SAS Board of Education - Superintendent First Round Interviews (04.30.2025)

001Thank you very much, Cheryl Hash. Well done. Well done. Um, we have apparently no public comment this evening. Uh, and I will, if we have time, allow for a public comment at the end just in case, uh, people pour in. Uh, could I have a motion? I'd like to entertain a motion to approve the agenda as written, please, as printed. So move stubben second. Berwick. Thank you very much. All in favor, please say I. I. I. Excellent. I would like to uh now ask uh Jay Bennett to uh collect our first candidate. Please note folks that those of you in the audience uh there are feedback forms at the back. There's also a QR code with a link uh if you wish to provide it electronically. Uh there's also for those at home there is

002a also a link to the online version of the feedback form available on the Selenary School site. Uh please look for the superintendent search button on the main page and uh we'll just wait while the first candidate is marched in. Okay. Like to introduce everybody to uh Martin Duboce. And uh if you wanted to just to say hello to us uh before you uh sit down, sir, we're we'd be delighted to uh shake your hand. Oh, he has something for us. Th those of us those of us at home who are threatening to correct me for my misprononunciation of his name, I was corrected in the back room. It is Duboce. Just give me a nod when you're ready and then we'll start the clock and all that fun stuff. Sir, thank you. Well, thank

003you very much for being with with us today. So, we've had the opportunity to review your your resume and your uh your letter of interest. So, my the first question is is mine. I had the honor tonight of doing that. So, please tell us what specifically interests you in the Seline superintendency and how your background and experiences would make uh would benefit the district and the community as our next superintendent. So, um, a, as I look to advance my career in my in my superintendency role, you know, I I've been, you know, surveying surveying this the state and the superintendent positions that are open. I mean, and when you look at what Seline is and what it has to offer, I mean, I don't know where else you would want to go. I don't know

004where else you would want to be. Um, it's a wonderful district. There's such innovation here. Um there's the facilities are second to none. Um and and really when you can pass a $180 million bond, you know you got community support and that is that's a good feeling to have. So, um, as, uh, you know, being my third year as a superintendent, finishing up my third year as superintendent, um, you know, as I said earlier, I'm looking to, uh, advance myself and Seline looks like a wonderful place to do that. Um, I've heard great things about Seline. Um, in fact, I remember, um, because I grew up in Jackson, we would play Seline in sports and man, you guys would always kick our butt in baseball. So, uh, you know, I, uh, I do I do

005know of Seline and it's a beautiful town. I drove through. My wife and I, we got here a little early and just kind of toured around me because I did come earlier just to look at look around, look at the facilities, what a beautiful high school and the the beautiful elementarymentaries that you have here. So, you know, um you know, wi-i with the experience that I have as a superintendent with the last three years and and I I don't mind saying that being in a small district that I am, my hands are in everything. So, I feel like I'm prepared to make that next level jump and I feel like Seline is that place and you know, I don't know why else I wouldn't want to be here. Thank you very much. I'm going to

006pass this over now to uh Vice President Steman. Hello. Hello. Definitely here. Um, please share an example of a time that you have led a sustained multi-year improvement initiative such as a strategic plan. Be specific regarding the situation, the task at hand, your specific role, and then the outcome. And I can repeat that because that's kind of a long question if you would like. Okay. Thank you. So, it's interesting looking at that question because currently right now we're in the process of uh creating a strategic plan at Reading Community Schools. So, we're about halfway through the process. Um you know, we started out with more discussion um looking at our mission and vision statement, how we want to adapt that to make it make it fit more of the times because I don't know when

007the last time it's been a while it looks like of when they actually uh created the previous strategic plan. So um you know got together with the board uh we established a committee that way we could uh set up a plan of attack on how we wanted to go about doing this. Um obviously we felt that climate surveys would be the way to go. Um and um you know I did partner with Kent ISD uh for a perception um uh u surveys uh looking at all the stakeholders involved parents students uh staff. So, um, I sent those out, got those back, looking at and re kind of reviewing. Now, we're in the process of collecting that data, looking at what, uh, what's what what are some commonalities that we're seeing in from each of the

008stakeholders and, um, that that can help drive our strategic plan. Um, so now the next steps are just that le let's try to look at focusing on three to five goals or focus areas that it fits the fits the needs of the district and the community and um and and and that's kind of where we're at currently. So my my next steps would be to look at okay put this all together. I need to set up a presentation for the board. We will do that as a committee. um and um present it, you know, ask ask uh stakeholders to please come view, listen, um any other input that they would like to add. It's never too late. And um and hopefully the the board will adopt it after that process. So, uh it it's it's

009been a little bit of a process, but it's supposed to be. So, you want to make sure that you're getting it right. Um, and you know, I gotta say when I look at uh the mission and vision statement here and the SAS compass, I love the SAS compass. That's it. It's it's really cool. Very nice to look at. I love the four C's that you have uh that go along with it. It's very thorough. It's very thoughtful and it it's aesthetically pleasing as well. I love this the layout. I don't know who the artist was for that, but they did a great job. So, you know, and and after after whatever the strategic plan being adopted, obviously, I want to then set up meetings quarterly with the committee to uh present to the board to

010see, okay, how is it going? Um, is there anything that we need to look at changing? Have we got any other input from any other stakeholders in the community or or within the within the district? And if that's the case, then maybe we need to look at it. But that's kind of where we're at in that process. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'd like to pass the next question over to Treasurer Gerby. Hi there, Mr. Deo. Hello. All right. So, as our superintendent, how would you work to ensure and enhance the sustainability and reputation of our district? Okay. So, you know, first I'd like to uh start with um to me looking at Selene and knowing what I know about Selena, I think there's an established uh reputation in a positive manner that is

011this is a very innovative district is a great district to send your kids to. So, I I feel like there's already that high bar there. Um but, you know, there's always room for improvement um in any district, in any organization. you're always looking to improve and that's how you always get better. Um so for me um you know I definitely follow through um with whatever um I'm saying to make sure that you know that that I that I have all the facts in mind and but I'm following through with what I'm saying because you don't want to put something out there and not be able to follow it up. Um you know I I I did look at the my school data in regards to the district to see where our scores were at. you

012know, graduation rates. I mean, 95% is I think what I saw on my school data for graduation rate. That's phenomenal. And um and it looked like all the scores uh from your MSTEP from um you know, just across the district were above the state average and and well in some some buildings way above the state average, which was great to see. So, I feel like that, you know, that uh uh that is that's there already, but as I said, we're always looking to improve. And I feel like that I can come in and look at things uh and and help to to move that along. Um you know, whenever I'm in the community, I'm going to always make sure that I am, you know, talking about Seline. I'm hoping that being out in the community,

013I I I feel like I'm approachable. I feel like I'm I'm very open. I always have an open door policy and um you know I want people to come and talk to me because I want to be able to tell what we're doing here and um how we're doing and how we're looking to improve that. Um you know and and I do believe that it all starts at the top and it's always the trickle down. So I need to be that model. I need to show you know the the district here's here's who I am. Here's what I the expectations are. here here are the goals and we want to push those goals and if I can get that across to you know my cabinet members to my principles to my teachers it would then

014reflect right into the students. So um so that's how I would try to do that to my best ability. Thank you. I'd like to pass the next question over to board secretary Darcy Berwick. Thank you for being here tonight. So honesty, integrity and trust are valuable characteristics to have in leaders. How have you worked to earn trust in previous positions and how would you do so if chosen for this position in Seline? Okay, so um I I'm I'm a relationship person. I love building relationships. Um, I um I feel like that's one of my strong points is um being able to meet somebody that I that I've never met before and and and really move that person into um having a having a good relationship with myself, trusting me and um and and believing that,

015you know, what I'm doing and saying is is is what I'm going to do. Um I'm authentic. Um, whenever we talk, you you'll know that that's who Marty is and and and what you see is what you get. Um, you know, I I like to allow people to to speak. Um, you know, sometimes they need to vent. So, when I talk about that open door policy, Yeah. come in, you know, and I know the conversations aren't always going to be cheery and happy and and there's going to be there's always concerns and and sometimes um it reaches to the level of the superintendent and and I don't mind that. I do that now and I'm okay with that. Um I want people to feel comfortable enough to come to me and talk to me whenever

016they need to. Sometimes they just need to be heard. Um, you know, when I when I was a building principal, um, you know, I I would have the angriest parents coming in, but by the time they left, we were laughing on the way out because they would expect to come in for a fight or or, you know, cuz their child got suspended or or something happened negatively and and and I would just listen to them because I would let them know you're okay. I don't take that personally. your mom, your dad, and you're supposed to protect your children, and you're supposed to come in and defend them. And um so you you allow them to vent, you allow them to talk, and then then now now it's my turn. And then I I'll bring it

017back around and and and start talking about what but here's what happened. Here's what we did. So um you know, how can we move past this? And it usually works out very well. So it's I've always had a high success rate with that. So, um, and you know, again, I talk about the open door policy. Um, I right now in Reading Community Schools, I try to visit the buildings as much as possible. Really, it's kind of easy because my office is in the high school, middle school, and then the elementary is at a separate building. So, you know, it makes it a little easier. But I get over to the elementary as much as possible. So, the teachers can see me, the students can see me. Um because I do kind of miss that as

018as a building principal that I don't get really get to see the kids or get in with the kids, but they know me and I think it's uh I don't want to say it's uncommon, but um you don't see a high incidence of students knowing the superintendent and and they and they know me and they'll come up and give me hugs or give me fist bumps and I love that. So um so yeah, so I I guess that's how I would answer that question. Yep. Thank you. I'd like to pass the next question over to uh trustee Tim Austin. Hello Martin. Um tell us what the term culturally competent means to you. Give us an example of how you demonstrate this character. So, you know, I saw this question and I was like, yeah, this

019is a great question for me mainly because I feel like my whole life I've been culturally competent. I've been in that mode since birth. I am Mexican descent. And we we we laugh a little bit about the the name Duboce and and again, Duba would be much better. It is a really cool name. And um but uh you know in in school they used to call me the French again uh because we'd combined the French name and and my mom's Garcia. So you know I feel like I've grown up with that ability just because I was around it. I lived it. That that's what I did. I and I don't know any different. And when so when I see terms like that I like oh yeah yeah I I do that or yeah that's me.

020Um, so I I feel like that it comes easy to me to be culturally competent. Uh, because I grew up with friends. I grew up in Jackson on the east side where it was, you know, we didn't have a whole lot of money and I was around people with with money and some people without money and it didn't really matter to me. You know, I just treat everybody the same and um but, you know, always proud of who I am. So, um, you know, I was always wellliked by others. Um, and I think that was because I was always very sensitive and empathetic towards towards everyone that I met. So, um, you know, culturally competent, I think, is a term that, you know, that I'm comfortable being known for or or talking about because I

021feel like that's really who who I am. I'm I'm I'm someone who's culturally competent. Thank you. I'd like to pass the next question over to uh Trust Lauren Gold. tell us how you maintain visibility and accessibility for students, staff, parents, and community groups. And so, you spoke about this a little bit, but if you could give us a specific example, um that'd be great. Okay. Yeah. So, you know, to me, this is where the work of the superintendent starts, especially coming into a new district. Um you have to make time. You have to make time to do that. Um it's important. And if you notice in my folder in my 90-day plan, I have that in there a as part of that. Um, you know, I I I I call it the superintendent tour um

022where, you know, I will set up calendar dates to to visit every one of the buildings and um and and I want to put it on the calendar because, you know, I I don't want to surprise people all the time, but I I want people to know that I'm coming. So, um, so if if somebody's got a question for me, they, you know, they'll they'll catch me. Um, but you know, um, I I'd like to set up some sort of calendar where I'm re moving to each of the buildings and saying hello or and saying hi, coming into the classrooms. Please invite me to come in and read a book to the kids or something, you know, like that. So, um, and you know, I know there's a lot more buildings here than where I'm

023coming from, but you know, I can always start my day, um, as I come to work to, uh, to go one of the buildings and start my day there to start this. So, um I think it's important for me to to uh attend uh afternoon events whether it's sports, a band concert, choir, what whatever that the re whatever the events that uh Seline offers, you know, and and obviously I'm I'm not going to be able to make every event, but I want to make every effort to make as many events as I can possibly because um uh again I I I think I think it goes a long way if the students know you and and and they see you coming to these events to see them. I think really think that goes a long

024way. So, um to me it's very important. Um I also think it's it's important for me to become part of the community and attend uh Kuanas Club or Chamber of Commerce. Um attend or at least attend meetings. Um the Rotary Club, that's always a big one. Um and I noticed uh you know the Seline Main Street events that they have going on here. Those look a lot like those look like a lot of fun. I would love to attend those. Um and um and I and I know my wife would too because going through the shops and and all that, she I'm sure she'd spend a lot of money out there. I'd have to reel her in a little bit. But um so I mean there's many things to do to be visible. Um I

025just need to find um you know what those are and what's available um in the community. Thank you. and I'll pass the next question to Jason Tisitus. What unique skills or leverage would you bring to this position and how will Selen Area Schools be served by this? Okay. Um well, you know, just looking at my background professionally and you can see the the steps that I've taken to move up and and I do have a biography in the folder for you to go along with the 90-day plan. Um but um you know I feel like my ability to build those relationships and I'm going to go back to that every time um because I think relationships are important and key to any organization to make sure that uh you know that the people are going

026to want to do for you and do their best for you. So um like I said I love talking to people. Um I'm an excellent listener. Um I I I'm a good cheerleader and motivator. you know, I'm I I'm going to go into my buildings and I'm I'm give pep talks to to my principles because there's going to be days where they're tough and they're going to need that support and uh because I know because I've been there. So, I know that I'll be able to help them with that. Um I I like to think that I'm always modeling that positive behavior and we talked about the trickle down effect. So, you know, I think that's important as well. Um, I mean, Selene will gain someone who is um who who's going to be good

027at diffusing situations um that can turn bad or explosive. I feel like that is one of my my strong suits is I'm able to to take a situation that is it could be going could possibly go really negative and really diffuse that uh situation. Um, so I can't promise a 100% guarantee on on every situation, but I know there will be less uh than than there is more when it comes to that. Thank you. Could you tell us how you go about making decisions about or on controversial or high stakes issues? Sure. Sure. Um, first I'd like to say that I always go to board policy. You always want to make sure that you are following board policy on any kind of situation um that may arise. Um, and of course, you want to you

028want to make sure that you're following the law. Um, you know, I'm not ashamed to say that I use trun law as as often as I need to, just even if it's to verify a situation that I might be in because, you know, being in a small district, I still was in quite a few situations where, you know, I needed true and and their advice. So, I think that's very important board policy and following the law. Um, and really I need to I I feel it's important to kind of educate yourself on whatever the issues are. um uh you have to be able to defend your stance um whether you're for something or against something. So in order to do that, you have to be aware of what the facts are and be able to

029um disseminate that in a in a in a way that you're going to convince folks one way or the other. Um I always I always like to listen to both perspectives. I need to hear both sides because maybe you'll sway me, maybe you'll change my mind. I never ever claim to be the smartest person in a room, but I I think collaboration with with groups and talking to other people um it can take you a long way. So, um uh just kind of a philosophy that that I I think is important. Um, and if you're able to convince one person on your perspective, then that's one more person that you've got on your side, one less person that you have to debate with, and that one person could turn another person in favor of whatever

030you're trying to push out or disseminate. So, so, so it it can be a cycle as well. So, um, uh, I I just I I'm a firm believer in you want to build bridges, not walls. Thank you. Sorry, I was still writing down some notes. No, you're fine. Um, what does an effective relationship between the board and the superintendent look like? And how do you cultivate such a relationship? Yeah, that's and that's really important. Um, so it to me it looks like mutual respect. Um, it looks like teamwork. Uh, it looks like uh reciprocal listening. We're sharing. We're we're talking. We're figuring out problems together. Um, and and we're not always going to agree on things, but I think the one thing that we should be able to agree upon is that we just respect

031each other. Um, and and and our thoughts. respect each other's opinions. Um I think trust trust is a big part. Um I I know that I will have to build that coming in. Um because you know coming into a new district you don't really know me. So it's it's going to take time for me to build that trust and and you know and I think it goes both ways as well. Uh but you know it will be it'll be on me to be able to to show you that I'm someone that you can trust. Um coming into the board. Um I know that for the board to to be able to master all these things I'm talking about is I need to keep you informed on issues and make sure that you're up to date

032on on happenings within the district. Um and update you regularly. Currently right now I I I do um a board weekly report um and I do it on video. So um it doesn't have to be that way. It's going to be whatever you know the the you know if I'm I'm coming into a new district and the board wants it done separately and maybe it'll be a little bit different um in a bigger district like this because there will be more to talk about. So it might have to be more in a report form. But um I I like the I I like the the personal part of a video because you I'm talking I'm still talking to you even though it's it's it's not live. I'm still sending you a video video of me

033speaking. So um and I also think it's very important that I never allow my board to be blindsided on any issue. Board needs to be updated and understand what's going on. I don't want I if something negative is occurring, I don't want you to hear it from from a community member and you don't know how to respond to it. Um uh I want to be able to to help with that and I think that's part of my job. All right. So, you're gonna find that um as treasurer and as the head of an awesome finance committee that money is important to me. Okay. Um and so please tell me about your experience with school finance working with the finance team and how you develop budgets that gain broad support. Okay. Um well I work very

034closely with our business manager because right now um my central office consists of of three people including myself. I have the business manager, my secretary who is also slashpayroll person and then myself who I I kind of do the duties of human resources um and anything else that needs to be done. But I do work very closely with my business manager. Um we work together to complete tasks like um in the summertime we're always we're we're in June anyways we're working on a consolidated app together u figuring out the title budget for for each one of our titles one through five and u making sure that we're putting whoever we're putting into the title budget that they're their hours are fitting what the what we're putting in there because we can't change that um once

035we get that in there. Um, I help out with a coordinated application which is through food service and um, and that's and it's been pretty big. I mean, we we've seen a really good increase in food service dollars uh, this last couple years and it's really served us very well. We we got a wonderful uh, summer program where we give out uh, foods uh to the community members and it's not just for folks in reading, it's throughout the county. Anybody can come to it and it's very successful. um you know the 31A grant for school safety, you know, I I helped to um write the grant for that to to obtain the funds and we were able to hire a behavior interventionist with those funds as well as update our our cameras throughout the district

036for security reasons. Um you the 35J grant written wrote that in in regards to uh curriculum. So this past year, we were able to purchase a brand new literacy program for our elementary building and it was all paid for by the 35J grant. And and with a lot of grants, as you may know, there's always a lot of stipulations that you have to follow and stay on top of. And 35J is one of those things. So um you you know, I'm working with my literacy coach down at the elementary and and we're updating each other uh fairly frequently. So um you know I I I help to manage the at risk funds um the 31A and and um making sure that you know we we've got people in the right place and the great thing

037about 31A with at risk is that uh you know those funds can transfer and you can you can turn them over 100% every year. So you you can build upon that and um you know it comes in handy when it comes a time where you know funds are a little tight. um you can you can always move uh some folks into um that risk dollar. So that's always nice to have. Um the syncing fund, that's another one that uh you know we that we work together pretty tightly on and and this summer is going to be a big summer for us in regards to syncing fund because uh we got a a nice increase in um added um funds. So, we're able to uh purchase uh new playground structures for the elementary, uh new asphalt

038pavement for the front of the ele uh elementary building. Um we're revamping some old tennis courts and make it into parking for our daycare and and uh our GSRP program. So, um a lot of stuff going on with syncing fund and and and we do have a renewal coming up here, too. So, that's the other thing that I'm working on is making sure that, you know, I want the community to know here's what your taxpayer dollars are working for and what they're doing for your children and their school. So, that that's important. Uh, bond renewals are coming up. Um, we we'll be working on that. And, you know, my goal for the bond renewal um is, you know, it's going to be a zero dollar increase for our tax for our taxpayers in the community,

039but we're going to be able to buy windows for the entire district, which is what we do need. Um um I work with the auditors when they come in summertime uh to help out because my business manager, she's by herself, so I I'm there to help her whenever that's uh necessary. So um and you know, we just we gain support um I feel by just answering any questions. So we're very transparent about you know this our our state school aid uh note that we have. I mean there's a lot of contention with that and nobody wants a state but in order for for reading community schools to be able to function that's just something that we need and it's really tough to pay down. So um I mean I have a lot of my hands

040are in there a lot. I'm not actually writing the the final budget that that is my business manager but we do get together and we work on it pretty pretty frequently. if you could please describe your knowledge and experience in using data to make informed decisions. Yeah. So, um you know, obviously there there are the things that we know. We talked about budget. You know, data drives our budget. Um you know, attendance, that's other data that we use to help drive, um instruction, drive, um our needs. Um attendance will be part of our strategic plan. Um you know, uh graduation rates, those are always very important. Hey, if our numbers are down, why? What's going on? let's let let's try to figure that out. Um so data drives uh is is driving our strategic plan

041currently that we're working on. Um and it's going to help with our vision and mission statement. Um so it helps drive um our how we instruct our students in the buildings. Um we we look at uh our literacy program and we're looking at the data. Okay, are are we improving now that we got this new literacy program? Is it really helping out? Um, you know, I'll be a little discouraged if it doesn't, but I'm getting good feedback right now. So, I'm hoping that things are are going to look up and, you know, our NWA scores and we use an Acadians for assessments as well and our MSTEPs. I'm hoping all those scores are going to go up based on uh uh the literacy program that we got. Um, you always use data to drive interventions

042for your students in the classroom. Um, whether they're special education or general education students, you're always looking to to help everyone. um it helps drive our behavior plans for students that that need that behavior plan again whether they're special education students or otherwise. Um so to me data makes our world go round and um and it's hard to make decisions without those and we really need that to to drive uh everything in the district. Tell tell us how you have used your knowledge of student learning and education re educational research to guide curriculum development and increase student achievement. So going back to my early part of the my career um as a special education teacher um I would focus on the strengths of my students and um and I think that's what helps with the

043learning and and and the education um and increasing that student achievement. Um to me confidence grows confidence, success drives success. Um and and and if you and if you can figure out what is moving that student or driving that student um that is going to make worlds of differences. So to me it's very important that we provide our teachers the tools they need in their tool belt to help drive uh instruction and increase achievement. Um and and that's what I would do as a building principal. So I I'm you know I'm progressing now to the administrative part. I would attend PLC meetings to to provide any kind of input or answer any questions that teachers might have. Um you know at the elementary it's grade level um PLC's and um you know I love the

044collaboration between the teachers and and I think it's also very important to have cross collaboration between the teachers. So it's not just second grade meeting during this PLC. Let's let's bring in first grade. let's bring in uh first grade with second grade, let's bring in second grade with third grade because they're going to be transitioning from one to the next. So, it's important that those teachers are together and they know, hey, Johnny needs to know this if he's coming into second grade and he wants to be successful. Um so you know curriculum can be adjusted um and and there can be accommodations and interventions put into place um for that to help increase ach student achievement. Um as I talked about the grade level uh collaboration at the elementary you and um you've got department

045meetings at the middle school and high school. So, you know, we we want them to get together to be able to talk and because they're the to me they're the experts in their field where they're at and and they know what students need and they know what students will will need and they can talk to each other um from, you know, from seventh grade to eighth grade. Um, so making sure that each each of those grade levels are develop some pacing guides so that they know here's what Johnny needs to know in second grade to make it to and be successful in third grade. So um that's what I feel is is important in research um in order to help increase uh student achievement. Thank you. Tell us how your previous professional experiences have influenced

046you as a leader. So I I I talked a little bit about my special education background. Um I was a special education teacher in an emotionally impaired classroom for adjudicated youth. Um it was residential setting. It was uh Macasyola Intermediate School District, but we were on site at Eagle Village. Um and um I learned a ton there. Um you know, I always felt like I I I do have a lot of patience to begin with and I do feel like that um you know, I'm genuine when I'm talking to to my students. But that position really taught me how important that is and really helped me define uh uh to to make that even better. So um it it taught me to be a multitasker. Um it taught me to like I said pat increase

047patience, listening skills. I think all the skills that I have now I learned from the bedrock of my special education career. Um um I I It it it just helps. I'm looking at um you know, I became a transition coordinator, but I was also a teacher consultant, special education teacher consultant after I left the classroom. And um and they added the duties because that happens sometimes of the transition coordinator, which was extra work that I have to do. But I feel like the transition coordinator position helped me to then really start moving into that administrative role because the duties were that a little different. But I get I I promise you that really helped me to be a multitasker because I still had to do my teacher consultant duties which was carry a case load,

048help help students go into classrooms, provide interventions, help the teachers how to manage uh their the classroom or the student that they were having difficulties with. And then I I I would hold uh I would have to uh hold quarterly meetings at the ISD with the entire county and bring um the the stakeholders that were important to that and explain to them laws, procedures, things that were changing in special education. So, um it was it was it it was a pretty daunting um experience, but it was it really prepared me for being an administrator and and um so meeting the meeting the preparations uh with a large number of staff um enhanced my multitasking skills as I mentioned. So um I I feel these jobs these jobs that I had prior to becoming an administrator

049really set the foundation for me to be a successful and yeah I I would I I would love love to say that I am a successful administrator and a strong administrator and and that was my that that's what built the solid footing for me. We have some of the best most dedicated teachers and support staff here in Seline. So, can you tell us about a time when you created a work environment in which people wanted to be driven to do their best and how you created that climate and what the result was? Sure. Sure. Um, so I when I came to Jackson Public Schools as a building principal for Dibble Elementary, um, it was a it was a good learning experience. I think it was a great fit uh to to be able to start

050as an administrator. Um the the students were great, parents were great. Um but we had another building um Frost Elementary, which is arguably one of the at the time was one of the most difficult uh buildings in Jackson Public Schools. And they were they were floundering. They were they were struggling. The administrator there was struggling. The staff was struggling. and the kids were the kids were tough. So, my superintendent um approached me because he knew my background in special education and you know, my behavior management skills, you know, uh all the skills that I had would fit that building perfectly. And um he asked me, he he didn't say you had to go. He he asked me, but I was like, "Yes, I want to go. This is how I can help JPS. This is

051what I want to do." So, it it it was a difficult move to start, but you know, um I I feel like going in there, I I gained the trust of the staff because again, as I spoke about earlier, I I did what I said I was going to do. I supported the the the teachers. I took the parent heat off of the teachers. They were allowed to teach. and building that that trust really really resonated and helped um in the entire building. You know, um behaviors decreased. Um achievement and scores increased, attendance increased. Um we had less parents coming in um yelling at the at the at the teachers because I would I would block that come to me. And again, like I mentioned earlier, it it doesn't bother me to to deal with

052some angry parents. I'm okay with that. I can do that. I never take things personally. That's just my that's just my personality. So, so I think that experience by being able to go in there and help change that building completely 180 um is is would be that example uh of um in regards to the question um as a professional um experience that uh I'm trying to make sure I'm matching up the right questions um and create that climate that positive climate a and um and made a difference in in that building and the district. Thanks very much. Mr. Duboce, um could you please tell us about any experience or tell us more about your experiences implementing and managing bond projects uh syncing funds and facilities management? Sure. Sure. Um you know, actually on day one

053when I walked into Reading Community Schools, we were in the middle of a bond project. Um it was a uh just a complete overhaul of HVAC heating and cooling um you know throughout the district and and the teachers love the air conditioning and in the warm weather and I mean the staff do too but the teachers really enjoyed it. So um you know I I attended every every meeting that we had. We had meetings twice a month. Met with contractors. Met with the engineer uh firm. Um we looked at any any uh things that were going on that needed uh adjustments. Um, I I always took the change orders and reviewed them carefully because sometimes the change orders can get messed up and but you got you got to catch it and and really to

054tell you the truth, I probably only caught maybe two three uh issues with some change orders, but uh you know, but when you're looking at the the amount of money that's going into that, that can be thousands of dollars. So, it's really important. So, um, in regards to syncing fund, I talked a little bit earlier about how, you know, this is a big summer for us at Reading and, um, there's a lot of things that we're able to utilize. Um, you know, the last year and a half, we haven't really had to jump into that syncing fund and touch the scing fund, so it's able to grow. And now, boom, here we are. were able to to do a lot of these things um in regards to the use of syncing funds and want to

055get it out into the community. Again, here's what your taxpayer dollars are are buying here. Um you know, I I'm I I love doing videos. I love getting on Facebook. I go live on Facebook with a lot of things that are happening um in Reading Community Schools. And um you know this is another way whether it's Facebook or creating a video to put on our website in regards to what we're doing uh with our syncing fund dollars. So um I mean I have a great facilities uh maintenance director. We talk quite a bit uh and um you know there's always things that Jerry needs and you know I'll do what I can you know I got want to keep him happy because he he keeps me looking good too. So, um, so, so again, you

056know, my hands are in a lot of pots right now at Reading Community Schools and and, um, and I do have that experience with with some HVAC and and the bond, but obviously I wasn't there to start it, but um, and I know that right now there's a big bond project going on here at Seline. So, you know, I'm I'm confident that I'd be able to help with that. Thank you. Um, next question is, could you please describe your experience as an educational advocate at the local, state, and the national level? Sure. Um, so looking at the kind of the local level, you know, um, I attend monthly county um, superintendent meetings. Uh, we get the together and start planning for the next year. We're looking at PDS. We're looking at uh, uh, calendars uh,

057have common calendars throughout the county. Um, I'm also part of the the superintendent special education community um uh uh committee and um you know I I I attend MASA conferences and you know we usually have legislators show up there to talk to us um about certain things and updates and any changes. Um you know I love the MASA because there's collaboration with other superintendents throughout the state. Um, and you know, anything that I can learn that's going to help me to improve the district that I'm at, you know, I'm all for that and and and that's a great conference for that. Um, you know, attendance sessions, of course, that pertains to my district. Um, that's always important, whether it's it's legislative or in some sort of academic realm. Those are important. Um, I attend MASA

058or MASB region 8 meetings. Um and and um you know I it's my colleagues there and and they're really really good sessions. They bring in good speakers. It's you know sometimes it's a national level um or or but it's mostly state information which is great. Um so you know I've written I've written to my legislators. I've I've spoke to I've spoke to my legislators in regards to some of the things that are going on right now and you know where we where we need to go and where we need to be. Um, and even though they may not agree with me, they they listen to me. So, that's always good, too. Um, but in on a national level, I haven't had the opportunity to move into that just yet. Well, as we wind down our

059time together, would you like to leave us with any closing uh comments, thoughts, or remarks? Sure. Um well, you know, I I just want to I I want to thank the board for selecting me as a candidate um for the superintendency here of Seline Area uh schools. Um you know, with my truest, sincerest thoughts, I am humbled and I am honored to be selected um for such a prestigious position. Um, I hope that I've given you reasons to believe that I am uh the person that can help to lead um Seline Area Schools into the future and and continue to raise the bar uh higher than it already is uh for the district. And um you know I and I and I appreciate the work because I know it's a lot. It's hard and it's

060long and I appreciate the work that the board did not just for setting this up but just in general boards boards do a lot of hard work and it always don't always uh get the recognition for that. So um I just want to thank you uh for having me and um hope you have a great night. Well, thank you very much. Um we appreciate your interest in the position. I'm I do have a statement uh and the board we are interviewing several candidates and we will certainly contact you if you are a finalist. So we want to all thank you for coming in and we really did enjoy I really did enjoy meeting you and getting to know a little bit about your work in uh Jackson. Thank you. We will say goodbye to the

061candidate and I will without objection ask for a seven minute six minute and 33 second recess. If you need more we'll go with seven. anytime sir. I just like to remind everyone first of all board we're back live and thank you very much for your patience uh those at home and those in the audience. Uh just a gentle reminder to those who are assembled live here that we do have comment sheets at the back with a QR code attached if you want to do it electronically. We'll also take your handwritten comments. Those of you watching from home, uh there is a link on the main board page uh to the superintendent search that has a link to the live stream. Oh, sorry, that has uh uh links to the um the form, the feedback form.

062Uh I'd like to uh ask to the to proceed to the interview of and he's gone away. Nicholas got the wrong paper. Sorry. Nick Steinmets is our next candidate. I'll just wait for him to actually walk into the room. No one has what? Oh, we have a few forms up. Thank you very much. I'd like to introduce everyone to Nick Steinmets as he settles in. Uh once you're all firmly settled in, we've been uh shaking hands and saying hello just before we get started. And uh once you're ready to go, I'll start the clock and Away we go. You look like you're ready to go, sir. Well, we've had uh uh Thank you for being with us today. We really appreciate that. We have had the opportunity to review your resume and your cover letter

063and other materials. Could you please tell us what specifically interests you about uh the Indisceline superintendency and how your background and experiences would uh benefit the district and the community as our next superintendent? Sure. Um, it's actually the same question my board president asked me um when I told her I was applying here. Really? Why Seline? And I said, um, I don't think you understand how similar Madison and Seline are. Um, we're right next door to each other. Uh, for one, the position that I'm in. Um, I was in Manchester before that. I know how strong of a CT program the Southwest Consortium is. U, my current district sends 80% of our juniors and seniors to the tech center. in Lenoi County. Um so there's a very big similarity with the the focus on CTE.

064Second piece is special ed. Um we have 199 special ed students in our district. 113 of them are school of choice. 56.78%. Um I think Selen's around 33%. Um so we deal with some of those same struggles and and conflicts and um pieces that you guys do also with the special ed piece. Um, I look at the position that I'm currently in and this position um to enhance. Um, both are already strong districts. Madison was strong when I got there. Um, I just think we're stronger now and that's what I'd look to do here at Seline. By no means do I think that means this is a cakewalk job. I think we all we all understand and know that. Um, I think that the track record that I have I have a proven track record

065record of positive union relationships, community collaboration, um, and a strong fiscal and curricular background. Um, I have a a viewpoint of a teacher, principal, assistant superintendent, and superintendent both at the ISD um and local school district level. So, I think that Selene is a melting pot of all my experiences put together. Um, no district is a cookie cutter of each other, but I think that I could help transition or ease that transition of leadership having these experiences already. Thank you. going to pass the uh next question to Vice President Jennifer Stein. Thank you. Um this question is, please share an example of a time you've led a sustained multi-year improvement initiative such as this strategic plan. Be be specific regarding the situation, the task at hand, your specific role, and the subsequent outcome. Sure. Um

066I've been the lead district representative for two strategic planning processes. Uh one was at the ISD level when I was the assistant superintendent. Um, and the second one was in my current role at Madison. Um, I provided a binder for you guys. If you flip that open to the first page, um, I gave the kind of the one-page outline of what our strategic plan is, uh, with our five goals on there. I arrived at Madison in January of 2020. So, three months into my superintendency in Madison, the pandemic hit. So, I had no trust built with anyone. um brand new to the position and we had to deal with with one of the most difficult situations in education. Prior to my arrival, uh Madison already had a a strategic plan that they were using. It

067expired in 2020. It was called Vision 2020, which I wish I could take credit for that name because it's pretty brilliant. Um but it wasn't mine. Um three short months later, the pandemic happened and we spent a year and a half trying to keep our head above water. Uh once we were finally able to do that, I knew that it was time to re-engage the district. Um so that's when we started the uh strategic planning process. Um we used a a process similar to MASB. Sorry Jay, we didn't go with MASB for the process. Um but it's a very similar protocol. Um and what we tried to do is Madison's unique is we don't we don't have a downtown. You know, we're on in the township of Adrian. So we don't have a downtown or

068cultural hub. So we tried to make our school district that. So we wanted to make it the place to be. Um so that was the emphasis of what we were doing is trying to get those people back into the school district um out of their homes um in re-engaged in the community. Um I think that the strategic planning process is pivotal of the superintendent role. Um all the decisions that I make in the administrative team should go back to a strategic planning goal. Um, from that you'll also see in the front uh pocket of your binder all of the questions that I'm going to be answering today. I've linked my experience to what strategic plan goal that I think that it hit um in those pieces. So those are there for your reference also. Thank

069you. I'm going to pass the next question over to sec uh trustee sorry treasurer Brad Gerby. All righty. Uh, so as treasurer and finance chair, uh, the bunny's important to me and we we we spend a good time with it. I have a great team. Uh, and we have a great team here. So, as superintendent, how would you work to ensure I I flipped the wrong question. As our superintendent, No, it's written wrong. Oh, duh. We're not there yet. We'll start again. Nick, as our superintendent, how would you work to ensure and enhance the sustainability and reputation of our district? And I may or may not have given you a preview of a future question. That's fair. Um, in my opinion, there's no greater responsibility of the superintendent. Um, my philosophy is you have to

070leave it better than you found it. Um, a little background of my current district. Did you flip to the red tab? Um, in your mind, in the late 1990s, Madison was a 400 student district. Um, we've grown now to, I'll say approximately, but I know this for a fact, 1633 students as of today. Um, the phrase that hurts me to say because I'm not an Ohio State fan, but we pride ourselves on being the school of choice option in Lenway County. um with growing from 400 to633 students, we're 58% school of choice. Um you can see in that chart that I that I included in the uh binder, we have 961 school of choice students coming into our district. And then you can see a breakdown of what districts in Lenway County those are coming

071from. And then there's six coming from other ISDs also. Um I know school of choice can be kind of a hot topic. We don't have a ton time ton of time today to talk about that, but uh we can get into that another time. Um with that sustainability and reputation is paramount. With a a district that's 58% school of choice, they can make another choice very quickly. Um so I've made a point to promote our staff, communication, academic offerings, facilities, extracurriculars, and student outcomes to make sure that everyone knows what we have to offer. Um I didn't have time to obviously engage with many people in the Sling community, but I did have a few people in the community that um I spoke with and they brought up what they wanted to be known for.

072Um academic excellency, inclusivity, holistic development, community engagement, extracurriculars, and students leaving here that can thrive in a diverse and dynamic world. I think that aligns with pretty much the mission that you guys have uh for your district. So, looking at the website and those um pieces that I talked to some community members about, I think that uh the last update to the your strategic plan was in 2021. Um I think it's time to maybe revisit that process, get those community uh engagement back into place and make sure that we're promoting the right values um and the right reputation that we want this district to have. Thank you. I'd like to pass the next question over to Secretary Board Secretary Darcy Burwick. Good evening. Hey there. Honesty, integrity, and trust are valuable characteristics to have in

073leaders. How would you work? How would you Brad, it's contagious. How have you worked to earn trust in previous positions and how would you do so if chosen for this position in Seline? Sure. Uh, a little more background information about my current district. Um we have 247 employees, 198 certified teachers, four central office staff, four district directors, nine building administrators, and the rest are support staff positions. Um when I came to the position, the biggest thing that I heard was we need openness and involvement in decision-making processes. So u we've been on a two-year implementation plan of the um MTSS process, the multi-ter tiered system of support, but not in the sense that you think um at a student level. This is a systems level. um at at the central office the district level uh

074we focus on things like recruitment and retention of employees communication implementation science data analysis barrier removal processes. So how we form that is we have a um what's called a DT district implementation team made up of various uh stakeholders in the community that kind of make those big overarching uh decisions. Then we've reddesigned what our typical school improvement teams are into bits which are building implementation teams that then get that information from the DIT and communicate it out to the rest of rest of the building. Um the other thing that we've done is we started we we have the philosophy of all means all. So if we hold professional development every staff member goes bus drivers, custodians, um food service workers, we want everyone to be on the same initiative so they know the common

075language. they know what we're looking for and that they can have those same talk toss um with the um with the students. So, I believe that open communication and involvement in that process really uh gains trust quickly. Thank you. I'd like to pass the next question over to Trustee Tim Austin. Tell us what the term culturally competent means to you. Give us an example of how you demonstrate this characteristic. Sure. If you guys flipped the clear tab in your binder, it's clear. Um, the first thing you'll see is a map of Michigan. Um, these are the places in the state that I have worked in school districts. I have covered everywhere from basically the border of Ohio to the far western edge border of Wisconsin in the upper peninsula. Um, cultural competency has come along

076with all of those different situations. Um, I believe that cultural competency is being able to interact with diverse groups of individuals. Um, on the next page behind that map, you'll see uh kind of a breakdown of these are the the school demographics, the district demographics that I've been in. My first district was um the Advanced Technology Academy, 74% black, 23% Hispanic, 95% free and reduced. went there to the um suburbs of Detroit, 74% white, 17 or 15% black, 19% free and reduced, then to the upper peninsula, which is a whole different type of culture in itself. Um with that demographic that I've laid out there, now I'm in Madison. Um we have a diverse population. We're 65% white, 25% Hispanic, 5% African-American, and 64% free and reduced. If you look at all of these uh

077district demographics together, all of them touch on something that Seline has. So I have that that experience in one of those districts. Um so I think that through these cultural differences, everyone still has the baseline of wants and needs, you know, that sense of belonging, that safety, that care. Um so I think my diverse uh experiences capture the makeup of the community here. Thank you very much. I'd like to pass the question over to Lauren, Trusty Lauren Gold. Tell us how you maintain visibility and accessibility for students, staff, parents, and community groups. Um, please flip to the blue tab. This is an area that has evolved tremendously in the seven years that I've been a superintendent. Um, when I first entered the superintendency position, I thought that visibility and accessibility meant that I needed to

078be at everything. I needed to be at every sporting event. I needed to be in every classroom. I needed to be everywhere. What that honestly led to was, well, then I fell behind. I wasn't responding to emails fast enough. Uh, some reports were, you know, getting done late at night. There has to be that balance. It's not sustainable. So um being accessible and being visible uh I think you have to have a baseline first of what the communication in the district looks like. So in here I've um included this is a our communication plan that I developed at Madison. It has points of contract points of contacts progression of contacts so that the community and the stakeholders students staff everyone knows here's how we do business with communication. This is what you can expect from

079these avenues. Um this the plan was created from with input from all stakeholders which I'll touch on in a later question when we look at data. Um but current I'm not at everything. Am I at every type of event? Am I at a place? Am I at sporting events? Yes. But physically I can't I can't be at all of them. But that doesn't mean that I'm not accessible because I've set up a way to communicate with the stakeholders so they still know how they can get a hold of me and what to expect from me. Also, I'm involved in uh the Kuanas Club, the Rotary Club, and just different various fundraisers in the community, but that's outside of the district. Thank you. I'd like to pass the questions over to Jason Tisus, please. Trustee Jason

080Titus. Now, I'm catching what uh what Brad and Darcy were. Sorry, I was I was too enthralled with your with your binder here. uh what unique skills or leverage would you bring to this position and how will Selen Area schools be served by this? When I was when I was thinking about this question, the immediate thing I started to do was list off things that I thought that that I I did well. financial sense, contract negotiations, knowledge of the community, relationships with county superintendent that that I had from when I was in Manchester, curriculum and systems implementation, and and I just felt like I'm just listing all of these things, but what they all boil down to is relationships. Um, if you look at curriculum, well, that's the relationships that I built with other ISDs

081or other school districts or state level partners. Um, negotiations, that's that's the relationship that you build with union. um and having those open dialogues, collaboration with other districts. Well, that's that's because I have relationships with other superintendents and other other leaders and other um other communities. So, what I think that um my greatest skill is to bring here is my my ability to build those relationships and harness them for the school district. Thank you. How do you go about making decisions on controversial and or high stakes issues? Um, I have three daughters. They are 10 uh 10, 15, and 8. Um, dealing with controversial or high stakes decisions I feel like happens every morning um when they're getting ready. Um, but in this type of setting, I think that what it all boils down to

082is you have to to make a decision that's best for the students. Um, but there's layers to that. You have to be accessible uh to your stakeholders to provide input on what the decision is. Um, you have to have an an avenue to communicate the district's perspective on that so they're able to provide that feedback and you have to include the perspective of all stakeholders in your response. Um, but at the end of the day, uh, this isn't a position that, um, the the choices are always going to be popular, the decisions are going to be popular, and you just kind of have you have to be okay with that. Um, you have to be okay with you're going to upset people. Um, but as long as you go back to it's what's best for

083students, that's that's the bottom line. Um my next question is what does an effective relationship between the board and the superintendent look like and how do you cultivate such a relationship? Um I think the the three things that are most important in that relationship is that it's open, it's uh trusting and respectful and there's clear communication both ways. Um when I came to Madison, I created board subcommittees for the first time. Um the board had never never had that. Um it was just the superintendents coming to the board meetings and sharing the information. I didn't I didn't want that. Um I wanted the board members to kind of be the voice in the community. Um the board is elected to choose they're chosen to represent the people. So I want you guys to have that

084information so then you can also bring it back to the community. Um, I want you to have the big picture, but I also don't want you to necessarily get caught up in the weeds, know the day-to-day operations. That's what I'm here for. Um, I'm here to kind of work through all of those things with with the rest of the team and bring those pieces back to you. So, I want to be the person that you've chosen to make sure that the things are done in the district on a day-to-day basis and you guys trust that I'm going to bring all that information to you and then we can make a decision together. I think together that can be an incredibly strong partnership that really represents the community. Well, now I got my question. All right,

085here we go. So, money. Yeah. So, we have an awesome finance committee and we have a great finance team and um tell me how you would work with stakeholders, those stakeholders specifically to develop budgets that gain broad support. Sure. Um if you flip to the orange tab in your binders, um I just wanted to to create or have give you guys kind of a perspective. Um this is my current budget. Uh roughly $24 million uh that that we're in charge of. If you flip to the next page on that, you'll see that currently we have a $10.137 million fund balance. Um, and when I arrived in 2019, which is on the next page that is highlighted, there was a $3.9 million fund balance. Um, so the fund balance since I've been there has increased 6.2

086million in 5 and a half years. Um, it's done that with we have the highest uh paid teachers in Lenway County. all support staff's um salaries have gone up over 50% since I've been there. Um so I think that those are those are good things to highlight in that piece. Um when you talk about broad broad community support, there's two two examples that that I want to focus on. Um if you flip to the next page, this is the the budget from Manchester Community Schools when I was there. Um, when I arrived in Manchester, I was not aware that the the teachers in Manchester had not received a step or increase in eight years. They were frozen for eight years. Brad might remember that. So, I knew that it was imperative that um we remedy

087that. So if you look at the two two uh areas that I highlighted um general administration and school administration um in 201819 and 2920 this is one of those cases um we were topheavy the district wasn't right sided or right sized when when it started to to decline in enrollment. Um so that's something that needed to be addressed. Um so I was able to do that. I became a um elementary principal and superintendent through that piece, which I already had experience in the elementary um principal piece. So that um in those two numbers in that year, we were able to save $289,712. Um we then settled a three-year contract. I think we only met three or four times to settle that contract. Um and they were provided steps for the next three years. the average

088cost of the step was only a little over $110,000 um for the size of the staff. So, so making those adjustments, we then were able to to get them back up where they should be um and also create a sustainable model model in the district. Uh the second piece that I wanted to highlight um was the COVID funding. Um when we got our first batch of COVID funding, we had we received $2.8 million. The first thing that we decided to do was we took $1.3 million of that for all of the extra work that our teachers, support staff, bus drivers, delivering food, and we gave that back to the teachers and in staff. So, $1.3 million, just under half of it, we went back to the people that were doing the day-to-day work. Um, so,

089so back to your question of how do you create budgets that are broadly accepted, you realize that every line item is either a student, their needs, teachers, or someone you know. So, I think it's really important to remember that as you're going through of what impact does this have on those people, on those faces. If you can get broad support of why cuts are coming in one area and how it's going to benefit another, I think that's where you gain that broad broad acceptance. Thank you. Thank you. We know that data is important. If you could please describe your knowledge and experience in using data to make informed decisions. Sure. In your binder, there's a green tab. Also, um this is where I went or I placed um some of the data um from the

090the earlier conversation that I was having. I didn't want to include necessarily in this this short time that we had together. I didn't want to jump to student um student data or anything like that. I wanted to kind of keep it concise and consistent. So, this is a um survey of three groups. Students um staff members and the the community, the parents. Um we we um went through a time where we knew that we needed to change our communication protocol. So, when we did that, this is the data that we collected to do that. from that is where I I created the um communication plan that I shared with you. Also from that and you'll see in some of the the points of the bullets of the short answer, we did a complete website redesign

091because we got uh fairly consistent feedback that our website was awful and our website was awful. Um we now do building newsletters both to teachers and uh community community every week, district newsletters once a month. We recently from this added a director of communications position. And the other piece that we really had to adjust was our social media presence. Um we were spending a lot of time and in the past I was too on social media outlets that that our community wasn't using. Um every community is different. Selena has a little bit larger of a presence on on X and on Instagram. Our community wasn't using that. So uh we had some staff that were using social media as their their form of communication. It was missing the mark. I mean some parents were super

092happy because that is a platform they use but others didn't have it. Um so we went to a common messaging system uh remind and infinite campus we went went to for those. Um so those are some of the major changes that we used from this data that I that I included for you. Um we just sent out the uh follow-up communication survey to see if the community is happy with what we've um done. That went out on April 15th. I haven't had time to to go through that data yet, but if I was back next week sometime, I could probably bring that back to you. Tell us how you've used the not your knowledge of student learning and educational research to guide curriculum development and increase student achievement. So, I think this started um as

093my work as a in my work as a principal. Um when I went to the Upper Peninsula um in a two-year time, we made our 35 building a reward school. Um we used um both our reading and math data um to do some pretty large overhauls. Uh we did quite a bit of data analysis which led to um we made a curriculum change uh put in place a viable curriculum, standard-based assessments, progress monitoring monitoring and tiered levels of support and it took off. Um that then led into my position at the ISD from that work that we had done over those two years. Uh I was hired as the assistant superintendent and um director of general education. So then I was overseeing those project at six local districts. Now, the UP is a little different

094um in the fact that our the six districts that I was supporting covered 2,800 miles. So, professional development was a bit of a challenge. Um but through my uh years there, we were able to do it and find a method that worked and they're still implementing those practices today. Tell us how your previous professional experiences have influenced you as a leader. Um, as I mentioned earlier, I've been in the superintendent position for this is I'm completing my seventh year. Um, studies show that most people last in in this position between three and a half and six. Um, I've already done seven and frankly I have 15 more to go. I'm I'm 40. I got into this early and I still have a long way to work. Um, so I think that it has influenced me

095from when I first started tremendously. Um, I slow down, listen, um, take a breath. I think that when I first started as a soup, I had my plan, I moved on it, and honestly, I left people behind in some of those decisions. And I think that, uh, frankly, it wasn't great leadership at that time. But I think over these seven years it has evolved and in creating some systems and that we have that feedback from all of our stakeholders. So I would say that now I'm much more reflective communive and I trust the other experts around me. I don't have to have all the all the answers. I have a tremendous team at Madison and I know Seline has a tremendous team and that that's what you lean on. Here in Selene, we have some

096of the most dedicated teachers and support staff. So, tell us about a time when you created a work environment in which people wanted to do their best and how did you create that climate and what were the results? Um, I think that there's a couple layers to this. I think that it starts with small things to build a positive culture. Um, when I was in Manchester, we did a training um that that Brad I think still uses in Manchester today. Um, it was called the orange frog theory. It's all about positive psychology and positive um, principles. I still wear a lot of orange because of it even today. Um, it's just something that I I kind of um, lean towards. When I went to Madison, I didn't do the formal training mostly with the staff,

097mostly because of COVID. Um, but I still implemented those principles and and do a lot of those different those practices within our districts. But then it's also small things. Um, We do an end of the year celebration every year where we cook I cook um either hamburgers, hot dogs, we we get food brought in and we we celebrate as a community and about 75% of our staff shows up. Um I do especially during the winter or if there's a big sporting event goes on um I do score predictions for personal days which I'll tell you what staff members if you do a score prediction for a personal day whoever's closest you have a tiebreaker they go crazy. Um, another thing, our staff can't wear jeans all the time. So, if you throw in a gan

098day on that, it really builds the that piece up, too. Um, the other piece that is kind of unique is I don't know if you guys know what a Ragnar race is. Um, it's about a 200 mile trail race that is um, eight people complete. It's a relay. I've done that three times with my central office staff and my building administrators. So, so that culture is built in. Um, the second piece to that is u I'm a certified cognitive coach. So, so I use that a lot uh to create that work environment. You know, there's three levels of coaching and you kind of go between them. It's you're either coaching, so it's a a you focused conversation, you're collaborating, so it's a we or sometimes you have to consult and that's a here's what I

099think you should do and move forward. Um, so I think that that's that's really helped build that culture also. So I think that I could talk about um all night what kind of leader I think I am. Um, but I don't know that you'll get a true picture of that. So if you turn to the green tab in your binder. I when I applied for this position, we um could give three references and I used my previous two board presidents and then u my current ISD superintendent. On this page, you will find my entire central office staff um all of my district directors, my building level administrators, my board of education, and um the president of Madison's education association. I encourage you to reach out to them. have them tell you what kind of leader

100I am. Um, you might get various responses, but I want to leave that out there for you because I want you to see from the people that I work with what kind of leader I am. Um, I think that I've created the type of environment that uh we want to see each other exceed succeed. We want to see good things for each other. Um, I have two members of my administrative team that are here tonight uh just to be here to be supportive to me. So, and that's the kind of culture that we've built at Mass. You'll also notice um under the board, there's only six board members there. I'm not trying to hide one. We have a board vacancy right now that we're filling at our main meeting. So, so there there is that

101piece. Don't think that I'm trying to hide that one board member that I don't want you to talk to. Um no, we there's just not there. Well, there goes my next question. Thank you. Um, please could you share any experiences you've had implementing and managing bond projects, syncing funds and or facilities management? Sure. Thank you. Uh, when I first arrived at at Manchester, we were just they were just completing an energy bond. Um, so I saw that uh to completion. Um, currently we have a syncing fund. It's a small syncing fund. Um, we generate about $300,000 a year a year from it. Um, but here's a list of the projects that are going on. They're starting now and this is what's being completed this summer. Uh we're inst installing three new rooftop HVAC units. Repaving

102a portion of our elementary parking lot. We're putting in a comprehensive security system uh that covers every classroom um inside and outside of the building. Baseball stadium seating with press boxes, softball uh stadium seating with press boxes. We just purchased 40 acres of property because for the first time we're adding a soccer program at Madison. Um so we're actually uh clearing a new soccer field, classroom updates, and an intra district messaging system. Um on that pink tab in your paper, you'll just see some of the blueprints for the larger building projects that are happening. With that, we have a federal grant to cover 75% of our security system. Um I've been kind of stockpiling our scing fund uh to cover some of these projects. So that's built up to about $800,000. But the thing that

103I'm most proud about with all of these these projects is uh we're doing it all with general fund dollars. I'm not going out for a bond or a millillage or any type of renewal. This is all being done with um our general fund dollars and our fund balance is still growing. Um so to be able to show that type of the fiscal management over that amount of time I think is a very valuable aspect. Next question is describe your experience as an educational advocate at the local state and the national level. Um, while I was at the ISD, I sat on many state level boards and panels. Um, a lot of the work that I did in my position was around that literacy piece. Um, so, so I was down in Lancing a lot, which

104was an 8 hour drive from where ISD was. I was down here two to three times a month, um, for those panels. Um, the second topic of the board panels that I was on was around teacher certification. um in the very western end of the upper peninsula, there is a very uh it's very challenging to find teachers unless you can get teachers from Wisconsin. The unfortunate part is there's not a reciprocity between Wisconsin and Michigan. Um so I was on those boards trying to change that. I was always under the philosophy that if another state is ranked higher in educational rankings, why would we not accept their teachers in a reciprocity way? Why why would we be making them take our tests? if they're outperforming us, they're doing something right. Please come teach in Michigan.

105Um, so I was on that. Unfortunately, that part still hasn't changed. Um, in my current position, I'm currently the president of the Lenway County Superintendent Association. Uh, I'm a member, I'm sitting on the CTE subcommittee and the special ed subcommittee. Uh, I haven't had any, um, experience on the national advocacy piece. It's something that I'm interested in. It just, um, hasn't had I haven't had the opportunity yet. Thank you. So, as we wind down our time together, uh would you like to leave us with any closing remarks or thoughts? Yeah, I think with our time together, I tried to provide you guys with some some examples that you could keep and go back to and kind of give you um just a broad overview of those. It's kind of my thought process of a as

106a superintendent. These are the decisions I'm making. This is how it goes with our strategic plan. Um, I'm pretty direct and to the point with those. I can get more into those with details. Um, but I wanted to give you that that broader piece tonight. Um, you guys have an incredibly difficult decision to make. Um, you're choosing the educational leader that represents every stakeholder in this community. Do I feel like I'm the right person for that job? Yes, I do. But I might not be. Um, so if I'm not, I wish you guys all the best of luck uh and continued success both personally and as a school district. So, thank you. Well, we appreciate your interest in our superintendent's position. Now, of course, you know, the board is interesting interviewing a number of candidates

107and we'll certainly contact you if you are selected as a finalist. So, thank you for coming. Thank you for the binder and we very much enjoyed meeting you and your fan club. Uh so, yay. Uh so as u I'm going to call for a uh seven minute recess and if you wanted to have a little handshake on the way out and wrap things up that would be great. Thank you very much. Without objection. Okay. Thank you very much. This is just uh we are back. This is a gentle reminder to those in the audience that we do have forms available uh paper forms you're welcome to fill out and hand uh to somebody on the way out and uh a QR code leading to the electronic version if you want to do it that way

108so you don't hurt your carpal tunnels. Um, and those at home, there is a link to an online version of the feedback form uh on the uh main page of the district website. Just click on the superintendent search button and you'll find it. Uh, I believe we are now. He was here seconds ago. Are you ready, sir? Is the candidate ready? Great. Well, I'd like to uh begin the interview of uh Rachel Kowalsski who's going to come in. And Rachel, would you if you can get yourself settled in? We're happy to shake your hand and then, you know, get you just relaxed a little bit and then we will start. Then the clock starts as we go through the first round of questions, some of you have noticed I reintroduce everybody's names. And uh when

109you're ready, just give me a little nod or wave or whistle shout. I was thinking of something else. I don't know. You came up with a great um list of things I could do, but I am ready. Clear your throat or to say or tell me you're ready. Um thank you so much. So, thank you very much for being here today. Um we have had the opportunity to review your resume, your cover letter, and your materials. And um let me start with the first question that uh please tell us what specific uh specifically in sorry tell us what specifically interests you in our Seline superintendency and how your background and experiences uh would benefit the district and community as our next superintendent. Please thank you so much for your warm welcome and I'm the last

110one. That's right. It's public knowledge that I'm the last interview. I So I want to thank you for your time and your investment. It's been a long couple of days, I'm sure. Um, and so I appreciate your willingness to have me and invite me to share a little bit about myself and how I might be a good fit for your students and your community. I also want to in um thank the community. Uh, as I understand it, you have lots of community engagement as I've seen and so I appreciate all of the um it's great to see so many people in person. It really is. Um, so this reminds me a little bit about where I grew up. I am an Oakland County native. Um, I grew up in Lake Oran. Um, so as I,

111you know, read a little bit about, um, your community and and your bond project that was passed recently, it reminds me a little bit of where I grew up. And so I always knew, right, growing up as the place that you'd kind of pass through and that was just a reality. But you'd you'd come to the occasional U of M game, the occasional one. I grew up in a working class family, right? So, um really nice to be here and to drive around your community today. It was beautiful today and now it's cold. So, it's Michigan um as usual here. Um but in transparency, as I round out this year, um as a city superintendent, I wanted to be closer to home. And so I uh obviously have been looking at um some opportunities and

112something drew me into um this community and it reminded me a little bit about where my skill set is and that's in large districts um closing achievement gaps with teams and with teachers. And so I see um and what specifically interests me in your community is excellent student engagement. It was wonderful to see student voice elevated at board meetings. That's amazing. And um a board and leadership team and community that does that is something I'd want to be a part of. Um but as I review your data and I get deeper into it at each opportunity that I have. Um specifically, you're a high performing district, but you have some there's some gaps. And it reminds me of a lot of the work I've done in in large districts um in suburban and urban settings

113where we've looked at um some rapidly growing subgroups and some area areas of opportunity to make kids lives better. So, that's what specifically interests me is really looking at your community, the um student data attached to it, and the opportunities to bring um my track record um and my ability to work with teams and to lead teams um to this community. Specifically, a couple things that jumped out at me um about three or four weeks ago when I submitted my materials were two subgroups. one being your English language learners. My background as uh you and publicly available resumeé materials is uh starting at a title one school with lots of English language learners in my classroom. I was a classroom teacher for many years and then um elevated that work as directing curriculum for a

114district Ocula County Florida where we had an abundance of English language learners who were amazing students who needed just different supports. Um the second group that jumped out at me is an area of which I've grown um as an educator and leader in in the last six or seven years and that's of um in special education. So that's another subgroup that for you has increased um and as the needs increased I've also noticed that you've matched that with financial um uh benefits to those areas. You have a a large amount of added needs that you've given to that and that's wonderful. So those things spoke to me in terms of my um background and my interest. Your interest in culturally responsive teaching and um systems and structures also was something that emerged from those initial

115Google searches. Um I definitely see a community that's engaged which is something that I would love to be a part of. Um, currently I have a very engaged community in a in a in a smaller setting. Um, advanced placement participation was something um that jumped out at me as well. And but the the again the opportunity to look across the board um at that participation and see if there's areas of opportunity to again enrich other students lives. Um, I think my background in early childhood as well and my um ability to help lead enrollment increases through school of choice is something else that spoke to me. Uh, those are some of the things that I share in my background but also match some of the needs of your district. Thank you. I'm going to turn

116the next question over to our vice president, Jennifer Stein. Thank you. So um our next question is if you could please share an example of a time you have led a sustained multi-year improvement initiative like a strategic plan be specific regarding the situation the task at hand your role in that and then the outcome. Thank you for that question. I brought um Colon's strategic plan here as a a reminder of how um it really connects with a lot of the work that you have in your 2021 strategic plan. Um, I think that some of those goals are timeless, by the way, and I would love to engage in updating that plan alongside you all and in the educators and community and parents. Um, here I actually want to start um talking about the development of

117this plan by sharing a little bit about how like this question is a little unfair for me to answer. Um, last week on Thursday and Friday, I uh engaged all of my Horizon leadership students in learning about strategic planning. And so I felt like this I should like, you know, not have to answer this question because it's like a freebie for me. But no, truly I learned from them just as much as they learned from me last week. Um so I've had the opportunity um this just since January to um instruct a group of central office leaders, a couple superintendent and um and mentor them and lead them through that program. And so I thought this was a great question uh and very timely. But uh I will share a little bit about the strategic

118plan work that we've done in Colon. Um it really started with um the first summer of listening and learning, right? Uh I want to hear from the teachers and our students, parents and community. And that's what I did for the first five or six months um pretty much entirely. And there became um in the fall just some opportunities on our facility our board facilities committee to say whoa wait we have a sinking fund we have esser dollars and there's a lot of needs um but there's a lot of things you have planned but nothing's really written down and so um I actually took the opportunity to approach the board president and then the entire board um that fall with kind of moving up our strategic planning process we I had originally planned to do it

119a little bit later in the winter so that um we could collect that data and then launch the strategic plan of the second year that I was in Colon. Um but again, we wanted to be I thought it was important to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars and to show the community what we were doing with what dollars. So it actually um started with that. Um the idea was that we would create a living document. So, while this is printed, um you'll notice on our website that you see updates usually every couple of months. One of the things that we're most proud of and that my my leadership team is most proud of is we actually um on the far right of the strategic plan, we update the community on the work that's been done.

120So, you can actually transparently log in, log to the uh go to the strategic plan and see some of the items that we've worked on, but you can also see some of the items that we haven't been able to get started on quite yet. Um, some of the things that went into strategic planning in um the small community that I am in um was that we didn't necessarily do focus groups. We did a lot of um innovative things to meet people's scheduling needs. where I am now, you have teachers who serve as coaches and their parents in the district. And so, um, putting those things on their plates can be a lot of extra work. And so, I made it part of some of the normal systems and structures that we were using already, such

121as professional learning communities, some of the work I was doing um with the superintendent advisory committee, and then some of the like um committee work that we are already doing with the with the board. Um, so we collected a lot of input. A lot of it was qualitative. We did do a survey. There were about 39 responses if I remember. We chart papered that all out. And we came up with four areas and they look very much um like the areas that you have. Again, I think I would just end with um how important it is that the plan that I currently am working on and doing the daily hustle with my team, we use it all of the time. um we use it in our leadership work. We use it in professional learning communities

122with our teachers and it comes to life on a very regular basis. The transparency of which we provide to our community is the last piece I would reiterate. Um being able to share with them in that sort of a method and in board meetings um and be clear about the work that we've done has been an important element um of the plan. Thank you. I'm gonna turn the next question over to Treasurer Brad Gerby. I'll get it right this time. All right. As our superintendent, how would you work to ensure and enhance the sustainability and reputation of our district? Your district has an amazing reputation. Um, that's one of the things that I'm sure draw drew many candidates to you all and in front of you. Um, there's a couple of things that I think

123um, well, first of all, reputation is sustainability. And so everything that I would be doing alongside your teachers, your administrators, the amazing central office team that you have in place um, would be demonstrating that day-to-day integrity um, truthtelling followth through that has to be done when you're leading a district of this caliber. Um, so reputation is sustainability. There's a couple of things that I think about um that I do see as opportunities. And the first one is just to deepen community partnerships. I think there's always opportunities to do that. And so um one of the ways which resonated with me um I did a lot of work with Junior Achievement of Central Florida. It drove a lot of the um economics and financial literacy initiatives we did in Orange County public schools. When I arrived

124to Little Colon, again, big systems work. That um work we did with Junior Achievement impacted 30,000 kids every year in Orange County public schools. But I felt like the, you know, again, I'm in a small community. It is equitable to approach junior achievement here to make sure we had some of those things as well. So that is kind of my example of how I've done that in my current setting. Um, I think deepening partnerships here is done through um working with you all and finding out what areas of opportunity there are. I always think um speaking with our teachers about, you know, what did we do a decade ago that you miss? There's a lot of those types of stories that you can typically get from educators and find out what pieces are we missing

125here. The second thing is that I think the cultivation and deepening of programs has to match the need to grow um your enrollment. So at this time you're very stable. Um as we look at that uh those data trends and um you know your your 10% uh I believe cap on a lottery. I think those are areas of opportunity to ensure that we are um developing those partnerships or deepening them as they are. So those are some ways um I also would just say as well that I do think school of choice and some of the conversations you've had as a board just recently are really important would be important for me to re return to very quickly um in the fall and looking at what options we might have for next year. Um, I

126know that there was a recent discussion about kindergarten versus maybe sixth or ninth grade. I think that's an amazing conversation to have because as we look at early childhood, those numbers might not be there in the future. And so, where are we looking for other opportunities um to grow those numbers? as you know and is is in my data here on school of choice, you have just about as many students who leave that come here, but those things can shift very rapidly if you're not deepening the programs and the partnerships. And so those are some ways that I would do that. Thank you very much. I'm turning the questions now over to a board secretary, Darcy Berwick. Good evening. Honesty, integrity, and trust are valuable characteristics to have in leaders. How have you worked to

127earn trust in previous positions and how would you do so if chosen for this position in Seline? So um relationship building and listening to people and and making sure they feel heard in a psychologically and safe place is at the heart of what I've done as a leader. Um I think walking the walk alongside them that is that is also difficult to balance in a district with so many students. So I will admit that. Um currently one of the things I did to walk the walk was I picked up teaching an AP class once a week. Um that was important to me. We had a need. It wasn't like I just woke up one morning and said I miss teaching. We we did have a need. um unfortunately our local um college couldn't support the

128DE class that they had intended to do. Um so I've continued that. I think it's really important to show our educators and and my administrative team that it can be done. Um, I realize that in a district of this size, because I've been in much larger districts, that that isn't a potential opportunity. But I would make sure I do things similarly similarly that um would would ensure that they see me walking the walk alongside them. Um, I think, you know, thinking about the um you have to follow through, right? So, when you have a teacher who's asking for help and sometimes they're not emailing you and they're not texting you, you're these things are happening in the buildings um as you're in the buildings. And so, making sure that as you see needs, you're following

129through. That doesn't mean that you have to do it the same day or the next day because a lot of these things are bigger picture and need to be solved. But, um in the past, what I've done is I followed through with things. Uh let me give you an example. So um leading social studies instruction for about you know well really 65,000 students really you know secondary was about 25,000 students I noticed in classrooms and I was hearing from our teachers that our progression was not correct. So we were using the traditional Florida progression of US history in seventh grade and then eighth grade civics. what I was hearing from them with almost you know 65% English language learners in some buildings is that the students did not have the context and it was making

130it very difficult to master those standards. So after listening to to that and um collaborating with PLC's and administrators um we took a hard look at at at changing the progression and we did so and so I guess I would use that as example of you know earning educators trust um through following up and following through um as needed. Thank you very much. I'd like to turn the next question over to Trustee Tim Austin. Hello. Uh, tell us what the term culturally competent means to you and give us an example of how you demonstrated this demonstrate this characteristic. Thank you for the question. Um, so my career has been guided from the start from my me working with um, English language learners and students from very difficult socioeconomic backgrounds um, at the ability to be

131flexible and be open to new thinking and new viewpoints. And I've demonstrated that um by un by showing understanding, opening and appreciation for um other backgrounds and celebrating those with students, with teachers um and building that psychological safety within the communities of practice that I was part of. I think one example um there's a couple examples that I would point to. one would be um our textbook adoption in 2017 in Orange in excuse me in OciOla County. So we had to bring you know it's that's a that's a really hot topic in Florida right a social science textbook adoption it's a hard thing and so bringing together so many stakeholders around rubrics and standards and making sure that we are clear we had clarity around what our purpose was but also demonstrating and modeling for

132parents for district administrators for teachers um and for a handful of students actually who are part of that from one of our high schools that we had to honor the unique needs of many schools in that community. So what St. Cloud Florida St. Cloud High School down the street from where I live needed was very different um than what Point High School needed on the other side of the county. And so that is one way that I I looked um at at a large district scale of how I've done that. Another thing I would point to is just my ability to be adaptive and to listen to people and be adaptive to to where they're coming from. So, um, Orange County Public Schools had 20 high schools and, um, obviously that impacts many students. And

133my work there was around professional learning, professional learning communities, supporting principles with that area. what I would do on a daily basis, spending several hours alongside principles in classrooms, um I would go to Colonial High School on one side of the district with about 70% of students who were English language learners and I would approach that and be um culturally understanding of the different needs of that school and that team. But then I would drive to Windmir High School where my husband happened to be a dean of students and that was a very different setting. It was an A high school. It was largely suburban. It's by my grandparents house. But what really came to the It was all the same work for kids. But my ability to be adaptive in the approach and understanding

134of what that group of adults and that group of students needed has demonstrated throughout my career that I'm able to do that and I'm able to produce results in any building. Thank you. I'd like to pass the next question over to Trusty Gold. Lauren Gold, tell us how you maintain visibility and accessibility for students, staff, parents, and community groups by exhausting myself. No, I'm just kidding. I'm I'm kidding. I'm not really. But um no, you have to learn that, right? It's so intentional. Um when you're in a large district, there's people who need you. And when you're in a small district, there's people who need you. It's it's the same needs. It's the same need to be heard and understood and need and they need support and they need you to remove barriers, right? And

135so that is my absolute goal as a as as your superintendent to help remove barriers for parents, for students, for staff and administrators um to to and you know to get us to that result of helping kids. So I think there's a few things to keep in mind for visibility accessibility. One is it's really fun to be visible and accessible when it's like great and when the football team's winning and when you're in your new I just got a new um Magi baseball sweatshirt yesterday. My whole team was really jealous of it. When you're in your new sweatshirt and you're rooting them on, right? But when there's the house fire last November and you've got a family who needs you, that's really important, too. And um showing up for them, right? and making sure they

136had their needs met that night, but then following up and making sure they had their needs met that weekend and the week after. So, I think um thinking about visibility and accessibility, I wanted to drive home that it is great to be accessible and to be at all of the things I I cannot be as your superintendent. I have to balance that with um strategic selection of the things I'm attending. um strategic selection of the work that exists outside of attending events. Um and that's something I I do really carefully creatively with my calendar quite honestly. Um thinking about the intentionality behind, you know, I've been meaning to talk to that parent. I'm thinking I'm going to probably go to the golf meet, right? Because I I really want to get that input from that

137parent on that um specific thing. And so being strategic and thinking ahead about where you can get more leverage out of feedback, seeing people that um make a difference for kids um and making sure that you're at the great things and you're and you're part of that culture and that that excitement around the community, but that you're showing up when things aren't great. And I will als I will end with this. It also isn't the tragedies. It's when things are really hard and the and the community has questions and you have to be there and you have to be the forward- facing um leader and I've been there. I've been there uh in Colon. It is a small community. I love it. I live there. Um, but it's not always good times and and in

138the end, right, we we collaborate and we find common ground. Um, but it's also being there during the difficult times. Thank you. I'd like to pass the next question over to Trustee Jason Tisides. What unique skills or leverage would you bring to the position and how would Selen Area Schools benefit from this? Thank you for the question. Um, I would really go back to um some of the work I've done with enrollment in colon. So, I inherited um a GSRP program that was um under the the ISD umbrella and it had been put under the ISD umbrella in 2017 and um I know how important that early childhood is to to make sure they're part of our school and part of our culture. And so they could not staff um one of the programs the

139first year I was there. And understandably um no one's fault. And I felt like if it was under our umbrella and we had a little bit more um management and and and um influence over it that we could staff the program and make sure we doubled our numbers in GSRP. And that's what we did. Uh the next year we did all of the things we needed to do and now we manage two GSRP classrooms. Um, I say that to to kind of say that enrollment really starts with some of those ideas, right? So, how are we going to build programs? How are we going to um showcase our programs and get people thinking like, I'm a MADI and I'm going to go to this school and I'm going to be there until 12th grade. So,

140I would say um in terms of skills and leverage, I think that is an area like I mentioned in my opening that um I think you you definitely need here. a solid um background in early childhood and the ability to grow programs and that's going to be really important for your sustainability as as your community moves forward. Thank you very much. Um how how do you go about making decisions on controversial or high stakes issues? Well, uh I became an educator for students. So, I would start there. Um although I it is a it is a balance. It is a daily um balance to to think about needs of staff. It is um often not it's it's not often conflicting actually, but that you're mindful of both at the same time. But I would start

141with students. Um I would say the second piece that I always try to do is collaborate. I didn't you know my dissertations and professional learning communities that's really what has anchored me um for my whole career. And you collaborate and then you conversate and you get input and feedback. Um and you remain open to having your mind ch like someone someone might change my mind tonight, right? Um and so you have to be open to that. And then I would say you have to be brave. Um that was something I did not understand until you are sitting in in this in the superintendent seat. Um you have to be brave with your um beliefs. You have to be you have to know them and know your why connected to them. Um and so one example

142and I I alluded to difficult difficult things um of this was the need to uh change leadership at one of our schools last year. uh it was a very very difficult time um and so I'll start with the first part which was students it was clear that for students a change needed to be made there was a there was a gap um and so I saw the you know I I can't leave this alone because I have students who are whom I'm entrusted with um that need this change um and so from there you collaborate with others um first with our board, right, with next steps. I I uh keep them apprised of all of these things and we worked through some very difficult conversations. Once the um initial change was decided and made, I

143wanted our teachers and our parent groups and our community to be part of the solution, which would be essentially selecting a new leader for the school. And so I asked at a very very difficult time last May for our teachers to come and kind of create what they would envision a new leader for their building would be and what students needed. And that took a couple hours and there were things that um that were said and that we put in that posting that um were driven by them and that was really important to me. So I think that's an example of um the collaboration that's required when you have to make hard decisions because you can't just make them and then no one has any impact on like the next steps, right? You have to

144involve others. And I would just end with being brave. Um sometimes it's a lot easier to ignore things, right? I I've never done that. Um you know, you have to practice the pause for sure. make sure that you're you're sit and you're situated in your in your decision and you have it uh you have students at the center of it. But um being brave and making those decisions is is is part of making difficult decisions on those high stakes issues. The next question, excuse me. The next question is, what does an effective relationship between the board and the superintendent look like and how do you cultivate such a relationship? Thank you for that qu Thank you for this question. Um, I uh think that I think of you all especially I said in my opening

145like I'm from I'm from Oakland County, right? I didn't claim to have any ties here. I just love the fact that I think I can make a difference. You are all the experts. I just have with me a set of experiences that I can leverage alongside you. So I think that the best way that I've seen this go is as thought partners. I know that there are very specific roles of the board and superintendent because we all and we we know that and we've had our wonderful partners um give us that professional training and that learning um and we know those things are incredibly important to guide governance. But I do think of all of you and and hopefully will have you as thought partners alongside me in this journey. Um that means that um

146when there's there's things that are coming up, I may reach out even though it's not identified as a bullet point underneath the board of education role. I may need that support and that help. Um and I've done that currently and I'll give you an example. Um, a couple years ago it became very very clear um, based on teacher feedback, student feedback um, and and and parent strategic plan planning feedback that our relationship um, with our technology management provider was not working. Um, it it's very hard to staff it was very hard to staff that through the um through the contractor we were using. Um, and and I needed better I needed to make sure our teachers were supported. we were removing barriers and so knowing our provider was the ISD. Um and so knowing that

147that was going to potentially pose some difficult conversations, I didn't go that alone, right? Um I didn't kind of like put that out for some feedback to teachers and and say, "What do you think about this?" I went directly to our board president and I said, "Here's some da here's some data qualitative, right? Here's a couple things that have occurred. These things are impacting students, right? They're impacting the ability for them to access curriculum um teachers to access, you know, to be efficient and have these resources. Um from there, once I as a thought partner approached him, we went to a board committee, right? We we went there and again talked about that data, some of the deeper issues, some of the things that I reflected on that I could do better on, right? We

148can always do better. um and ultimately decided to explore um severing that contract and that relationship and and moving forward with a more efficient relationship. that has resulted this year in a much more efficient um al although still addressing right gaps always we're problem solvers right we're always problem solving um but you know I think that if I hadn't had the board as a thought partner I probably would have avoided that for a few more years um and so that was an example I wanted to share with you um there are many about you know I have a lot knowledge and skills, but we have to marry that with the community that you know and that you love. And some of you have been here your whole lives. And so for that, um, I would

149say that I would cultivate that by demonstrating that willingness to learn alongside you. All righty. So, as treasurer and chair of the finance committee, sorry, I wasn't making myself clearly known enough. So, as pre uh treasurer and uh school finance uh chair, we we have a good team and and we work well together. How would you work with us to develop budgets that gain broad support? Yes, thank you for that question. I act I I've relied a lot on some experiences in my current study as superintendent and I want to talk about um my work in Clintondale schools which is near in Mcome County. Um I felt this desire to come home to Michigan and that's what we did. Um and I joined a brand new leadership team central office team in that district and

150within about two weeks um I I really operated a little bit more of as an assistant superintendent. my title is director of curriculum. Um but certainly with an interim superintendent who was amazing um really she wanted to have the central office team have a lot more hands on things that were happening for as the new leader took took um that position. And so about two weeks in it became very clear that we had right sizing to do that was not going to be um very pleasant as a new leader but it had to be done and it had to be done for students but I wanted to do it collaboratively because I've known I knew that that was the right way to do it. Um so we brought um some curriculum coaches to the table

151all of our principles and talked about the reality. We put we put up all of the master we put the m master schedule up and we sorted out ways that we were able to leverage people's strengths um get some new courses actually going that um could be great for kids um and so you know thinking about Clint's budget it was 40 million at the time um and about 80% was staffing I mean I had a lot of um a lot of work to do with our principles and with their support teams um to ensure we were making some of the right decisions there. Um I would say also in Clintondale we managed a uh $6.2 million esser uh three budget and that was done through some some school level groups that I organized with our

152director of finance. Um we had parents so it was during summer school and we knew that parents sometimes were hard to reach in that community. So we actually had them during drop off come in for some committee meetings there. Um and so you know you you do it through what meets the needs of the community. So here it may be surveys and focus groups. It may not be and we'll work together with the um finance committee and with you to determine what some of those things are. You also likely have things you also have not likely things in place that are already working for you as evidenced by your fund balance. I mean, incredible stewardship of of your fiscal resources here for students. Um, I do still think there's certainly opportunities to look at the

153future um and what some of the um some of what the revenue may look like um moving forward. But, uh I would say that it's through matching the needs of the of the community. So, what worked in Clintondale, what works in Colon may not work exactly like it does here. And so being willing to come to the table with those committees um learn from you all and lead that work um at here. Describe your knowledge and experience in using data to make informed decisions. Thank you for that question. I'm so impressed with um your MTSS structures. I uh spent a little bit too much time on s'more today. You have those wonderful resources out there. I love how your team of MTSS coordinators have shown the overlap with your compass. It's really impressive. I love

154when things connect. I'm like thinking up late at night about how can we connect that and make that work. Um and so really impressive work that they've done. So I guess I I would start there is that I am um sure without being in one of your buildings today this week that these are things that drive processes here and that's very exciting to me. It's very exciting to me because um I was so I so love this work this datadriven collaborative work that um I initially set out to write a dissertation and do research on PLC's in large districts. Right? So, I wrote all of chapter one about Orange County Public Schools and how we were going to use data and professional learning communities um and see like how that worked and how central office

155leaders played into that work. Um as as you know from my path and my journey, I ended up in a small rural district and then I shifted my focus to how data is used there. I think um my knowledge and experience really doesn't matter unless other people can do that work too. So I can use data all I want behind a desk or um or at home late at night saying you know what is this subgroup telling me and what is this subgroup telling me but unless people care and have the efficacy to do it in the classroom or at the building administrative level um some of that doesn't really matter. The other thing I would say um is that data is everywhere. So beyond student achievement data um looking at your attendance data, you

156have some interesting things going on there as well. Um I think t you have some excellent tier one supports in place for attendance, but I do also see some areas of opportunity for subgroups there as well um in the areas of your English language learners and economically disadvantaged students. So I oftentimes try to triangulate these things. So what's going on here? What's going on in attendance and what's going on maybe with discipline or behavior, which of course isn't as readily available to me um not being from the district. So triangulating those things um is incredibly important and showing others how to do that so that you're not, you know, look at this data that I found. Don't you enjoy looking at it? No, I want them to have the efficacy to be able to do

157that as well. Um, one example of this is, um, we we a couple years ago as a as a leadership team brought in some teacher leaders to look at NWA as a tool. Um, what we were seeing was that despite like that investment of staff meeting time and investment of PLC time, it just wasn't really being used. Um, and the teachers, some of the especially new teachers, which you have a lot, we have a lot of now, um, kind of found it frustrating to use. So we um switched to I Ready, which is what we currently use in my uh in Colon. Um we have seen a tremendous growth in our students. We have some students that are meeting stretch goals at every administration at every um progress monitoring administration. um we have seen teachers

158even in content areas and science and social studies working in I Ready um to pull data to match to some literacy opportunities within those content areas. So those are some things I would say about my knowledge of data is that it's vast, it's deep, but unless it's unless it's something that I'm willing to be able to share and model for others, that doesn't matter. I want to create the efficacy um around data for everyone. Um tell us how you have used your knowledge in student learning and educational research to guide curriculum development and increase student achievement. Thank you for that question. This is my favorite one. Okay. All right. Um, I want to share some experiences that I am proud of, uh, so proud of the teachers in Orange County Public Schools and the work

159that we did with their principles and their assistant principles. Um, in 2017, I had a colleague through the Florida Association of Social A Supervisors, which I'll hopefully get to talk about tonight, um, who said, you know, we're trying to really disrupt these stagnant, um, social studies scores. would you consider, you know, here's the posting. Would you consider coming over and being part of this work? Now, that was um a difficult decision as a as in a career move for me because I left a team um supporting 65,000 students of who I cons consider to be mentors. My my supervisors, all three of the assistant superintendents were I consider all three of them mentors today. um and to take this leap into this big right se I was on the seventh floor alongside a curriculum team

160managing a $92 million curriculum budget right it's a big leap um but I was I'm so excited to this day that I met some of these amazing professionals and did this work alongside them I think that um what's important to understand about this experience is that it started with a task and that was please create standards aligned uh universal design, right, to support our special education students. Um, using SCUP, using WEDA, using all of the strategies. Please, please create these lesson plans so we have equity in teaching and learning across Orange County Public Schools. That is a huge task. Um, I could not do that alone. And so I very quickly established relationships. I love to build relationships and um across the district with civics and US history teachers who helped me through this process.

161Um so that's the research base right using research to create the this curriculum but as we all know as teaching and learning uh folks and those of you who I know all of you are incredibly talented as board members in this work you have to tie that together nicely with professional learning support professional learning communities tied to data to make sure that we're supporting our educators and our students um to actually use these these resources because a resource without those things is just a resource. So very quickly um we developed district PLC's probably about nine months after the launch of the lesson plans. The intent of these district PLC's was to get feedback from educators uh real-time feedback on how those lessons went so we could adjust and we could monitor and adjust. Um, we

162then realized that there was a a hu they wanted to to see some formative assessments. Uh, so to get even deeper buyin with some of our newer teachers, we brought them to the table the following summer, so two years in, and we developed these amazing formative assessments, which uh is, as we all know, there's a lot of professional learning that's embedded in that as well. And then we thought just like Michigan has experienced um some gaps with you know newer teachers and teachers at the table who need that support and mentoring um we developed an impact PD series that actually had won many awards um and supported newer teachers through like learning the pedigogy, learning the curriculum alongside it. And then the final piece right before COVID was that of course at the very end

163of the day the people supporting this work every day although we were on the ground um every week was was their principles right was these principles and assistant principles that were supporting these teams and doing the PLC's alongside them. So we brought them in uh once a month for uh a shorter version of the impact PD to help support the these administrators. I would say that um those encompass how I've a great example of how I've used educational research best practices and I will share that um and I know this was in my materials but we were given recognition for closing um subgroup gaps for students of color that was a large subgroup gap of which we closed. We also had some significant gains for English language learners that year although not as as drastic.

164But what would what made it for me was when those EOCC scores were released that June day having hundreds of just communications with the teachers that did this work and just so proud of them and so proud of lifting up kids because while scores increase and that's great for everyone, kids knew more stuff, right? So that's what proficiency equals to. Kids knew more things and they were able to feel successful. um some of those kids who came from other countries, who came from, you know, South America, Puerto Rico, were able to be successful on this US history exam. Um and so that's really um an area of of pride for me. But I don't I did not do that work alone. I don't do any of this work alone. And I I'm really proud of

165those teachers to this day and still stay in contact with many of them. Tell us how your previous professional experiences have influenced you as a leader. This is kind of general so and you've been talking about it but you could narrow down. Thank you for that question. So I think the word that um comes to mind is resilience. Um we went through many social studies changes from 2018 to 2021 of which at the end of the day um during a pandemic I wanted to be closer to home as well but uh had kind of worn on me and my colleagues and um so being very resilient and working alongside leaders I'd say that um resilience in terms of navigating a small small town um you know where I'm leading work that's really good for kids

166but sometimes might not be seen that way um usually is alongside an incredible team an incredible team of professionals and so I think um I'd like to acknowledge the amazing team you have in place here I've I've looked into all of your central you start with central office right to see I miss that work I miss that work we did that in Clintondale I I still stay in contact with many people from there today um you've an amazing central office team, amazing teachers. One of the things that jumped out at me when I researched your district was um would I want to work there? And I don't mean a superintendent, like yeah, right? I'm here, but would I want to work there as a teacher? Right? What's on what what are they saying on their

167social media? What are they what are you communicating on your website? And I think that's really important um is in in shaping right my professional experiences is like would I want to work there as a teacher. Um so that's something that I think about. And lastly I would I think that um something I didn't necessarily get to touch on quite yet and maybe I'll have some time is just building teams but also sustaining teams. you because again you have an amazing team in place here and unlike other situations I may I will not have to build that team and that'll be great because I'll get to learn alongside them support them remove barriers um and do that work along you know alongside a team that's already in place and already knows um the work ahead

168so those are some reflections I would share here in Selene we have some of the most dedicated teachers and support staff around. Can you tell us about a time when you created a work environment in which people wanted to do their best? How did you create that climate and what was the result? Thank you so much. Um I I would reflect a little bit on um inheriting a teaching and learning team when I arrived in Michigan in Clintondale and um coaching them up to think of things a little more systematically. So I had about eight people on that team, a pupil accounting coordinator, some instructional coaches, um a couple directors um related to technology and I you know kind of breaking down silos. So from big districts uh I I am now in a small

169one the silos I see from a mile away and that's one area I do think that um makes allows me to stand out as a candidate. Um but I do I do want to address your question and talk about some of the work I've done recently. Um when I joined when I was given my first superintendency, we had a um principal who left um just before I got there and um I served as the junior and senior high principal for the first eight or so months of my tenure in Colon. It was incredibly taxing work and so rewarding. Um but the first couple weeks in in that in the building um there were no substitutes. Um and the the behaviors of students of some of whom I'll get to shake their hand in a few

170weeks here across the stage. I'm so proud of them. Um just wasn't matching the the high bar of which we would expect um you know from our handbooks and from from um the way we treat teachers. And so some of the things that we did was we tried to remove barriers and we um we started a minor and major structure where we were alerted to things happening in the classroom to help support teachers and we were we were in the halls. We we had the standing desk thing going on, right? We were in the halls supporting teachers. Um very quickly within about six months we started to see substitutes our fill rate go up to about 60 70% which was amazing. Um, I actually got a an email from a former substitute who came back

171to Colon this February and it was she said it was just remarkable like when you you know at the top when you're modeling great things and um and the way that you act and you interact with people you know students are are definitely seeing that. So um we removed a lot of barriers. We supported teachers and I'm I'm proud to say that, you know, we've seen attendance teacher attendance go up as well in the last two years. We were having some issues with that as well. Um, and it, you know, just following up and following through is is a great way to build those environments and those cultures. I'm just going to check with Jay for three minutes. That's what I've got, too. So with three minutes remaining, if we can give tight answers to

172the next the last two questions, that would be fantastic. So could you tell us about any experiences uh you've had implementing and managing bond projects, syncing funds, and or facilities management? Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to to give those short responses. Um yes, we're currently I'm about ready to see hopefully see through a successful bond in on August 5th of this year. Um for many years this community in in Colon has wanted a gym to alleviate some of the issues with having a smaller a small community. Um we have the you know amazing facilities. Um our facilities assessment on January 2nd put us in the top 5% of facilities in the state. So we have the we had the ability to go out um for for a bond for technology needs. Some some incredibly

173important technology needs. Um I would share lastly with this that I did not start by just calling up a a bond company or you know saying hey can you come out and talk to us about this. We actually started with a focus group last August. Um we envisioned what we wanted to do and we later about two months later um approached some potential partners who who we interviewed. I I interviewed them alongside many other stakeholders. So um I'm leading that work. I have a part-time facilities director so um that's been very hands-on. Um, I know I wouldn't be as hands-on here, but it's been incred in incredibly rewarding to learn learn those things. President Ste, thank you. Um, can you describe your experience as an educational advocate at the local, state, and national level? Thank

174you very much. Um, yes. I think, you know, going back to being a secondy year teacher and being asked to be involved in um some union work, I early early on got bitten by the bug of wanting to impact my community and beyond. Um I've shared a little bit about the progression changes we made in in civics and middle school in Ocula County. That led me to a statewide stage of being the secretary, vice president, and then president of FAST, which is the Florida Association of Social Studies Supervisors. We worked on financial literacy curriculum with the state and civics standards as I left the state. Um and then currently I'm really proud um of of um joining MASA's small and rural task force. So equity is a huge area um of concern of mine and

175you know I'm in a big district learning about all these um pieces of equity and through all different kinds of lens. But little did I know that when I got to a small district that that would be incredibly revealing to me about additional equity issues in our systems. And so um I can't fix all of those. So we'll so I joined in um that task force to look at some ways that we can alleviate that. And those are some ways um I've been involved in Michigan and then in my previous experiences. Well thank thank you so much. So, as we wind down our time together, would you like to leave us with any closing uh remarks or thoughts in the remaining four minutes? No, you don't have any. No time. I had I had four.

176I had 750. So, 850 is the I could say thank you or more. What do you want me to say? The board from hearing the grumbles and mut mutters. I think we'll give you one minute. Thank you. That sounds great. I appreciate that flexibility. Of course. I No, I appreciate you all having me. Um I'm really eager to elevate what's already being done. I genuinely believe um that I have a skill set that stands out. Um I've I want you to please remember I have I am in a small district. I wear many hats. I do have a team. I have an incredible team. Um, but I have I have worked in these systems where I've seen the silos. I know um where these systems thinking things come into play for kids. And so I'd

177encourage you to look beyond my current role. Although I'm incredibly proud of the work I've done. Um, and then I just encourage you regardless of your decision to continue to look at those gaps. Um, I see them. I think that you can elevate this work that you're doing and your teachers are doing such incredible work with their principles. So, I would love to be a part of it. Um, but I really appreciate it and thank you. Well, thank you so much. Um, we appreciate your interest in in joining our superintendent search and their interest in the superintendent position. The board we are interviewing several candidates and we will certainly contact you if you were among the finalists. So, thank you very much for coming. It was a very it was a great pleasure to get

178to know you. So we're without objection we will take some time first of all to let you you know say goodbye to us and uh also to review the feedback that's uh coming in. I think we're going to take about 30 minutes for that. Jay looks at his watch and concurs 30 minutes. So we will be off air for those at home for the next 30 minutes. Thank you so much. I'm gonna start here this time. I can't even I I downloaded it. Yeah. Okay, you're here. How are you? Okay. Thank you. We are temporarily back. Uh the board is going to take an additional 10 minutes at so at 9:33 or so 9:34 we will be back live for the discussion of all the candidates. Thank you. Thank you very much for your patience

179everybody and especially to the 33 people hanging out at home watching this uh live stream. We are now at the point where uh we would like to engage in a guided discussion of candidates and uh we will I will hand the podium over to Jay Bennett of the Michigan Association of School Boards. Thank you. Executive search. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Uh so uh nice job tonight on the interviews. Uh you stuck to the script, read the questions. Fantastic. Three good interviews tonight uh to go with our three good interviews from last night. So, let's talk a little bit about each of the candidates. Uh, we'll start much like we did last night with the things that we heard that resonated with us that we really liked and then we'll start getting into our

180wonders. And we're going to start with our first candidate of the night, Marty De Boyce. So, what did we hear from Marty tonight that struck us well? Yeah. Should I go? Absolutely. Okay, let's kick it off. 9:35. Um, so the first thing that I really struck me is that I saw some of the um human or or kind or empathetic or genuine qualities that I see in some of our staff here in Selen Area schools and that made me feel comfortable. Um, he he reminds me of facets of a few different people that do things very very well. Um, being able to say that he was interested in potentially starting his day in a building meant a lot to me. Um, that he would be out in our district and and that the start of

181his day includes those children in the buildings. Um, I was able to hear um pieces of our bridge toi bridge to civility in his words as he was answering some of our questions. Um he seemed to always be looking at us and seeking to interact with us versus reading script. Um, I appreciated that he he um admitted that his mind can be changed as he talks to people and works across silo and builds bridges. And he actually used the word bridge and I was like, "Oh." Um, I saw different facets of support and partnership for Miranda, for Carol, for Julie, for Cara, for Jackie, for Rex, for our our core team when talking about some specifics. Um, and I felt like there was, it's very hard in a first interview because we are scripted and

182we're kind of getting that, you know, very surface level response, but there were glimmers of some deep knowledge in multiple areas. I thought that I would like to hear come out a little bit more. Um, I think some of the qualities that I was picking up were aligning in the letters of recommendation. um things around hard work um ha um handling difficult sess uh sessions with individuals in the community with grace being genuine and being a collaborator collaborator um I think on the wondering side um I go back to that reputation question again I I don't feel out of the six that any of them gave me a substantial answer enough on that so whatever we do with round two I would like us to reflect on how we can go deeper with that question

183and relate it specifically to what would you do for Seline? Um, a lot of the answers were about self or about small components, but like here's our data. Here's what we are as a school district. Where are you going to take us and how are you going to preserve the reputation and how you're going to enhance what we already have? That's that's great about our district. Um, again, a small district. We had talked about this a little bit yesterday and me reflecting upon um what supports would be put in place to um help mentor uh and support an individual that had experience but in a smaller district. I believe he would willingly accept help. Um I think the answers I would like to go deeper. I mentioned this. I I feel like I saw glimmers

184of knowledge and specific knowledge in certain areas, but just not the opportunity within the the time. Um, he was the first person to initiate a 90-day plan for our perusal as well. And that's it. Okay. Anybody else? I I kind of I like how he started out as a special education teacher. um that was important to me and then where kind of he went from there and kind of helped build things there. Um and then he does have experience with bonds and syncing funds and working through those. I thought that was okay. Um I appreciated the idea of the 90day plan. Um just to be thinking about how you would see yourself in a role. I thought that the um answer around school finance and developing budgets showed a really good understanding of both the

185financing and like how to communicate it to the um district. I was disappointed with the answer regarding cultural competency. I felt like it was a little flippant and um you know didn't go much beyond personal experience which is sort of the whole purpose of cultural competency. So, I would wonder if that was a term that, you know, people he was familiar with. Um, I also liked that uh he was a special ed teacher and I liked him talking about diffusing situations. Um, I thought his answer regarding turning around a school that was having difficulty showed real strength and specificity. Um but I thought I wondered about his understanding of like how students learn and um sort of the science of learning and the question regarding that I thought and the educational research in his own

186educational background there's not a dissertation or things like that. So I wonder if that's an area of growth. Um so okay I would echo everything that's been said so far. Um, and then I would just uh I'd like to emphasize that he really talked about establishing good relationships with people and I think that that's the foundation for reaching everyone in our district, parents, students, staff. All right. Um, I would speak to I liked his what when he talked about patience and like thinking about things and I liked his general demeanor, right? He felt like someone who would be very deliberate about decision making but not hold grudges, not have some of those those barriers there. So I really liked just his general mechanisms for how he described how he would solve problems and go through

187some of that stuff. Um I found myself wondering continuously about some specifics. um I just didn't catch the substance piece that I was looking for. Um whether it was about um whether it was about professional development, ELA programs, cultural competency, I didn't catch enough of the example piece with him of like the SKI kids specific initiatives and some of those kinds of things. And so I would want him in a second round if he he came back to to share more of those kinds of like real experiences rather than overview where I really liked a lot of that. But I want to know a little more. What did you do as a superintendent? What would you do here specifically? Okay. I actually share the same wondering myself, Brad. Uh that I was there was light

188on specifics uh heavy on personal stories. I did also appreciate that he was an EI teacher. That was helpful. But of the several areas and domains that we looking for in a decent not even a decent a strong superintendent uh he for me he covered one pretty well and it was the your question Brad uh about finance 31 aa school safety 35J 31A syncing funds GSRP. he was he was on it and spoke as somebody who's actually had real experience with with that and that's something that a superintendent should have but that's sorry I'll just leave it at that. Okay. Any other comments on Marty? Okay. Moving on to our second candidate of the night. What did we hear that we liked? What resonated with us? What are we still wondering? Mrs. Nick Steinmets, I

189I'll I'll lead it off. Yeah. Um, first of all, the by far the most well-prepared candidate we've seen, and we've seen a couple prepared candidates in my opinion. Um, definitely definitely brought evidence of his capabilities, uh, for sure. um uh going through a lot of the feedback that we received um regarding uh some answers. Uh we might want to get some clarification. I don't I don't think he I don't think he was bragging about the school of choice numbers that they had. I think he was talking about it in a in a positive way. um talking about how they're managing that district with such an influx of school of choice and and how they're uh how they're managing it. I thought how they managed their budget was fantastic, the increase of the fund balance I

190thought was fantastic. The one thing that I would like to hear a little bit more about um because there was a couple couple questions where we didn't get real specific answers. Um specifically one that President McVey asked regarding making controversial decision. Um I would actually like to hear what the process was. A lot of his answers were circled around relationships, relationships, relationships. And that's that's fantastic. But I want I would like to know what actual thought process somebody goes through in those situations because I'm data driven and some people are emotionally driven, some people are analytic driven. There's different ways of looking at that. I'd like to know what that process would be and I would like a specific example. having served seven years as a superintendent, there's got to be examples that he can

191give us. So, I I would like that if we if we brought that candidate back for a second interview. Okay. Noted. What else? Um, so Oh, go ahead. No, you go ahead. Um, I um Okay, I'm going to start positive. So I think that there was a lot of um written preparation um in the folder uh that probably you know a lot of summary of how he does his current job. Um, I wondered about the fund balance and I I would have to research this more because I couldn't think about the numbers this quickly, but I wondered how much of that was a bit of timing with where just from what I've learned in the last few years about when we got those ESSER funds and sort of the big infusion postcoid. So, I'd want

192to look more closely over um what if that was due to management versus just sort of the timing of when he started at the district because he was coming in during the influx of COVID recovery money. So, I just wanted a little more depth in explaining what he specifically did to manage the funds. Um I uh thought he did a good description of how his strategic plan went. I really appreciated the the place strategic plan. It stuck with me. So, it may must have been and how he tied that together with um the fact that there's no downtown and kind of explained that. And so, I thought that was a good answer about the strategic planning um in the beginning. Um I again am going to continue to wonder about cultural competence uh and the

193depth of the cultural competence answer um I felt like wasn't there. And I also wonder about this communication tree um that uh was given to us as part of the materials. I wonder if having the materials with me and flipping back and forth actually decrease my ability to really hear more depth than the answers. I found it not I found it actually personally a little distracting to have to be flipping through things. there wasn't really maybe that those materials are good to review afterwards, but at the time I felt like it was hard to switch back and forth, but I did notice the communication tree seemed really prescribed. And although I think that um I think that could be really good for parents to understand the sort of the way things are supposed to work

194in the district. It was really specific and I wonder if that's something that would work here in our district. um sort of people being prescribed exactly how to go through the charts with that level of detail. So I would like to hear more about that and how that actually works there and how he thinks it might work here. Okay. Um so few things. um he mentioned uh CTE and I thought that he mentioned that very positively because he said something like 80% of his current students go to a CTE program. Um I think that's important since we have such a important Southwest consortium here in Seline and with the current potential CTE bond at county um level I think he could be very uh advantageous for that um organized. I echo what um Jason said

195about prepared. I my wonderment would be more along the school of choice. Um I do kind of agree with Jason. I don't necessarily know if he's, you know, touting the 50% as far as that's like what he wants to do for everybody, but I I I'd like to know a little bit more about that and kind of what his goals or idea is around that. Okay. Yeah. Um, so we actually had some good references on this one coming in, I felt like, or at least I had been receiving some good references on this one coming in. Um, I agree that this was a little bit more of a deeper preparation, but do agree with Lauren that I felt it distracting. Um, he was very quick in his answers and they were shallow. And so between

196going so fast, not taking the the all of the time, flipping and trying to like reenter on each question, I felt like it was like and I was like, you know, following along. Um, it did to me feel a little bit like I was being told what to think. Do this, do this, now do this. Here's what I did. and and I'm not I wasn't getting for me anything about what about Selen Area schools. So it was this this this this and what like that was missing for me. I think overall when I think about all six candidates I always like more of that because they're here interviewing for a job in our district and I appreciate that they have experiences that they're bringing to the to the table. I think it was amplified in

197this interview with with what was missing about Seline specifically. Um I schools of choice stood out to me on this one as well for a couple of different reasons. Um the first that it uh the first way that it it stuck out to me was he said we have 199 schools of choice students and 113 of them are special ed. And I'm like, so um I didn't understand where that was going. Um are we correlating that all schools of choice children are special education and therefore different? I I don't I didn't understand what that was. It just caused me pause. It was followed up with a comment about the upper peninsula people being quote a little different. And I just I paused at that as well. So I don't know I I I don't know

198what the meaning was there but the schools of choice I paused on and I started listening intently and then after that I was like I don't know what this means. Um his opening in tying and this actually came out in a lot of feedback. His opening about how Seline and his current district are so similar really escapes me. um the number of students, the number of staff, the ranking in the state, the budget, um the schools of choice, very very different school districts. Um and so I was struggling to understand the connection of of how this school district was attractive because it was so similar to his own. Um let me see. Um it was definitely a different approach. It was the first time there had been a lot of union forward. Um, love our

199unions, all of them. Um, it was a little performative to me that we were given um, the binders and that he walked the binder over to the union. I felt I saw some things being a little bit performative last night as well. And I appreciate that everyone's looking to, you know, gain a little favor here as as they're applying for a job. So, appreciate that. I think that went a little too far. The board makes the decision on hiring the next superintendent because that's what the rule is. Always always want feedback from every single union, every single staff member, every single community member. I felt that was pandering. Um I would also wonder why the tenure was so short in Manchester. And that's it. Um thanks Jennifer. I have a similar See, I'm learning wonderings

200wonderments uh about the school of choice. It's it's it's fine and dandy to say you built up your 400 student district because of school of choice. If I understood that correctly, 50 58% school of choice. The other way of looking at school of choice in that respect is that we poached x number of students from other districts that needed that money as well. So I my wonderment is what was is this part of a a long-term strategy? it was it sustainable? Uh, and was that the original plan or did he inherit that or walk into that is my wonderment. The next uh question I had and and I'm going to count on Treasurer Gerby if you could help. Um, it was it was actually your question again. Um, they've got a good great fund balance,

201highest paid teachers in London. That's that's fine and dandy. Um, but I curious to know how they unfroze uh Manchester after eight years. What happened there? That was intriguing to me. Uh, he addressed a topheavy district and his remedy for was a top heavy district was to take was to take on the role of assistant principal or something or principal at an elementary school. My wonderment is a little more about how he dealt with the management of of employees and administration in that district that appeared to be so topheavy. So, but my other question now this is where for you uh uh treasurer Gerby is more about after the co in the covid he talked about giving 1.3 million directly to the teachers because we are all doing hard work. Everyone was doing hard work.

202I got that. But my question, my wonderment is how was that sustainable? Was that a one-time only amount of money? And it was all great how he was sharing that. But just so many things just begged questions. The devil of course living in the details. Um but but the bottom line though is line items are teachers was one of the things he said and I appreciated that. But he he just raised too many questions. So my wonderment would be what was going on? Tell me more about balancing the funds, dealing with COVID money, etc. And what did you do to get that uh maintain that high fund balance? The one one interesting thing to me was a wonderment again. He talked about the excitement of GAN day in the district. Um, wow. To me that

203seemed like it was a kind of it was a it seemed like a a bit of a silly thing, but maybe not. But, uh, I'm wondering I'm wondering is how how much of a micromanager is the superintendent in in that district in in his role? How how micromanagy was he with his staff? So, and the GAN day was the one that made that just didn't quite sit right for me. So, those are that was those are my concerns about him. Uh, I I appreciated the binder. I I also did I think I you said the thing I or you did Lauren see the long list of I think it was 27 different names or 19 different names. Uh I'm not calling all those people. I thought that was a bit excessive. You pick your four

204or five. I mean he's making a point and again you said performative and I and I agree but is there a wonderment there? Could he have, my wonderment is, could he have narrowed down his list to just three or four really key people who could answer questions about him? So, okay. Any other comments on Yeah, I I'll go. I wanted to I wanted to listen in and and all of that and then and go now. Okay. So, um, I saw his binder as being as as being prepared and all of that. Um, and so like I appreciated being able to see that, but I guess the biggest reason why I appreciate being able to see the binder is because I see a lot of um, evidence-based stuff that prepares us like our superintendency is a

205really big super is a big superintendency with a $78 million budget. And so what I appreciated mostly about this binder and while it may have at times like been like yeah like I'm focused a little here when I would like to be there. I think it gave us examples of strategic planning. It gave us he looks at how he breaks down school choice. he, you know, wanted to talk about demographics of of different things with regards to cultural competencies and that every school district is, you know, a little bit different that he served and yet he's still been able to serve them and serve them pretty well. And then I don't want to get too like into everything. Uh, I would say that like the the I actually liked the page with all of the

206individuals. And here's the reason why I liked it the most is because he has a business office. He has a human resource and payroll. He has a chief financial officer. And so, and then he has a athletic, special education, transportation, technology, food service. He's got principles and then assistant principles who serve those principles. And so like I see a structure with this that more closely resembles what we have in Seline, right? So like that's some of the reasons why I appreciated um the binder. Um Michael Mr. McY or Dr. McVey, you asked me a couple of questions. I'd like to reserve those more for our deliberation time. I'd like to keep it more about just my thoughts on when we have deliberation time afterwards. I'll I'll talk to you about some of my answers potentially

207on what I think might be there, but I also think the candidate, if we bring him back, will answer those things. Well, I'm glad I didn't know you have thoughts on the I mean, I do, but um but they're my thoughts. Anyway, but um I thought this demonstrated he had good systems and structures and um I saw him as being the closely the closest this is just my thoughts the most closely as aligned president or superintendent to what we have here in Selene. Uh I did appreciate about you know he does speak a lot about relationships and and and those kinds of things. Talked about CTE and special ed and some of those kinds of things. Um I would I have some wonderments about and I my wonderments are this. Um I'd want to hear

208more. He talked about that he would like to um talk more to us about student le and student datadriven changes. Um I would like to hear more about what he would do in that in that regard. He he spoke to that and he said I'd like to be able to share you more share us more on that. Um, and then on the school of choice front, um, I I don't know how to interpret it entirely. I saw it a little differently than maybe some of my teammates. I saw it more as like hopefully he's made Madison a destination district for people to want to choose it, right? and that they have choices in this competitive environment and that they're choosing to go to Madison over going to Adrian, going to some of those nearby neighboring

209school districts. And so I saw that a little differently, but I wouldn't mind some additional clarity just like my teammates do about, you know, how that tied in and all of that kind of thing. Um, and then yeah, and and so those are kind of my thoughts. Okay, I'm glad that there are so many of us at this table because I feel like we all hear and relate and connect to candidates in different ways. Um, I appreciated the binder. Um for me that meant that he came prepared uh and was able to connect with the qualities that we are looking for in a superintendent and to show us uh how he was able to do that. Um and having said that I felt that he was relying more on the binder than um interacting with

210us. So I would like to have had more from him on that front. Um, one thing or rather a couple of things that I really uh appreciated that he focused on was again relationships um and having open, trusting and respectful and clear communication that went both ways. Um, I liked the philosophy of uh you leave it better than you found it. Um, I also appreciated as as Dr. Gold said that, you know, he was looking to make this school the focus of Adrian since they didn't have a downtown because he's building community. Um, and the one thing that sort of struck uh me as sort of the first candidate who really addressed the baselines of wants and needs, which to me and and Dr. Gold will know is sort of Maslo's hierarchy of um of

211needs and that you have to meet um the base baseline needs order in order to uh have a full life. And I think that as we're seeing candidates who come from uh less financially wealthy districts that that is where they need to start. And I think that um I appreciated what Louder had to say about that the other day where I mean he's looking at getting kids into the school building in order to be there to learn. Uh and Kowalsski also touched on it and saying you know um we need to get the kids uh you know f fed and and in school and clothed and um to address those basic needs before you can meet the top level of of love and belonging esteem and and self-actualization. I feel like we're fortunate in our

212district um that we essentially have some of the basic ones covered and are working at the higher end of that level. But um I didn't hear him talk a lot about um interacting with parents and I felt like that was we have a very parent involved district and um I think that with his list of communication structure I I felt like that was a lot for our parents to have to go through to get to him. Um but uh and I guess lastly with this um schools of choice, I think that in the state of Michigan, we've determined that uh we value that and um he's making the most of it. Uh doesn't mean that we need to do that here, but I think that if he's looking to grow his school district, that was

213one way to do it. Okay. Any other comments on Nick? All right. And our final candidate of the night, Rachel Kowalsski. What do we like? I went last, so I'll go first. Sure. Um, I appreciated that she said that she uh came to the table listening and learning first. Um, I did appreciate her actual response on reputation. Uh, well, no, sustainability that reputation is sustainability and I I feel that that was spot on. If you have a great reputation, you're a destination district. Um, and uh that means stability. I like that she talked about removing barriers and she did talk about parents and students and staff and admin. I mean, they all talked about the staff and the students. I didn't feel like there was a lot to involve the parents in these conversations here.

214Uh I appreciated that she practices the pause uh center students and talked about being brave. Uh, I also felt that I was beginning to be concerned about our question regarding cultural competency because I didn't feel like anyone really answered it and then I felt that she understood what it was and did answer that question. Um, I liked that she talked about data needing efficacy because she's right. There's numbers and information out there and um, what is it? uh paralysis in analysis, you know, you can get stuck in the data and if it doesn't mean anything or you can't relate it or you can't use it, it's not worth the bother. Um she talked about improving students comprehension and their confidence. Uh she talked about coaching up which I really appreciated. Um she was also really

215um strong on equity which we're looking at here. Um and I one thing she did mention uh was the increased sub rates and that to me uh you know if if there are people wanting to come and be and teach in your district that means it's a good one and you're going to retain some staff. I'm sorry. Did you say increasing sub rates? Yes. Teacher rates. Y just want to make sure. That's what I thought I heard. Um, yeah. It, you know, the schools have reputations and if you can't get subs in, you're not going to educate your kids. Sure. And if they if she can bring them in and they come back, she's doing something right. Okay. Yeah. I um thought she was far and away the most prepared candidate. um I really appreciate

216in talking with people um when they anticipate the things that I'm going to wonder about them and seem to fill that. So, she clearly came having watched some of our board meetings, which I thought was impressive and had read up a lot on the district and um I felt like well, I'll get to my wonders that I felt like she answered well, but she really smoothly like took these very broad questions and did what I thought was intended, which was gave us a pretty specific situation or task and then spoke about how she addressed it. So, I thought she had um very uh strong answers um about learning. Uh she gave a very specific answer about how she would deal with a difficult situation. It wasn't maybe one that we've dealt with here in terms

217of, you know, um needing to do a staff arrangement for someone, but I thought it was brave. She said she had to be brave and I thought she uh answered that particular question with the most honesty and directness of actually giving a specific example and I watched that. I um I also liked the um reputation is sustainability. Um she was talking about removing barriers for people to um have visibility. that may not be as big of an issue in our district, but I like that she's thinking about it and um that she was thinking about equity. I liked her example regarding textbook adoption in Oola County. Um so to get to my my the biggest strength that I really thought that she had was her ability to be specific and to anticipate potential weaknesses in

218her own candidacy. So, she started by mentioning that she comes from sort of what seems like a suburban area that might be somewhat similar for for here. Uh, she talked about um her leadership in larger districts. And I sort of like the um idea that she has spent some time out of state with districts with a high level of English language learners and uh could talk about her experiences there. Um, so that sort of was an answer. I'm not saying it's a complete answer to whether you could go from such a small district to this one, but I liked that she was thinking through what we might be thinking. I think that shows good leadership. Um, and then she brought it back to how um she's had to wear a lot of different hats and

219be very handson in this very small rural district that she's at now, which um shows me she's willing to grow and adapt. Um that of course is the wonder is that um it is a small district uh with less of a um you know um she wouldn't have she doesn't have a central office working underneath her there but there is something you know about in medicine we say uh see one uh do one teach one so she's definitely doing the she did the C1 part at the you know um bigger districts working in central offices. She's currently doing the do one in that she's working on facilities. She's working actually teaching in the district she leads. So, I think you can command respect from people when you've had those kind of hands-on experiences even if

220even if on a smaller scale. And then the teach one is I'm pretty sure from her resume, she didn't talk about it much tonight, but I think she does have some like teaching and leadership around rural districts and being a superintendent um in her resume. So um my my wonder is again on the cultural competence in terms of the culture some of the um marginalized groups that we have here and I I would like to hear more from her on that um and also like the large districts um and her ability to be leadership of our very strong central team. But she struck me as a person who would earn respect. Okay. Happy to go. Uh I concur with you, Dr. Gold, on on a number of things. And if we were to bring uh

221this candidate back, uh I would definitely want to do some unpacking based on some of the comments I've read, uh they've added to my wonderments. The biggest unpack is is Trusty Austin's question about uh knowledge of student learning and educational research. Uh obviously, she took great pride in lifting up kids. I got that. That's great. uh but she may have glossed over formative assessments a little too much. She mentioned though UDL, WEDA, SCUP, you know, some of the cool tools or essential tools that are used in her district. I like that a lot. Um but obviously not a lot of time to dig deep into it. So I would look forward to an opportunity to dig deeper. Also regarding digging deeper, I would wonder a lot about uh students at the core, her collaborations. I

222know she could probably talk for hours and hours about professional learning communities, but I would want to direct that information back to Selenary Schools and I concur with a lot of the things everyone said. I think she was an outstanding uh candidate. Um, and she mentioned the FASs uh, acronym and MASA and and her work with state standards and so forth, which I thought was pretty exceptional considering all the other hats she was wearing uh, both in. So, she worked both in Florida and here. And I would love to know, my wonderment is more about what she hopes to do uh, from a position here at Seline Area Schools uh, in statewide. I'm sure there are plenty of opportunities, right? Yeah. So, some of the things I liked was the be brave, don't ignore uh

223when you got a controversial issue or something like that. And I thought that was important to to note. Um didn't really hear much. U so some of my wonderments would be maybe the CTE, special education, kind of her background and all that and and what she would do to kind of promote that here in um Selene. The other thing is uh she she mentioned a lot about um uh decision making and um collaboration and collaborate that's that's great. I would like to know a little bit more dig a little deeper into her decision- making when she has to make a tough decision and she has to do it on her own because as the leader you're going to have to make those decisions sometimes on your own. Okay. Um, so I appreciated that. Um, obviously

224her current school district and and I like she owned it. I understand I'm at a slightly smaller school district, but I mean coming from the school districts that she's coming from, I don't think you can get much bigger. It's it's absolutely huge. And so I like that learning experience. I do like the outofstate things as well. Um, to Michael's point, I also appreciate that she was very involved in in um, state organizations. Um, I think one of my favorite things was that I heard new things in this interview that I didn't hear in any other candidate and they were pockets of information that I would like to unpack because we are much more surface than I would like in this short timing. So, just to give you three examples of things that I think I

225heard for the first time. Um, she discussed early childhood education and that's incredibly important to me and I know we've had really good conversations about where we're going with that in the state of Michigan and what we want to do with that in in our district. Um, we've also talked about it in finance in the past as related to revenue generation. Um, I love hearing that someone's thinking about early childhood education. Um, I also liked that she wasn't afraid to consistently suggest rooms where we could improve, that she had listened to previous board meetings because she did bring up our schools of choice conversation and entry into the sixth grade, etc. Um, but she was consistently thinking about Seline, which is what I would like to see a whole lot more of in round two.

226Um, and saying, you know, this is very good, but we there's some room for improvement here around X, Y, or Z. and I like the beginnings of those conversations. Um, and the other thing that really stuck out to me that was new was, um, we've had two superintendent, at least in my tenure on the board, that are incredibly gifted at being visible in the school district. Um, the buildings, the events, doesn't matter what it is, they're they're out there. And it was the first time that I heard someone talk about the human side of being there. She mentioned the house fire and and being there. It's it's one thing I think to go to that great football game on Friday night and the coral concert and the science Olympiad like that. We have so many

227wonderful things that are going on. But I have seen and I'm sure you all have seen I've seen Steve do a lot of showing up in silent ways as well behind the scenes when we have h suffered loss in our school district when a child loses a parent unexpectedly and and how he mobilizes those supports and that's showing up too and that's really important to me. um she she was definitely the um the strongest on curriculum. Um we also have a strong support in place already with our our our staff, but um I really enjoyed that part of the conversation. Um and walking the walk alongside of them, ear earning trust by following through and following up. I thought that was good. Um in my wondering column, I'm wondering about us versus a job. Um,

228obviously I think we know we she was interviewing with Waterford as well and probably some other school districts, but I don't really think that I should hold that against her because if she does want to um move forward in her career and she wants to be closer to home and and and she's looking for that kind of career home, I don't feel like I can hold that against her, but I didn't know if there were other things on the table or or what have you. So, I'm wondering about that. Okay, I'll offer a couple of things and we'll go from there. Um, so I thought she had good examples. I thought she was brave in a number of the in the decisions that she talked about with regards to having make decisions about a principal,

229having to make decisions about curriculum, making decisions about so like I I I appreciated that. The the probably the one moment that stood out the most for me um I loved when she talked about show up when things are hard, right? Like I liked that piece, right? that like she was so anyway I guess that kind of goes back to the bravery. Um and then she did talk about students a lot which I think is a good thing because we center students. I would say Nick said that a lot too about students are at the center of all decision-m that kind of thing. She talked about students being at the center of things and she talked about them a lot and I appreciated that. Uh my wonderments are a couple of things. Um she I

230looked up her budget. It's about an $8 million budget and so we're a $78 million budget. A little different there. I'd like to know more about those processes and some of those kinds of things. But she did also talk about um something with the regards to I think it was $94 million for liter or for curriculum budget. So in Orange County. So I was like okay. So she's had some bigger dollar ways of you know. So anyway, I'd like to know more. And then um she talked a bit about we have gaps, right? She said that multiple times. You have gaps. And I'm cool with that because I think if you can I think in order to improve, you have to understand where you are and where you want to go. Um at the same

231time, I want to know more now about your ideas to solve those gaps. Right? I missed on that piece. I did not think she gave us any of that. But also, you know, 55minute interview. Um, and so and then she also said that she would visit quote school of choice right away in the fall. I'd want to know more. I'm getting some look. I swear she said it. Okay. So, like So, can you just repeat what you said? You heard what she said. I'd like to visit school of choice right away in the fall. Okay. I just like to probe on it, right? What do you mean? What do you do? You like what we're doing? Do you not like what we're doing? Do you want us to do it different? Do you want us

232to grow school choice? Do you not like I just I want to know a little bit more about that piece because she's she kind of pointed that out. So, okay. Anything else on Rachel? Okay. So, we have a couple options. If we think we need to have some additional conversation about the candidates, we can do that now. If we think we're in a position to uh start discussing who we'd like to move forward for next round, we can do that. Um I have some ideas on that as well. Um where do you think we are? I think if we have further discussions about other candidates, it'll be based on what our board colleagues who our board colleagues want to bring back. Okay. So, what I would suggest is I have uh seven slips of paper

233here in front of me. Um if I pass out the seven pieces of paper, then I would like you to put three names down. Okay? The three names will be your name and then two candidates that you would like to bring forward. The reason we need to have your name on there is because we cannot uh do any kind of secret ballots. So once you have written your name and your two candidates, uh pass those forward to your uh board president and then we'll have him read off uh your name followed by the two that you have voted for and we'll see where we are um with that tally and we can go from there. So I have a follow-up question. Shockingly enough, um I'm not at a place after the quickness of the evening

234um and the the feedback that we're getting. Good. Thank you, community. I appreciate that. Um to rank I'm not asking for rankings. No, no, no. I But by selecting two, you're disqualifying a potential third if we would like to do that. And in my mind, I have not ranked to top. I have an idea of who I so I don't necessarily um I'm not I'm not there to cut one to put two I guess is what I'm saying. Well, what I would say is that I'm asking for two, but there's nothing precluding you from putting down three or four or five or six. Is is is there a reason we have to do this written down? I actually would sort of like to hear what other people are thinking. So, one of the reasons that

235we do it this way is so that none of us are influenced by the others, right? So, if we all write down our names, then we know where we all sit and we're not necessarily influenced by others. Um, so I find that it just kind of helps take that pressure off so that you're not necessarily influenced by how others are voting. But we do have to have your names on them. We do have to read the votes out in public because otherwise we'd be violating the OMA. But I you obviously we would like to talk about other candidates. However, this is a very good way of getting the field narrowed. So we don't spend time talking about candidates none of us are interested in. Correct. Could Could we possibly could we possibly to to Jen's

236point, could we possibly I don't want to rank them necessarily? No. But could we could we put our name our two two and then an alternate? Would that be acceptable? That would be fine. But we don't have to put an alternate. You don't. So if some of us wanted to put an alternate, then you could. Okay. I accept that proposal, Jason. Yeah, on the back is fine. Yeah. No, it's just it those were the those are the slips I had available, so I thought they they'd work out well. And I guess if you'd like, I can I can collect them as well. I I would like to say just quickly that there's one part of this that's a little difficult in that we had like 24 hours and got some outside feedback and concerns and

237information that on the first three candidates that we won't have the opportunity to get this time around. So, it's inherently if if you were doing this as a scientific study, it has inherent bias. I just want to acknowledge what Lauren said and agree. Not really a counter Jay because what I'm saying is is that it's unfair because we got a flurry of information that we about the other candidates which could happen tomorrow about these three candidates but then I've already made my choice as to how to narrow it. So it's just inherently unfair. We could have started at at 3 in the afternoon yesterday and done all of them, I suppose. But would you like me to read now? Oh. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't I haven't memorized all of their first names,

238so last names work better for me. Although I could figure it out. I know you didn't. And I figured it out. I I would be remiss if I didn't bring this up because Jen did bring it up yesterday. Is there any possibility that we as a board tonight decide that none of the six are acceptable enough to move on and we have to make a decision to reopen the search? At this point, nobody has submitted a piece of paper with a single name on it, meaning their own. So, we've all found somebody we think is worth bringing back. But I appreciate that. I just I just wanted to bring it up for discussion because it was brought up yesterday and it is a valid point to it is to mention. Oh, Lauren, were you see?

239I was just going to say thank you. I had some I had some summary notes to include and that was one that I wanted to to um acknowledge. I have received feedback um I don't want to speak for anybody else um both written and verbal um about that as well and inquiring um both before I mentioned it yesterday and today. So it's it's it's valid to bring up to acknowledge that people have asked about this when that happens. When is the best time if we were to consider that? I guess I'm just asking I guess the question would be whether a second round of reaching out would be demonstrabably different in terms of the candidacy. I mean, I suppose we would have to have a vote of four board members that would say that we

240we have and I don't think we're there. I just wanted to I wanted to bring that up because I too have gotten a lot of feedback regarding I don't know if any of these are good enough candidates, but I did get a lot of that feedback before tonight's interviews as well. So, I think people are worried about fit and but maybe we go to the next round and then have that discussion or is that unfair? I don't know. I I'll add one thing and then we should go to this side of the table. Um I um the way I'm thinking about it and I do have this in my mind um Jason also I I felt like because of the scripted um manner of round one that I don't know about that yet, but I'm

241not ruling that out. Um, and so I was just thinking about when I wrote names down, seeking to understand more about those particular candidates, um, and some great things that folks have brought up at the table tonight that they wanted to learn about, too. So, I was kind of thinking about it like that. Go ahead. I'll kind of piggyback on on that idea and say that yeah, round like I could see both sides of this, right? So, like I could see like potentially quote unquote leading two people quote on and then later on saying we want to walk away. Like I I I don't love that piece. I don't think it's fair to them. Boom. The other side of this though for me is that there is some authenticity that comes a little bit with

242the second round and we get to ask questions that are more specific to Seline. There is the meet and greet piece where we really get to feel more about him. There's the visit through our district where our people will have that contact and that ability. We even, like I said last night, can go do some site visits and talk to people. My point is there's some information gathering pieces that come along with that that might help to satisfy some of these I don't know if you want to call them curiosities or or Jay has called them wonderments for me. and and so like I guess that's the benefit of having advancing two candidates or three or whatever we want to do. So I guess that's my take on that. You can change it. Word president

243has it. I I want to acknowledge that this is a really hard decision. I've spoken about it before, but Seline is somewhat of a unique district in our population size. Um, and when I went through the candidates and I did go back through, um, I didn't find anyone who was sort of comparable to our sort of medium-sized district. And so it's either going to be someone who's done work at a larger district or someone who's stepping up into this size. Um, and so I'm I'm trying to work through my comfort level of taking the chance on someone who is stepping up into a larger size district or someone who's um potentially coming down. Um I know that Kowalsski had worked in a larger district but it was also one that was um had a lot

244of ELLL so it would be different for her as well. So that it's we are a unique and fabulous district and it's going to be hard to find someone who's going to step right in. I'm not sure what Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. I was going to say I'm not sure if we're entertaining a bunch of discussion about that, but I um obviously we've gotten a lot of feedback regarding that. Um the way I look at it just for this perspective is I think we want a superintendent that is that has a potential to be here for a long time. That's that's number one. Okay. uh or not not the number one but just for my point that's the number one thing here I don't from a business perspective businesses when they're growing or starting

245either one they don't want to have a down run they don't they don't want to have a situation where they're taking less money I don't think we want a situation where we're taking a superintendent who's taking a step down from a large district uh or experience from a large district stepping I think what we need to have, and this is just an opinion, is we need someone that is energetic, that is moving up, not moving lateral because I think if somebody's moving lateral, why are you moving lateral? Is it a pay bump? Is it because you want to be closer to family? whatever that is. I would like to see someone that is energetic, wants to be here for five years, 10 years, whatever that that is, and they're moving up to Seline. And I

246think we need to embrace that rather than looking at candidates that are coming from a district that might be 800, might be 1600. I think we need to embrace that. We don't want someone coming from a 5,000 student district to a 5,000 student district. I think we want someone that wants to be energetic, wants to move up, wants to be heard for a long time, wants to build something, and stop looking at that as a negative, and look at that for the positives. I see just as much positive of somebody doing a lateral move if it works out for them geographically for whatever personal reason they have and and that's great for them. I'm saying it's not necessarily purposefully beneficial to us. But yeah. Yeah. If you're ready, uh how do you want me to

247do this? Just go read off uh the uh board members name first and then the names they have on the slip. I've got it. They're going to check your work. That's okay. Go ahead. Tisidus we'll start with has two Steinmets. Kowalsski. Okay. Burick has two Steinmets and Kowalsski. Mcbay has two. Steinmets and Kowalsski. Stubben has three. Uh, Kowalsski, Steinmets, and Duboce. Austin has two. Steinmets and Duboce. Oh my god. I'll go over them again. He prepared. I'll re I'm going to review it. Gerby Steinmets and Kowalsski Gold Kowalsski Duboce and two alternates Steinmets and Cintron. So I'm happy to review them one last time to make sure everyone's got their numbers right. And once again Tisidus Steinmets and Kowalsski. Yeah. Yeah. Berwick Berwick Steinmets and Kowalsski. Ready for it? McVey Steinmets and Kowalsski. Stean Steinmets

248and Kowalsski and Duboce. Austin Steinmets and Duboce. Gerby Steinmets and Kowalsski. Gold, Kowalsski, Duboce, and two alternates Steinmets and alternate Centron. Thus endeth the list. Okay, so by my count, I have Styets at six and Kowalsski at six and then uh Duboce at three. Uh an alternate for Steymits would which would put him at seven. uh and then an alternate for Cintron. So with that knowledge uh I will pass it over to the board president to uh determine how he'd like to proceed. It sounds like overwhelmingly we are looking at two candidates to come back on Wednesday, May 7th, Steinmets and Kowalsski. Do I misunderstand? As somebody who voted for Dubo, um Kowalsski would have been a close second for me anyway, so I'm completely fine with that. I appreciate hearing that. Thank you. Um

249your mic was on, right? Um I would I would like to advocate for um I believe he goes by Marty. Um, I saw a lot of knowledge, surface knowledge scratched in that interview and I think that he has a lot of um, our bridge to civility in him. Um, I think when I think about the unique community that Darcy was just describing earlier, I see a lot of positives that he can bring in um, diffusing conflict and and bringing people together. And if I had to think of like a top five thing that I would want the superintendent to have, that would be in the top five for sure with some other obvious choices um around academics and um and working with staff. Um I saw a lot of positives. So I think if we

250all agree that the short interview scratched the surface on it. Um, and I heard his name come up three times from Warren, from me, and from Tim. I would I would like us to consider adding a third. I'd like to hear from others because it sounds like we are in the process of considering, but um I'm not sure if the weight is there yet. Would anyone else have put put him as an alternate Duboce? Yeah. I'm just I I clarifying the name you're talking about. Yeah. Yes. I'm sorry. Dubo and and I I have no problem being on record. I he would not have been an alternate for for me. I if we want to go around the table, that's the most democratic way to do it. Well, I'm happy to add to that. I

251would not have put him as an alternate. Okay. I would not have. It appears and I appreciate your lobbying for him and I'm sure if he's listening in he would appreciate it as well, but it sounds like four board members would not want to support Duboce. So, is there any more discussion? I think at this point we might make a motion and I believe I'm happy to frame the motion. I'd like to entertain a motion to bring back for a May 7th interview two candidates, Steinmets and Kowalsski. I'll second it. Okay, at this point we can open it up to discussion then. If there is no discussion and I'll I'll wait the 10 seconds. Jay's very good at that weight, by the way. Your pauses, teacher pause was perfect. And Brad, you mentioned site visits.

252Is that a realistic? So, I mean, in a week, it's okay. A couple things. So, one, um, timing can be problematic. My my experience with site visits is this, and take this for what it for what it's worth, right? Um, you hear one of two things. You hear how awesome they are because they truly are awesome and the district's going to really miss them. You hear how awesome they are because the district wants them out. Very rarely are you going to hear, "Well, you know what? They're really not that great. Um, but I guess we're stuck with them." And so I I'm not sure how effective they are. Um, it sounds great on the surface to go and to see where they work and and to talk to the staff and to talk to the

253community and to talk to some students and and hear about how great they are. Uh, I'm not sure that it really moves the needle. I think that um the open houses, having them here in the district, having them take the tours of the district, getting the input from your staff and your community members that come through and and see them while they're touring the district or see them in the open houses. I have the input forms. We hand those input forms out in those open houses so they can fill those out. If they come across them during the district, you're going to hear about it. You're going to get some feedback from them. Hey, you know, I I saw them in the district. They stopped in my classroom. They're fantastic. they weren't whatever. Um, I

254think that is a little bit is quite a bit more effective than the site visits, but uh, you know, however you'd like to do it. Yeah. I mean, I I guess I would see some value in a site visit and that you can see sort of visually what they're prioritizing the state of the facilities. Um, and for the openhouse visit here, how long are they here for? So, you know, generally they would come into the district say somewhere around, you know, maybe lunch lunch uh you know, take some tour of the district with uh with some of your staff. Again, the the issue with the tours of the district is staff availability and you know, time for staff to to take time out of their day to give the tours. Um and then the open

255houses, two classrooms down the hall here in the building, say from 4 to 5:30, hour and a half or so. Uh, and then we go right into the interviews at 600. So, the candidates are already here because they've been here for the tours, they're here for the open houses, and then we can roll right into the interviews. Yeah. I just similarly as to the site visit, I don't know how much information we're going to get if we're going straight from an open house to interviews. Like, how are we going to hear feedback? We'll have the forms. I'll have them fill out the forms and the forms will be copied and we'll give the forms to you after at the end of the interviews, just like we did tonight. and and if they've gone into a

256teacher's classroom, we're going to get feedback from them. Okay. Since I hope you guys don't mind me jumping in since I've mentioned it multiple times. I what you're saying it is it it hits home for me. I I I get it. Um, I also think maybe like the more I think about it, there could be a sensitivity piece to like where this person is and you know like that could be difficult on some of that person's staff members. Some of that per like right like you know we saw tonight there were people that came along. So like I know that as a person who has I think seen 10 or 11 superintendents in my career like you know like it was it's one of those things where like I would be like I'm going to

257lose this person potentially that I care about. So like yeah I I guess I could let it go. And furthermore I also see some complication with what if only three of us could go? what if only four of us or six of us or and so then like who's who you know then then if you're the one person who couldn't go whose opinion am I valuing the most about those site visits and all that. So it could also create some conflict in that regard. So I I can let that be actually since it was mostly me who mentioned. Okay. So, uh, just to just be, we had a motion, we had a second. We're in discussion, uh, currently. Correct. Okay. I don't know if this is the time for it or not, but I think

258you had asked us about presentations. Are we talking about that next? I I' I'd like to have a let you let you complete your discussion around the motion that's on the on the table, and then once you've uh completed your discussion, taken your vote, then we can get into the next steps. I'm not hearing any more discussion, so let's put it to a vote at this point. All in favor of bringing back two candidates for a second interview on May 7th, Steinmets and Kowalsski, please say I. I. I. Oh, sorry. Okay. I said I'll say please I'll say I I I opposed. Hearing no opposition. We're That's the next step. So at this point Jay will talk about the uh presentation absolutely step. Thank you. Thank you everyone for your hard work on that and

259uh we're looking forward to the yeah the next. All right. So uh as we talked about last night some decisions we need to make. So uh someone already brought presentation we can talk about presentation. First we'll establish whether or not a presentation is something we'd like and once we have established that then we can talk some potential topics. So, let's first think about whether or not an 8 to 10 minute presentation from the candidate on a topic yet to be determined is something that we're looking for as part of the interview process. Remembering that the interviews for second round, we're looking at about an hour 15 um as opposed to the 55 minutes, not as many questions, opportunity for follow-up questions, opportunity for questions from uh those here in attendance at the uh at the

260interviews. So, where do we fall on presentation? 100%. Yes. Okay. Ditto. I would like to know why just so I can wrap my head on around the why. I can I can answer. Um I did not hear enough about Seline um in these interviews and I I would really like to um hear what their thoughts are for our district specifically. Um, I think that this particular role communication is incredibly important and I would like to see how they manage a room and manage a presentation to some of their stakeholders um both as parents, as board members, as community members watching um how do they relate to the audience? How do they handle follow-up questions? How do they what is their executive presence? So, you would you would want the presentation And we would topic it

261because that was going to be the next question, right? So we would want to topic it on Seline. Am I Well, that was that was something because that would be that would be that was an idea that Jennifer brought up. No, and I for the record, I'm a big fan of presentations. We we do that when we interview. I just I wanted to know why for this. So, it's funny. My my initial instinct was not a presentation because I wanted the candidate to answer more specific questions about Seline. So if the presentation is specific to a vision or specific to what you would actually implement and do in Seline. Yes. Now I like the presentation. Would that detract from the hour 15 minutes? It'd be part of Okay. Maybe we we'd start with the presentation.

262we'd provide you an opportunity to ask them questions about the presentation and then we would get into the uh the eight to 10 questions that we'd have for the interview. It sounds like you've taken a sort of a stroll straw poll although it's not legit. It sounds like we are leaning toward leaning towards presentation. All right. So something around um Seline specifically. So just off the top of my head, uh we could do something along the lines of uh you have a strategic plan in place, correct? Yep. Um so we could do something along the lines of uh you know, take a look at the strategic plan, pick an area, how would you promote that or how would you further us as a district in that area? Something along those lines. we could do. How

263would you uh increase academic achievement in our district? Uh I mean, what what are we what are we thinking here? What's the I want to stay I want to stay away from the uh I'd like to save the why Seline because I heard a lot of that tonight about you know that I'd like to save that for more of a question. We can talk about you know what it is what is it you know give us a little bit more about why you're interested in being our superintendent. I'd like to save that more probably more for a question than for the presentation. Yeah, I I I like your strat plan. Um I would like something specifically for the staff. Um because I think that they're wondering how will this person affect me. Okay. Um and

264so I don't have the answer in my head, but I I think something should be like in in your first month or in your first couple of months, how how will you engage with staff? I mean, you're a teacher, Brad. What would you want to do with the new superintendent? I actually one of the things I liked about a candidate tonight was he brought us a plan. So like one of the things that I would see would be multi-tered and could include lots of different experiences would be if that person gave us like what would you want to accomplish in your you know first 100 days as the superintendent of the Selenary schools and have them give us you know what what they'd want what they prioritize what they do what they see. Okay. So,

265I'm just going to give you just a quick if you don't like it. Yeah. My my one my one caution to the 90-day plans and to the is that um I can come in with these grand plans of what I'm going to do in the first 90 days, right? And it it has the potential for setting them up for, you know, if the board says, "Okay, well, you came in and you gave us your 90 days. Let's go. Let's see them." And so, it kind of sets that expectation. I mean, honestly, the first 90 days is getting to know the district. It's getting to know the staff. It's getting to know which bathroom is the one that the superintendent, you know, is supposed to be using versus the one that staff, I mean, not that

266they have a private bathroom, but you know what I mean, right? First year plan. Exactly. Is that a better Is that I think it's I think, you know, and that's why I like to kind of say you have the strategic plan in place. So, if we could, you know, if there's an area around the strategic plan that you'd like to kind of get an idea of how they would address that particular part, if it's something around staff, we could talk about, you know, what's your plan for retention of staff? Uh, you know, what's your plan for recruitment of staff? what's your plan for? Um, you know, increasing uh I mean maintaining morale of staff, you know, things along those lines. Yes, let's please go with that one. Yes, I I concur with Jen 100%. Yes,

267morale. Okay. If we're going to do staff, it should be so staff retention, morale, something along those lines. Okay. All right. I like recruitment, too. But Yep. Yeah, we can kind of play it all into a I I was thinking about a different question. I'm just going to throw it as an alternative. All right. What do you got? What if we did? How can the superintendent affect the life of a child in this school district from kindergarten on? What how how like like just narrow in on like Okay. Insulin insulin specific. All right. Like if I'm now this is looking at a parent perspective and not a staff. So I'm totally fine with the staff thing. Although I would like it to be more than just morale because I think anybody can get up there

268and be like I'd pay them more money. I would you know like I said I'd let them have jeans day. But if we went the route of morale it would be more around Yeah. your plan for you know for retaining teachers increasing mor you know maintaining morale and it's not just a morale. So let's change the word to culture. Yeah. I think culture or maybe like what makes a successful teacher super you know or something like that like what in your view would okay I've got but I also like the idea of like really trying to narrow in on what is the kind of experience you would build for a student coming in for kindergarten and graduating. Can we give them two options and they can pick? I don't know. Well, for consistency, I think

269we want them to present on the same topic. Yeah. I was just trying to think that if you made it student focused, there's something there for the teachers, for parents watching to kind of if we narrowed in on like and I maybe I'm not articulating it the best, but how can you build an, you know, what can you as a superintendent do to build? Well, we cleared the room, didn't we? So yeah. Um, so Jay, just to I'm just thinking about how to kind of create this in Lauren's vision that she's kind of adding on because having something student centered, I think, is very important. Um, sure. So do we want to like give them three questions they have to answer within um within their presentation and limit them to four deck pages or like

270like four slides because I think there should be a limit, right? I I think that I think that uh you know I think that that what you're trying to get at would be a fantastic question that we could definitely ask them. We could definitely ask them you know a student- centered question. Uh it wouldn't necessarily have to be part of the presentation. If we wanted to stick to the presentation on kind of what we talked about staff retention and recruitment and morale that would be the presentation but then we could definitely get a question in there about uh you know you talked in your previous interview about being student centered. Tell us more about how you know what that looks like here in Selen. you know, if you're the next superintendent, what are you going

271to do to make sure that we have a student- centered uh cultural here in in Selen or something of that nature? So, I think we can definitely incorporate that in as a question for sure. Okay. All right. So, I'll come up with some wording for the presentation. I'll get that to all of you. Um, and we'll go from there. All right. Uh, reference checks. Everyone's available to make some phone calls between now and Wednesday if I break up and assign you all two or so for each candidate. Good, good, good. Yeah. Yeah. No. Okay. Thumbs up. Got it. Okay. Um All right. So, second round questions. I think I've got enough wonders here from the two candidates to at least mock up um some second round questions that I can get to you for input.

272Um, so let me take a whack at that. Get you something either tomorrow or Friday. Uh, look at over the weekend Monday. Get back to me by sometime Tuesday morningish so that I can start putting it all together and have everybody ready um for the Wednesday interviews. They're not going to get these ahead of time because we're going to be working on these right up until the end. Um, they'll get obviously the presentation. So, I want to nail that down first so I can get that information to them so they can start working on the presentation. Um but then we can then focus in on the questions um after that and get those tuned up so they're ready to go for Wednesday. Um I wonder for either the presentation or how do we make Seline

273attractive to teachers and like the next generation of young parents. This is like important to me. Okay. Um, so it sounds like open houses something that we we'd like to do have them here for the open houses. Does 4 to 5:30 hour and a half. Does that sound about right appropriate? So I think we should probably talk with our staff because we wouldn't be hosting this. Is this correct? No. No. Uh, the open houses. open houses would be I'll be here for the open houses. We've got the two candidates in two rooms. I'm bopping in between the two rooms just making sure that the that the you know as the community comes in I'm directing them to where the Okay. I just didn't want to sign a staff member up for something talking. No, that's

274that the the open houses are completely on me. Now, if we would like to do the tours of the district, then I can talk to Betty and and get an idea as to staff availability and staff willingness to to conduct the tour. Jackie emailed this earlier to Jennifer and I and and offered her availability to assist. Fantastic. Okay. All right. So, I will work with Betty and Jackie to get those set up um for the two candidates. I did tell uh the candidates that if they were um fortunate enough to be moved to the second round to kind of keep their Wednesday open. So, they are anticipating um that this was a possibility. Um so, we're good. We're good. For those families who work, is 5:30 too early an end date? Well, we're starting the

275interviews at 600, so we gota Yeah. I mean, we could go to 5:45, I guess, if we if we wanted to, but if we're starting the interviews at 6, then what's that? Yeah. Yeah. No, stay far away. Bump it. Bump it 15 minutes. Just, you know, someone's off shift at five, they can I'm sorry, what's that? Bump bump it up 15 minutes just because if they're off shift at five and could make it Yeah. 5:45. again at the last minute. But yeah. Yeah. All right. And then the last bit. Um where are we? Do we have any interest in employing any of the behavioral testing uh for the two candidates as an additional data point? I have no interest at this point in that. And besides, I suspect that they both engaged in that anyway

276through MASB. What's that? Superintendent training and so forth. No. No, they wouldn't have done that. I'm not interested in that at this point, but the other my colleagues may be. I agree with Michael. Okay. All right. All right. So, I'm going to call each of the six applicants. Uh I will start with uh the two that you've selected to move forward, make sure that they are still interested in moving forward, and then I will call the other four uh and let them know that uh the board has decided not to move out of the second round. Uh there is also a better than average chance um that they've been watching and are already aware of that. Um but you know that is what it is. So I will still make those phone calls. Okay. Anything

277else for me tonight? Quick question. Uh will we want to have the u online form available for the evening uh of May 7th for next week that if you're planning on streaming, you set the precedent with uh tonight and last night. So I think you'd probably want to continue that. I've already edited the form in anticipation of that answer. All right. Uh, that sparked one other thing. What was it? Hold on a second. Uh, yeah. I don't know. I lost it. Well, I've stopped accepting respon I've stopped accepting responses to the form. Um, at this point, I could open it again right now if the board wants that. Just has those two candidates up. No. Okay. I just like if we could just um because I know that you were editing to to group people

278together, but it was while I was reading. So like maybe can we just pop like if we do accept, let's just have it filter on the bottom so I know what's new. Um I have stopped accepting. I have colorcoded everybody. It's all ordered by name at this point. So we're no longer accepting. So it's it's cleaned up. It's as best as it can be. And in fact, if you would prefer, I can generate a uh PDF of the responses separately if you want. Okay. I uh I do have a quick request uh for the next feedback form uh for the interviews. Can we include a field that asks if they're a parent, a staff member, a community member, can we do that? Could we have it a required and have a finite drop down or

279something like that? It'd be really good for the feedback to know. Well, you know, the answer is of course we can do any of that. Well, the names of course were optional, but the name's optional, but I can do that. Just tell me the fields you want. Affiliation. Yeah, affiliation. And then do we want to have it finite? Staff, parent. It's easier when it sorts if it's pre-lugged. So, yeah. So, I was I will get you a tomorrow. Great. Jay, before you go, I'm I'm sure that you will um have productive conversations with the candidates. I just wanted to make sure that we said on on tape that we really appreciate everyone who came in and interviewed and they all had great things to offer and we appreciate that they considered Seline. Thank you. Is

280it helpful? Ladies and friends, board members, colleagues, there's no public comment without objection. Uh, sorry. The next board meeting will be held Wednesday, May 7th, 2025 at 6 PM for these interviews. Uh, motion to adjourn. Motion. Berwick. Berwick. Second. Tidities. Tisidities. All in favor? I. I. Oh, and one objection. No. Okay. All in favor? Thank you.