draft two well could we you at least use the word

041strengthen relationships as opposed to bill or guild and strengthen the lack thereof yeah and then i guess you have to move builds um to after the and then strengthens relationships and builds the ability yeah i don't think that flows now it by by putting relationships there it does kind of make it just about the learning environment where i think some of the commun the community was wanting to indicate that this was relationships that were outside as well that it was it was everyone including like partners in the civil city and things like that is that correct yes not that i have a solution but i'm just bringing that up yeah that's an excellent point so the first statement puts the emphasis on relationships or we create a positive inclusive learning environment that builds relationships i

042like builds in there and i like the we i think the the royal we is important there and then you can still have that i know you lose improving but builds is just like improving i i think we would have to disagree i think the relationship's already there right so you're not necessarily building them because the relationship's already in existence what we want to focus on is the strengthening of those relationships because we we do feel like that implies uh to miss reynolds point more action you have to be active in terms of how you're strengthening those relationships um building is to me there's limits to that but strengthening is like that continuous improvement true but they have to start somewhere so when we get our elementary in there they're building the relationships so when

043you're talking at the high school level i would totally agree with you you're strengthening those relationships well i think that's what we were discussing in the first statement it was internal and external relationships right there may be some relationships that exist they may be fractured damaged negative in in intent and so or and feeling around it and so improving the relationships whether it's a negative or positive relationship working toward improving those relationships and then using those improved relationships to then create a positive and inclusive learning environment and that's sort of where it's the conversation was about you you can't do anything alone you can't be functioning in a silo and so how our external partners whether they're family members the business the city working together to collaborate to provide the best for the students and

044what's the school city of hammond's role in facilitating that right so that's where we had the starting with the through continuously improving it was that constantly working evaluating and improving upon the existing relationships that already exist um i think it either has to be environments or builds right but i like this yes thank you so just in case anybody can't see it the bottom one says through strengthened relationships we create a positive and inclusive learning environment that that builds on the ability of all scholars to be healthy confident socially responsible critical thinkers and problem solvers right i like it i i do look like i'm a team player i like relationships within it but if the majority likes this i can live with it well and and then my thing is is it a learning

045in is it a single environment an exclusive learning environment that builds or is it inclusive learning environments being like multiple you know our schools we're not a single entity right and it's two-way um along with the community and that sort of thing opposed to just you know builds the ability i think i like learning environments that build on um but i don't know what anybody else thinks about that i like that we were actually saying that over here that it's through strengthened relationships we create a pile we create positive and inclusive learning environments that build on the ability of all scholars yeah i like i like that better because again it's more inclusive that way so colleagues you're comfortable with statement two or draft two anything else on this statement i can live with it

046i'm good i'm i like it you guys feeling good about it yeah when i understand it correctly once we present it to the community can they change can they offer changes as well or that's it well ultimately the board is going to vote on on it but our my recommendation is to present these as drafts to the community and to solicit feedback before the board would take a final vote so this is not fine it could very well not be absolutely violent correct thank you well um i'd like to follow the mission statement i'll work with dr bulge it likely just like we said earlier it's either going to be a form of survey or offering times to host some meetings where people could come in and offer offer feedback on it that's we haven't

047had the greatest attendance on those type of events in the past but we can't absolutely we can but again we're setting our standards high so as as we have presented we have to find ways to raise that level of activity attendance thank you okay mission statement um when we're working on these in committee the vision and the mission has the feeling of running together because they are a bit similar except the mission statement has some direction parameters within it so it's a bit more straightforward clear and concise and we like to see nice alignment between our vision statement and our mission statement but when we think about decision making we can find more keywords and phrases in the mission that helps us with that central to your vision statement was a focus on the students

048that you serve and that is spot on and you'll notice in your mission statement front and center are the students that you serve so i'll give you a moment to review that did you make any changes yes yeah we instead of just having advocating i i wanted it to indicate that we're going to be providing it to like i think advocating by itself is not sufficient so we added by advocating for and providing so community colleagues any comments you'd like to provide for context for the board i like it i have no problem with it agreed agree okay just it looks good yeah and i was one of the things i shared in the committee work is that many vision mission statements can be distracted with environments or things and yours gets at the heart

049of the students that you serve which gives it an air of distinctiveness so these two together the vision and the mission really makes about a powerful statement about how you will serve your students excuse me go back one quick second sorry um councilman tyler brought up a point about where it says we empower a diverse group if we wanted to assume more ownership of that and say we empower our diverse group of scholars and it's more inclusive it pairs nicely with the we term that we used how do you feel about our diverse group i agree are we going with owl okay ready okay so the priorities are what the district needs to focus on most and pay attention to and it's um this is a difficult task because it it really forces a conversation

050about what matters most over the life cycle of this strategic plan in terms of how we'll focus time and energy and resources and so the committee had an extended discussion of this and we did make an edit to the third bullet a commitment to diversity equity and inclusion but i'll give you a moment to review the committee's core priority draft what is united district-wide community that's a great question um should that be unite all right colleagues would you like to share your perspective on that so the conversation in the community was that at the time you there it was covet consolidations school closures and things and so one of the topics that we discussed frequently was what is the district's role in creating and building upon to guarantee there's a unified district throughout unified community

051community throughout the entire school district so whether it's different parts of the city whether it's each individual school you know community groups parent groups how is the district playing a role in unifying all of those that are directly related to the school community and i provided example um there was an nsba group on new orleans and i did one of their trips to um a school district right outside so during katrina when new orleans lost all their power this district had the only broadcast station for the whole area so the news came out of the school district and so we visited them and the one thing that i was delighted with as we saw the elementary students and we also went to their high school and they had um an acc like ours and the

052lady that was leading us she would go we are and the whole classroom would shout out who they were so in hammond it'd be we are either school city of hammond or we are sch and the community they were just so proud of who they are and i brought that example up is that when our students come in that's what i want to hear you're proud we are providing the services that you are thrilled to get up every single morning and come to school and so that's the bit i added to that one so one of the intentional elements of a set of priorities is that we don't number those um to clearly communicate that students accept is number one in a unified district-wide community is number six however there is a sense of priority

053to them and you'll notice strategically the student and staff face comes first student success and the retention of our staff and students and then things are afterwards so united district-wide community there was some intentionality in having that as number six for the board's consideration but the more we talked again this morning we reaffirmed its importance did you feel that it was worthy of remaining i noticed you took out the committees is that intentional because like on the sheet you actually have subgroups underneath those yes so that was meant to let me scroll to is it united or unified so what this was to capture the thoughts of the committee on our final meeting together right i think that's important yes so i'll leave that up for a moment and colleagues if you want to speak

054to any of those phrases or trustees if you have questions feel free to ask thank you for reminding me trustee murphy can i don't i don't want to um divert where we are so you can tell me to put a pin in this um when we talk about fiscal responsibility i i i just want to throw out this one idea without fiscal responsibility it's difficult to ensure student success and i'll get i'll give the example textbooks right how long has it been since we've been able to provide new textbooks and textbooks to every student because of the deficit that we had in that area um now we we are addressing that and that that's being resolved and we're moving forward but again i know they're not numbered but it does give you a sense of

055priority it also makes retention difficult of faculty and staff and that sort of thing and so um people are more important than things um and i guess i'm just trying to walk through it people are more important than things but without the fiscal responsibility none of those other things are are possible um i mean some would say like the consolidations of the school well if we really wanted a unified district we wouldn't we wouldn't have consolidated schools right you know what i mean so but it was the fiscal responsibility had to had to take place first and so i don't know how anybody else is feeling about that and yes people people are more important than things but it's just not at the cost of not being fiscally responsible um because then we can't provide

056those services or those things so if i if i if i could make it i totally agree with trustee miller and i think it could be very well number one the first bullet point because without that we couldn't do anything with the other we can't do any of that so one suggestion for your consideration might be um i have some graphics that you remember in wedding vows that a ring has no beginning and no end one of the ways that we could present these is with something that's a bit more circular in a graphic so no one can pick and choose what's first or last there'll be no sense of priority then and i've got a graphic that would be quite appropriate for that i would be comfortable with that okay i would definitely be

057comfortable with that i just don't want it to come back you know at some point at what cost we can't keep spending what we don't have yes you know what i mean those things are most most important so how do we how do we express that and i think you're right if it's circular excellent good i will uh drop that in to the powerpoint um and so that all of you can see that one i'll do a final iteration so you can look it over and that would give you a chance and lisa well that's a good point there's certain things we want to rise to the top so when we tell the superintendent what one of these things are dearest to our heart and important to our community and you figure out if we

058can pay for it and if you can't then you need to come back to this and then we need to tweak that and say okay if we can't afford to do this then what do we take out i still think student success is number one that drives your finance that drives everything that we do is ultimately student success and i would agree too out of the list that is the number one priority but if we could display it in a circular fashion so it's less listy like i um they they're they build off of each other because if i recall our uh our what's that this we have we get from the state board's responsibilities is students is number one student is never on the top and then fiscal responsibility i believe is number two

059or three before as far as our responsibilities to the community that list that we get from the indiana school board association so you're going to put it in a circular form so one doesn't outweigh the other but again student success and money that's it they're going all of it you know what i mean they they are they're so interconnected i think the circle is a great option i still don't get the united district community wide i remember now i vaguely remember the discussion but uh we our school that's something we're going to have to develop because we certainly don't have it now so it's we're going to need a team to help um fortify that concept because people gonna look at it united district community what is that all about you know and that's something

060that we can build on because we certainly don't have it to a certain degree in my opinion so okay we can leave it there but it's definitely going to take some work to get there yes so superintendent miller so since we've added commitment to diversity equity inclusion do you have bullets under there that you want to suggest our priorities underneath that one um so i brought that one up just this morning when we were reviewing the priorities because it wasn't reflected in you yourself have asked a few times publicly is our dei plan going to run on the side of this or is it going to be integrated into this and my my preference would be have it to be integrated in this but still to have its own priorities and goals so that's the

061sub points are going to be the points that dr goodloe presented in his his plan but that's that's that's i thought it was important to put as a priority see anything else on this when we move into the goal phase one of the things we talked about relative to the ei this morning was some districts choose to have a goal statement and several objectives that are related solely to dei other districts have taken the goal committee say for dei and they have representation on every goal committee such that that commitment has a more robust feel throughout all the goal statements as opposed to a single standalone but you'll have options to weigh um i think it can be both i think that we can absolutely have di representation at on all the gold committees but

062there are some measurables that i think that are unique to those initiatives that we want to ensure there's growth on very good so to me trustees this is the one that i would encourage we pause for a moment this is a statement of what matters most and i want to make sure that you feel comfortable with that before this would be communicated to your stakeholders you think we've captured that in these six bullets i think so it really pleases me as a facilitator that you're so closely aligned with the work of your committee it's nice to see that reflection of what they believe to be central to your foundational statements and and your willingness to resonate with those so i like the close alignment yeah i think we all think the committee did an excellent

063job i mean that was a lot of work a lot of volunteer work and the effort everybody put in for that is just incredible i think everybody up here feels that way as you know people came and go because they're so busy we competed with a lot of things and a lot of things were given up to spend time on this so i was very grateful for their time as well so if if i could have a couple moments of your time then to clarify what we would do with these is develop a survey if you would like the last time we did any surveying we had a spanish version of that as well and so we would it's a very brief one we talked this morning about access to your community stakeholders i can

064develop the survey in a way that's very friendly for social media devices we could have qr codes when people attend events or things they could just click on that and go straight to the survey typically no more than three minutes is needed to give us foundational statement feedback and then i can develop a summary of that feedback for your final consideration before these are informally adopted with their adoption we start phase two and i'll work more directly with the superintendent then on those measurable outcomes to support your foundational statements so you under each one of these headings you're going to have a bunch of items that you're going to ask the community to prioritize no this it's very straightforward this is what they'll see in the survey they will not the bulleted items were to

065capture the talking points behind the committee deliberations for the board so to make sure that they understood what was discussed but what they'll be an introductory a two-sentence intro that asks them if they resonate with those phrases as the draft or as the core priorities for the district and and each each slide has an explanation of what the priority is and then it has one question about the priorities that they can respond to there's an open-ended it's a it's a an optional thing to have an open-ended question about the priorities in general but it's often helpful some very interesting things come out in the narrative that we may have not thought about the community members or other stakeholders see so i would also encourage an open-ended statement to gather additional feedback not relative to the

066foundational statements yeah i'd like to see that before that goes out there because like trustee blake kings and so the united district-wide community we played with that a lot so the original was rebranding yeah that's what we started with rebranding yeah and then at a lot of talks then we came up with this um again they make that phrase may not play well with the community without an in-depth like what are we talking about here and what do we want to do because some people may say well that's under improved communications it's like no it's not really we're trying to build school pride like i talk about you know there's going to be a time where we're going to be having like um i'll bring up chess but also football and everything else it's like

067those games playing each other and going back to that district down in louisiana they had two high schools too and so using their broadcast studios they had the coach come in on each team and they'd talk about how they thought the game was going to be and that was building community and i think that was a wonderful idea having the coaches come in and talk about the games and key players before the game even happens and so those are things want to make sure that we're getting the flavor because the committee did a lot of work and a lot of discussion talking about these and making sure they understand where we're coming so and we get the commitment to diversity equity and inclusion sometimes the lgbtq community does not necessarily feel that they're being taken

068care of um and making sure that that is in there too so that's what i'd like to see before that survey goes out what you're going to be sending out on the survey sure so we're not breaking it all down that's not the point of of the priorities is to break it down we we are saying these are the high level priorities for the district phase two that's where my charge is to go through and then break it down and come up with a plan for each of the priorities and how the district's going to address it in fact when we introduce this to the community whatever dialogue they might have regarding any of those bullet points especially united district-wide community that might be the one of the biggest questions sure you know in their

069mind and from that we can build on him uh mr miller you can certainly go from there so we have to allow the community to give up give us something we can't give it all because we don't know it all you know but once we get the feedback from our community i do think that last bullet though is the one that that is the least obvious right that's why i questioned right to start with well and that's my question too like if like i understood what it meant um but if we're have then it needs to be rewritten i think if you can't clearly look at it we have to explain what the priority is yeah then i'm concerned that like we need to massage that a little bit not change the intent but how

070do we make it how do what do we do to make it clearer so there's not a question on what that priority is yeah like retention of staff students that's very obvious what that means fiscally responsible you know the united district what community comment you'll be able to build communities because they'll have a buy-in to it then can we what about if we made it united school district community uh instead of district-wide like united seh community does that make it clearer well we know we're a school district we we know what we're working from and where we we're the beginning is we're a school district they know that they know they're coming to us to address the issue of the school so i i mean it's sort of i mean our community is intelligent enough

071to figure that one out that they know it's schools they know it's not church they know it's not government you know we got to give our community some credit for thinking and as mrs trevino indicated that alone is going to trigger a lot of conversation and i'm i'm curious just to let bring them back bring that feedback to us they'll have an investment then right so i mean if that's what you want to do they're they're being able to put some you know meat into it will be their investment right we can't do everything let them give us something back and the reason the word community is there is because we do think of this as not just the school district but the entire city um and we because we we want people to understand

072that they play a role in the development and success of our school district um and i'm not saying this is the perfect way to say that there might be other ways to worst method but i think we don't want to lose that sense of community that's there you know a clever play on the district's name the most commonly accepted term is school community and we hyphenate that to mean something all-inclusive but you are the school city of hammond so it could be the united school community but it the goal would be that that would resonate as a district-wide priority not a school-based priority and there could be confusion with that as well what about what trustee miller said united sch community yeah but with that it kind of um takes out what um barry just

073just said like we haven't made it it wouldn't include everyone right you know um in that um i mean again again it does but it doesn't um if we put s-e-s-c-h there instead i may be school i don't just i don't dislike that a united school community um but again does that councilman is that is that inclusive enough i think we're just going beyond as we said going beyond the school you just want to go united community trustee king is that that's right and again allow the community to give us that feedback you know let's hear what they have to say if they say well where should these schools or whatever you know let them do some work you know we don't have to do all of them i would say we were talking like

074leave it united district y community get the community feedback to see what resonates with them and the type of feedback that you garner from their survey responses and then allow that to guide your modifications that'd be one great way to take community input and put it to work is there any argument that a commitment to the first five would accomplish uniting the district-wide community i can't hear you comment any comment i know you're good yeah that was so negative any comment no i i mean i think it needs to be in there i think just um if we if there's that many questions here i'm worried three years from now like it'll get lost you know because it's not i think it's going to be interesting to see what kind of responses we do get

075yes we might be surprised absolutely on all of it it's something that can go back to the city council then too uh-huh exactly build on what we have okay so what i my next steps will be is to share an english version in a word document that you could look through and make sure you're comfortable with it and then i would load this in a survey format and send it back as a draft and i'd like you to mess with it take it as multiple stakeholders and make sure um that you're comfortable with how it works and then we can do a translation into spanish at that time and i'll activate this circular graphic beg your pardon i think everybody would like to see it absolutely i'll clean this powerpoint up with the final draft

076statements i'll add the circular and send it back to you thank you sure you know i mean i don't mean to be rude i'm just no i i work on behalf of the board so whatever time frame they want if there's this can move as quickly as you would like at this point but we work on behalf of this of our community yes we work on behalf of them and that is what she's saying that's what we need to really use i think sorry i was going to say uh we're already in june um and i know a lot of educators and even families are taking vacations throughout the summer so i think it makes sense to launch this in august when school reconvenes maybe at your i don't know first or second meeting of

077that month uh and i'm working with a couple other districts in other parts of indiana and that's when they're releasing their strategic plans too is is on that same timeline good very dope and again we need student engagement we need student i mean that's what's missing from all of this our students period and they don't want to have to live with this um councilman but you're talking about the actual release of the finished plan correct not waiting till august to do surveying well i think that you can you can start the survey but i think that there is going to be a lot of people who you want to either survey or convene in person that might not be available over the next six weeks so i do think that you can start that process

078now and have a couple summer sessions but you probably want to continue those through the first month of august and so then maybe that means that in september you're releasing the finalized draft in fact it might take from now and to then to develop a good survey we need to review that to make sure we're you know asking the right questions so we can get the right feedback so from now until then we need to work on that survey saying i was um thinking like we have summer school in session now right and we actually have quite a few students and families that are engaged with that and so um it might be possible for us to push something out and get at least initial engagement if we if we act quickly um on on

079this i don't know i agree i i would like to see the survey done by the end of the month dr balsh when do you think you could get us the um the documents back so i need i i've got to get back um i'll need a few days to get you a word document and as quickly as you can get that back to me then i can begin to build it into the qualtric system which is a few more days and we can put that in test mode for you to try and then the last time we did something like this you were able to provide someone to do the translation i can still do that yeah okay so yeah we a couple couple of weeks probably to turn the whole thing around and

080have it ready to go for your patrons yeah let's do it what now i mean because there is a there's a phase two to this too like it's going to be an ongoing process throughout the summer and into the uh into august you know what i mean like but for this initial part because we're kind of stuck right before we can go on until we get some initial feedback here and the administration can't even start on the other parts until we've done our mission and our vision correct well summer school is only three weeks and if you say the end of the month they're gone i mean we don't need to rush this we need to do it right the first time that survey has to be on point and that's why i want to

081review it the board should be able to review it even even our community make sure we're asking the right questions so that we can get the information we need oftentimes if you don't ask the right question we don't get the right feedback so that's crucial i'm sorry no i was just going to say i understand the to your point i understand the want to get this done quickly but the same time you want to make sure it's done right and i think that just means taking time to make sure you have as much stakeholder input as possible and to trustee murphy's point i think once you have this then the schools will be able to adapt their plans to adjust to this and that might happen after school starts which i know is is not

082ideal but i think if we wanted if we had wanted to not have that be the case then we probably would have had this meeting a couple months ago so they would be able to use this for by the end of the school year but i think where we are now we just have to kind of take our time and make sure it's right before we push it out there i'm just going to throw out there i was on the original committee with jerry that did the mission envision and jerry did not ask for any community feedback whatsoever it was totally done in-house um i think whatever if we get a couple hundred people that give us feedback on it i'm just totally good on that i think the committee aren't you guys proud of

083your work don't you think these are the final versions or pretty close to the final versions at least with the mission and vision so from there if the board can do those we can start redoing the banners around the district at least with that and let the district go and start working on the other stuff i think we're with the mission envision i think that we're all comfortable with that i think when it comes to the priorities rushing the survey out is not increased transparency it's not going to create a unified district and it's not improved communication right and so i think if you're doing one survey then you want to wait to make sure if this is what we're saying our priorities are we don't then wait until a lot of your teachers your

084faculty your staff are on vacation to where our parents are on vacation and then push a survey out and give them a very short time to respond and then take that because how long would the survey be open for them to actually submit their responses if it's two weeks to get it done how long would you allow them to take before the survey window closed well and i think that's what we haven't talked about is how long the survey is open like we can still get this thing out and get get things moving um and if we feel like it needs to be open longer or we feel like we're not getting enough response or we feel like you know what whatever but at least we've started that process um and again maybe that's maybe

085that's the compromise the participation typically falls off dramatically at 10 to 14 days and i can run the numbers for you so you can see how many in each stakeholder group you have but at that point it needs a disruption either a reminder to complete the survey or you're satisfied with the numbers and we can shut it down so on the committee i would say i was surprised to get the email that this session was taking place i just landed from florida last night um and gone through email and barry texted and said are you coming to the meeting and i thought went through my email to see and i i missed one meeting in the entire time we're going through this process so you want to make sure that you're telling people this survey

086is coming and then you're going to have two weeks to complete the survey and then it's going to take us this amount of time frame to review that and make changes before we announce to the public this is what our plan is i think until you get that time frame completely ironed out don't put anything out there that's a an excellent point one of the serve the final slide in this survey what we have found in the past is that people that take the survey are hungry to know what's next where's all this headed and so excellent point we'll have a we should have a two to three sentence paragraph that says what's next the other thing that i've offered to districts and you may want to take advantage of it is a short video

087vignette from either the board president or the superintendent that introduces it and puts some meaning behind it it tends to increase completion rates when a familiar face builds some enthusiasm for why we're even doing this and usually one minute is sufficient and so mr miller if you'd like to do that i can i'll send you the downloadable format but you basically can video yourself from your laptop and send it to me and we'll introduce the survey with that internet and consider getting a student to help you guys with that i mean we're gonna do a video it should be represented of who we're trying to you know engage with i mean i mean that's my opinion we have to engage as many people on it you're gonna do a video you just again we just

088don't want to throw something together we just wanted to make it inclusive of everybody and we got to start listening to our community that's why they're here you know transparency we've got a community they're communicating to us we have to listen to what they're saying i think this meeting was a good job of listening to what they were saying fundamentally i'm not sure or not but we're going back and forth on something that we i thought was the timeline that's the first thing they said timeline and then we want to do a survey and then you know we just keep going back and forth we need to get better questions colleagues i we've really brought this full circle i think i have my marching orders and next steps i'll be in touch very soon anything

089else at this time from me i'm just pleased frankly that we were able to get through so much i think it speaks to the caliber of the work that the committees did and i just want to publicly say thank you to those who served here and and those who weren't able to make it today uh for this work because i do think it's very representative of where school city hammond needs to move so um thank you thank you um and thank you again so sentiments as well dr ball so there's anything if there's not anything else i think we can motion to adjourn um i just want to make sure that we're clear just again kind of following up um on what has been said so um next steps are we're going to at least

090develop the survey we're going to get that back to the board to review and then what we have to do is we have to set we need to set a timeline yes um as to we're gonna we're gonna get the survey to review we have x amount of time to do that then when are we gonna release the survey or you know are we gonna wait until like august when everyone is back or you know what what's that going to look like how long is the survey going to be open once the survey closes like what are the what are the next steps so we can try to land this plane that has already been said this has already been out here for a long time right so i i would like to walk away

091today at least knowing like what i don't have to have the dates right but like that we have a plan that these are the next steps of things that we feel like we need to do to accomplish this well it seems like there's two opinions on the board there's one that is right now like get it out as quickly as possible just solicit as much feedback and the other is wait until we can get more potentially more feedback and do in august so it's whatever the board's pleasure is why can't we do both right i mean we need to give you that timetable so that we all that's number one timetable i mean everybody knows it would give us initial information over the summer then uh we could launch it again in august for one

092more batch because we all know like historically your return on surveys isn't great right so um could i mean is that a solution like you know do it now let's see what the initial feedback is do we need to make adjustments based on that and then relaunch it again at the beginning of school give it the two weeks or whatever then then we close it so we can move on you know to the next i mean does that work does that hit all of it it's fine with me it's like i said pleasure to the board of it does that solution yeah in my opinion when we work up the survey there's going to be questions on that it's going to it's it's going to not that i like it it's going to delay it

093a bit uh right off the bat to make sure that everybody's in agreement with what we're going to send out because that's the critical part of this and then at that point once we have that settled down the board can say all right we're all in agreement with what survey says do we want to send it out now is timing good or do you wait one or two weeks or whatever based upon schedules i'm not sure but i think you're going to have a natural delay just in the review process to make sure it's good because if it's not good why are we sending it out right mrs you know i i think the timetable is first then once we get the survey then we'll go by that timetable and in the meantime mr miller

094can we the board starts submitting questions for the survey so it might sort of it would help prevent some something so it's not it's not that kind of survey it's going to be basically it's going to be like there's the mission with the draft mission what's your feedback on that then it's the draft vision what's your feedback on that these are the core values do you have any that's those are the questions we're asking so it's going to be like like four options or you're going to grade it one to ten is that how we're going to do it so it's not a likert scale if you'll let me just send you the draft what i've been doing is tweaking this survey with communities for years and so it's a very standard template i mean

095you can make suggestions but i've tried to work on it in a way that's very clear and straightforward and maximizes the input opportunity for your patrons again lisa and i think we're on the same page we'd sort of like two so we can get this out as soon as you can get it back to us we can do some tweaks then we can get feedback and then we can say oh you know what that's a good point for that community member maybe we need to tweak this one word in the mission statement and then we can do another one once school starts in august sure and what are you going to send it to now address your need about timeline the last slide will be a draft timeline statement i'll go ahead i'd like to

096give i'll give it a stab for you all to consider and then you can adjust that you're on a very doable timeline to implement this in january i could see that you might receive a final presentation from the administrative team in november or december for full adoption so based on my experience with other districts i would recommend that you think about full implementation by january um with a december or a november presentation okay councilman tyler my only thought is if you send it out twice how are you going to decide what feedback to implement from the first match then if you get feedback that's the opposite direction in the second batch then are you going to backtrack if more people in that second batch disagree with what was put forth it's just a thought so

097my suggestion baby is to leave it open even if you start it just leave it open until sometime in august so people can if they have availability to do it now they can um or if they want to wait because i think the other thing you might want to do is have community sessions where you actually present this in person give some of that additional context so that as people go into the survey they have more information to work with because i'm guessing you're going to have community members this just by looking at this document or what's in the survey are not going to be able to fully engage in the survey because they're going to want to learn more and you give them the opportunity to come in person learn more and then go

098back and take the survey and mr president with that we have time to do the video we can promote it i could be announced at council meetings mayor's night out one is coming up june 15th uh there's other venues that we can have it announced you know the survey is coming the survey is coming so that those numbers will be higher than 20 percent of people participating in a survey and uh mrs truvino had indicated some community um yeah we have the ham and hispanic community meetings monthly so you're more than welcome you can send your video over to us and we'll promote it that is coming you know let people know it's coming you do your video and barry to be honest it's very difficult for this board to meet outside of the two

099meetings a month so getting this meeting today was extremely difficult it took six weeks in the making trying to find a date where we all could come together and view this so that was so we would have to like plan now trying to get a date in july or august if we're going to do a public work session i think we talking about equity and open communication that that's one of those things that you all will have to figure out is how do you guarantee community input and feedback in advance of implementing decisions and you know i've served on boards i've worked with boards and scheduling can be a nightmare i completely understand that it's scheduling the nightmare for parents and families as well and so figuring out how to guarantee that you're offering sessions

100at different times to be able to say this is out there the survey is up there i think is going to be extremely important to unifying the district and creating and improving relationships open communication i think that has to be a priority to figure out even if it's only one or two sessions to say maybe it's not an official meeting maybe it's you can find one or two of the community members here you can have it here and you can just have surveys open for them to fill out where they may not have internet access i think just figuring out how to be equitable inclusive of all the stakeholders that are associated with natasha school city is extremely important if you really want feedback before you implement a new mission vision and beliefs yeah that's

101the big word yes we can't do anything until we get that survey to start with but we can start promoting it what do you guys think um about uh like zoom sessions like could you do a live stream session and does that i mean i always feel like as a make it easier for parents right you're not trying to get child care you're not trying to feed people dinner and run here and that like if we if there were zoom sessions instead um i know uh superintendent miller you've done some q a you know type thing um is it does that work or does it does it need to be in person or do we need to offer a mix of both i i i don't want to be the negative nelly on this i

102absolutely will do zoom i'll do in person i will do it all but a lot of people honestly don't care about the school city's strategic plan i mean they just don't well that's our fault that no it's no it's not it's just parents have a lot of things on their plate and like they trust the people who are invested in it to do their job and um i will do it all though but like i'm just like to think that we're going to get 20 000 responses we're not like we will not um so uh we're lucky if we'll get 2 000 people to say give their input on it but i will i'll be happy with my administrative team we'll sit down i'll have we'll write out a communication plan and and we will

103we will execute it but for me it's like the textbook it's it's opportunity you know that we've provided the opportunity we've solicited the feedback we've made it easy for people to participate if they choose to you know and it's all about like like opportunities so if we do an in-person one and then we do you know one or two zoom ones you know at you know maybe one's on a saturday and one's on an evening like we've and we've promoted it well have we had have we provided the opportunity like for people to ask questions and stuff and i think i think that that's important and if they don't it's it's just like the superintendent speaks like you can't make people attend but we we want to provide the opportunity it's a two-way a two-way

104road i think that would fulfill your goal of being inclusive and open to feedback is if you do have two zoom sessions virtual sessions and then one in person session and if they don't come you know i'll leave it at that but that this is their opportunity to provide feedback and you just want to make sure that you can have a clear conscience that we did what we could do to encourage community feedback we educated them we made them aware of what was happening we were available to answer their questions and to accept that feedback and if you do still get a lower response then you know that you've done all that you could before moving forward i think that's realistic thank you um and one in one group we always miss is the churches

105i mean we just don't realize the impact our pastors and bishops and them have on our community if they go from that pulpit and say a survey is coming and we need you to participate i mean that's that's a layer that we've missed and and i've heard ministers say they want to get involved but no one don't approach them to that degree so we just got to do better i mean we got all this time to promote this survey is coming and i'm excited about it and i want people to be talking about it i'm tired of the 20 percent we need to build that thank you these these sessions do we feel like those are better left um for like august or do we need to have them kind of sprinkled out like like

106july august or or can we do one like do we feel like it's too you know is it so we won't have it more than likely until the beginning of july right so do we feel like july is too early to do these or do we need to wait till school starts or can we do it in early august before school starts just again i want to give scott as much direction as possible so we can schedule it out so people know ahead of time i would say july do a zoom session for those people that may still be around then plan an in-person session for after school starts in august and then maybe one more zoom session around that same time frame and that'll help too as we're trying to flesh out like the

107complete timeline like to know like when we need to do these things is what's the thoughts on that guys anybody i like again you have to take step by step you know i mean get the survey review the survey how does that fit in what type of timeline at that point you know i think it's going to be a moving timeline as we put pieces of it together as we decide to go out and advertise about the survey and get the word out about the survey that's going to take some time so again i think it's a moving target at this point see and i think we need to have like when we get it for review you have till x amount of time to review the survey um we we are historically bad of

108not everyone responds and we're waiting on someone and i think i think we need to to set deadlines for ourselves and then also do we want to share that with with the committee like do we want to you know like hey do you guys want to take a look at this survey too before we get it out and solicit feedback from them that if we're going to do that then we need to give them a week or so to look at it to give us their feedback and then we review it and along with their feedback make our final changes and go forward i just i think we just need to set some deadlines to try to move things so dr balch when do you think you can get a draft survey to us i

109will have a draft survey in a word format for your review by wednesday and then we'll say give the superintendent's office two days to review it and get it out to the stakeholders and then a week after that we need to respond with any questions strange opinion we're not giving ourselves enough time to promote it we're reviewing right now we're not we're not sending it out we're reviewing the original questionnaire that's going to go up that's all we're doing right now i believe i can save a little time by not sending you a powerpoint with the graphic how about this i'll have the graphic in the survey so that you can see the edited version with the graphic all at once yes let's do it right yeah yeah and i i want to look at

110it after like i want the committee's feedback and then i want the survey so then we can look at those things and then kind of move forward okay when i get this survey on wednesday i will send it to the board and i will also send it to all of those who are on the committee and um so that'll be on wednesday how many days do you want me to offer to the committee to to give feedback a week a week like a week two weeks what do you guys think this is just input on the survey question so i think a week would be fine the following wednesday that's one week wednesday okay that should be more than enough time all right and as i get feedback i'll share forward it to the board

111i'm good okay cool during that time so then after that point um that wednesday then the board should be thinking about what their feedback is based upon you know your own opinions and then what what comes back from the community committee well we should have the same deadline the following wednesday yeah well the reason the same deadline wouldn't work is because there may be people submitting feedback up until that wednesday so you're right you have time to consider it can we say the wednesday after that so we have a we have two week process all right that's fine so just so everybody's clear let me get the dates and then you're gonna touch base with our pr person mr george yeah i actually just emailed him yep okay so by the 15th dr bolsh will

112send me the survey and i will send it out to yourselves in the community group we'll set a deadline of the 22nd for the community group to offer feedback on the survey and then by wednesday june 29th the board should have any feedback back to me which i will share with dr balsh that's perfect then it takes a few days to load while i'm start that i'll put a placeholder in for a spanish translation and you can send me that later okay okay do we have anything else at this point sorry i just have one more thing i just want to echo a point that trustee blake king shared in terms of when i think about my responsibility as a city councilman it is to do everything in my power i think we're we're there

113to do everything in my power to present information in a way that is acceptable um or people are able to receive it so as many people are able to receive it and then get back to me as possible so i think the point that she was trying to make is that we have to explore every option to get this survey out to prepare people that is going to come out and then when it's out to encourage them to to respond and i think part of that is also the the rebuild of trust as we've talked about through this entire process of not only are we expecting you to give feedback but once you're once you give your feedback we are going to actively review that take into consideration and decide whether we're going to implement

114it or not and then on the back end if we do implement your feedback we'll tell you how we implement it and why if we don't we're going to tell you why we didn't do that i think that is going to be important as community members submit the survey the responses of the survey because i feel like there's been times in the past where it wasn't as clear how the survey responses were going to be uh utilized in terms of the decision-making process that you guys were involved in and so i think it's just something important that we have to be clear on as we release this information and try to encourage more people to to respond because it is about building that trust and letting them know that their time their investment is appreciated

115and is going to be considered throughout this process now is the survey anonymous because we wouldn't be if it is then we wouldn't be able to get feedback directly to a person on an idea we may use yeah i wasn't referring directly but i'm saying if you make changes from any feedback that you get from the community then when you release your final draft then you can say throughout the survey period throughout the feedback sessions we heard this and this is how we implemented it i don't think you need to say it comes from a specific person or not all right so to get into the nitty-gritty so we did some grammar changes tonight so we changed it from environment to environments do you want to get down to that nitty-gritty and say a community

116member told us that this should be plural versus singular no i don't think so but like say the the you united district wide community if that becomes to unify the community you may go and say originally we had united district-wide community overwhelmingly we heard that wasn't clear and that there it didn't hone in our sense of unity and so we made that change to be this now just to be able to have a broad explanation to say this is what we originally started at this is what we heard from the community and here is where we ended up and if you say this is what we heard from a community however based on this data these statistics we still kept it with this to be able to what barry's saying be able to say clearly

117we we had an idea we listened to your feedback and we hear you we're listening and we've implemented that into our plan and here's here's how i don't think you have to do it for every single you know for every single piece of feedback that you get but if you get a piece of feedback several dozen times and you still choose not to to implement that then i think it would be it would be great for to tell excuse me to tell the public we overwhelmingly heard this excuse me um but we decided not to implement that or make changes because of this because and i think that what happened and i'm specifically talking about the the renaming of hammer high to having central i think there's still a lot of confusion about how that

118information was used there's still community members that um are just to be blunt are upset with how that experience played out and i'm not sure i think part of that is because it just wasn't clear on how the information would be used i don't think there was anything sinister done by anybody in this group but i do believe that if you get to a point where so many community members are asking those types of questions then they can start to believe that something sinister was done and so you want to eliminate that possibility by being as transparent as possible okay i i hear you in that but then sometimes like free daycare or having and we actually did this with the elementaries we had people come in earlier because when we changed the school times

119and we used the ideas they needed to have child care they had someone in there because they had to drop them off earlier on breakfast before they actually started school but sometimes it's not fiscally able to do that thing so are you saying that maybe they came up with some ideas and then we looked at it and it's like fiscally we can't do that and they come back and say hey we can't do that because of this all right i understand now okay understand now and so that i'm clear what what ways are we getting the survey out i mean how are we going to get it out that's what i asked mr george that's mr george's thing okay and i would highly recommend especially the hispanic community organization they should be able when they

120meet have them panned on hand for naacp when they meet they can help in you know because those meetings are well attended in any other organizational group and this can't be parent square or power school or whatever yes ma'am right absolutely yeah we just don't need to absolutely think we need more than one mode to get go ahead i was going to say i know you guys are planning a back to school giveaway too i would think that it would make sense to have a table dedicated to just the strategic plan conversation have surveys on hand and be ready to share more information and answer questions at that time too crime watch meetings they're throughout the city well attended those surveys can easily be put there and i'm sure they would take the time to

121uh participate in them but we're not going to do paper we want this to be electronic i understand that but you just can't stick on one mode yeah so we this is all going to be electronic this is not going to be paper the survey itself yes but the promotion some of the promotion could be paper it could be a flyer with a qr code or a poster or something like that with your back to school affair could you have a tablet or something set up where if people come in you have a table a couple of laptops tablets where people can go on right there and just do the survey that way you're saying we don't expect you to have access to this technology at home or know how to use it we are

122being equitable we are being inclusive and so come to the fair take a few minutes we have that resource here for you because we want to hear your voice you may be marginalized in the past you may not have been heard in the past and we're demonstrating that we're taking steps to bring you in and listen to your feedback very good i mean if you piggyback on that i know we did it at scott with the pta many times we actually if you filled out the survey you've got one free homework assignment off we can't so you've signed up for the past we're going to move forward that's my attitude we can't we got to stop dealing in what happened in the past we got to move forward and i mean again we're going to

123get stuck on the same two percent 20 if that's what you're satisfied with i don't understand that i'm not offering an incentive like to get people to participate it was just a suggestion it's our job as well as board members to make sure we we get that message out period and we can do that through facebook let's just do it and stop the answer i mean we've got our facebook page i we save our and we send that stuff all the time um and i insist well if it doesn't work you got to find another way that's not my name we just have to find another way so for our public out there we have a great facebook page that nate's in charge of and i suggest you make friends with it because the survey

124is going to be i see it all the time so how are you suggesting that cindy sorry all right all right all right let's get back on track here we're making no progress this way sign up to it i am on it i didn't ask you to well don't i'm asking for the public to sign up do we have anything else constructive at this point if not i'm calling for an adjournment second thank you everyone you