SAS Board of Education - Superintendent First Round Interviews (04.29.2025)

001Can you imagine how much I love you? Do you know that that broadcast? I'd like to welcome everybody to the April 22nd, 2025 special board of education meeting uh at Selen of Selen Area Schools. Uh so uh standing as you are able, we'd like to start with the uh pledge of allegiance led tonight by pastor Kimberly Serest of the First Presbyterian Seline Church. Good job, Pastor Kimberly. Well done. Well done. That'll be the I won't ask you ever again. Uh before we begin the uh tonight's interviews, I just want to note that members of the audience who wish to provide feedback may complete an interview form following each interview. Uh and after completion, they'll be distributed to the board members. There is also a link to an online version of the feedback form, the same

002feedback form available on the Selenary Schools website. look for the superintendent search button on the main page and uh we'll get started. So, I'd like to welcome um we now we'll now Where's our candidate? Excuse me. I just didn't look at the agenda at all. Uh I'd like to uh yeah, public comment. A member of the public can address the board briefly for up to three minutes or request to be scheduled on the agenda of a future meeting. Please note that students will be given priority to speak on any topic. First public participation portion of the meeting will be limited to one half hour normally and limited to agenda items. There will not be a second public portion tonight uh tonight's meeting. Uh individuals addressing the board should take into consideration the rules of common

003courtesy. A public participation portion is not meant to make personal attacks against a board member, district employee, or student. Do we have any? We have one. Okay. Shouldn't be too long. Mr. McVey school board, I'm delighted tonight to be here as part of this. I think this process is a very important process for us. And as a parent, as a community member, as the pastor at the First Presbyterian Church of Selen, and someone who is very active in our community, I just wanted to share a few words as to what I'm hoping to see in the candidate that you pick. I'm looking for someone who holds valuable the whole student and their right to be who they are and to shine in that way. I'm seeking someone who exudes emotional intelligence skills that allow them

004to build resonant relationships with staff, with parents, with all those around them, and to empower this district in visionary ways. I am also really looking for someone who values the district's place as a partner in the broader community to help make this a dynamic and vibrant place for us all to live together. I believe in partnerships and I hope that we can continue to live in that direction. Thank you very much for letting me speak. Thank you very much. As there are no further public comments, uh I'd like to entertain a motion to approve the agenda as printed, please. So moves stubben. Support Gerby. Thank you. All in favor, please say I. I. I. Opposed. Great. We have an agenda. Thank you. I'm going to hand this part over now, I believe, to to Jay

005Bennett and we're gonna move some tables around just a little bit. Right. I'm sorry. Will be over there. For those not on the mic, Jay is Jay Bennett from MASB is just directing uh the floor a little bit. We're putting a table front and center and ming it. Oh, okay. Fine. I trust you. So, if the audience wants to reposition themselves a little closer, you're welcome to move. And I already did my introduction to the whole thing. So, One other thing I'd like to note for those at home watching, uh, the candidates all self- selected their availability this evening and positioned themselves on the agenda where they felt u on the two nights where they felt they were best able or could could manage to get here. Because you're the first one, sir, it's going

006to take us a little bit few seconds to get organized. We are ready. I'd like to uh proceed our interview of Dr. Harold Brian Earwood and uh and I'd like to first of all thank you. Welcome for thank you for being with us today. We've had the opportunity this is the first question. So we've had the opportunity to review your resume. Could you please tell us what specifically interest you in the Seline superintendency and how your background and experiences would benefit the district and the community as our next superintendent? Sure. As I did my homework, things that jumped out at me were um commitment Oh, sorry. Yeah, sorry. Uh the things that jumped out at me were the commitment to academic excellence. Um the levels of innovation that are here and of course the community

007partnerships. I think these were were first you know um eye-catching um and this of course aligned with my lifelong educational vision as one would say. um the district's vision of preparing uh scholars for the global success that resonates with me because again one of my core values um talks to preparing our scholars not just to be good in doing math and reading but really to be a a competitor on the global scale. Um and I'll talk about that in my personal uh experiences as I uh um made my progress through through life. Um one of the strongest I call it uh points that I also saw was that um you you want to see an elevation. You want to see a level of excellence that is not just short-lived but one that is fully sustained.

008And again that speaks to me. So with my experience with I have 30 plus years in public education starting off as a teacher uh moving all the way through the ranks assistant principal principal assistant superintendent and so on. So I've always been able to bring about a high level of success when it comes to the outcomes of four scholars on the academic front. You know most recently I'm sure you read um my past district who were the most improved in the state. I jump up 16.4 four points in uh state accountability. Unheard of. And it took me three years. I told them it was three to five. It took me three. Um the success that I see comes from a datadriven or datainformed environment where the instruction revolves around data and not only the data

009but looking at the data in a collaborative fashion. Looking at things like advisory committees, looking at ways that you can gather input from different stakeholders. So all of these again uh when I looked at my experiences and I looked at the direction I saw the direction that Sel was going I saw the a good fit and I said okay here we go and here I am. Thank you. I'll now turn it over to our vice president for the next question. Thanks Brian. Um would you 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 the outcome? Yes, thank you. Um coming back from COVID that's not the time to start any

010initiatives. However, our strategic plan had expired and I was tasked with uh starting a new strategic plan in my district and of course um you know followed the various steps on looking at needs assessments and so on and three areas uh four areas that jumped out at us. One uh we needed academic growth, we needed a high level of operational sustainability. We had over a million dollars in deferred uh maintenance costs. um there were some issues with community trust and of course equity was not as pervasive as um we would like to see it. So I started tackling these in in that plan. We looked at things like the achievement gaps. We looked at systemic inequities that existed and the need for more of a I call it um a comprehensive or more unified vision.

011Um because our vision was to be the best school district in the state. It's not like y'all y'alls are I think very northward. You want to be not the state, you want to be in the world, basically. I love that. So, we weren't even on the pathway to getting there. So, I took key actions, identified issues, I conducted needs assessment with my staff. And when I say I, I I always work in a collaborative manner. I always have a team of individuals that basically are I'm in high collaboration with. So we did ac looked at academic data, we looked at school climate, we looked at staffing, operations, demographics and so on. And then we started diagnosing systemic gaps. Um so that we can start aligning these gaps with these measurable goals and objectives that were

012in our strategic plan. Um we engaged our stakeholders. That was very very key. Um when I say stakeholders, I'm talking about my scholars, my parents, my staff, my community, uh my surveys and so on. And of course we paid very close attention to I call it our marginalized or underrepresented populations because a lot of times we forget that there exists and we forget that there is a voice that needs to be heard. So we we we we wanted all and when we say all we meant all to be involved in the process. We applied um our equity lens making sure that we look at things like who is this going to benefit who who's going to be excluded and making sure that we're not leaving anyone out. We did collaborative decision making. We built consensus

013protocols within our move to to build that strategic plan. We developed evaluation systems so that we can uh look at not just one but look at different lens lens look through different lenses as we approach certain goals and problems. And of course we had transparent communication. Um the key part is once we made through all this we had to communicate it. We had to communicate in multiple languages. We had to let our constituents know who was doing what, what was expected, what what were we trying, what were these goals, what were they for. And um we were able to get that done. And then once we implemented it was I call it user friendly. Everyone understood this is where we're going, what we're trying to do. Um we outlined clear action steps in our plan.

014We had timelines. We had uh very key which was never done before. We assigned leaders. We assigned individuals to make sure that we knew as we set up our goals objectives who was expected to be the front for certain objectives and certain uh goals and of course budget and accountability was premier. So we tracked all of these through dashboards. We looked at our KPIs. We looked at quarterly updates and then we as we as we moved through the the the implementation and we got all that in and we started moving we looked at reflecting. We looked at reflections. That was a part that again typically you formed a strategic plan and it forms a nice little paper weight somewhere and stuck in the back of someone's file. That's not how I operate with that. If

015you have a strategic plan it's just that it's a plan to strategize on how we will improve the lives especially for scholars. So again, institutional reflection was very very key. So as a result of that, I think that's what brought us together. We saw a a a change in the culture for continuous improvement because now we had the foundation, the document that everyone was committed to. We started uh seeing more of a a shared vision. Everyone said, "Oh, what's a vision statement?" Um I I used to sort of joke with my team. I'd go to a school, I'd say, tell me what what's a vision statement. Oh, so Dr. It's over here. I'll get it for you. you know, no, I want you to articulate it, to live it, to be able to say, we

016want to be the best in the in in the state because then I can ask you, how are you contributing to that vision? You know, we can have that conversation. So, those are things that I had to do to get things and the result of that phenomenal. The district gelled, we came together and that's why I think we saw the drastic improvements that we had. we saw being uh we were able to I was able to pass a an $18 million bond that second year handily because of the trust that we were able to regain up there. Thank you very much. Could you just um sometimes my hearing isn't perfect. Could you say the number? Was it 80 or 18? I couldn't hear that the number. It was we started at 70 and then we

017went to 86.4. 86. Oh, thank you. 16.4 gain the highest I say the most improved growth in the state. The bond Oh, sorry. The bron. Sorry. 80 million 80. Okay. Thank you so much. That passed. Yes. 80. Thank you so much for that clarification. Yes, ma'am. I'm going to pass this over now to Treasurer Brad Gerby. As our superintendent, how would you work to ensure and in and enhance the sustainability and reputation of our district? that is one that cannot be taken lightly, one that has to be very very well thought through and it starts with your public relations strategy. Um when I took over again leadership of my past district, we were facing sort of stagnant academic performance. Um we were at 70 70.1 and we were plateaued out. If you get to 69,

018you start losing accreditation. Um there was fractured community trust. I would get on any given day I would you know if there was something brewing um I would get 200 emails four and 200 emails against and there was sort of uncertainty about the future. So I had to start looking at a unifying vision and it started by putting all scholars first and that's why I have my beautiful pin that I wear everywhere I I get a chance to dress up and wear it proudly. And to do that we had to have a a focus and we started focusing on academic progress. We started focusing on sustainability. We started focusing on on on reputation. So one of our central goals that evolved from this was to engage and to improve uh engagement and transparency um with

019all stakeholders um to build confidence and drive support. Easier said than done. So there were certain actions that we were very purposeful for. So we developed a multi-platform system for communication strategy. Um we did monthly data presentations. Um we did infographics, videos, town halls. Um we created uh uh for me advisory groups that were focused on uh just information sharing and get you know um us being able to get feedback. I enhanced uh our finance and facilities committee and we started doing live streaming for these committees. So we had committees where we brought in board members uh staff members and our community and they weren't uh live streamed before but we started putting it there so our community could go back and see what we were discussing with finance with facilities and ask questions and

020they could also attend those meetings. We opened it up. Um again we strengthened our internal communication as well. We made sure that our staff members were communicated with. They knew um every month after board meetings I would send out a a memo letting them know the big decisions that were made by the district as well as for other departments as well. Um we started talking about uh stronger consensus building. We started promoting positive narratives and and and sharing these out and we did that through newsletters through media outlets through magazines um social media. I had a a a special article where I was able to talk about the positive things in the schools. um I created a a a department of workforce development so that we can start tapping into our businesses to get appren

021more apprenticeships and more um internships. So all of these things again helped us to start building the relationships with our external stakeholders and internal stakeholders. I would hold weekly meetings with my chief of communications to make sure that we were addressing any issue that was was bubbling up and addressing it in a positive proactive way instead of waiting for things to go boom the it's it's already too late. What I saw happening is that as we did our surveys the surveys we did we do Korean post surveys um I saw that there was more of a positive move towards uh higher engagement. I saw that media coverage went from reporting on the negative to also reporting the positive. I I saw that um the the the survey results complimented us for communication transparency and as

022a result of that I saw a greater confidence in our leadership. I saw staff morale go from minus to the positive and all of this because we made were very purposeful on on on our communication. So once you communicate uh or create a sustainable communication model, you have to ensure it's embedded in your district culture and it has to be one of positivity, one of celebrations. Thank you, sir. I'm going to pass it over to Secretary Burwick. Sure. Thank you. That seems better. Thank you. uh honesty, integrity and trust are valuable characteristics to have in our leaders. How have you worked to earn trust in previous positions and how would you do so if chosen for this position in Seline? Sure. Um trust is key. Without trust you you you can't get movement or actions

023or buy in. So um for me I always move towards building trust with staff with my scholars with my families and broader community. Um typically our communities want visibility. They they want I call it principled leadership common sense leadership that are committed to things like transparency and and and high levels of consistency and and shared success. So my task as a superintendent was to create a culture rooted in integrity, rooted in authenticity and high ethical standards because you're not going to get to trust if these aren't in in existence. And historically that's what I've always been strong at as a principle. my daily visibility, my collaborative uh movements or actions with my teachers. Um my open door policy, always willing to listen and to take criticisms as well as you know the the accolades. Um

024set setting high but fear. The key word there is fair expectations. Um making sure that there was clarity of purpose. In other words, if individuals don't know what you stand for and what you mean, a lot of times they may misinterpret. And so I I was always clear about putting scholars first in the direction I'm going. As an assistant superintendent, I led advisory committees for teachers, for principles, to guide instruction, to make sure we had the right resources. I had listening sessions um at every school to ensure that we were conveying adequate information and we were receiving and I made sure that at every school we had that on a monthly basis. Um we pri I prioritized followth through on commitments. That's something that is a a pet peeve of mine is not is is

025is making sure that if I'm saying something that I'm going to do something I'm 100% making the commitment to follow through as a superintendent. Um I did campus visits. I did multiple advisory councils. I shared monthly communications. I held virtual and in-person drop-in sessions. Um I continued to to make sure that there was true visibility. And when I did these things, it wasn't just to show up and shake hands and leave. It was to show up and to be present, to listen, to make sure that I'm getting feedback and that I'm providing authentic engagement, not just, oh, okay, yeah, you said that good. Uh, uh, Mr. Whatever, you go hand. No, make sure there's true followup that builds success. So as a result of that um again measurable improvements in culture and climate um you

026know the the the public uh the reputation of our schools started rising. Um I started hearing less of oh they think that there are all that and it became more of there are places we can go to be heard and to to to be listened to and the evidence is there. We would not improve if everything was falling apart. We were jelling with our community and bringing everything together. Trusty Austin, tell us what the term culturally competent means to you. Give us an example of how you would demonstrate this character characteristic. So, as we talk about cultural competence, I think of the ability um to recognize, to respect, and to respond to diverse backgrounds and identities within our school community. Recognize, respect, and respond. And as a superintendent, I would be tasked with building that

027inclusive, equitable system that empowers all scholars regardless of whether they're special needs, multilingual, gifted, doesn't matter. Empower empowering all scholars to succeed. And for me, as we talk about cultural competence, it's a segue to turn equity into what I would call a lived value, not just a statement. Um to to to ensure that when it comes to our scholars, they they feel seen, they feel respected, and they feel valued. That is huge for me when it comes to cultural competence. Um ways that I've uh experienced this um in several ways. Number one, um as an assistant superintendent, I introduced district-wide equity walks and equity action plans aligned to all data. Um I led professional development addressing institutional barriers to student success. Um I also hosted focus groups with underrepresented scholars to incorporate their voices in

028planning. Um I did all scholars but I made sure that whenever um I met with a group that there was representation for more underrepresented scholars. As a superintendent I made equity a strategic priority. Um I embedded it in could say almost every initiative um requiring equity training for for all schools twice a year. um forming advisory committees behind this um publicly shame disagregated data to show where we are and sometimes you know it was not very pretty but I always followed up with but this is how we're going to get better but this is the plan this is how we're working towards this um I had targeted initiatives such as restorative practices we developed what is called a pick five mentoring program this is where every staff member was asked to select five scholars in

029the district. I had five at a middle school and they were magnificent. I I were I was amazed at their depth of knowledge of those scholars as we interacted having lunch with them, talking about school and so on. Um we developed a behavior matrix that we implemented to ensure that again we were providing an equitable stance in how we were dealing with behaviors. It wasn't just an ad hoc um procedure. As a result of that we saw 25% decrease in our discipline referrals. 25 we saw 10% increase on our student um attendance. Um we saw academic growth like you would not believe. Um and and so you know we develop systems to make sure that we stay committed to cultural competencies where all voices are heard to where all scholars are equipped to succeed and

030to develop a district where a model of equitydriven excellence and inclusivity is present for all whether you're dealing with scholars, staff members, leadership, it has to be across the board. Thank you, Trusty. Thank you, Dr. Yearwood. I'd like to ask how you maintain visibility and accessibility for students, staff, parents, and community groups. Yes. um long hours, late hours. Um as superintendent with over 18,000 scholars, I was tasked with addressing a critical gap. That task was the the the gap was the disconnect between district uh leadership and the broader community. Um with our staff members, our families or community members wanting more access. Um they wanted more authentic engagement with our district leaders. And my goal was to address that to build trust and collaboration by doing several things by showing up by listening um by

031making sure there was follow through. So what I was able to get done is um I became personally committed to regular attendance at things like athletic events, fine arts events, extracurricular events, community events, town halls, faith-based gatherings. I would take every opportunity I had to share a positive message about the school. Um, field trips. I even went on a a couple of school bus rides to connect with scholars in informal settings. I was going to drive the bus, but I was told you had to be unionized, so I couldn't, but I was about to. I thought that was that would have been fun. Um, you know, you have to increase access to you. You have to increase approachability by saying that there were times that I would be at Walmart shopping or I'd be, you

032know, somewhere doing some shopping and a parent or community member would come up and they'd want to engage and I would 100% give them that full engagement by being an active listener. Sometimes I would have to take notes on my phone. They would no one would ever say he shunned me or he said he didn't have time. You have to be approachable and you have to be available even in times that perhaps you know you know wife is at home and she's waiting on you to bring the bacon or something like that. You have to stop and you have to give that time. That's just a part of what we have um we have to do as a superintendent. So for me um you know I always listened with intentionality gathered um had u advisory

033groups and over time things started diminishing in terms of the negative perceptions and and the attacks. Um the the the the stakeholder satisfaction started increasing with our surveys. Our surveys became very positive. Um we saw things like trust. We saw things like leadership accessibility. We I saw things that where our even our staff members we there was a greater what I call it um retention among our staff before they were leaving they could hardly wait they would you know they hear stories of well I told this teacher don't come teach here this is not a good place to where now all of that had turned around so again the successes that we have on the academic front and passing the bond and things like that all of that culminated from being able to be visible

034and accessible from my me and my leadership as well. Trusty Tisides. Uh thank you Dr. Yearwood. Uh what unique skills or leverage would you bring to this position and how will Selen Area schools be served by that? Yes. So being in education for over three years, you know, I've held leadership roles, superintendent, assistant superintendent for HR, assistant superintendent for academics, chief operations officer, principal, assistant principal, and so on. And I've always been entrusted with complex, I call it, and high stakes challenges, which I love to to to to get engaged with. um from turning around struggling schools to leading large-scale operation projects. Thoroughly enjoy that. My core mission actually aligns with the Selen area schools, elevate scholar outcome, ensure fiscal and operational excellence, make sure that we continue to build deep commitment to trust. the

035actions that I've done in the past. Um, my district that I was the assistant superintendent in academics from, I remember walking in there and we were an F school district. There were things happening there that I I don't want to even talk about even to this day and had to change it. And it took me a couple of years, but we ended up being a B district. um my training has had prepared me for that. I spent three years training to be a curriculum auditor, a national curriculum auditor and I understood more deeply about datainformed revisions and implementation of growth focus instructional systems. Most people think about instructional systems that are definitive by proficiency levels, but you really have to focus on growth of the scholars. On the operational side, my experience there and and

036by the way, as we talk about growth, um I was very proud my first assignment as a principal took over a school that was 90 90 plus% poverty. Um a school in which the teachers were told, "Please go teach there and then we'll move you after three years." Um and and and it took me one year and we went from that F to a B. We stayed there for seven and then for the last five years we became an A school. After the year number three or four, no one was leaving the school. Everyone was staying there because of the again the commitment to collaboration. In terms of operational leadership, as a chief operations officer, I was in charge of a $286 million bond, successfully overseeing dozens of facilities and infrastructure. Um, used uh construction

037methods that resulted in our projects coming in on time and below cost. working with our architects on a weekly basis, working with our construction managers, making sure that again everything was was on time and reporting that not only to my to uh my superintendent but also to the board. on the on the operational side. Um I oversaw the building of a nature school, the first of its kind, the only one of its kind in the country where scholars were could go and with their teachers and learn about nature, learn about plants, animals, ecosystems. They can do some uh fishing. They can they do catch and release with birds and so on. One of a kind. They could uh they spent uh nights of uh camping as well doing good weather. Great experience. So all of

038these things I would bring to the table as far as my knowledge on operations, my learn knowledge on um instruction. Very very important. So another big one was programs. Um I was able to one of the issues that I had in one of the districts I went to, we were losing about 300 scholars per year to private or charter schools. and I was tasked with helping to stop the flow out. So I as the assistant superintendent for academics, I launched into theme-based schools and we started things like the international baloric program for the early years and for the middle year programs. We enhance our performing arts programs. We we we enhance our uh our project based learning uh initiative. As a matter of fact, we have what is called a New Tech school. Um, New

039Techch Middle School, New Tech uh elementary and a new tech high school that's all based on project-based learning, the entire school and they were built they were built around that. Um, developing AVID schools. So, making the school environment more exciting for our scholars, very important. The net result I saw after year number two of implementation, we had about 250 of our scholars that were going to private or charter schools coming back to us because of the programs and the themes that they could tap into. Um, we saw academic achievement increase across the district. That's where we went from that F school to a B to a B-rated school. Um, voter approved bonds never a problem, never a question, full support. Um, so we're able to modernize our our facilities. Um, and and we're able to

040launch into we were just about to launch into what I call uh dual language programs. You know, I think we were looking at doing Mandarin and what was the Spanish, you know, schools and some French and having our scholars do total immersion in those at the elementary level so they can become more proficient in them. I'm not sure we'll do Mandarin anymore if I were there. So anyway, so that's my experience. Thank you sir. Um tell me how do you go about making decisions on controversial or high stakes issues very very carefully. Um I make sure that I adhere to the rules of ethics and inclus inclusive decision making. Those are very very important. Um and and sometimes when you make certain decisions, be prepared that there will be push back. You know, a a

041veteran superintendent that became the commissioner over all schools in the entire state of Texas once told me, "Brian, if everyone's happy with you, you're not doing a good job. Somebody's not going to be happy with you with what a decision you're making." So, one area was faced with declining academic performance. um I was tasked with I coming up with a solution with my team that would accelerate learning um recovery and and and and continuing to build on that community trust. So my our proposal was to extend the school year and adjust holiday breaks which was controversial because you know people plan vacations and plan things and so on. So I started down the process with my team. We had collaborative meetings with our constituents or internal external stakeholders. Um we showed the data. We made

042sure that we were ethical in our presentations letting them know yes there were pros but there were also cons to this. And we engaged. We had focus groups. We did surveys. We met with principles, teachers, families and so on. And we analyze the data. We analyze the input. We analyze the even our student performance done at the the micro level to make sure that this was actually the best practice possible. We studied it and uh after communicating, after doing all these forums, after going through all of these questions and answers, we decided to move forward and even moving forward after taking on input and and and really we decided to move forward because we started having consensus and this would be a good thing. Um there was some mixed feedback even when we implemented but

043we remained transparent with our communication. We shared the good, the bad and the ugly. We shared what our uh successes were and what all or negatives were. And because we were transparent over time, the negative went away. What that did is it reinforced for me, for my organization, for my leadership that it's important to have a culture of shared responsibility and collaborative leadership. It's not what Dr. Ywood wanted. It was what was what is best for us scholars and to come about that in a collective means by looking and listening to the good to the criticism and trust me the criticisms came they were heavy but then over time because of sh data sharing and so on winning others over that's what I've been able to do. Yes. Um, next question is, I was wondering

044if you could please um describe what an effective relationship between a board and a superintendent looks like and how do you go about cultivating such a relationship? Sure. You know, I always my my superintendent friend says, you know, you have seven moms and dads as a superintendent and you have to make sure they're smiling at you at all times. That's going to be very very critical. So, you know, for me on joining my school district as superintendent, I pri I prioritize first of all um being transparent um and looking at building more of a collaborative relationship with with the board. The issue there is sometimes boards change and there's certain agendas that come forth that you have no control over. So what I did with major initiatives um I made sure that my board was

045always informed. I met with my my board um uh on a weekly basis. My president vice president uh always accessible. They were always the first to know. I said I don't like surprises and I don't want you to be surprised by anything. Um and you know when we looked at things like the academic turnaround the strategic planning um the prawn projects I was able to do it in a unified fashion in a trusting fashion and with shared leadership by getting input from the board along the way because there are things that they may have know or hear of in the community that I'm not aware of and always willing to take the the positive as well as the negatives. Um my task, my priority would be to fosterate partnership with the board that's built on

046mutual respect, open communication and aligned goals because any any of these are off the whole thing goes by the wayside. So again, my actions were to establish uh weekly um meetings having me. I would do memos to the board every week, monthly reports. We had dashboards that they had access to, maintained a no surprise culture. Um this was key. We honored board governance roles. We clarified roles and responsibilities. And we clarified methods of communication. Some board members wanted a phone call, some wanted to email, some went to a text message. We clarified that. Um, we we made sure that uh for me I I made sure that I honored the board's governance role with providing them with information that was needed to make decisions and sometimes um I would provide information that would would be

047against certain thoughts but I had to provide them and they knew I will always give you the truth no matter what even it made you unhappy. Um, I I stayed within my operational leadership lane because that's what I'm about. Um, and made sure that our district was aligned to the policies. Um, I made sure that we were transparent and responsive in communicating successes and challenges. Um, making sure that I was always accessible to the board. Making sure that I sought input from the board with respect and regularity. um you know making sure that again the vision of the board was shared through the goals that we have. What ended up happening is that we became a highly functioning board, became respectful, um very goal oriented, and of course we're able to get things done like

048you know the bonds and and things like that. But where that has you have to be very careful is when boards change. I know for me, for example, the board that hired me, the board that I was with, um, changed drastically. I would say there was one person left and that one person is no longer on the board. So again, you know, keeping that in mind, um, I will always work to build and to align and to collaborate and, you know, see what happens from there. All right. Uh, this question is near and dear to me as treasurer finance chair. So, here we go. Tell us about your experience with school finance, developing budgets, and working with the finance director to gain broad support and make decisions. Yes. Good. I I met with my uh

049chief financial officer on a weekly basis to make sure we were always on the same page. Um, so I I inherited a what do you call a complex financial system. We had about um a $280 million budget. Um, and you know, we had to deal with things like expenditures, revenues, um, referendums, bond obligations, capital planning, and so on. So for me, I was always tasked with ensuring the fiscal health of the district because I wanted to be an excellent steward of taxpayers dollars. I never wanted to go into the red and I never did. As a matter of fact, we always were able to contribute to our fund balance which was very robust. I would say um to be able to to do that, we were always transparent with our expenditures. We made sure that

050our expenditures were aligned with our goals and objectives. um we we we made sure that the budget process was done very strategically, very inclusively and very transparently. So the actions that were taken, we developed a collaborative budget process with a zerobased budgeting that started with the staff and the board understanding revenues, expenditures and projections and so on. We did a five six year projection and then we also shared this with the committee um the community I'm sorry through listening sessions through our uh finance committee through town halls and so on. Um we also shared uh what was going on. We combined uh there were times we combined finances with our facilities to provide sort of open community forum so they can listen to what we're doing with our our facilities and get feedback. And what

051we were able to do is to connect the budget with academic outcomes. That was critical. Not only those outcomes, but also long-term goals. So we developed what is called a tiered system of funding for schools. And like I mentioned, we did zerobased budishing. The tiered system means that if there was a school that was underperforming, we provide them perhaps with additional resources so that they can, you know, come up. Um, we always had infographics. We always had clear data visuals. Um, we were consistently uh public uh publicizing our financial documents and so on. And all in all, we ended up on a yearly basis receiving the uh I call it the the governor's uh government sorry government financial officers award. Just recently we got the certificate of achievement for excellence in financial reporting. We also

052at the same year received the distinguished budget uh presentation award because of how the budget was presented. Um the national school public relations association awarded us for stakeholder engagement. So, we built strong community support leading to that's why I think it was easier to pass the $80 million bond and to again sustain momentum on our strategic investments. All because of our transparent communication. All because of being able to show our board and our community what we were doing and that we were excellent stewards of taxpayers dollars. And these awards that I mentioned did not come lightly. Not everyone has received one of these awards. Very proud of that. Thank you. If you could please describe your knowledge and experience in using data to make informed decisions. I know you've touched on that a little bit.

053Yes. um data must drive or instructional decisions. Data must drive our day-to-day um in in instructions. And for the the sake of time, I see I'm running short on time, so I'm going to make this quick. Um when I walked into a district, we didn't have data. No one knew how many third graders were reading on level. None of that. So I always uh we put growth measures into place and we are able to measure where our scholars are and based upon the data make projections, make interventions, make our instructional decisions um in that case and this was done on a district-wide basis. It also drove our professional development for principles, teachers, instructional coaches. Um we embedded data in our leadership practice. I trained my principles on what you call data walks. So that way

054um as they walked into classrooms they would know this is what a good instructional environment looks like and levels of regular relevance and so on. Um it was very important and again the net result came about with our growth that I've seen in in the districts I've led. um teachers reporting greater clarity and and empowerment and ownership because they understood the data and how to use data dissemination um and and allowing data to become a part of our culture for improvement. That in a nutshell is how we use our data. I think we have time for one more. Oh okay. uh tell us how you have used the your knowledge of student learning and educational research to guide curriculum development and increase student achievement. Yes. Um because of being a a curriculum auditor, I understood

055the role of the curriculum. I know you have the curriculum, you have the taught, tested and written curriculum and if they're not aligned, you have major issues in the instructional environment. In addition to that, um the curriculums that the curriculum that you teach must be aligned with the state standards. If there's misalignment, then you start seeing poor performance as well. So being able to attack or make sure that there was no misalignment in those areas. In addition to that, um, looking at the curriculum and understanding how standards within that curriculum needed to be taught and that was a bit of an eye openener for me. There was a a district I I went to and and teachers were struggling with understanding how to break certain standards down. For example, something may assignment may say um

056have a student create a scenario in which and the word create was not fully understood instead of they were doing it in forms of either uh simpler tasks not at that high level. So getting instructional rigor to be understood within the curriculum was also very very key and that was a lot more uh far-fetched. As a matter of fact, I have to say that was one of the issues that I found in multiple districts with teaching in the teaching and learning environment understanding the true rigor of the standards that needed to be taught. Um so I was able to uh systemically and through a professional development um breaking through to that I I led well not led but I was very entrenched in bringing a curriculum audit to a district 393 page document that we

057made into a living breathing document that also helped us with our strategic plan. Um, and we made sure that we were in high collaboration with our teachers, with our instructional staff to make sure that they were all integrated into an understood evidence-based uh, instructional strategies. Um, there was a lot more again that that we got into um, as we prioritize things like growth assessments and formative data was very very key. So curriculum it's wonderful it's the road map but it has to be aligned with the written taught and tested has to be aligned with state standards. Um you have to make sure that everyone understands where to find the curriculum as well. That was one area that um I had to develop recently. We we develop what is called a curriculum framework because my administrators

058were saying we don't know where the the curriculum is housed. We don't know how to find it and that was sort of a soft and then um I did my research and found out it was larger than expected. So it has to be available and visible. Parents need to know what it is we're teaching their children. They need to be able to have certain levels of access to understanding this is what's going on in the school. So perhaps they can serve as a partner to helping us, helping teachers, helping staff to get across to their their their their beautiful uh scholar. So for me, I I bring a deep expertise in instructional design, curriculum alignment paired with collaborative and equitable uh equitable centered approach. And this will help if I were to be here to

059help uh here in Selen in reaching new heights in student achievement and academic excellence. Well, thank you very much Dr. Yarwit. As we wind our time down together, would you like to leave us with any closing remarks or thoughts? Um yes. Great. um the success that I achieved and I say I but really I I mean we because it's a my success as a team of success of collaboration in previous districts this was no accident taking an elementary school from an F to an A turning around a middle school walking into a school district where they didn't have teachers there was no place for teachers to live and getting as a HR person vanlords of teachers to come teach there with a smile on their faces. Walking to a district where they were an F

060and turn them into a B district in a few years and recently taking my district to be the most improved in the state. This was no accident. It came from a clear vision, consistent action and an unwavering commitment to scholars. I am excited to bring that approach. Should I be fortunate enough to be here in Seline? Well, thank you, sir. Uh, we appreciate your interest in our superintendent position. The board is interviewing, as you know, a number of candidates, and we will certainly contact you if you are a finalist. Thank you very much for coming out and we did enjoy meeting you. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, I will come around this. Without objection, I'd like to have a fivem minute recess then as we reset. Thank you. I'm returning us to order. While we're

061bringing out our next um candidate, I just want to remind members of the audience, if you wish to provide feedback, uh there is a paper form available uh with a QR code that also leads to a an online version of the form. Uh if you're at home, the uh link to the online version of the feedback form is available on the Selen area schools website. Look for the Seline superintendent search button on the main page. And those of you who are in the audience, thank you for being here. President McVey is still working on that tit. Just give me a signal when you're ready to start. Thank you. Well, we will President Mc. Thank you very much, sir. Well, we will now proceed with our interview of Alexander Cintron. Um, you've been escorted to the

062table and thank you for being here, sir. We have had the opportunity to review your resume and your cover letter. So could you please tell us what specifically interests you in the Seline superintendency and how your background experiences and background and experiences would uh benefit the district and the community as our next superintendent, please. Okay. Well, first of all, I want to thank all of you for for inviting me here to the party. I'm very excited to be here. Um I'm very humbled to be here because I know what a wonderful uh community that Seline is. Um I have experience in Seline um on a personal level. Um, I've golfed here at Brookside before. Um, I have family and friends here and my partner actually filmed a movie here called um, Five-year Engagement, which was

063a couple years ago and so I have quite a bit of experience here. Um, and I'm very proud of that and I think it's a wonderful community. It's very similar to my community in Waterford, Clarkston area. Um, we have a lot of similar pain points and so I really can identify that not only from a professional level but also from a heart level. and I know how much we love our communities and I um I feel that my professional um aspirations here um align to your goals especially along the um bridge to civility and also your compass and also um I have a personal stake here because of the fact that I have family and friends that live here um they're also holding me accountable uh to the job that I do here for their

064children and for their legacy of living in this neighborhood. So, thank you again for um inviting me here. I'd like to turn it over then to uh Super Vice President Stein. Um if you could do me a favor and please share an example of a time that you have led a sustained multi-year improvement initiative such as a strategic plan. Um, if you could please be specific regarding the situation, the task at hand, your specific role, and the outcome. If you need me to repeat that, that's a lot of comments. That is, and thank you for that, and I and I will if need be. Thank you. Um, uh, Vice President Steman, I appreciate that. Um, before I begin that, um, while I'm going through this interview, I have categorized who I am, which is very

065important in answering each of these questions. And I am definitely a servant leader, which I will explain that along the lines. I'm I'm an transformational leader. I'm an instructional leader. And of course, I'm a leader that has to hold accountability. And they vary um in percentages depending on the task and what I'm doing and the initiatives throughout the year. So, please keep that in mind. And I will definitely explain what each one of those is if anyone needs further clarification. But my important um and really the one that is really innate in who I am is the servant leader. I I really believe in putting other people's needs first. Um because this is a role of service. I am I am appointed by a board a governing board which I respect and I've read each

066one of your bios very intelligent people and you have such love and commitment uh to Seline. Okay. So I just want to keep that in mind to answer your question. Um, Vice President Stebon, um, one of the ones that I would like to share because it's most important and aligned to to um, Seline is MTSS. Okay. So, um, I worked with our um, director of uh, diversity, equity, and inclusion um, at the time in Detroit public schools. And I want you to understand Detroit public schools has over fi 52,528 students. Okay? We have over 3,227 teachers. I was responsible for over 8,000. What I did was a drop in the bucket compared to the larger scale. So, I really had to advocate for my programs even though we had over 8,000 students. So, I really

067advocated that I was part of the MTC TTS program, a multi-tered uh system support in that I wanted to see English language um development within those um frameworks and that was extremely important to me and the way we did that was through teaming. We had to create teachers, we had to create problem solving teams and we had to use data in order to drive those decisions. Um, for the data piece, we have over um 12 thou, excuse me, 12% are EEL students. And so those were the students that I was focused on. Uh, the majority of the district is 81.9% black. So I also had to work on my cultural competency in terms of how I was serving those students. Uh, we did find in the data that our African-American boys struggled the most. And

068I will share that data as we go into the cultural competency piece. You're welcome. Like to pass it over to Treasurer Gerby. Sorry, I was taking a couple notes. All right. So, as our superintendent, how would you work to ensure and enhance the sustainability and reputation of our district? Well, um, being that you and I appreciate that you're a finance guy, um, I think having a long-term financial plan, um, I do respect your level of finance. Um, prior to going into teaching, I was a financial adviser. I have my series 6 and series 7 at the time. Um, however, um, I was very young and I was very ambitious and that's what I thought I what I wanted to do. But before that, I was substitute teaching while I was working on those uh certificates

069and I got bit by the education bug and I left financial uh planning behind. However, I did learn a lot from that experience with American Express and I can go into that at a later date with you. But to answer your question, um I think what I would need to do is have a great relationship with both um Lori Dawson and Benjamin Goodman and Jacquellyn Martin because those are people that really require um media attention and what does that look like? What are we doing here? I walked around uh this afternoon. I had a wonderful experience of going into your um high school and I actually got to pet Buddy. So I was really excited about that. Um, but I went into the high school to get stickers because I wanted to put stickers on

070each of your um, folders. So, I apologize for that. The school, if I can divert the school, uh, store was closed today because they were in a field trip. So, sorry about the stickers, but I did get a pin. So, I was happy about that. But to answer your question, um, I would work closely with them. We need to emphasize why SAS, you know, why come here? Why what is going on? Um you guys are doing remarkable things in terms of your uh graduation rate at 94 um percent uh graduation rate. I think you're doing great things with college attrition at 77% and you're also looking at servicing and you have a great reputation for servicing special education children right and that is dear to my heart u my I have a nephew that is

071autistic and so that is something that I also um have value for and these are things that people in our city have value for right why why would I send my child here why is that important and I think you offer those kind of programs you strong academic programs. One of the people that really strongly advocated that I apply was Mrs. Sutherby and I know her son was a star football player here and she really said the athletic program is bar none. And I don't know if this is like kismmet or what but my um father-in-law his last name is Corona. So I noticed you have the Corona athletic field but um and because of my timing I have to stop myself but we I would love to talk about this more. this over to

072Secretary Berwick. Thank you. 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 Selen? Well, I go back to uh the servant leadership piece um that I had mentioned before. Um I was tasked with um when I was um hired by the educational achievement authority, I had to build a school from the ground up. Basically that meant the janitors, that meant the um people that worked in the kitchen, and of course the teachers and administrators. And so I had to immediately um create um a sense of trust. And so I was actually trained through servant leadership by Robert Greenley. He created this back in 1970. But I also added um love and

073logic because I thought it was very important that we had that relationship and that kind of dialogue. And please note these were young teachers. I was working with Teach for America teachers which were very young and they were very naive in terms of what urban education looked like. So there were a lot of tears you know in my office. But because I have a degree in psychology and anthropology from Michigan State, I was actually able to use my degree and I used it probably a lot in education where I was really able to listen to the teachers and really empathize with them on a feeling level and understanding how they felt, you know, and and I know they had the ambition and the heart to do the work, but the reality of what they were

074seeing was another thing. And so I was able to navigate a lot of those tears and really empower them to go back into the classroom and make a difference. And that's what I mean when I say I am a servant leader because I have to put my ambitions and goals to the side at times and really listen to my staff to empower them to be leaders. Thank you. I'll pass this over to Trusty Austin. Tell us what the term culturally competent means to you. Give us an example of how you demonstrate this characteristic. Okay. Well, this embodies everything that I am. Um I'm culturally I mean, if you look at me, I mean, I I'm ethnically ambiguous. Um, I've I have to respond on how people um how they receive me, right? Sometimes I'm Lebanese,

075sometimes I'm Jewish, sometimes I'm Greek, sometimes I'm Spanish, and sometimes I'm Mexican. But it really depends on how people receive me. And then after I get to know people, then they really kn know my true authentic self. And this happens at the grocery store where someone may be flippant or someone may be a bit um concerned about my appearance depending on how I'm dressed that day. But I have learned just to kind of step back because cultural competency is it takes two. It's a two-way street. And it it takes all of us to truly understand who we are as people. And we also have um diversity of thought, right? And I learned this in Farmington Hills, which I will go into that later, but just because you're white does not mean you don't have diversity

076of thought. I have met many white people that are very diverse, even more so than myself, in terms of their thinking because of their exposure to different events throughout their life. Um, I think traveling certainly helps to do that. Um, you know, I would I when I look at students here, I would want to look at are they going overseas? Are they going to Germany? Are they going to France? Are they going to Spain? Are they going to West Africa? where are they going and how can we build that in our system so our students can be more c culturally competent on a global level and so I think that's very important and also in terms of cultural competency I've done things outside of my district and I'll show you why it's my passion because

077I volunteer for the Pontiac Creative Arts Center and I've brought artwork in there from Mexico I brought in La Mariposa which is a program where we brought in Mexican art, Hispanic art, Cuban art but we also brought in art from people that were not of the culture, but they were allies of that culture. And then I brought in uh it's called soulful stitches, which and I I shared the the card with both um uh uh VP um Steban um and uh President um McVey where um it was an African-American experience about the Underground Railroad. And some of it was very troubling because one quilt had um like in Michigan it showed all of the lynchings and it showed all the lynchings throughout our country which the the quilt itself had a vibe. I'll tell you

078it had a vibe but nonetheless it was a a way for me to be culturally competent and lower my effective filter and accept the reality of that history. And so these are things that are very challenging and I I too even though I do the work with Muslims, I do the work with Pakistani students, it is something that I challenge myself every day. Um my in terms of religion, my um my understandings and my um experience with religions have been mostly Catholicism and Judaism because of where I live and the friendships that I've developed. However, I've learned to expand that by understanding what it means to be Muslim. And that's my challenge and I do that on an everyday basis when I work with my mus Muslim students from Afghanistan. Trusty Gold, tell us how

079you maintain visibility and accessibility for students, staff, parents, and community groups. This one of um Miss Gold Dr. Gold, this is one of the things that I really enjoyed about the current superintendent because when I got on your website, I could see him in classrooms like he you can see the visibility in the classrooms. The the as I was looking at the website, I'm like, "Oh, I like this guy because you could just see him there." Um, I am a person that cannot sit behind the desk and and I I'll be very honest with you, I love being visible. Um, I was at the high school today. I was so excited to feel the energy, to see the students. I saw the autistic students and special needs students in the building. Um, and it just

080brings joy and energy to what I do on a daily basis. Um, in terms of visibility, I believe with um, social media that is respectfully done through the school, Facebook through social media. I um, I personally do not use social media um, myself because I think things have gotten too politically contentious on there and I don't want to be in that space. However, I understand the need and the reality for social media. So, I would rely on again Mrs. Martin to be a part of that. Um, let's let's look at newspapers. Am I are we having discussions in ST newspapers? Um, football games are big here. So, I'm going to put on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and highly be involved in that. Um, I've already had a discussion with my partner that

081I would like to live here. Even though I'm only an hour away, I know this is not a nineto-five job. And I know it's going to be required to be at board meetings. I know I'm going to be required to be out in the community and and meeting stakeholders within the community. And that's something that I really am excited to do. Um visibility, I think, is one of my um strong um one of my strengths because as a principal, I was always in the hallways. I was always in the classrooms. I was always at the nonprofit centers. Um so that is something that um I believe in and I will maintain that uh with the student staff, parents and community groups and vely in terms of community groups I created it was called the bilingual

082parent advisory council where our teach our parents could come and speak to us rather than going to board meetings because there was the language barrier and they were having a very difficult time communicating during the board meetings and so it gave them an opportunity to air their grievances or even give us kudos at that time. Of course, they had a 100% um option to go to the board meeting, but it really created more of an intimate environment where they can be heard and listened to. Trusty Tis, what unique skills or leverage would you bring uh to this position and how would Selen Area Schools benefit from that? Well, what I when I looked at this, one of the things that I wanted to know, I noticed was the teacher retention. I think teacher retention is

083extremely important um in the district and also enrollment. Um I noticed there was a bit of a declining enrollment, but I think there's probably reasons for that in terms of birth rate and also in terms of COVID. It seems like there's a slow roll back and I know um some Catholic schools have opened and many students have stayed within those Catholic schools. So, there's some understanding in terms of what's happening there. Um the way I want to leverage this is really looking at um some of the you know austerity measures around um our current climate around grants around funding and what that looks like in terms of teacher salaries. Um, I know that's for up to negotiations right now and I'm not obviously immersed in that particular piece, but I think in terms of leveraging

084great teachers and really highlighting teachers um in in the school newspapers um in in in blogging and also attracting those uh you know communities outside of uh Seline to come here and again why Seline and that's a question that I will ask myself as I go through this process and uh leveraging that particular piece I also want to talk about again um you you have a fund balance that is is in the black and congratulations to you. That's a huge accomplishment for a district. And what does that look like in terms of leveraging those funds to bring in some more unique programs and that may attract other people to this district? Thank you, sir. You're welcome. My turn now. How do you go about making decisions on controversial or high stakes high stakes issues? So,

085I'm going to give you two examples and I want to give you a personal example because it's it it is quite controversial and I had to experience this firsthand as a parent. U my son went to Farmington uh public schools and I got a letter one day home that um we had to address uh the use of the n-word. My son was on the football team and this team were using the n-word. So I asked my son, his name is Simon, and I said, "Simon, what's going on? Why am I getting this letter? You don't use that word, do you?" And he said, "No, Dad, I don't." And I said, "Well, what's going on?" He said, "You know, the football players and stuff use it." And you know, and they're just joking around and stuff.

086I said, "You don't use it because and and my I'm although I'm I'm Spanish, Portuguese descent, Puerto Rican, Cuban, I I present differently than he does. He presents white. He's blonde hair, blue-eyed, and six foot two." And um but I tell him that um you know, that's not something that he should be using. And he knew this. So, I was very proud of that. Um, but it was very controversial. Kim and I had a conversation about it, but I had taken an extra step and I had contacted uh the DEI um uh deed at the time and I knew her because she had previously worked at uh Detroit public schools. And so I said, you know, Naom Naomi, what's going on here? And she says, we're having conflicts with the use of the word with

087culture and climate there. There's tensions going on. And I said, well, how can I help? and she said, "Well, we're going to be uh forming focus groups. Um if you'd like to be a part of it, fill out the application. I can't guarantee that you'll get in, but just give it a try." So, as you'll see on my resume, I did get in uh to that particular um focus group and and I think it's on this resume. If it's not, it's on my other resume. But um I it was a focus group during the summer where we sat and we did some uh planning and goal setting around that. But we didn't necessarily address the word itself, but we addressed what does it look like for our African-American students in terms of suspensions? What does

088that look like in terms of disciplinary referrals? Um are we creating an equity an equitable framework? And again, we challenged oursel and looked at what are our internal biases? Is there something going on that we're not addressing it? And also we had to have professional development around it because legitimately teachers were not addressing it because they were afraid because they were being told by parents that we are trying to take back the word to empower our families uh to use the word. So it became a very um controversial obviously situation but we created data and we use data to have the data informed decisions about how this word is inappropriate. Okay. And also I want you to know this is not necessarily an American issue. Being a bilingual person, uh we I deal with this

089at um the current school where we have Muslims or or um we have uh people that have never really experienced the African-American dispar disparia or the um or or the culture. And so they I've heard them use the word and I have to explain what this means to them because they hear it within the climate and culture of the school. But also, it's just not that word in in our and I won't go into specific words, but there are words in uh the Latin language that are completely innocuous. You may be talking about a cake, a piece of cake, and in another language it means something completely different. And so when we're all that's something that I have to be aware of at all times in terms of what is being said in another language

090that doesn't transfer into the same language when you have the same students and understand that Detroit public schools has over 32 different languages and about five to six different Spanish dialects. So, you know, some of these languages do intersect and some of them do have different meaning to different cultures and something that, you know, we're constantly growing on as human beings and but at the end of the day, we try to solve those solutions with data and being respectful and I think you guys obviously do it through your bridge to civility. Thank you. So, um, the next question is, what does an effective relationship between a board and a superintendent look like? That is my favorite. Um, and and how would you go about cultivating such a relationship? It's my favorite. And I'm going to

091tell you why. Because when I was a superintendent, I had three boards that I had to report to. Uh, when I was with Way Charter Schools, um, I had my Flint board, I had my and and actually was the Flint board. It was interesting. One school was located in an arbor at the 555 building and the other was located near uh Ketaring and Mott there by by by the M uh M Ketaring uh campuses and um then I had my Detroit board which was located in southwest Detroit and I had three boards and you could see I don't know if you received the letters of recommendation from uh President Battal and also uh President Barker and President Murray and upon me leaving. They were actually very disappointed and they didn't want me to leave and

092their letters of recommendation are are proof of that because it it's respect, right? And and it's complete transparency and communication. You're my first call. I mean, we have to have a united front around financials, but more than anything around safety, and I will talk about that more in in the next questions, but it's extremely important that you understand me. You're going to get a glimpse of me tonight, but you'll probably know you'll know more about me than you probably want to know. However, it's very important because I don't believe in any surprises to my board. You need to know who I am in terms of my character, in terms of my professional development, in terms of where I was born and what I currently do because in this culture and climate that we're experiencing right

093now, I think around education, we have to be a united front. And it and it would be a disservice to me both morally and ethically to blindside any one of you. and I would do my best no matter how painful it might be for me to come to you with the honest truths. I will do that and I think that cultivate respect and honesty. Um but I will do that and and I will have to share my failures with you because I would like to think there will never be any failures but there's going to probably be something that I'm not going to do right. Um because one of the things we try to do and I work on myself, I want to satisfy everyone and everything at all the times and that's really my

094downfall sometimes because it's impossible to do that and that's where my leadership comes in to be a leader that's authoritative. That's when it's like I have to make this final decision around safety especially and that's that and there's no negotiations. But of course as a governance I would respect your decisions and your input and your value and again I've looked at all of your res your your bios and there's something each one of you provides for me because I want this also to be a growth relationship because I want to continue to grow as a professional and a human being and I know what all of you guys offer me. I I'm really excited about that and I'm I'm going to be very specific. um my uh nephew um I won't say his last name

095but Sam he just graduated from the Ross Business School and so I I admire what you've done in your work and you're obviously a very intelligent woman woman and I want to grow from you um and learn more and also President uh MCI with your um knowledge on IT and technology that's something that I also want to grow now I'm going to leave it at that because there's something each one of you brings to me just from your biographies but I'm hoping I grow from and you grow from me and then we grow this community to be um you know what it deserves to be um and which is 100% the pursuit of excellence. All right. Well, as you touched on earlier, I am indeed the treasurer and finance is important to me and I'm

096the chair and I'm lucky to have a great team. Right. Please tell me about your or us about your experience with school finance. How you work collaboratively with others to develop budgets that g and the goal being to gain broad support and implementation. So how do you work with a finance director? How do you work with a committee? All the things, right? So um my experience is um with the bilingual budget, I had a $3 million budget and that was pretty consistent and I would go through the mi Michigan educational grant system and I would go through that grant system. I work closely with Kelly Alvarez at the state level. We would look at the grants. Um they would give me the allocation and I would get approval from them. I worked really closely with

097Jen Paul as well. And we would make sure that um things are aligned appropriately in terms of the federal funding and things that we wanted to make sure that we were uh supplementing and not supplanting. That was always a huge one. And properly you utilizing those allocations. The way it works with um bilingual education, it is very odd, but if I bought this um highlighter for an English language learner, only the English language learner can use this highlighter. Now, in all reality, we know that's not realistic, right? So, what I did to um when I bought Smartboards, I would make sure that there were um at least one or two English language learners in that classroom. that way we can use that smartboard for the entire class rather than differentiating that. So sometimes we would

098work creatively around those things. Uh but mostly we would create focus groups. Um recently we received a $94.7 million um there was a literacy lawsuit um Gary B versus Whitmer. And so we received $94.7 million to correct the problem. Uh students had sued the district for not receiving an adequate education. And so uh Dr. Vidia at the time appointed me to become the newcomer director and I was part of these workshops. These workshops invited parents to come in, community members, students, teachers, and all staff to decide what we're going to do with this $94.7 million. And so out of that, we wind up hiring a parapros uh to assist many students. um we we hired um or we created elevation which is a software that we use for English language learners and it also transcends

099to our mainstream students and so when we have these highlevel budgets it is very important to have focus groups it's very important to have group um input um and also to do our research especially around what we're doing and what we're hiring um I have experience with RFPs which is request uh for proposals uh before we purchase anything, getting three or four quotes before uh we purchase any of these highlevel um you know software or even of course if it's you know staff we have to do background checks and making sure that most of the people have buyin in terms of what we're doing but I will heavily lean on you. It's a partnership um and it's a collaboration and I value that. You're welcome. Thank you. So uh if you could please describe your

100knowledge and experience in using data to make informed decisions. Yes. Um this is also true to my heart because of the fact that I worked on my dissertation and um I UNESCO I went to UNESCO and got a lot of information on uh print literacy acculturation and culturative stress among immigrant Mexican mothers. And so I'm very astute when it comes to research and when it comes to data collection. Uh, one of the things that I was um emphasizing when I was both a principal and when I was a director and a superintendent, we used a book called datawise and it really taught uh us how to sit down and collaborate. Even with lesson planning, teachers would use uh data wise in terms of how they're looking at their lesson plans. Are the lesson plans moving

101uh the students in the right direction with the current data that they do have? Um I also use data in terms of like creating again the necessary tools that we need around elevation. Was it a tool that was effective? Is this something that will move students in the right direction? So in terms of data, it's something that we can't not do because we have to have evidence in terms of what we do. It has to be more than just a feeling, right? Oh well, I have a feeling this is going to work really well. Well, good for you. Let's figure out how we can use data to instruct our decisions. Um even around um you know suspensions, what what does that look like in terms of suspensions? What's the data rate? Um I use panoramic

102data in terms of students taking a panoramic view and that's what it's called. Uh the the particular company and the students fill out this data. We have families that fill out the data that inform us on what their perspective is in the community and then we take that data, we discuss it and then we move forward with decisions that we need to make. So, uh, data informed decisions is what we have to do. And I know as a board that's what you expect. I mean, I don't know. I don't think it'd be, oh well, I like it. I come to a board. I like it. It's very nice. Well, good for you, Alex. What's the data? What's the research behind it? which is very important um in what we do. So data-informed decisions is absolutely

103essential in everything that we do and also it protects us right how did you formulate or how did you come to this conclusion and this is the data that I used in order to formulate that. Tell us how tell us how you have used your knowledge of student learning and educational research to guide curriculum development and increase student achievement. Well, uh again I mentioned UNESCO um that that was my um go-to uh when I was working on my um dissertation. Uh Vigotssky, he's he's an expert also in education. Um also SCOP, which is sheltered instruction observational support, and it's a it's a way of teachers laying out their lesson plans. uh that way they can have a very connected experience uh with students in terms of engagement and strategies that they can use um in

104the classroom and outside of the classroom and it also gives us a model in which to discuss uh what's happening in that classroom and providing a structure not only for myself but for the principal so it's very clear on what's happening um so that is uh what I do in terms of that one of the things that I also did was I looked at um the pedagogical pedagogical um influences like within the classroom. What was I doing to help the teachers uh become successful? So I worked with uh Teachcape at the time and Teachcape was really in essential for me. What we do is we had an iPad and we would go in and um identify specific look fors like were there objectives on the board? Uh were there was there clear content? Uh was

105there you know clear ideas? Were there exit tickets? um even the structure of the room. Uh you know we had data in terms of how many rooms were student centered rooms, what was the placement of those uh seats, um were there peer-to-peer um you know relations occurring. So Teachcapes was really valuable in terms of giving us that information that we could use to form um you know solid instruction for curriculum development. Um and also from that we created um like workshops for parents to come in and also look through the books. We had them look at National Geographic, uh, Pearson, Holton, Mifflin, and say, "Oh, I I think I like this particular, um, you know, curriculum because what the curriculum that works in Detroit may not work here in Seline." And so those are conversations

106that we would have around working with parents and community members and teachers in terms of how to select curriculum. Trusty Gold, tell us how tell us how your pre previous professional experiences have influenced you as a leader. Thank you, Dr. Gold. I um I had mentioned that I was a financial adviser before and that certainly influenced me from a financial perspective, but prior to that I was only in my 20s and um I had left Michigan State and um I had gone to Chicago and I was a um case manager and I worked with HIV AIDS patients and it was very um eye openening for me at that time because it was prior to being a doctor, it was prior to ACT and it was really creating um a tremendous um just catastrophic on their

107bodies, on their minds, and we didn't know it was happening. There's a huge stigma behind it. And so, um it was really difficult for me as a 20-year-old to do it. Um but I was able to do that work, but it really taught me and I think that's where I learned a lot of my empathy and really trying to understand because I was confused myself um because of the, you know, the cultural stigma of it. I was young. I didn't quite I wasn't quite as solid in who I am as a person at that time. And so I really learned a lot from that experience, but it really uh taught me uh to really um value humanity um in terms of what people are doing and and I brought that into my teaching. Um and

108so that was ju just very helpful. Um but I I think that's that's pretty powerful and I I want to talk more about that. Um I'm hoping u my resume will kind of stand out in terms of u my previous professional experiences. um you know the superintendency of course. Oh I oh this is very important. Um I consulted with uh Washington um the county and there's a a letter of recommendation in my um in that yellow folder from um Alyssa Nicholas. Um I work closely with her and I provided SCOP training to her. So even as a consultant um that that helps me grow you know outside of districts and helps me grow and learn about other districts. And of course, my relationship with MASB, Jay's been great during our our treat our um retreats

109and and and learning more about what it means to be a superintendent and and around laws and working with um the different uh legal firms and all of that that helped me um you know, become more of a professional and expert and and really grow in this role. uh here in Selen you have a lot of dedicated teachers and support staff. Uh 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? Yeah. Um, I again I I'll reflect back when I was a principal and I did that with the TFA staff and just empowering these young people to to become better teachers through my servant leadership and really humbling myself, humbling my ego and

110really looking at what they needed to grow and and and and looking at their objectives, looking at, you know, you know, their their their pain points. And so that really helped me in terms of creating a culture and climate there. again using love and logic was very helpful uh to me. Um also I have um I brought two books here. One is uh restorative practices which I use and I'm and I use with students and I use with staff as well and that helps me also get to know teachers in terms of restorative circles where we create a a space of trust in talking about our pain points and and being very frankfully honest in that safe space. And then I also have the growth mindset playbook where I feel this also helps teachers to

111develop their understanding as they grow in this work. So these are you know two very good books that I've used in the past um that help me. But I'm going to tell you one quick uh story. Um I um I have a when I left the bilingual department when Dr. Vidy appointed me to become the newcomer director. Um I'm I'm still friends with my team. I I had a wonderful diverse team. I had a um a parent uh engagement quarter from West Africa. I had um Megan who was white but she had married a Muslim. I had um Joe who was um you know Mexican and German. I had David who was Jewish and then became Muslim. I had um just a wonderful array of of um of of um team members. And so, you

112know, they just really respected me and I respected them and I g and they had families, they had issues, some of them had health issues, but I was very respectful of that. And and I'll give you a very quick example. During COVID, um, spring break came around and we get a five-day uh, break. And because COVID was there, I really needed them to not go on vacation. And I asked them if they would kindly not go on vacation because we needed to create curriculum guides. And if we didn't create curriculum guides, the students would have nothing because as you know, COVID was all online learning and they would have no ELLL strategies. And so this team said to me, "Alex, anything for you. Anything for you." And when they left my department, um, they were

113in tears and and we're still friends to this day because they loved who I was as a person and they knew that I would always have their back and in in the most ethical way, doing ethical things, of course, but I would be understanding and compassionate, understanding that they also had lives. And if I was flexible with them in in that, then they always turned around and supported me. And I'm going to give you a very specific example with Megan especially. She had had a miscarriage during um this time and she came to me and she was just very distraught and she didn't have anybody else to talk to about it. And so I gave her some advice and um you know and I and it was her first child and she just thought she'd

114never have children again because she had three or four miscarriages. But I gave her hope and we talked and I got a little godly on her and we talked and I gave her some things to read and almost a year later she h she's now having she had a baby and now she has two babies and so it's that kind of relationship that you have to develop with people because they're human beings and that's where I really learn my servant leadership with my staff and really truly understanding what they need not being a softy but being compassionate, being empathetic, but also holding them accountable for what they do. And it's easier to hold people accountable if you are at the front end kind to them and accepting of who they are as a human being.

115Thank you. Could you uh please tell us about any experience you've had implementing and managing bond projects, syncing funds or facilities management? Yes. Um in the folder you'll see there is um some evidence there on a playground. Um we received a grant um on a culturally inclusive playground which I was very excited uh to be a part of. Um and so I'm and I this is something that I will tell you I am not a contractor. I can't even I am not a person that could build things very well at all. However, um I can conceptually understand what it takes to build a building. I could understand the finances that it takes to build a building. I understand the bond process in terms of the community, the taxes and what that takes and really looking

116at the funding portion of it and also the voting of course and I do understand that from um you know an int you know administrative point of view. But when it comes to the actual building of the buildings itself, I know some things always go wrong. Something, you know, it's the wrong piping or we don't have that pipe. And and Phoenix was one of those schools because we have over 100 year old schools in Detroit and the piping is is a challenge. Um, in fact, that building was so bad where I was a principal, it was knocked down. Um, but we had children in that building, but we were constantly looking at repairing of the building. And so that experience with facilities management really opened my eyes in terms of what it takes to manage

117a building and what it looks like from a bond perspective and finding that money in order to sustain some of these buildings. And so that was my experience there. Now when I was a superintendent with the 555 building, it was a little different because it was a public building. It was a public space. However, we we leased a room within that space. So that was a bit of a different experience. We didn't necessarily use bond funs. we had donor funds to use that. Um, so we were able to look at that space. So I have quite a diverse experience when it comes to bond funds and when it comes to facilities management. Uh, but those are two different, you know, scenarios. And then of course I think the one that comes to mind because it

118was for children is the one around the playground and we were able to get money and funding for that which was well needed. Thank you, Vice President Steen. Um, if you could please describe your experience as an educational advocate at the local, state or national level. Yes. Um, I work closely with the Michigan Department of Education. Um, I worked with Kelly Alvarez. We created a book and this was a collaborative um across every single district in Michigan and we created the um the MDELL uh playbook and in that playbook it gave very specific instructions to districts on how they can serve um our English language learner population and that includes advocacy and where we go and how we advocate and the way we advocate for children. Uh there is a streamlined process. Of course, most

119respectfully, uh superintendent, not require, but they would like you to advocate internally. You know, what does that look like? How can we make this better before teachers or other principles or even uh parents go to the state level, right? How can we advocate internally? What how can we make a difference doing that? Um my particular advocacy comes around the sanctuary policy. So um I co-created uh the sanctuary policy with Sadi which was uh she's from West Africa. She was my bilingual parent advisory um coordinator and she and I worked on this uh sanctuary policy and we ran it through the board. And so, uh, Detroit became a sanctuary district, meaning that, um, ICE, we are very close to obviously Canada. And so, we have ice trucks always surrounding the schools. And at one point, um,

120if it was found, and this is pre this administration, this has had been happening in many administrations. um ICE was coming into buildings and taking children out of the buildings um and into wherever their parents were, whether that was a jail facility or that was somewhere else. So to me, I understand the um ideas around the federal government and doing what they need to do around illegal immigrants. However, um I advocated for children and I did not feel that it was appropriate or right for a legal entity, especially a man or woman that is extremely intimidating with a gun and um a uniform walking into a school and demanding to take out an elementary school student, middle school student or a high school student because it can be a very traumatic experience for that child

121and also for the staff. And so through that sanctuary district policy, we were able to create protocols and procedures along with the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center that these are the things that we would respectfully like done in terms of warrants. And then there's a process that must be done that goes to our legal counsel that would then review the paperwork and make sure that that warrant is legal and and that that then we would release the child. However, there was also a way to circumvent that in that we highly encourage parents make sure you have on your emergency contact form an emergency contact because if they come into the building, do you mind if we contact the emergency contact to take the child out of the building? And that's usually a yes. However, this is

122no different if a parent is gets in a car accident or has some illegal activity going on. the police must come in and take the child out if they don't have an emergency contact. So, that's a way we were able to circumvent that. Thank you. I I know you've been looking at your clock very closely. You nailed it. You nailed it very well. But finally, as we wind down our time together, would you like to leave us with any closing uh remarks or thoughts? Well, um yes. Um there's someone that said something very profound and I'd like to lead with that and they say um we have to love where we live. Okay. And we need to love where we live. But I would almost take it a step further. We love we need to

123love where we work and we need to love where our children learn. And I feel with my passion for education, my love for education, my respect for the community, my accountability to to my family and friends that have children here. Um, I want to do the best that I can for Seline public schools and the best of my capacity and the best of my intelligence and the best of my emotions. Um, I have been in education for 25 years and my goal is to be at Seline five to seven years ideally if I'm able to do that if not more. And I would love this to be my last stop. And I would love this to be my last stop where I can really be proud of what I've created as a career. This is

124not a jumping stone for me. This is not, well, I'm going to do this and I'm going to move somewhere else. No, this is something that I really want to give my all to. I I really do. And I know the pain points that Seline has been through. Um, and I have been through similar pain points on an individual level as I stated with my son and some other personal things that I won't disclose. But I really feel um if it is God's will that I am here and that I can serve this board and I could serve this community in the best of my ability. Um I don't want to let you down. I don't want to let the students down, the teachers, and I don't want to let my family down. So I'm

125humbled again to be here. And if there's anything more that I can say or do, um, I'm an open book and I'm happy to share and thank you for your time. Well, thank you very much, sir. Gracias. And uh uh thank you very much. We are looking at other candidates of course and we will um we will certainly contact you if you're a finalist. I understand sir. And thank you. But thank you for coming. We did enjoy meeting you and getting to know you a little this evening during your hour. Thank you. Thank you. I'd like to encourage the audience to complete their feedback forms, please, and or use the electronic version that's available through the QR code if you're in the room. Thank you. Um, so without objection, like to take five minutes for

126a little recess and uh reset. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome back. We uh just a gentle reminder to the people in the audience that we uh as we wait for uh Tracy Louderder to settle in, we'll uh just a reminder that we have uh feedback forms and a QR code if you want to do it electronically. People at home, you can find the link to the QR code on the district website. Trey, nice to meet you, Doc. I love it. Thank you. Nice to meet you. And once you're settled in, just just give me the uh the nod and Mr. Austin will make sure that your uh mic is on. All right. All right. Well, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Well, thank you. Uh, so we'll now proceed to the interview of Tracy uh Louder.

127You went you went by Trey. It's a long complicated story. Then we'll go with Trace. We'll go with Tracy Louderder. Uh, thank you for being with us today. Um, the first question is uh in a roundabout way. Mine. Um, so we've had the opportunity as a board to review your resume. So could you please tell us specifically what interests you in the superintendency and how your background and experiences uh would benefit the district and the community as our next superintendent. Um, the Seline superintendency intrigues and excites me as it gives me an opportunity hopefully to work in a district that is supremely successful academically, artistically, athletically. Uh, a district that I believe prides itself on meeting the needs of its students and its community at every given opportunity, at every turn. Um, I've got a

128nephew that's in the district, so I talk to my brother-in-law pretty regularly. I've had other folks that have children that have been in the district. Um, when I was the principal at Pioneer, I had some teachers who had children in the district. So through those conversations, the things that I've heard about Seline uh have been very positive overall, but the challenges that do present themselves are things that I think my skill set will help with. Uh I've been fairly successful at almost every stop that I've had. Uh I started out teaching kindergarten. I've taught behavior modification in elementary. I've taught talented and gifted. Uh I helped develop a curriculum for talented and gifted in Jackson. I've been a boys varsity basketball coach, a girls varsity basketball coach. I've taught language arts at the middle school.

129I've been a high school assistant, high school associate principal, a master scheduler, um a head principal at Pioneer for eight and a half years and a superintendent at Vander Cook Lake for two. Uh, I stepped away from the superintendency. Um, that has probably been one of the things that I if if I had a doover, I might reconsider some of that. Um, I really really missed being in a building and being with a team. Um, so I I wanted to go back and make sure I was making the right move, so to speak. Uh, so I feel as though if there's an opportunity to work with a team in a central office environment, I will be okay and able to do that. At Vander Cook, it was a little more difficult because it was a

130one-man show. And in all honesty, I wasn't prepared for it. Uh, I walked in thinking one thing, thinking that there would be some individuals that would be there to help and it would be a team environment and it just wasn't. Um, it was me and I wasn't ready for that. I really wasn't. And all the schooling and all the soups academy and all the things you do to prep to become a superintendent. I wasn't ready to be a one-man show at a as as a superintendent. So, I stepped away. Uh, I am at Portage Northern High School right now as the building principal, back in a building, back with a team of people. And I realized or I realize now it's not necessarily being in the building and being around the students as much as

131it is working with a team of people who are all pushing the rock up the hill the same way trying to foster the best success we can for our students. Well, thank you very much. I'm going to turn it over to our vice president, Jennifer Steman. Thank you. Um Trey, if you could please share an example of a time that you have led a sustained multi-year improve improvement initiative such as a strategic plan. Um please be specific regarding the situation, the task at hand, your specific role and the outcome. Uh we worked on our strategic plan at Vanderook for a little over a year. Um, my role in that was essentially top to bottom figuring out what our district needs were based on our community meetings and speaking to our community members and our board.

132Uh, getting the message out about what we felt we needed to do and how we needed to do it. Uh, we then hired a company more. They worked with us to develop the timeline and put some of the other pieces in place uh including our facilities assessment. Um going through our buildings and discovering what things we needed to do and and prioritizing those needs. Uh then trying to list or discover through, you know, our our bidding process and things how much those things would cost us to get fixed. um before we sent out messages to community and then decided that we wanted to start working on uh as far as our sinking fund and and millage proposals and things of that nature. So, we put those things together. Uh once we finally got those things

133put together, uh the sinking fund vote was this fall or this past fall, I'm sorry, of 24 that passed. Uh I was not there for the success of that. Obviously at that point I had left but the things that we had put in place helped us to pass a sinking fund and we have a I say we they have a bond millillage proposal or a non homestead millage that's coming up on May 6th and I have every confidence that that will pass as well. Again, I am not there to drive that bus anymore, so to speak, but I believe that the things that we put in place are what's allowing those things to go through. And I believe that the the the what we built with the community and and reestablishing and reconnecting is what

134is allowing those things to go through now because those things hadn't gone through for several years um prior to that. I'm going to pass this over now to Treasurer Gerby. All righty. As our superintendent, how would you work to ensure and enhance the sustainability and reputation of our district? I believe sustainability comes from continuously observing, analyzing, planning, and then investing in in your most valuable resources. That being your staff, your students, and your community. There are several different ways to go about that. Yes, your buildings and their infrastructure. finding more efficient ways to find energy sources or taking care of your transportation fleet. All those things are are things that you have to take care of. But ultimately, we need to take care of all of those things because we need to take care of

135our students. Uh and we do that through giving them curriculum updates, technology enhancements, uh working with staff to make sure that they have proper professional development opportunities. um looking at things that they think they need and then determining if there are ways that we can help to facilitate them having those things and then turn them loose. Uh I am a staff centric individual. You will hear that from any building or district that I've ever been in. Uh I recognize that the students are definitely our most important priority, but I prioritize that by taking care of my people. Uh, I am going to take care of my staffs. Um, we've I've been in two districts now where we have negotiated new contracts for our staff, for our supplemental people. Uh, if we don't treat them like

136the professionals that they are and try to compensate them as such, then we're not doing the service that we I feel we need to do to for our staff or for our students, I'm sorry. So, I do come from a staff-entric point of view in that regard that if I take care of my staff and I love my people, they'll take care of my students and we'll have fewer issues. Thank you. I'll pass this over to Secretary Berwick. Good evening. 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? being present, being approachable. Um, we hold what we call listen and learn sessions. Um, so I I open the doors and

137and invite people in so we can talk about how they best feel I can be of service to them. uh we bring folks in so we can talk about our pillars and what we hold dear or or what we hold valuable as a community. And once I have obtained some of that information and know where I need to focus at least my early work um that establishes the fact that I'm here to work. I'm here to work for you. Um my staffs will tell you all the time I I tell them it's it's it's a broken record. You don't work for me. I work for you. my job is to make your job easier and how can I do that? And so we have those conversations and when we have those conversations about how I

138can help them be at their best, it allows me to do my job to help them and thus helps me. Uh ultimately that is what I also believe helps you know lead to making sure we take care of our students. We also have you know we I've had coffee house meetings. I we do a coffee thing where you know we meet people for coffee or we open up the superintendent's office and people can come in and talk and we have coffee and things of that nature. Those are meetings that we hold to again it's it's during the day. It's an opportunity for people who maybe can't come after work that they can come and have conversations and kind of express some things and and some thoughts and go through those things there. Uh again, the

139listen and learns meetings are things that we do after hours, six o'clock or later, so that way people who are working can get there when they get out of work. Um outside of that, it's it's being present, being approachable, listening to people, and then going to work on the things that they've said to you, demonstrating that you've listened. Thank you. I'm going to turn it over now to Trusty Austin. Tell us what the term culturally competent means to you. give us an example of how you demonstrate this characteristic. I believe being culturally competent is having an understanding that we're not all the same, but being respectful of that. Uh, it's getting to know people at their core or as much as you can get to know someone and then using that knowledge to be understanding

140and and willing to work with whatever differences may present themselves. Um, how do I do that? Um, at the end of the day, I'm I'm kind of a people pleaser anyway. So if if people have needs, I want to know what those needs are. If people have differences, I like to hear what they their differences are or what their thoughts and opinions are. And I try to value that even if it's not equal to mine or if it's not the same as mine. Uh ultimately we all have to work together [Music] and we don't really have a whole lot of room for for non-tolerance or for making bigger issues out of things that don't need to necessarily be issues. We don't all think alike. We don't all look alike. We don't all behave the same

141way. But we still got to figure out how to work together so that we can do what we need to do for our students and our kids. Thank you. I'm gonna pass this over to Trusty Gold. I think you spoke a little bit about my question, but it is tell us how you maintain visibility and accessibility for students, staff, parents, and community groups. And I guess since I think you did a good job when we talked about trust about being visible, I just would like to hear like an example of a community group that you felt you worked well with or a student group. So, I joined the Lions Club in Vanderook. Um, all I can tell you is I was the only person in that group that looked like me. Um, there were a

142lot of elderly gentlemen and oh, let me refresh. I'm sorry. There were a lot of older gentlemen in that group, but we we found ways to talk about things that I felt like I was talking to my dad about, you know. And so those are the things though that led to us building a stronger relationship and them, you know, stuffing the bus, them doing the pancake dinners, them hosting uh food uh dinners for parent teacher conferences and things of that nature. But it it was it was it was me joining the group and and showing up at a few meetings and having conversations and letting them get to know who the man in that office was and me getting to know some of them so that we could build a relationship. And ultimately it helped

143with my students because they did a tremendous amount of work for my kids and helped us get some things that we wouldn't have gotten any other way. I'd like to pass the next question over to Trusty Tisus. What unique skills or leverage would you bring to this position and how would Selene Area Schools be served by those skills? Okay. So, I'm going to go ahead and say it. I'm not certain if I'm answering this question correctly. Um, I believe that I am an active listener. I believe that I am a team builder. I bring people together. I I find ways for us or for the people that are in my care or that work with me and for me uh to be able to do things that we didn't think we could do, but I

144will be quick to admit that I don't know everything. And in some instances, I'll say, "Hey, I don't really know much about it at all." But if there is someone who does, then we share those ideas. And sometimes that's all people need. They need an opportunity to be able to do the things that they know they're capable of if they've got someone who believes in that the fact that they can do it. And that's kind of always been me. If if you think you can do it or if you have some reservations about whether or not you can, I'm going to be your hype man. I'm gonna be your cheerleader. I'm gonna try to get you going and then we're gonna get some results because you they're going to bring things that I don't have

145or they're going to know things that I don't know and I'm not ashamed to utilize that. I'm also not afraid to make sure that I share credit when it's due. If something goes wrong and something falls apart, it's on me. I'll take the hit. But when things go well and and we're excited about the accomplishments and we're celebrating the successes, I want to make sure that the credit goes to the people that built it up. And I've been lucky. I mean, I've been incredibly lucky my whole life. I've been I've been privileged enough to work with some incredibly brilliant people who have done some brilliant things. Good grief, that is not happening. My wife told me I was going to do that and I told her I wasn't. So, lost that bet. Nonetheless, I've been

146able to work with some brilliant people who have done some brilliant things. Thank you, sir. But I've gotten a lot of the credit for it. You know, we flipped an elementary school from being in the lowest fourth percentile. I don't know if you guys remember the term priority school, but we were a priority school at Northeast Elementary in Jackson. I had some brilliant teachers who had some brilliant ideas. Two years later, we're a reward school. That was them. I didn't do a whole lot. I just gave them opportunities. Uh the pioneer, we were struggling. Um, I'm not absolutely certain if I want to talk about it the way that some of them talked about it, but we had an influx of school of choice students and we were having some challenges with their level of

147success. Um, going through our data, we un we we we discovered that assignment completion was a big problem for some students. We discovered that the ability to study and the proper way to study was a challenge for some students. And we put together what we called the academic challenge. And the last two weekends before finals, we had one Saturday from 9 to noon that kids could come in and we called it our day of amnesty. They could turn in assignments that day that they were missing. Got some credit for those assignments. that allowed some of them to pass some classes. Um, the following Saturday from 9 to 12, we had study guides for all of the classes and they could come in and they could go to one study session from 9:00 to 10:30 for

148one class and from 10:30 to noon for another class. And we broke down study guides and help kids study. Kids pass classes. So, but it wasn't Tracy Louderder's brainchild. Some people had that idea. I said, "Let's run with it." We ran with it. It worked. Thank you, sir. My question is, how do you go about making decisions on controversial or high stakes issues? The first thing is to try to gather feedback. Um, I want to talk to the board. I want to find out what our policies are. Where do we stand? Uh, after that, I want to get as much feedback, especially from those that my decision may affect the most. Uh, after getting some feedback, I want to be transparent. I want to be transparent about the process and why decisions were made the

149way they were. Uh, I want to include teachers. I want to communicate with families in the community. I want to gather as much data as possible. I want to involve as many stakeholders as we can without belaboring the process because I know sometimes time is of the essence. But if you have the time, take it. If you don't have the time, rely on your expertise and previous experience. And at the end of the day, there are board policies that cover almost everything. So rely on those. um you you get administrative guidelines for a reason. Other than that, be transparent in your outcomes. When you've made a decision, talk about why you made the decision and then stand on it. Don't waffle. Don't don't flip back and forth. Once you've made the decision, stand on that.

150Thank you. Um, the next question is, "What does an effective relationship between a board and a superintendent look like? And how do you cultivate such a relationship?" I think that's pretty easy. We're all best friends. We all hang out. And it's it's about defining and and having clear roles. if if we know what what what our roles are and and how we go about handling those roles, things are usually okay. Um we have to share we have a shared responsibility for developing the goals for our students. We have a shared responsibility for determining how we go about or how we finalize the decision-m process for many things. Um, I think it's very true that the higher up you go, the fewer decisions you have to make, but the more time it takes to make those

151decisions. Teachers make a thousand decisions every day. principles and administrators maybe make a hundred. Superintendent might make 10. The board you're going to make three or four when I give you all of the information and then you have to vote. So, as long as I communicate clearly with you and make sure that you are aware of what's happening and and and sharing of information and you don't ever have to walk into a situation where you are unclear or don't know or haven't heard of something or haven't heard about something, then I feel like I'm doing my job to make sure that I'm keeping you informed. And if I'm making decisions or if things are coming up, I I do I communicate with you. Um, I will be honest, I wasn't that great at that when

152I was at Vanderook. I was coming into it and I didn't really understand that part. Um, I understood it more my second year than I did my first, but my first year I didn't understand that. I was still thinking like a principal. I still acted as a principal. My second year I was a lot better. I was just tired. But, uh, since then, like I said, I've I've I've recognized that the things that I need to be better at, I was definitely better at my second year. Uh, and I'll be even better moving forward. All righty. My uh my turn. So, I am the treasurer and the finance chair. So I see things very much through um a financial lens quite a bit. So please tell us about your experience with school finance and how

153you developed budgets as part of you know a team that that were able to gain and develop and plan and had broad support. Uh so again uh my experience with that is at Vanderook and there wasn't much of a team. We did have a business manager that we rented from the ISD who was with us two days a week. Other than that, it was it was me. Um, but what she taught me was analyzing, looking at, and and fine-tune combing previous year's trends. um making sure that you take a long hard look at enrollment trends and where you are as far as are you going up, are you going down, is there some fluctuation? Um looking closely at expenses versus revenue and then asking yourself where can we make cuts if we can. uh buying

154things once or paying for things once uh as opposed to finding things that we have to continuously pay for annually. Is are there things that we can pay for once and not have to pay for them again? Uh and then kind of look at where we are again from a infrastructure. Do we need building repairs? Are there facilities expenditures, staff development, tech updates? Uh there's a lot of things that go into building your budget as you well know. Um but taking the time and going through those things line item by line item by line item is what has to be done. Uh there are two ways you can get fired from this position very very quickly. Uh one of them is mistreating children or students and staff and the other one is messing up money.

155So, uh, that will never be an issue and that is something that I take very, very seriously. Um, and while I say that I was a one-man team and sometimes I was weary, it also gave me an opportunity to learn a lot of different things about how things are built um, because I had to do it. All right. If you could describe your knowledge and experience in using data to make informed decisions, that would be great. So, there's there's so much data. I guess it kind of depends a lot on what data you want and what data is valuable to you. Um, for example, at one of my previous spots, we recognized that our attendance first hour was really bad. Tardies and absences first period were horrible. Um the challenge that we found out was

156that a lot of our students were utilizing public transportation and so they were having some issues with that. We also found out that some of our students are not necessarily the primary caregiver but they had some other duties as far as maybe getting siblings off to school and things of that nature. Um but once we had an opportunity to again look at the trends and the data that was there in front of us as far as tardies and absences and then having conversations with those students and those families, we made some adjustments to our scheduling. So, we offered a 1-6 period schedule and we offered a 2 through 7 period schedule. And what that allowed us to do was to shift some even some teachers who had early morning daycare runs and things of that

157nature that they had to do. That gave them an opportunity to teach a 2 through seven schedule for some things. And so for our kids who were chronically tardy or absent frequently based on some of those things, we were able to alleviate some of that to enhance student success because if you're here, I got a chance. If you're not here, I can't do anything. So, we had to figure out how we could get them there. That data from looking at the absences and tardies and then modifying our scheduling matrix allowed us to give some kids an opportunity to get to school 2 through seven, be there on time, get what they needed to get, pass more classes, thus enhance our graduation rate. I got another one if you want one. Um, so at Vanderook, what

158we noticed uh in our last round of negotiations with our our teachers contract was that health care uh for a family was costing us roughly $22,000 a year and we had a lot of families that were or a lot of teachers that were utilizing our insurance. Um, what we decided to do was to break that down a little bit and we offered some incentives for not taking the district insurance. And we offered a larger we offered a larger stipen than most other districts would, but it allowed us to have 10 people jump off of our insurance. those 10 people jumping off of our insurance as a result of us are offering a larger stipen. And we we offered 8,000 a year. So we offered them 8,000 a year not to take our insurance. As a

159result of them not taking our insurance, we were able to save the district a little over $142,000. But again, it's looking at the data, seeing who's on our insurance, seeing what it's costing us, seeing if they have spouses or someone else who could provide insurance for their family, giving them an incentive to utilize that as instead of ours, giving them that stipen, and then saving the district some money as a result. Tell us how you have used your knowledge of student learning and educational research to guide curriculum development and increase student achievement. So what we discovered at Pioneer was that AP courses and if you took just one AP class as a high schooler, it was a gateway to to more students going to college. But we were having a very difficult time getting minority

160students, lower income students to take AP courses. Uh we broke down test scores, uh teacher recommendations, and grades to identify students that we felt could be successful in AP courses. After having multiple conversations in different cohort groups, we discovered that the rationale behind a lot of the students not taking AP courses was either they didn't have anyone in there that they could identify with as far as a friend group. Um my son who was a basketball player at Pioneer, he said, "Then I walked into AP English. There were no kids in there from on my basketball team, so I walked out." Um, but in purposefully targeting those students that we thought could do it, we teamed them up with other kids. So now you've got a a study partner. Now you've got one of your

161teammates. Now you've got someone that you're familiar with in that class that hour that you can study with or that you know when you go into a a group assignment. You're not going to be out there solo. You've got some other folks with you that can help you get through this course. And then we had to put some other things in place to make sure that we gave them the proper study guides and equipment to be able to manage it. But we made that modification in our curriculum to make sure that we got more kids into AP courses. Uh tell us how your previous professional experiences have influenced you as a leader. As you obviously you've got my resume and all that. So, you can see I've had a whole lot of experiences. Uh, some

162have been incredible and some have been crap, but I I wouldn't change or trade any of it. They've they've made me who I am. And and and while I feel like I'm still a work in progress, I feel like I'm headed in a pretty decent trajectory. Um, my time in Jackson taught me patience and the value of taking care of your people. If if you protect your people, stand behind them, give them what they need, and fight for them, they they'll do good things. My time in Ann Arbor, uh it it taught me the strength of academics. Um not that Jackson wasn't strong academically, but you know, there's nothing like the the self-proclaimed most educated city in the world. Um, but I learned some things about powerful academic challenging and rigor. And I learned a

163lot of that from my time in Ann Arbor. Uh, I learned a lot about master scheduling and making sure that, you know, your 7th hour Mandrin Chinese class doesn't bump up against symphonic band because there's going to be a problem. So, it's things like that that I learned through my time in Ann Arbor. I also learned that, you know, people can be mean. If there are people who have an agenda and they they want to get something across, they they'll try to do it. And and learning to deal with that and battle with that and come to grips with the fact that not everybody's going to like you all the time. You got to do your job and that's what's most important. Uh, my time in Vanderook gave me an opportunity to learn what it's

164like to be more of a professional, to recognize that I do have seven bosses and sometimes they're not going to agree, but no matter what happens with that, I can't waver from my decision-making process and offering what I think is valuable. And if Dr. McVey doesn't agree with what's what's being said over here. I can't waffle. I got to stick to what I said I would do. I can't come and have a conversation with you and then go have a different conversation with him. It taught me that integrity and credibility in this position are of optimum importance. If you can't stand by what you said, don't say it. So my time in Vanderook has given me some of that. Um, so no, my my experiences have have led me to this position where I think

165I can be of service to the Selen Area schools. And like I said, even though I haven't enjoyed every experience, they've helped put me in this position. They've helped mold me to who I am. uh we have a lot of 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 do their best and how you created that climate and what were your ultimate results? This is going to sound horrible, but I I don't I don't think I've ever been in a position or been in an environment where people weren't giving their best. Um, the teachers that I've worked with have always been hardworking and and and done the best that they could possibly do. I guess I would

166say and yes, I looked over the questions, but I I I had a bunch of different answers in my head. And now that I'm going through it, I guess if I go back to Vanderook working with the staff, staff morale was pretty low initially. I went in and made sure that they understood that they had support and I would be able or I would do everything I could to make sure that they had everything that they needed to be at their best every day. And that was one of my number one concerns. um that allowed staff to go out and to be able to work unencumbered, without pressure, without feeling like, you know, and in some districts when the superintendent comes in, everybody scatters. Oh god, he's in the building. What what's what's he in

167the building for? I don't ever want that to be the case. At Vander Cook, all my students knew me. Um all the staff knew me. We talked regularly. We we we held barbecues. We did golf outings. And not because I made them, but because we wanted to foster an environment where everyone understood and respected everyone else. And so we we intentionally did things together to foster that. you know, we open we open, you know, staff meetings and board meetings with, you know, we got to make sure that we we start this out with someone saying positive about someone else. Uh at Portage now we start every staff meeting with a this buds for you and everybody's got a big well a few people have a big plastic thing of flowers and they say something incredibly

168nice about someone else on the staff and then they get the buds and they have it until the next month at the next staff meeting where they get to pass it on to someone else and they get to say something nice about someone else on the staff. It's that type of environment. It's that type of environment where respect doesn't have to be talked about. It's it's [Music] witnessed. And when respect is witnessed, it it permeates throughout the rest of the building. It permeates throughout the student body. It permeates throughout the community. They know that we're here for each other and they know that we're here for their kids. And that's something that we did in Vanderook with intentionality. It's something that we do at Portage now. Um it's it's something that again the more you

169the more you work on it purposefully the better it becomes for everyone. And I'm sorry, did I answer the question? Because I'm thinking you said a lot, but I don't know if I really answered the question. I I I think you you had me at barbecue. So There you go. Uh sir, we have just a couple more questions left. Uh could you tell us about any experience uh you've had implementing and managing bond projects, syncing funds or facilities management? Just through my time at Vanderook, uh we went over the whole facilities assessment, putting together our strategic p plan and determining what things we needed to do uh for the building for the buildings infrastructures for the boilers and things of that nature and going through that with more Prosper. Um, again, we put together a

170timeline of the next five years on what we wanted to do with the monies that we could bring in through a sinking fund. So, year one, we knew that we wanted to make some roof repairs. Year two, we knew we wanted to do some things to the gymnasium at the elementary school. Year three, we wanted to get new bleachers put in at the middle school. So, we we put together that timeline for what we could get done with our syncing fund dollars. Um, I do not say this disrespectfully, but Vanderook is a place where a a sinking fund will bring you maybe $400,000 a year. Um, we all know I I can't get many roofs fixed with $400,000 a year. So, we have to be we had to be incredibly purposeful and resourceful with the

171money that we were allocated. Um, so that's where we were. And like I said, we we did our board hired more, brought them in, they helped us put together a timeline and a plan. We did the facilities assessment. We broke everything down. And now that timeline is being fulfilled as the sinking fund just went through and hopefully on May 6th the bond mill or I'm sorry the nonhomestead millage goes through and they'll have a little bit more money to do some of the things that they really need to do for those students. Thank you. Um the next question is I was wondering if you could please describe your experience as an educational advocate at the local, state or national level. Okay. Um locally it's it's by working with the board and the community and making

172sure that we are giving our students what they need the best way that we we know how to give that to them. From a state standpoint, it's about talking with and being present with our lawmakers and our policy makers and making sure that they understand the needs of the Selen area schools and how the things that we need to have done here should be a priority for them. uh in Jackson at Vanderook um we [Music] were we were fortunate enough that the 14 superintendent in the area would meet regularly and our state representatives would come twice a year and sit down with us and have those conversations. So like Kathy Smalls and there's a woman here and I can't think of her last name. I want to say it's Beth from Ann Arbor, but we've

173had opportunities to sit down and have those conversations. Um that is something that I would absolutely try to continue or want to continue in this environment. Um, at the national level, I think it becomes more of a being involved in having membership in some of the national organizations. Um, AASA, uh, there's a couple others that I'm not as familiar with. Um, I I would be lying if I told you that I had memberships in all of those. uh in Vayner Cook. It was a situation where I had to pay for those things myself. And not that I was opposed to it, I just wasn't aware of some of them at the time. Um now that I am a lot more aware of what's out there and what's available, it would be a matter of getting

174in some of those memberships, being a part of some of those organizations, and then voicing and and having a voice or a seat at the table to discuss the needs of my district. Well, Mr. Louder, as we come as we wind down our time together, would you uh like to leave us with any closing uh thoughts or remarks? We are not done, are we? See, I told you we'll just fly. He did. He He grabbed me early and said that we were we were just going to have a conversation and get to know me. And that I I will say one, Dr. McVey, that was a tremendous help. It really was. I I I'm still supremely nervous, but I felt better after having that conversation with you. Well, you Thank you very much. You don't

175show it at all. So, do you have any uh closing comments or remarks for us? I just want to say thank you to the board. Uh I appreciate you taking the time to interview me. Thank you to the people that came. It demonstrates how important this is to you. For those of you streamlining or watching at home and couldn't make it, thank you for taking the time to be a part of this. Um, the last thing I guess I would say is that I I I hope that the things that I I can do really really well offset some of the things that I don't do as well yet. Um, and that my ability to build teams, take care of my people, and put students first is a good match for SW. And on that,

176we thank you very much. You said it very well. Well, I want to thank also the audience for um well, first of all, let me thank you properly. We appreciate your interest in the uh in the position and uh we're interviewing a number of candidates. So, uh we will definitely contact you if you are a finalist and I do want to thank you for coming and letting us get to know you a little bit. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. And Mr. Ladder said it very well. We're going to be wrapping up soon. I just want to thank you all for coming in person. and it did, you know, taken a good chunk of your your your home life and shared it with us. And thanks to everybody watching the recording and the

177live stream. Okay, we are going to without objection then have a quick 10 minute recess and get back to have a discussion about the candidates. Great. So, we're back. Thank you very much for waiting. Jay, I have a question about we're we're about to do a little discussion of the candidates. Uh, how free are we to share thing our gleanings from resume and social media and whatever else we found. So, what we're going to focus on right now is the things that we heard in the interviews tonight. The things that we that we liked that we heard in the interviews and then the things that we're still wondering about. Uh remembering that um only one of these candidates is going to eventually become the next superintendent here in Selen. Uh the rest need to go

178back to their current districts and their current jobs. And we're in an open meeting. And so, um you know, as uh my mother taught me many many years ago, if I don't have anything nice to say, I'm not going to say anything at all. Uh so, we want to stick to the positives. If you have nothing to add, then feel free to uh pass or not say anything. But if you've got some thoughts on what you heard from the candidates tonight that you'd like to make sure that we get down, uh then we'll talk about those. U we had three interviews tonight. Uh so while it's still fresh in your mind about the things that you heard from them and the answers that you heard from them, the questions, uh I'd like to just have

179a a brief discussion each of the three candidates. Okay. All right. So first candidate that we do we need to make a motion to have that discussion? Oops. It's on the agenda already. So it was it was moved that um we went forward forward with the agenda as printed. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So we started the evening tonight with Harold Yearwood. What did we hear from Harold that we liked that stood out to us that we thought was promising? Anything along those lines? And just feel free to just shout it out. I wanted to ask a question or offer a suggestion. So, I want to reflect on what Darcy said about a little bit more time because I like to read feedback and and and think about things as well. So, respect that. And and

180as I was listening to the candidates and making notes, I wrote down some questions that are more general. They were they were created while listening to a specific individual or two. Um but how do we go about when we have a general type of question versus this particular candidate? A general type of question about um Okay, I I'll give you an example. So, as we were going through this, I was going through their letters of reference and kind of the online portfolio, and many of the candidates um overall and and some tonight had letters of reference that had dates that were as old as 2019. Sure. Um and so I guess I my first question was why is that? Because I'm I'm thinking through is that a pro or a con when thinking about the

181individuals if they didn't have um newer letters necessarily? So that actually applies to several. So that's a an example of one of the general questions. Yeah. So uh you know ideally we'd like to see something that's you know uh at least three years or less old. Um and occasionally uh you know they really like that particular letter from that particular individual. They really want you to see it and they realize that it's six years old but they think it's still relevant and so they include it in the portfolio. uh sometimes they just uh are under a time crunch and don't have uh you know maybe they've requested a letter of reference from somebody and they just haven't got around to getting it to them and the amount of time that they needed in order to

182so there's a variety of reasons. Um you know I I don't read a whole lot into it. Uh generally speaking, when uh the board does reference checks, uh I encourage you to, you know, reach out to those individuals that wrote the letters of reference and have a conversation with them in addition to the references that they've listed specifically uh in the materials. And so I usually assign each board member uh several of the uh references of the check for each of the individuals and we kind of go from there. So a follow-up question to that one. Um you said when the board does reference checks. Yes. So can you talk a little bit about that and and what you're doing versus what the district is doing versus what the board individual members are doing because

183we had been instructed not to contact. Correct. Okay. So uh district is not doing anything related to reference checks. Uh between the first and second round interviews once you've selected your your second round candidates u for your second round uh then I will assign each board member some references to reach out to and talk to and and we have a list of questions that we provide to you. uh you then after the end of the second round interviews will do a recap for me and for the rest of the board on the types of things that you heard in those reference checks. Okay, that's the first time I think I'm hearing that we're doing individual calls to to candidates. I'm I'm fairly certain that we talked about that at the very beginning process of the

184search as part of the process. Uh you know, all the background checks have been completed. I believe there's still something pending on one of the candidates, but all the background checks have been completed. Nothing's come up in the background checks of any significance. Um, but the reference checks we reserve for those uh candidates that we're moving into the second round. Uh, and it's just another uh data point that uh that all of you have in order to help you make your decision. So, between um this week and next week, we will be calling on a a list of individuals. Correct. was for two for two of the candidates for Yeah. for two of the candidates. Correct. So So for for two or for the individuals that go on to round two, which may not be

185two candidates, could be two, could be three. Okay. Um so you just mentioned background information and you'd also mentioned sending us the social media and background information report. Um and thank you for sending that tomorrow before the board meeting so we can um we can digest that. Um, this is a question that I've been receiving from staff about how are we vetting them. Um, and so can you explain because I know a lot of them are watching on live stream a little bit more about what that encompasses specifically so they're hearing it from you. Yeah. Well, the vetting process is primarily uh we're taking a look at the application materials that they present. covered letter, resume, uh questions in the application, um their list of references and and uh reference letters. Uh in order to

186create a fairly level playing ground um for all of our applicants, we're sticking to should be sticking to the application materials that are coming through. Uh in addition to that, uh you know, I do cursory Google searches on the candidates that I'm not aware of, uh that I haven't seen in their searches. Um, and depending on the types of things that I find, if there's something that uh kind of speaks to me, uh, that may not be something that the board wants to necessarily bring out in front of the the community, then I'm going to make a note of that. And, you know, as you remember, uh, when you receive the two uh, tiers of applicants, those in the top tier were those that most closely match the things that you were looking for. Those

187in the bottom tier uh, were not. Um, and so that vetting process kind of helps me in defining that process. And if you remember, I also provided you with a rubric uh that we used in order to help score. And that rubric was a big part of helping you score that for the first the top and the bottom tier as well. Okay, great. Follow up to that one. Um you had mentioned candidates that you're not familiar with. So some you would be familiar with. And so I guess my question is um um for our three candidates tonight, and I'll ask this tomorrow, too. Um have you or are you working with any of them on other opportunities presently? Uh, not that I'm aware of. Okay. And that's for just the three tonight. Yeah. Okay. Perfect.

188Um, for candidates who have not been superintendent before or might have experience in a smaller district than Seline or maybe a little less tenured, what has been um, some best practices you've seen through MASB um, with regards to mentorship, coaching, and professional development for those individuals? MASA's Horizon's program for uh, for new superintendents, for first year superintendent Okay. And what was that called again? MASA Horizons program. So that's the that's the Michigan Association for School Administrators, the Superintendent and Administrator Super uh Association. They have a program for uh first-time superintendent. Uh I highly recommend it's very effective for uh those first-time superintendents and they get to learn from veteran superintendents. They get to interact with other first-time superintendents, create a network, and I found it to be very effective for uh for boards and superintendents

189with those first- time superintendents. Okay, those are my general questions and that horizon's um program sounds really great. Yeah, thanks. A general question. So um I know you spoke about how uh we wouldn't reach out to anyone until after we make the next decision, but I'm based on materials alone may have some trouble deciding how to make that next decision. And one question I guess I have is that it seems like it would be useful to reach out to sort of a variety of people, maybe not just the people listed. Uh, you know, people spoke tonight about having a not so awesome experiences or different experiences. So, are we procluded as board members from looking into uh you know looking into that in order to help us move to the finalist position or do you

190know you know you said you would share information? So, I guess I'm just asking on your social media searches what kind of information is out there. Sure. So, I'm not going to preclude you from making any inquiries of your own. Um, that's going to be completely up to, you know, up to you how much you want to reach above and beyond the references that they provided. That's going to be completely up to you. Uh, I always encourage, especially for those that are current sitting superintendents, for the board president, to reach out to the board president of that particular district if they are current sitting superintendent so they can have that board president to board president conversation. And that's generally one of the people that if not listed by the superintendent as a reference, uh, I

191still encourage the board president to reach out to that other board president anyway. Um, and so, uh, you're going to get, and I'm sure you've already received a number of unsolicited, uh, opinions on candidates. Um, and, you know, I just caution you, uh, that, um, those unsolicited opinions are not always coming, you know, with the best intentions in mind. Um, and, you know, you're going to get a variety of of stories on a variety of different things. So, uh, use your best judgment and how you vet that information. And if you have any serious questions about information that's presented to you, please share it with me and I'll do my best to vet it out and let you know what I find as well. So, I actually have not received that much in the way

192of unsolicited information. So, here's me soliciting from the public information and opinions. Be careful of what you wish for. Other questions I can answer for you? on the um individual candidates. Yeah. So, if we if we go back to our first interview tonight, uh what did we hear from Harold that really kind of resonated with us? Yeah. So, I think he has a a lot of experience. I appreciated his um he repeatedly talked about scholars first and I think that goes with our student first um mentality around here. Um you know I thought he had a really good um sense of running big organizations which I think is really useful here. Um so those were positives. I I felt he was sincere in talking about his um you know appreciation for students and I thought

193he had good evidence of um test scores increasing and um you know pretty specific feedback. I, you know, we got some feedback regarding um no mention of us special education um students or little mention and I thought I noticed that also. Um I think it is an interesting thing as an educator which I am not to to balance all your needs but I'm only supposed to be positive but so I thought in general his focus on academic excellence was something I appreciated. Okay, good. Others? Well, I certainly share that and he obviously has a great many experiences as an administrator. I did note with a little dismay that he had not spoken much about Seline directly. Didn't seem to have done a lot of Seline centric homework as opposed to the second candidate tonight who

194went way the other direction. But let's focus on on Dr. Yearwood first. So what you're saying is one of your wonders for uh Brian would be what is it that you know about Seline? That's a very good translation of what I just rambled. Thank you. Yeah. And so to that point uh one of the reasons that we talk about their wonders is so that if they do in fact make it to the second round now we have a question for that second round. So what is it that you can tell us about Seline? What is it that you can tell us about our district? think something of that nature. And so that's why we talk about these wonders to help us kind of develop those uh those questions for the second round. Okay. Thank you

195for the guidance. Absolutely. So other things that we heard from Brian that we liked or Harold that we like tonight. Yeah. Um so I would add um I liked some specific examples he gave around communication and transparency. So an example of that would be a former district um it might have been his last one, I didn't recall. um live streaming committee meetings so people could really engage and and understand what was going on with the board of education. Okay. Um my wondering would be um he spoke with a lot of um passion and and love about um immersion when discussing languages when discussing the the other school with um nature-based curriculum programming. Um, and it really caused me to pause and um, as I looked at him speak about that with a with um, you

196know, kind of some cherished memories. I didn't understand why he would leave that position um, last year uh, and be looking for something new when I was hearing such positives and um, closeness to some of the initiatives that they had in the district. Okay. anything anybody else would like to share regarding the things that we heard that we'd like tonight. I I also had a bit of a dismay that he said he met with his financial officer on a weekly basis and to me knowing how our offices work here once a week meeting with the financial officer seems dreadfully thin. Uh now maybe that's how it works with a larger school district, but um we're a lot they're a lot closer here. Um Dr. Latch's office and his his interactions with the HR and finance

197and teaching and learning are daily and multiple. So So what you're wondering is how often would he plan on meeting with his administrative team and his administrators or something to that effect? We can work workshop that one. Yeah, thank you. Absolutely. Other wonders other things that we're wondering about from our first candidate? I I'll go now. Um I saw a lot of things where he was focused on student achievement and improving on student achievement and he was able to give some data about some of those things and that and that made me um happy. Okay. Uh my wonderments are the exact same two wonderments that have been expressed and that is it did not I' I'd want to know why Seline for him a little bit more. Okay. and and why he's specifically interested in

198this position and and I would have liked a little more clarity on the questions from him with regards to what he would accomplish and want to do here. Sure. Um and then the other thing is I have some wonderment too as well about some of the um you know Yeah. things like I mean there there are a lot of really great things happening in Missouri there and and so some of that kind of stuff would would interest me and you know why why m why come all now you're going to come to Sling come to Michigan come to so just some of those kinds of things would be something I'd be in wonderment about for no reason maybe you have a family member who lives here but my point is sure it's made other wonders

199all right any other comments on Our first candidate tonight, Harold Yearwood. Okay. All right. So, let's take a look at our second candidate for the night. Alexander Citron. What did we hear that we liked? What resonated with us? Is it okay if I go? Yeah. Okay. Uh so, uh some positives, uh that I took away, uh he obviously did a great deal of research on the district and us individually in my line of work. We would caution on that. I'm just kidding. Uh but he did a great deal of research on us. He knew personal items about a number of us. Um, I think that shows that he was really digging in and really wanted to do his homework on that. Um, he knew the uh names of key staff. Um, he toured the high

200school. I didn't hear anybody else mention anything about, you know, the walked around the district, any of the schools. He liked the energy. I I appreciated that. Um, probably one of the most important things is he knew he knew all of our data points and key differentiators on our data. Um, I thought that was impressive. Uh, he knew a lot, uh, that went along with, uh, our metrics. Um, I also like that he used a lot of personal experience to reflect on almost every single one of his answers. So, he was drawing on personal experience, which was vast. Uh, for this particular candidate, I have probably more follow-up questions than anybody would want me to read. Um but uh from a personal perspective because I I I think this is important when you're interviewing anybody

201not just reflecting on professional experiences and things like that. He had made mention uh of uh I'm going to get the term incorrect what he said but from ethnically ambiguous. Uh he described himself as you know sometimes people thinks he's he's Greek or Lebanese or uh Spanish. So he touched on something that I would really like to ask a personal follow-up question on uh when he talked about um being in a grocery store and depending on how he's dressed, how people interact with him, and I think that would be really reflective on some of the challenges that Selena has seen over the last couple years. So, I I think that would be an important question to ask, how that made him feel and how he reacted in that particular situation. Um, and the other question

202that I I would like to ask along with my eight others I have written down, but I won't take everybody's time. Um, he acknowledged that there could be possible failures taking this position. And I I think everybody uh makes mistakes. If if I only screw up three times before 10:00 a.m., I I consider it a good day. So, what I would like to know is what would he fear most about making a mistake here in the district? um you know depending what that mistake he he would like to rattle on but what would he fear most about making a mistake in leadership here all right I guess I'll jump in after that if everybody's okay with that so um the I you know the biggest thing that hit home with this candidate for me is

203this candidate really wanted to be here right like I mean really connected really like you know there was engagement with with you know family here and all that and he had a lot of support and I was I'm really excited about that for him. He's a tremendous human being um just from a standpoint of like wanting to give back to others and volunteerism and all of that. So like kudos on that. He has you know really built some impressive programs. He talked about NTSS and how and we know that NTSS is really important to us as a as a you know part of our student improvement and and is part of our how do we go about you know making decisions and that kind of thing. So I thought that he talked about that. Um

204the the wonderments that I'd have about him a little bit um are not his fault. Um and the thing is I'd wonder how he'd handle a $78 million budget. Um, I wonder how he'd handle um, just having a director of communication, a director of transportation, a director of HR, a director of, he said he built a school from the ground up. So maybe like from the, you know, school to the ground up, then maybe he did all those things and maybe he had a teaching and learning team and he had a, you know, a a cric, you know, a per person who was in charge of curriculum and all those kinds of things. I guess I'd want to know more about some of that kind of experience because we're $78 million thing with all of

205those various components. So, so if I could piggyback on that, he's referring to the EAA experience, the Educational Achievement Authority under Coington at the time if he was building a school from the ground up. He just seemed a little I don't know, I felt like it was such a churning environment that he just kind of wafted right past that. So that that whole element, the fact that it was started by Governor Snyder very abruptly and not with a great deal of popularity and yet he was pulled into this experience, which is fine. It was great. All the teachers I met there were were and administrators were really focused and wanted it to happen. But I thought that he would talk a lot more about that experience. So that's sort of my wonderment. What Brad said

206is what I'm saying. Got it. Um what I appreciated most about Alex was his um that he has a heart for this work. Uh you know he was in an area of finance which I'm just going to assume uh was going to lead to better economic outcomes long term than education. Um but he found a passion for it and uh redirected his career path. Um and I think that that's going to take you a long long way. And that reminds me of our teachers here that they are here for our kids and it's a passion. Um my I guess question or wonderment would be is that we are a bigger pond and he is willing to jump in uh with both feet. Um and I think that we have great central staff that would be

207able to support him. Um I would be I if we're allowed to ask where they're at. No. Okay. I don't know either. I think we have great central staff who would be able to support him because I think this would be a growth role for him, but um I I think that enthusiasm makes up for, you know, a lot of learning. Um and that he's willing to to put in that work and that we are not a stepping stone for him. Sure. Darcy, can I just ask you to um I I didn't just quite hear something. Sorry. Yes. um what were you and Brad talking about? I didn't understand the exchange. So, I think that we have a very strong central admin team here with department heads and um just wanting I I guess I

208want to make sure that um they feel strong enough to be able to support someone who is um this is a bigger pond. Okay, perfect. I didn't know if we were allowed to ask and I Yeah. No, you're good. No, I second that. I I want to know what the core team thinks as well. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Yeah. So, um I would back up uh what my colleague said about warmth and passion um for Seline and for students in general. Another positive thing I noticed is that he gave a pretty specific example to question nine about budgets which I was listening for because there was you know I also sort of shared the concern of um budgetary experience and I thought that his example was quite good like they he mentioned a $94.7 million

209uh lawsuit settlement and he was talking about how to fairly um you know disperse that money and he talked about hiring parapros, which of course I liked. He talked about getting focus groups and um and then he talked about like finding ways to elevate the his English as English language learners, but he also in the same breath talked about finding ways to sort of leverage special supports for certain students into wider opportunities for all students. So, I really appreciated that about the interview. Um my wonderment would be you know if this is I was sort of feeling like since um he had superintendent um experience in the past and was at such a large district that maybe those two things combined would allow him to um move to some place like this. But my wonderment

210was whether or not his experience in direct leadership of very capable individuals just under him would translate well to um being the person that someone reported to. And I guess I would like to hear more if he were to come back about how um how it went with having people report to him in a leadership or sort of uh you know top of the chain sort of role. and how he earned that respect and beyond friendship or uh sort of warmth or personal attachments. Sure. All right. Any other comments on our second candidate tonight? I have some. Um so, uh I'm going to echo a couple of things that I heard as well. Um I thought he had a nice enthusiasm and a hunger for this particular role. So that's attractive. um clearly had looked

211in looked into Selen area schools. I like that he was able to recite how many students are in Detroit public schools. I think it was 52,528 and he quoted how many staff like that means something because it's a number but behind those numbers are people and to know that I thought was was was very nice. I also said um that I like not a stepping stone or a jumping off from place. I appreciate that. Um, with this particular candidate, I wrote down less. I found myself writing down less because I was trying to keep up with the the the pace of the storytelling. So, I thought that the storytelling um was was good, but at sometimes I didn't feel like our questions were answered. So, if I look back um I took very little notes

212on one particular one. I took no notes on one because I was trying to um grasp what he was saying and going into and um there was one question specifically that Jason um asked that I I wrote down. I don't feel like I know what the answer to this really was. Um and that was around the preservation and sustainability of our district reputation. Um Oh, that was you. Okay. thought it was. So, um, so I that's an incredibly important question to me because this is a very very high performing school district. Um, our students, our staff, and so that's important. That's very important to me. Um, he had mentioned that he can't sit behind a desk. I get that. Like I I like to move around as well. Um, and I love that Steve is

213out in the classrooms and we see that on his weekly reports and emails to the community. I love it. But we all know how many meetings Steve's in. We can see his calendar. We talk to him. He's in a lot of meetings and he is sitting behind a desk a lot of time. He had he does an excellent job of balancing that with being visible in the community. But I I don't want this individual to think that he can't not sit behind a desk. There will be sitting behind a desk. Um, and my questions about supports in the Horizon's program were stemming from this interview. Um, I I I felt a little bit uncomfortable um with one of the questions and some of the answers about asking staff not to take vacations and talking about

214female reproductive private issues on a live stream. I will not repeat that because I don't know if the woman has given her permission to be discussing that at our board table. Um that signals to me less maturity in a leader. Um and so that's where my question was coming from about supports for a new superintendent because I I I it's not healthy to not ask people to take a vacation. I'll leave it at that. Okay. of the several things that Jennifer just said, um I I'd like to sort of amplify either end of them. The first is that I also took very few notes because I felt his answers were kind of meentric. Uh and there were stories which is great. It's a good way to start things, but they sometimes it appears that he'd

215lost the thread of what he was talking about. And uh the last part I it was a feeling of maturity. Great guy. I'm really delighted about a number of the things that he shared, but I I I felt like he it was more of an application for like a a Ryan Cerr job or I didn't feel like he was I just felt he was a little immature in some of his responses. Okay. U so as for wonderments, um I I I would ask a few specific questions like you mentioned UNESCO twice, but I was still left wondering for which program was he focusing on. So these are like direct questions I would ask him. He talked about the SC up, not the PSI but the PSY I mean but SIOP which is interesting but uh

216and he also went into great elaborate detail about the sanctuary policy of the district and which I found interesting as a story but um I I would have liked to have heard more about his national or uh advocacy beyond the MDE. So, okay, my two cents, any other comments on our second candidate? I thought he was very personable and passionate. I mean, he he's seems like a great guy. Um, he does he I think he does a lot with ELLL, so I think that was very um that was very encouraging. I do have some questions about his uh executive ability. Um, so that would be And I think he did spend a lot of time looking at our district and seeing what our district needs. Um and our district is very we have we have

217our own issues and um some of those issues I think is are easily to be found when you do your research on Seline and I think um so I I I got some questions on whether or not that was a good fit maybe. Okay. Anything else? All right, last candidate tonight. Tracy Louderder. I'm fine kicking off again if everyone's Yeah. Um, I really like the fact that he did have notes but referred to them very infrequently. I I I like that. Uh, I also like that he uh was articulate in his speech and it flowed well despite not referencing notes and he did not appear to uh give be giving any theatrics when he was talking. Um, I think that came out in his emotion. I think that was uh I think that was all

218truthful and I think that's where he's coming from. Uh, he was very thoughtful in his answers. I like the fact that he paused. He he gave it thought before he answered it. Uh that is showing me because that is one of my problems. I want to answer before the before the questions out. So I appreciated that. Um I'm not going to say what word I put down here, but he's very straightforward and no uh extra stuff. He was just very very plain uh and put it out there. His opinion is his opinion. He's willing to listen to other people, but he likes that he he stands strong uh in his stances even in disagreement. I thought that was uh I thought that was excellent. Um there's a couple other really good positives. I wrote down

219his actual quotes because uh it's exactly where my head's at. One question that I would like to ask if we were to bring him back um would be that I would want him to talk about his experience specifically with schools of choice and what he feels pros and cons are because that has been a a topic uh uh for us uh off and on uh for a little bit. So that'd be one of the questions that I would like to ask. There was Okay. Um there's a couple others around his programs that he got set up that I would love to know how he got buy in for, but that can be for a different time. Okay. What else? So, I thought he was a very real candidate. Um his emotions showed it. I thought

220that was um it's kind of nice sometimes to see some people show their emotion. They have to kind of let their guard down. So, I thought that was uh that was pretty impressive that he um he was willing to do that. he did that in staff focused. I mean, he referenced his staff a lot. I think um right now our our staff, you know, needs lifted up and um so I thought that was very impressive. I think he's going to definitely would uh collaborate with our staff a lot. So, I thought that was a that was a pro for me. Okay. Um yeah, like I I I I could tell you that the teacher in me really like connected with him and in particular like when I really connected when he was very authentic and

221very real and very you know for example like I found the end he got a little emotional and then I found the end of his question on unique skills or leverage to be when he talked about like how he flipped the Northeast school from a priority to a reward school and then he immediately Ely followed that up with about school of choice and challenges with success. I was like, "Dude, you're nailing that, you know?" Um, so like I just really did I I did resonate with that, right? I want someone who cares, someone who, you know, can connect and and when you're the face of our school district, there are going to be moments where you're going to have to do that, right? Um my wonderment with him uh I won't is a couple of

222things that I I I kind of feel similarly a little bit like with Alex where um you know he talked about a one-man show and he talked about those kinds of things. I I worry a little bit about some of his executive I I love how Tim worded that's an executive functioning I I worry about like how would our team grow from him um and some of those kind of things. Yeah, executive function is about brains isn't it? I'm the But anyway, but you I think you know where I'm getting at. Um, so anyway, so I'd want to know more about that. I'd wonder a little I' I' I'd want him to like experience some positivity potentially in a superintendency and because I think he could do the job really well and then see a

22378 million dollar budget with all of these things kind of come his way. Um, so that'd be my wonderment would be, you know, how ready is he for for that for this particular superintendency at this particular time. Okay. Yeah. Oh, were you ahead? Are you sure? Okay. I'm here. So, um, I appreciated the, um, opening statement. Uh, he referenced athletics, arts, and meeting the needs of students. He talked about his teaching experience which was pretty broad between teaching kindergarten, teaching middle school, uh working with in the gifted and talented program. Um, I liked his answer to my question regarding uh working with community and when he pointed out that he had worked with the Rotary and it just seemed like a really real answer that was very specific and it made me think that he

224would be able to he seemed like the type of person who could work with various groups in our community and could sit down with people and sort of win people's respect over time. um even though he maybe doesn't have the kind of experience I'm having some difficulty with how to weigh being young and enthusiastic and having vision which are all things that I would like to see versus experience and um we do have the benefit of a really experienced finance team. Um, I didn't get any sense that he would not take the job seriously. I felt like he was a very, even though he was plain spoken, was a very serious-minded person who took instruction from people um, with a lack of ego. And I really appreciate that in leaders. I think there were some

225things about that that kind of reminded me of our current leadership that he was able to understand where he wasn't an expert and seek out expert opinion but then came back to saying that he understood that the sort of the buck would stop with him. So I was intrigued by hearing more about that. Um, I thought that his answer about centering teachers, um, and sort of letting that flow back to students was interesting. Um, and I sort of wondered about more about his leadership style on the like um, you know, in that we're currently going through contract negotiations and like what his experiences are regarding sort of those bigger picture kind of leadership moves that are less relational and less relationships and more kind of on a larger scale and also um, vision and priorities

226for the district because this would obviously be a pretty big change from his previous superintendent. um position and it sounded like that was a position where he was really working with really limited resources in a lot of ways and this is a very resource luckily a very resource rich environment. So sometimes the challenges are setting the priorities um and so one of my wonders would be how have you prioritized in the past? How would you like to what would your vision be for Seline specifically in terms of priorities? But overall um I had very I had positive I I took this interview positively. Okay. Al although he he said he would take the financial part very seriously. I didn't hear much of in in his answer uh that he talked about he had some key

227words expenses versus revenue but that's that's 101. Um, so I I feel like he did not he tiptoed past some of the questions, although he did give a couple of uh I mean I appreciated his being a cheerleader, etc. and sharing credit. I like that. Um, and he gave some good examples about using data for management informed decisions. Thanks. That was a good question there, Darcy. And moving more kids into AP courses. I mean, some of this isn't really relevant to us, so we need to So, um, I don't have as many questions. I I just I feel like I we need to flesh out some of his answers. Okay, Jennifer has one. Yeah. Um so I also appreciated that I didn't feel he was reading a scripted answer um and that he was engaging

228with us. I saw a lot of um you know back and forth emotion and the human side. I really appreciated that he's definitely a straight shooter. So I think about that leadership style meshing with what we have currently in Seline. reflecting on that. He did know a lot about specific items that I enjoyed hearing about um with regards to AP tardiness, master scheduling, the bond, um sharing credit. These were all like really good points to hit on. Um on the wondering side, I'm wondering how flexible he can be in hearing other people's viewpoints. Um this is something that Seline desperately needs. um a a bridge builder and being able to take in all and I'm talking about staff and community um and students listening to students who have different different viewpoints and experiences as well.

229Um I wonder also about his what came off as a very hands-off leadership style and that can have pros and cons. Um I wonder about it being too handsoff for staff, not that they need to be micromanaged. However, being a support and saying, "What can I do to help you?" versus having some constructive ideas is already something that I see coming up on the on the feedback forms from staff. So, I'm not surprised. Um, at the end of the day, if Fander Cook was too much and it has 700 students and we have 5,000 and we are a top 20 school in the state of Michigan academically, if that was too much, what is this? That's really what I'm I'm struggling with. Sure. Oh, and one one other thing. Um Jay had you had a

230met you had made a comment at the beginning of this which I appreciate the sensitivity. Um you said one of these candidates um will become Selen's next superintendent so being you know careful and some people are going back to their districts and things like that. I just wanted to remind the board um this didn't happen last time but this always can happen at superintendent search. We can and do have the power to send this back to search if we want. Absolutely. Um so one of these candidates may or may not become absolutely the the superintendent. So I just wanted to remind that because to be completely honest, I've had that question from quite a few staff as well is if the board is not satisfied with this pool of candidates. I'm not saying we are

231and I'm not saying we aren't. Sure. I'm saying it's been a question that's come up. That's a valid That's a very valid point. Appreciate you bringing that up. All right. Anything else on our last candidate? Yeah. Um I appreciated that uh he was expressed some self-awareness and understood um what his strengths and weaknesses were uh and his acknowledgement that his move to to Vanderook was um not probably in alignment with where he was at growthwise. Um, I also appreciated his somewhat creative problem solving in uh getting kids into school and meeting them where they were at. And that included adjusting schedules. And I appreciated his his interest in getting more students into AP classes and making that available to them. Um, I think that he was considering a a population that needs an extra effort

232and he put that in. Um, I also appreciated that he I felt like he was 100% teacher focused. I worried that there wasn't enough centering of students. I mean, you know, he's saying in service of the students, this is how he um he leads. Uh, I don't know how well that will fly in Seline. I think that um we have strong parent voices and we have excellent students uh who have strong voices as well and I think that we need to be able to balance all of that. But yeah, I appreciated what he had to say. Darcy made me think about one more thing with him because if we meet with him again, I'd want to know this about him too. Okay. Um he talked about being a people pleaser, right? which I think is

233great and I think it he does connect and he builds relationships but sometimes there are nasty parts of this job that are going to require no require like boldness require struggling like what do you do with a struggle I'd want to know what would you do with a teacher who's really really struggling to improve what would he do with a student who was struggling with outcomes that are related to xyz I'd want to know just some of those things that he has. I'm sure he has done just from his experiences, but I'd want him to tell me about some of those nastier, meaner, more difficult parts of the job. Okay, good. And Jay, I'm going to mention something that I'm probably going to regret because it might influence tomorrow's interviews, but um I guess a

234wonderment I have for all of them is no one really talked about our CTE programs. Um, and that's a really big part of of who we are. And we only had like um one mention mostly from Alex about our special ed which is also a big part of who we are. Okay. Any other comments on Mr. Louder? Okay. Fantastic. Nicely done. Great recaps. A couple things I don't need answers on tonight, but I want you to ruminate on them because I will need answers on these things tomorrow night. So, we already talked a little bit about uh the reference checks. So, if you know for now or if you're not sure, kind of think about what your schedule looks like between tomorrow night and Tuesday. And if you think you're not going to be available

235to make calls because of things going on in your life, whatever. just when we talk about that tomorrow night, just come prepared to to let me know about your availability for making roughly two to three phone calls on some of those references. Okay? Um, think about whether or not you're going to want to see a 8 to 10 minute presentation um from the candidates uh before we get into the interview questions for the second round. We don't need to worry about topics or anything like that right now, but just think about whether or not you want to just go right in the questions for a second round, whether you'd like to see them give you a presentation just to kind of give you an idea as to how they would present information to the board

236and to the community. Okay. Um, we'll talk about second round questions. You gave me some great wonders tonight. I expect you'll give me some great wonders on the applicants tomorrow night. So, I think we'll be in good shape for second round questions. Remembering during the second round, opportunity for follow-up questions. if something just kind of sparks uh you know in your head as you're listening to them, feel free to jump in with some follow-up questions or clarifying questions or things that you were looking for in the first round that you didn't hear like some of the things we talked about tonight. Uh if those don't find their way into a question uh that we developed specifically, then you know, jot it down and feel free to ask that as a as a follow-up. Um, so

237that is to say, uh, generally speaking, for second round, we're usually looking at about an hour 15 minutes per interview. So, a little bit longer of an interview. Uh, fewer questions because we're going to allow them to go a little bit deeper and then allow you some space for some follow-up. So, if you don't see a question within the preliminary 10 questions or so, that's okay. just jot it down and you know think about using it as a follow-up and then also leaving some time for questions from uh from your audience members as well. Okay. Um think about whether or not you would like them your finalists uh to take a tour of the district. Uh and if that's the case then remember that that is something that is going to rely on your staff

238um here in the district to uh to take them around and and show them the district and whatnot. So that's going to be contingent on whether or not the staff is available and willing to do something. But if that is something that you're interested in, then think about that and we can work on the logistics of that. Uh an open house is something that we generally do. So if we're doing the interviews at first interviews at six o'clock, two rooms in this building down the hall here, uh we put the candidates three rooms and we have three candidates from say 4:30 to 5:30, 4 to 5:30, something along those lines. and then members of your community and staff can come through and can visit with them and ask questions of them and talk with them.

239And then we'll have those input forms there as well. And so if they want to fill out those input forms about how that visit went, then they can fill those input forms out. I'll collect those and then get those to you as well. Um and then if you think you're going to want to do any type of uh behavioral testing on the applicants. So we've got the achiever test that we've talked about before. The achiever test is something that's uh had has been tuned specifically to superintendent. Just another data point uh going to give you a little bit information about uh how they process information. Um there's all kinds of nifty things in there. There's there's a numerical section that's timed and uh it it's kind of um measuring your proficiency in looking at numbers

240and then there's some uh other scenarios in there. Again, just another data point. We also offer the disk assessment as well. I'm sure most of you are familiar with disk assessment, MyersBriggs, things of that nature. So that's that kind of testing. Um so if you want to employ either or both of those, uh then we'll need to know that tomorrow night so we can get those processes set up. Okay. So again, don't need any answers tonight. If you've got any questions about any of those things, please let me know. But otherwise, that is something that we'll have to decide tomorrow night in addition to who we want to move down in the second round. Yeah, I may have one additional item that I'd hope for and it is potentially um a site visit of their

241home districts just because I'm not as familiar with this set of candidates and all of that that we can talk about site visits as well. Absolutely. Okay, Jay, my follow-up question would be is this timeline reasonable and feasible? I mean, I know we set it out, but this is a lot to to go from tomorrow night to next week for all of these items and and adding on Brad's um good idea as well, which we've talked about before. So, I I I think we're all balancing other items in our personal and professional lives, I say, with a laugh. Um, and so, I'm just trying to How does this all get done between now? And I'm not saying it's not important and we will all do the work, but we want to be fair and take

242good time to do this followup and absolutely read the feedback. Absolutely. Uh so, you know, uh did Jackie provide the feedback forms for for tonight? Um Oh, there you go. She's got them. There you go. Um so, we got the feedback forms from tonight. So, please take those home and and uh and take a look at them. Uh and we'll do the same tomorrow tomorrow night. We'll have them ready for you um to read. and we'll give you the time to read through them and and to uh and to contemplate uh tomorrow night for sure. Um the the timeline is tight. Uh we've got a couple things that we have to think about here. Um this is the timeline that we did agree with. Uh to your point, uh we also have to remember that

243um while I'm not ex I'm not aware specifically of any of these candidates being involved in other searches, that's not to say that there aren't. um they could very well be involved in searches that you know that my association is not running. Uh and so the longer this decision goes on then the the greater the chances are of us losing a you know losing a potential candidate to another search or possibly losing a candidate to um you know just cold feet uh the longer the process and the decision-m goes on. So we want to do our best to stick to the timeline that we've set. Um everything that we talked about tonight uh is definitely doable uh between now and then. Uh I wanted to give you a heads up uh tonight so you can

244start thinking about some of these things. But yes, putting together a presentation, turning around a presentation in that amount of time is generally not an issue. Uh remembering that the presentation, if we decide to go that route, uh it's more about how they present information to us. We're not going to get too hung up on the PowerPoint if there's misspellings and whatnot in the PowerPoint because we know they're putting those together pretty quickly. We're looking more about how it is that they present information to us um as opposed to uh you know nitpicking the uh the style of the presentation down. Uh but no, I think that it's definitely something that we can uh we can accomplish and and get us in position to make a decision next week as to how we want to

245proceed after that. And and just the agreed upon timeline also did include as the second meeting. So we do have May 7th, second round of interviews, first opportunity for possible selection. Then we have May 13th, traditional board meeting night, second opportunity for board selection if necessary. That is correct. Yeah. Do you have a thought as to whether those follow-up phone calls would need to be made during business hours? Uh, not necessarily. They there's something that can be made. I mean, you know, I don't know if we want to be calling them at 11 o'clock at night, but you know, I think before 9 uh p.m. would be reasonable. Um, and on the weekend. And on the weekend as well. Absolutely. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Any other questions? I think you've landed the plane. Thank you

246so much. I had a quick question. We had talked about maybe switching up the order of the questions tomorrow for um so uh if there's something that we want to change on the questions I might need that uh because I've already printed off the questions for tomorrow and um we have sent those out to the applicants for tomorrow as well. I'm not saying change the questions just change the order if uh yeah you know you've uh you've got the copies or I I'll have I guess I could present I I've got them with me. I could give you uh the packets um for tomorrow and if you want to discuss um maybe before the meeting tomorrow night if you want to discuss rearranging the order a little bit as long as we all are on

247board as to what that order is so that we don't muck it up too much that's fine. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I would just suggest starting at like four or five and then cycling back through. Okay. If that's I'm I'm down for whatever. Um, we could just for ease of use keep what we have go in different orders going from one end of the table to the other or something like that. I don't know. Whatever. I'll do that, too. I don't I don't really care. Because these questions have been used in other interviews recently. I understand. But if well if they're running out of time um I would like to hear sort of some fresh answers. I I don't necessarily disagree. The only problem is we've we've done this format with the first three and

248if we're talking about leaving it in apples to apples or level playing field I think changing the order now and that's a fair point would not could create a different advantage or disadvantage. That's fair. All right, we'll just leave it. Okay, anything else I can do for you tonight? Jay? Yeah. Are you are you staying in town or are you going home? I'm going home. All right, great. Thank you. Well, safe travels. Thank you. Thank you. All right, back to our regular agenda. I'd like to uh first of all thank the many, many people still here in the room. I want to thank whoever made live streaming possible. Well, okay, we all did. Um, the next board of education meeting will be held on Wednesday, April 30th, 2025, tomorrow at 6 PM. Uh, I'd like

249to entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Tissies support seven. J tizzies and J7. All in favor, please say I. I. Thank you. Oppose. Hearing none. Thank you.