Saline Area Schools: Board of Education Meeting (02.11.2025)

001e e e like to welcome everybody to tonight's the February 11th 2025 selary Schools Board of Education meeting welcome to everybody including AP Gov students I know you're out there uh standing as you're able please we will start with the Pledge of Allegiance led by our very dear friend Dr Ryan the flag's over here sir Dr Ryan Dr Ryan ran row to the flag of the United States of America and to the republ for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all I offered to let a student do the pledge but she was terrified so next time next time um I'd like to pass over the microphone to superintendent lch for a a uh an interesting um recognition thank you good evening everyone we're very excited as both Grace Roth

002and Hunter Easton are two of the 120 Michigan State finalists announced for the prestigious 2024 25 mhsaa Farm Bureau Insurance scholar athlete Awards the programs in its 36th year and it's recognizing student athletes who participate in at least Le one sport in which the association sponsors the association the mhsaa sponsors a postseason tournament to be eligible for the award students must have a cumulative GPA of 3.5 or higher and previously have won a varsity letter in at least one sport in which the mhsaa sponsors a postseason tournament however multip multiple sport participation Remains the norm among the applicants students also were asked to respond to a series of short essay questions and submit two letters of recommendation and 500-word essay on the importance of sportsmanship in educational Athletics class a scholarship recipients will be announced

003on February 18th we're very proud of both Grace and Hunter being honored as two of the top student athletes in the entire state of Michigan let's give them both a warm Round of Applause and invite them up to the podium to tell us a little bit about [Applause] themselves to make it green the push button somewhere on there there we go good evening it's an honor to be here tonight my name is Grace Roth and I ran and I've run cross country and track and played basketball for all four years of high school I play French horn in s's concert band and was a member of the marching band for three seasons I'm I've been blessed to be a part of so many selem programs that have supported my interests since elementary school in the

004high school I am the executive council treasurer of National Honor Society and co-founder of a bi biology Tutoring Club that offers student tutoring before school on Tuesday and Thursday mornings I'm a member of students about saying healthy club and student council my favorite class in high school was Miss Dag's AP statistics class class where I saw the application of the material I was learning in the classroom into a future career for one of the first times she brought in a guest speaker that exemplified how data could make a difference in the real real world and that pretty much sold me on data science next year I planed to major in data science and statistics however if reading was still considered a school subject it would definitely get a mention I love reading a good book

005especially outside when the weather gets nice in my free time I love to run and challenge my sisters to basketball games in the driveway I also love to bike and to color and to make ice cream runs with my friends in the summer I love hiking and sitting around a bonfire and I'm a huge football fan I very grateful to be able to represent Seline as a student athlete through this scholarship I hope that younger student athletes can see that it's possible to pursue many different passions there's a big push to just focus on one thing as you going into high school and there's definitely something to be said for narrowing your focus and not overbooking yourself but I also think there's a lot of value in continuing to pursue many aspects of your identity

006I've learned valuable communication skills as I've navigated school and sports throughout the last few years I've realized that my teachers want to help when I'm not understanding the content I'm learning in class in a similar way I've learned to advocate for myself when conflicts arise between concerts and races and Club commitments I've had extremely supportive coaches over the last four years that have allowed me to be successful as well coach Stern my cross country coach has specialized running workouts for me during the basketball season and Coach hotop one of my basketball coaches got in the gym with me early to put up shots before school during the fall and the spring when I couldn't make it to after school workouts balancing three Sports Seasons would have been way more difficult without them thank you again

007for the honor tonight [Applause] hello my name is Hunter Easton um obviously I'm a senior class 2025 I play baseball um and kind of before I get to talking about myself I first want to thank Dr lch and the rest of the uh board of education for having us here tonight it's a really cool experience and a really great honor and I also want to congratulate Grace as she's a she's a great candidate uh I really hope she receives a scholarship I've known her since we were in fifth grade um and she's a great candidate she does a lot for this school and for the Seline Athletics so just congrats to her uh a little about me so I play baseball I'm the catcher I've been uh on Varsity for three years we won the

008district Championship back in my sophomore year which is my favorite memory of Seline baseball it was great to dog pile on the field and be with all of my team um I do a lot within Seline high school I'm in a lot of different clubs I am the class 2025 treasure for student council where we planned prom we planned graduation as well as our homecoming events um I'm in the National athletic Honor Society where I was selected as one of 30 members nationally to meet monthly about athlete mental health and athlete leadership where I've tried to incorporate that into our baseball leadership meetings and try and SP spread that throughout different sports in Seline High School uh I'm on the weight room design committee which is going in soon at the high school which I

009am super stoked to see a little sad I'm going to be gone at that point but super excited to see all my teammates get to use that in the future and me being being able to come back and uh use the wait room and then finally I was a student section leader this year where I one of the most fun experiences of my high school career happened we put on our high school game day show and an effort to bring the community together after obviously some tough issues and Seline um shout out our amazing shs video crew for helping us out with that they were awesome um some of my favorite classes in the high school one of which is marketing uh where we got to do sales pre presentations learn about Supply Chain management

010and learn about customer service which was all really fun and I working the edge this year which is a blast um and then another favorite class of mine is AP Eon uh Mr kaz's final year he's a great teacher and I've learned a ton about uh everything from monopolies to supply and demand ton of different stuff um so those are kind of my favorite classes and in closing I would say uh the city of Seline it's it's all about positivity kindness and a this great community and I I think I've tried to embody as much as I can of bringing this community together and everything I do and I'm so happy that I'm able to be here and talk in front of all of you and be a part of Seline baseball Seline Athletics and

011Seline high school so thank you don't sit down quite soon we want to do questions before we are we could do a question or two if there's anything any the board members okay Jennifer Ste what amazing Representatives you are of the school district I'm like beaming um Grace I have to say you are an absolute pleasure to watch run cross country I'm such a fan um Hunter I really like that you talked about mental health and mental wellness and Athletics so thank you for doing that and I hope to see you at a baseball game this spring thank you thanks okay so what we're going to do next is we're gonna um meet over here by where Jackie Martin is and she's going to take a picture of the board and Hunter and Grace and

012then we want to do that with your family so we'll go first with the feel free to come up with your cameras families I know you've got them ready e e thank you audience for your Indulgence this is the public comment section a member of the public May address the board briefly for up to three minutes or request to be scheduled on the agenda of a future meeting uh please note that students will be given priority to speak on any topic the first public participation portion is limited to one half hour normally and limited to agenda items a second public participation portion will be offered at the end to allow for any other comment uh indivuals addressing the board should take into consideration the rules of common courtesy the public participation portion cannot be used

013to make personal attacks against a board member district employee or a student we just have the one is that correct uh Miss y uh Jessica Hendricks pickles please thank you our secretary Berwick will hold up a yellow card when you're at about the 2 minutes and 30 second Mark okay thank you all right good evening members of the board as you begin the search for our next superintendent I urge you to consider what truly makes a school district successful not just in reputation but in its ability to serve all students in today's climate the words diversity equity and inclusion have become politically charged but the fundamental values behind them are not controversial they are the foundation of any school system that claims to care about all students every child should feel represented in the curriculum

014um included in their school community and safe in the environment when they spend most of their waking hours these are not radical ideas these are the bare minimum of what a functioning educational institution should provide yet time and again we see these priorities set aside in favor of Optics reputation management and quick fixed disciplinary action a strong leader will not simply seek to silence issues for the sake of Public Image but will acknowledge the complex systematic work required to create real change restorative practices cannot be an afterthought they must be a first step a foundational approach to discipline not a footnote in a punitive system designed for convenience students must be taught not just academic content but how to navigate a diverse World interrupting bias recognizing harm and learning from mistakes are not just extras

015these are essential life skills discipline should educate and repair not just punish and remove schools must stop treating serious racial incidents as isolated events requiring Swift and harsh discipline just to make a headline disappear we cannot continue pretending that the problem is solved when a single student is removed that approach does nothing to address the deeper issues in our district instead we need leadership that invests in ongoing Manor mandatory staff training not just optional professional development that could be ignored we need measurable concrete goals for improvement not empty rhetoric that Fades after the public Spotlight moves on additionally federal law guarantees students with disabilities the support they need not the support that's convenient for administrators to provide we need leadership that will uphold these rights without families having to fight for what should be automatic

016and finally we must examine what due process should look like when serious incidents occur there must be a fair transparent procedure in place procedures that do not allow for bias fear or self-interest to dictate I dictate outcomes a school district that prioritizes the well-being of all students must ensure that no child's future is sacrificed for the sake of a quick resolution we cannot afford another leader who's more concerned with maintaining appearances than with doing the difficult necessary work of real change this District needs a superintendent who understands that their job is not to protect the comfort of the most powerful but to protect the futures of the most vulnerable the students of Selen area schools deserve better all of them please choose a l leader who will rise to that challenge thank you thank you

017very much I just have two quick things to say I ran into um Mrs Hayes this evening uh the music teacher at Heritage and she said the uh junior band starts at 7:30 so if we can hustle the presentations along we might all be able to get out in time to okay I doubt very much that that'll happen this past weekend uh one of our uh our board members ran a marathon of sorts she took six courses through the Michigan Association of school boards and I just want to gift her with a pen for their diamond their 75th Anniversary it's a special pen it's not a real diamond sorry but Darcy Berwick thank you so much for doing that appreciate that this that was a herculan effort six six courses I I don't think I've

018even I even did that that's a lot three one day and three the next thank you so much uh at this point I'd like to uh have us revise or uh amend the agenda uh I'd like to items can be added or deleted at this point or the order changed at the request of an individual board member or the superintendent uh the agenda item has to be approved before proceeding further do we have a motion to proceed Michael I just had a a point of order and clarification did you want to just um for the item um for item number 15 did you want just want to mention the names later or would you like to revise I'm going to mention them then I would like to approve the agenda as printed JS do I

019have a second I'll support it gby BG thank you very much all in favor please say hi hi hi oppos good we have an agenda uh thank you very much I'd like to introduce am I introducing this gentleman or are you oh thank you very much get ready you're on I'd like to introduce you to uh Dr Ryan row who is going to uh he did promise me there'd be no arithmetic but I saw some numbers in his presentation so all bets are off I'll I'll just let you introduce yourself you're so good at it and oh thank you sure thank you Dr lotch and president McVey and Board of Education members thank you I always appreciate being here to talk about um my passion which is experiential and applied learning including Career Technical education

020efforts this has been a focus of the uh nine District superintendents Workforce Development and our postsecondary partners now for 3 to four years I'm fortunate to be at Selen area school's Board of education quite often to provide regular updates um however I'm making the trip around to all nine Board of Education um meetings over the next seven weeks to provide each district with an update on our CTE effort so thank you for the time this evening in Wasing County we certainly are looking for a world-class education for all of our students um that looks uh it comes through in different forms and formats so Career Technical education certainly would be one of those opportunities however advanced placement International back laurate first robotics dual enrollment and Project Lead the Way amongst others provide an opportunity for

021students to immerse themselves in real life Hands-On experiences that combine their purpose with their passion how do we get there when we look at a worldclass system of Education in washingon County when we're in the economic Hub of the state of Michigan um when it comes to Career Technical education it looks different than perhaps what what we were involved with when we were in school school looks different today than it did when we were going through both our academic uh core classes and our technical attitudes as well so we have to shift mindsets and we've been doing that with blending our continuous improvement with Innovation future Focus programming uh launching new programs we'll talk a little bit about the programs that have been launched throughout Wasa County uh in this presentation we're engaging the community

022so we held two Think Tank sessions earlier in May and we brought folks together throughout washingon County which included postsecondary leaders from Eastern U ofm and washing Community College along with um economic developers business industry leaders and certainly our educational K12 leaders as well um we're looking at a data driven future so we have entities like the University of Michigan Youth policy lab right in our backyard they have been at the Forefront of examining the lack of access to CT programming not only in washingon County but throughout the state of Michigan and then we've been collaborating with business industry Partners which we certainly need to as we move along this journey the system as it is and was so we in washingon County we'll look at a map in a in a few minutes but

023we have a decentralized uh system uh back in the day IPS salani and Willer run really had a strong robust Career Technical education center on the east side of this County obviously due to economic issues um that has shrunk at the same time the Southwest washingon Consortium which back then had five districts joining with Lincoln in 2009 has grown exponentially and so when we look at the Southwest Washington Consortium as one Consortium ipsilanti as a district and Arbor Public Schools in Whitmore Lake we have functioned differently not in a centralized manner so it's it's led to an inefficient complicated transportation system comes as no surprise to anyone in education that's one of our greatest barriers uh is transportation teachers work for local school districts they don't work for the ISD enrollment is below demand so

024we'll talk a little bit about weight list this evening and where we have students waiting to immerse themselves in Career Technical education but due to a lack of Supply they're not able to access those and then we lack a countywide system of career a awareness and exploration we look at this journey as Early Childhood through 12th grade in the new Michigan career development model I just hand out to you does take that from Early Childhood to 12th grade one thing we would not argue against is we have to start much earlier in that Career Development process uh our programming is funded through General funds so we do not have a vocational millage to help offset the cost of these experiences for our students but we do have a community with energy commitment and resources to

025help redefine what applied and experiential learning looks like so we're partnering with our K12 school districts we're partnering with businesses like Le bear Aerospace here in Seline zoler Toyota research and development uh University of Michigan Health are all at the table for this conversation uh our our postsecondary institutions so when we talk about mobility and we talk about uh energy and transportation we're partnering with m city at the University of Michigan when we talk about Aviation pathway we're talking about Eastern Michigan University and careers in education and washing Community College as well as sitting at the table and then our community organizations like Michigan Works Southeast United Way and others so what Dr Michael rice the state superintendent refers to as CTE deserts washingon County happens to be one of those we would not think

026about washingon County being an economic CTE desert but we happen to be CTE deserts come in many forms and Fashions above all else we cannot supply enough programs for the demand that students have to enter CTE programming to affirm what they want to do or perhaps don't want to to do before they go off to college um so these create opportunity gaps so our students of color our students who qualify for free and reduced lunch and our students who are enrolled in the smaller sized districts are all at a disadvantage to accessing CTE programming so we do not have a vocational millage 41 isds have a vocational millage we're one that does not if you look at that map and you see any County such as lenaway County where I was a CT director and

027a local district superintendent they passed a mill prior to 1994 uh 2.9 Ms prior to 1994 prop a you could pass it for as many mills as you want for as long as you wanted after 1994 you could go up to 1 mil and you have to go back to the voters for Renewal uh just to give you a glimpse of what a vocational millage would look like U A 1 mil vocational millage is basically going to generate $20 million here in washing County currently how do we fund our CTE programming so to put this in perspective we have a federal Perkins grant that we receive that Perkins grants about $585,000 per year in the county and we have added cost funds that are about $800,000 so we as a county collect $14 million to

028support our 71 programs to put this in perspective lenaway County in its entirety has less student population than an Arbor Public Schools they collect $14 million for CTE programming every year so it's at the expense of our general funds and if you walked into any of our CTE programs they are state-of-the-art they are future focused you would not know the difference because we have proudly supported those over the years and Selen has certainly been at the Forefront of that so the 15 isds with no Vo ational millage you can see Wasa Livingston and mome are probably the uh counties that are are the most Progressive economic hubs a lot of these other ones are certainly rural when you don't have a vocational millage it creates inequities in the system of students accessing programs so what

029can vocational millage uh funds be used for CT read Readiness activities maintenance and repair of the labs physical equipment building salary and benefits of the CTE certified staff Transportation cost it would free up General funds instructional program areas curriculum and assessment when we think about our students who are enrolled just for instance in our cyber security program and they successfully complete that program and go on to take a certification exam at the end of the year that Exam May cost $500 to take we're currently funding that because that's a value added um certificate credential or license on their way to college same with the CNA certificate or license but when we're receiving $679 per student from Perkins and added cost we don't we aren't left with a lot of money to invest in not only

030enhancing our current programs but expanding programs as well so what would that create if we had a funding model that we recommended um come this year it would decrease the CTE deserts and opportunity gaps increase students graduating from high school with a purpose increase students exploring career paths that interest them increase students earning an industry recognized credential on their way to college and increase student engagement at an earlier age we could allocate resources according to what that demand is at the Southwest Washington Consortium ipsan an arbor in Whitmore Lake we can improve program quality and certainly we would expand program quantity as well so four years ago go um the superintendent led by Dr lch and superintendent Norman at the ISD looked at how we could expand programming and address the inequities that we had

031in the county specifically on the east side and Dr lch helped lead that effort so we've expanded that by about 15 to 20 CTE programs in the county most of those at ipolani Lincoln Whitmore Lake and Ann Arbor Public Schools classes were grounded in computer science and cyber sec Security in healthare and areas in greatest need so I just talked to you about not having the funds to pull this off so how did we actually do that well we looked at our enrollment 9th through 12th grade overall and at the same time that we have declining enrollment over the last four years with our 9 through 12th grade population look at the enrollment and Career Technical education programs this is what we are seeing as a trend when we came out of covid Co accentuated

032an already existing problem we have a low birth rate we have an aging population an aging Workforce individuals that were retiring as nurses and Educators um Engineers manufacturers were retiring at 60 to 65 years of age preco and 550 to5 55 years of age postco so we accentuated an already existing Talent pipeline issue and I think students are reexamining the value added ways in which they can approach college at this point in time CTE happens to be one of those so how did we get there how do we expand programming um at the rate that we did we had a CT equipment Grant so legislators said you with you that do not have a vocational millage in your county we will grant you through Grant funds CT equipment funds $535,000 in 2122 so we updated

033equipment in all of our Labs Health Science manufacturing welding some of that equipment was 15 years old what we did in one year was what we couldn't have done without These funds in perhaps 10 the next year they came back $576,000 we expanded more programs we enhanced the programs that we had last year 1.1 53 million so over three years we're investing $2 million in CTE programming and come this year we're allocated zero so we've reached a Tipping Point whether you're at an arbor or you're at Southwest Wasing Consortium or ipsan or Whitmore Lake we do not have the funds currently to sustain our programs let alone expand them at the rate that our children our youth our students are expecting us to offer those opportunities uh the press release I took some students up

034to present to Dr Michael rice and the State Board of Education in December our students from iany and an arbor and Lincoln schools testified on the influential experiences they had in CTE programming on their way to college so the State Board of Ed education recognizes that there is a need to increase funding for all CTE programs throughout the state let alone in our CTE desert such as washingon County part of the bigger picture our top 10 strategic education plan not one of those could not be addressed with future funding in a in a systematic manner in which we operate here in washingon County if we were to come together in a Consolidated approach so we have a history of unequal access and we have University of Michigan Youth policy lab in our backyard so who

035do we rely on for that data in 2019 we looked at the U ofm youth policy lab and and asked them can you please tell us what CTE access looks like in washingon county and they came back with the following findings lack of widespread familiarity with our programs uh CT courses align with emerging occupations however there's a desire to expand programming and the state saw us do that and went to the U ofm youth policy lab and said in January 2020 we want to know what CTE access looks like in the state of Michigan 50% of all Michigan students are enrolled in the CTE program female black and and economically disadvantaged students have are likely to part are less likely to participate we have a half million jobs that are waiting for our students this

036is pre-co so we went right back to it we questioned the U ofm youth policy lab Commission in another report to find out if our demand really was what we thought it was and demand for CT is equal across all of our districts students participate at high levels when they have easy access in off-site or neutral site locations like our cosmetology program are often a way to deliver programming outside of a traditional High School the state went right back in December 20122 they recognize an economic challenge that we have with CTE access and finally in July 2024 we commissioned our final report which was all student the findings all students have less access on average when compared to the state how are we doing that in washing County that we our children have less access

037to the average in the state of Michigan access is depending on which District offers the programs and based on those findings from the youth youth policy lab we move forward to say what programs could offer credentials Awards and credit on their way to college we saw that the investment for every dollar that we put in the community reaped those benefits 5 times over we also recognize that the 127 rule so in any organization like U ofm health system Toyota research and development Lee bear Aerospace zoler we have the 127 rule for every 10 employees one requires a master's degree or more two require a bachelor's degree and seven individuals require an associates degree certificate or credential and when you think about University of Michigan Health I often think about the doctors the Physicians but I

038also think about the RNs the X-ray techs sterile processors CNAs the maintenance workers and Food Service employees as well so after we uh invested and received a quarter million dollar Grant from the state to study this through a consolidation studies Grant those findings that we had from the U ofm eth policy lab empowered us to apply for another Grant which was implementing the findings and recommendations so we applied for the State and received a $5 million grant that we're implementing now so what are we doing with that we're increasing capacity so prior to the superintendent agreeing to pay for my role at the istd to lead this charge we had zero other employees at the ISD that were CTE related providing support services it was all done in the local districts out of that Grant

039we are leading the way to build capacity from a CTE coordinator to a County Wide work-based learning coordinator a special populations coordinator data reporting specialist and a CT Grant Management coordinator we were doing this four five six or seven different ways in an inefficient system across washingon County we're bringing that in and trying to consolidate those Services out of our 71 programs that you saw on that map not one of those programs is accessible to students from all nine districts where you reside is where you can attend so if you're an ipsan student you have access to six programs if you're part of the Southwest washingon Consortium you have access to 30 we have one welding program in the county I can tell you that liar Aerospace does not care where you reside they want

040employees we have 47 students on a wait list for health science we need RNs we need nurses and Healthcare employees we have students that want to be involved in these programs we have not provided the access for those students to be involved so we're looking at three programs that we would open countywide and we're paying for this out of the countywide consolidation incentive payment Grant out that $5 million to show the community what could be possible if we have a system in place and a funding model to sustain these efforts the very first one is Aviation Aerospace so starting in the fall we're going to launch an aviation Aerospace program where Juniors and seniors in high school can enroll in our FAA part 107 Dr own certification program on their way to Eastern for a

041bachelor's degree in aviation on their way to be an entrepreneur on their way to being a surveyor or civil engineer that's currently using drones in a variety of other aspects and occupations and we'll work backwards to have Project Lead the Way courses and programs at the middle school for flight and space and work with the center for digital media at University of Michigan for digital road maps aligned with EV and Mobility a prek through 12th grade Continuum of Care of experiential applied learning opportunities the second one is engineering construction trades so at a time that we need more engineers and folks in construction ipsan Community School students and Whit more Lake students do not have access to a Building Trades program and frankly some of our students currently due to Transportation issues can't even access

042in reality the programs that they have access to at least on paper so we're looking at some way that we can offer east side wests side hubs or Regional Center based programs or a central neutral site location the last one is our best leadership program so any student by the way there's on average about 350 students at Selene high school that enroll in state approved CT programs that would be at the junior senior level Selena has always benefited from our programs our equipment and our Labs because the nth and 10th graders can enroll in intro level classes so although you're not our year-long culinary program you can be in intro to Foods or intro to baking if you're not in our year-long Automotive program you could be in autotronics or inine fundamentals or inro a

043cad these are the same labs and classrooms that we equip for CTE purposes so the last one the best leadership program is a collaboration between destination and Arbor Wasing Community College and our K12 institutions any student that comes out their junior year of any CTE program we're going to Pilot in the fall as part of their senior year schedule they're enrolled in their CTE program if they so choose let's take culinary for instance they take a class at Washington on the fall a class at Washington on the spring and a class the summer after their senior year aligned with a business industry internship let's say Zingerman's Deli and they walk away on their way to college with a management certificate focused on entrepreneurship free of charge to them and their families so we're looking at

044that Capstone and trying to build entrepreneurs of those that have an entrepreneurial spirit and I'll give you one example Trent trout computer integrated manufacturing teacher is working with Jamie Mayo at the ISD Jamie Mayo walked through the ISD this afternoon with adaptive technology for students with significant special needs and students in Trent computer integrated manufacturing class are designing and producing adaptive technology to work alongside our students with special needs those students are our next entrepreneurs they're going to UFM they're going to Michigan Tech and at the same time they can transform lives with whatever Community they reside so those are three examples we're looking at different models uh that we look to enhance and expand and then finally out of those um Grant funds we're looking at developing communication marketing and and what this looks

045like so a countywide logo countywide messaging if I asked each of you what Career Technical education is we' come up with different answers so we've had focus groups with students 4,000 surveys were answered so that we can come to consensus around what values and education does this community stand for when we talk about experiential applied learning we'll hand that data over to forthright who will do a report to the community and then roads branding and marketing was on campus last week including Selene High School doing 90c videos around our three Pathways all leading to a March 18th Community Summit at Washington Community College where we will roll out all of this to the community so where are we headed uh basically we are implementing all of this I will be at each Board of Education

046to update them on the progress that we've made we will head towards that March 18th Summit where we'll share this information with the community and then we'll rely on the board of education regarding Next Step superintendent Norman will lead that charge perhaps that leads to some polling with the community to see where they are interested in heading and then November 2025 could certainly be our decision Daye regarding a philosophical approach to a countywide system of implementation along with a funding model that supports those efforts I'll entertain any questions you may have board uh you had mentioned the certificates at the end of some of the programs uh to take the tests to get the certificates is there any uh has there any been any research done in the private sector for scholarships or anything like

047that yep so certainly we're working with different entities um I would say nonprofits along with folks like Toyota research and development that has probably supported those certifications that align with their Industries um we've really worked with um a variety of different constituents who have added to the charge of of that fun model they know the situation we're in and I would say we can't rely solely on a vocational millage we really have to rely on those foundations and scholarships to help our students we're relied on our post-secondary partners business industry and then folks like Michigan Works Southeast can help as well as you know I'm very interested in drone and Aviation program especially because we have one at Eastern and I'm a drone pilot or at least I used to be one before my latest

048drone crashed um but I just wanted to say I've been seeing corridors opening up near busy air air passages for the delivery of meds that are just starting out they're working out all those details so in two to three years I'm really excited that some of our students are going to be in extraordinarily high demand assuming these programs are funded and carry on so I want to thank you for that thank you Michael and all of these great programs Brett Brian I think you do a fantastic job and I think you're a good leader for this this movement so thank you um so a couple of things so if you want to scroll back with me to I think of things I've got a couple things Finance wise go to that not all are equal

049funding slide not all funding is equal so this speaks to money that is captured through school aid and Perkins is that correct have you ever done an analysis on how much it costs to educate each student who is in CP e programs I can give you an approximation uh about $3,400 $3,400 okay and then I guess I have one other thing it's more of a comment thank you for that and uh you know I I really do think that when I think about the programs that we have especially insuline I can think about my own son who has benefited greatly from Mr vasiloff lab and like you said from cooking and baking and so it's not just CTE students who are benefiting from these things when they're available and our they're they benefit all of

050our students right and large numbers of them and so um when I think about you know appeal to the masses if you will right I'm glad you spoke to that and I think it has a lot of value or strength so I would say 350 students on average in CTE state approved programs and additional 540 students at Selene High School in the CTE elective courses talking about 900 students every day that are impacted by career related programming who aren't necessarily corre Consortium kids right so outstanding thank you anyone else at the table Jennifer Steen I always love to welcome you back in your energy and passion for all of these activities so thank you Ryan and team um one of your slides said uh you'd like to increase student engagement at an earlier age and

051I could not agree more and you gave one example about um Aviation Aerospace perhaps entering the middle school also down the road could you give us for Seline area schools some other um examples of of kind of like some short-term winds that we could expect to see around starting those things at earlier ages and maybe then some long-term objectives yeah the interesting thing is we think about culinary we think about Aviation we think about engineering but really what we're talking about is that's the Catalyst and excitement to deliver Math Science and stem education and so when we talk about mastering fractions which is a critical aspect we could teach fractions but what's the Catalyst to get a student excited about that and I think that's the same thing with entrepreneurship um students are interested in

052shoes or interested in sports how do we turn something exciting like starting a small business in shoe design to capture the excitement from a student at a much younger age um one aspect that can be paid for out of vocational millage is career exploration camps now we've offered a few of those through sling Community Ed I'd like to offer 40 of those every year at a very reduced price offset by the funding model of a millage and have our quality teachers be offering those in our CTE Labs at a much earlier age for a weeklong career exploration Camp why not we're doing this throughout the state we don't have access to those opportunities at this point in time simply because we can't fund those and we've prototyped some of that here though correct like um

053through Community aded shout out Community aded um with baking and cooking which you already mentioned I mean they sell out like very popular so I love to hear it thank you so much Ryan anyone else yeah um so thanks Ryan for coming uh I love the CTE stuff and uh first off you mentioned the washingon county as a CTE desert and here in Selen with the Southwest Washington consorti you we don't think of it as a desert but um so that was kind of impactful for me and you know I am super supportive of this I am not one that's super supportive of millages but I'm supportive of this because I think this um is a great idea to get more kids exposed to CTE um looking at washingon County some of the districts that

054some of the students would benefit the most from CTE are the ones that are lacking the most and I think that that is uh that's just that needs to change um so anyways and then um I also once again not a fan of millages I'll just I'm not going to go into it all but I'm not a huge fan with the way the ISD handles act 18 and how that funding model looks so I'm anxious to see what your funding model looks like um and I'm sure it's going to look a lot different at least I hope it will JY thank you I just wanted to mostly comment on how much I appreciate the Southwest Washington Consortium um I've had the opportunity to sub in four different CTE classrooms and every one of those teachers

055were uh inspiring their students for the work that they produced especially if you go into Mr Trout's classroom all of the 3D printouts and the Machining that they've done is incredible and those kids are there because they want to be there um not that they don't want to want to be in traditional math English and science classes but this is exciting for them um and when you were speaking to you know the cost of equipment and things like that it's incredible equipment and um it's things I had never seen before but they those Educators take good care of the equipment that they have because they value it and the program and so I would really love to see them expand thank you well thank you once again Dr Ro for coming back you're always welcome

056thank you very much appreciate it thank you for the time we're going to slide into a uh discussion and possibly a motion right after uh once a year oh that's okay he have he has quite an Entourage I'm very impressed that's the AP Government group thank you very much um as you know we as a board can cast one vote for member of uh the board of directors uh for the Michigan Association School boards the masb and we have before us three candidates uh I just want to have just a general discussion and see if any of those candidates have bubbled to the top of your uh your radar and whether we may be able to uh to cast a vote tonight I just want to share I have worked with uh candidate number three

057is on page eight and nine I have worked with Jack tamsey before I have also worked with guo Lopez uh who is currently serving on the board he and I ran together or in opposite each other four years ago and uh I I ended up he he ended up beating me by about three or four or five votes something like that which is fine and I've since spoken to him when I found out he was running again I said gearo I am going to step back because I think you um you've done fine work he's 2 for years on the board he's doing exceptional work on the board of directors and uh that's just my two cents I sadly though I don't know anything about the other fellow uh Corey mclaughin but he's an upand

058Comer so I I if we don't vote for him I'm sure we'll see him again do you have any U anyone else have any preferences that bubbled up or comments you want to make on any of the other candidates uh Jennifer I just had a question If you happen to know and I'm trying to Google it and I tried to look a little before do you know how long Mr Lopez has been um I know he's the in 24 years so that was his school district how long on the district uh I believe it's uh his he's three terms in so he's been at least eight years I think so I'm looking at Jay because you might know six year ter so 12 years at least he's looking at his third six-year term okay thank

059you I'll speak real quick to this um I I can tell you that I've heard from one out of the three personally right so gu Lopez took the time to send me a p to my personal email like a letter about himself and to improve you know provide information and all of that kind of thing and so I will be honest with you like from a personalization standpoint I really appreciated the fact that he was forthright and told me what his goals were and what he wanted to do and you know about you know that he's he's very much into into training is what I took out of it and youth Health kinds of things and he talked about um he he's really into like sleep deprivation and some of those things with youth and

060so long story short like I mean if you ask me like I've at least heard from him the other two I would not be able to I wouldn't say that I would be against them but he is the one individual who's personally reached out to me um yeah so I can also tell you he does walk the walk as well he shows up at the legislative uh priority setting sessions and uh where he could easily just uh you know bypass that he's actually there with us and passes on that information to the rest of the m and I'd be welcome to you guys jogging my memory but like Anyway D oh sorry oh sorry Darcy or Tim I so um yeah I'm don't really have a huge preference one way or the other I did

061like how Corey did mention how career and Technology technical education was a priority of his and obviously coming off this that was that that I was that I highlighted so um I did like that but I don't necessarily have anybody that's really stick okay Darcy uh similarly with Tim I appreciated the reference to CTE um as far as uh Jack tsey was concerned I appreciated that he was looking at uh school funding which is rather PR at this point in time um and I I was a little disappointed I felt like G Lopez had reached out after realizing that perhaps his information was lacking on the presented materials um that was that okay that's just one way to read it right or or he added all his details in the letter that he sent so

062yeah I mean given space contraint constraints I felt like it wasn't it wasn't uh best foot forward but okay are we in a position to uh just do a quick uh well to to put a name forward at this point we feel like we're ready to I have one other comment um uh I did notice that uh Corey in the board packet um speaking of masb certifications and things um has has been is that correct that he's been on his board 11 years for Jefferson schools but has completed just the CBA 101 am I reading that correctly I'm gathering that it says certified board member that he's taken the full set of courses he may not have filled out the form because if I look at Mr tempy it has his complete list Master Platinum

063Master dond etc etc and then um same with Mr Lopez yeah well they um having done this before they do ask you what's the highest level that you've achieved okay and uh you pop it in and then they automatically populate all the levels but so it does look like uh Mr mlin has not done a great many masb cbaa courses that's we can attest to that but he is board member certified which means he's taken uh the basic nine okay um that just stood out to me just additionally I take it in said in a negative way a little bit yeah yeah a littleit little bit okay okay well I I tell you what I'm going to put a name forward and um my Rec I'd like to entertain a motion to cast our Collective

064vote for and I'm going to say at this point GE Mo Lopez and to the as our vote for the masb board of directors representing region 7 if he doesn't get enough votes we'll cast around and find somebody else do we have a motion not ready to move yet huh should I insert another name if you need you made the motion you're just looking for a second right I I I'm said I'm entertaining a motion to to put his name forward if we're ready if not I think we still have another two weeks the Miss Yan can maybe remind us the vote is due next month correct so if we really needed to we could we we could Ponder this for another two weeks and come back to the table does that work for you

065or or do I have a motion to put his name for I'm not sure it's going to get better for me like you know what I mean like this information is not going to change that in this packet I I don't know you guys talk to me like help me any a motion to move to as it's written here move to cast our Collective vote for gearl to the masb board of directors representing region 7 so at what point would it be acceptable if I wanted to make a different motion well uh now go ahead and make a motion I would make a motion um that we elect Jack tsey for the masb all right is there a second for that I'll support dery's motion well there you go uh we can have a quick

066other discussion now uh just writing down your initials great can I have can I ask for a moment to read them again please you just in the metime can say a couple other words to build off a why I would attack it um I'm sure Mr Lopez is a fine individual and and uh I really thank him for his service in 24 years on a Schoolboard blesses Heartland Ling that's really hard but um I I do overall believe in um um limiting terms and um giving other people opportunities and voice so that's why I was open to that okay did Brad's still reading it's okay it just we can wait I'd like to hear more if other people does anybody else have anything like one way or the other about it seems like we're between

067Gamo Lopez and Jack tsey corre making sure that so the motion is on the floor for Jack temp again just as far as discussion is concerned I um I waited more what I was reading here than the email that was sent separately um and you know as we are heading into an uncertain Michigan Education is underfunded horrifically regardless right and if he's willing to look at how we fund education in the state I'm very interested in that okay think that might be compell money might be a compelling to me sorry and not to say that I expect great change but if someone is interested in having that discussion I applaud that okay red you done okay right then well um at this point then we say all in favor of voting for Jack tsey at

068this point please say I hi hi I'm I heard the majority I don't know how many of that was opposed me okay that's fine so we have a six and one I will it is Jack tsey we're putting forward to the masb Miss Yan just give me one second please great thank you um I'd like to pass the microphone over to uh our next facilitator here is going to be chairman Brad gerby Treasurer Brad gerby all all right so I had the privilege of leading the fin the new 2025 Finance team through our our first meeting today I think it's going to be a an awesome team and I appreciate Jason and Tim and Miranda and Steve for for being my teammates on the on the finance team we had a we had a pretty

069robust meeting and we took every minute of the one hour that we allotted and we had a number of discussion items um we just first of all made sure that there weren't any questions overall about SAS budget and some of those kinds of things we have lots of fun and bonds and grants and all of that thank God we have Miranda to kind of keep our headon straight and keep things going so thank goodness for her but long story short we just kind of um just did a little bit of just tidying and making sure on that and then uh we you should anticipate the whole board that on the 25th of February we do plan to bring a budget amendment so we will be asking uh do Dr McVey to to place a budget

070amendment upon the agenda items for for the 25th of February that meeting two weeks from now thanks for letting me know okay uh and at that time we'll talk a little bit about some of the more specifics um there's some you know we called it good news bad news kind of thing right the some of the you know we expenditures are appear to be up revenues are also tracking up um some of that is due to some ACT 18 money and some of that I don't want to get too much in the Weeds on specifics because I think we'll accomplish a lot of that on the 25th but long story short like that is the reason why we're thinking we're going to bring forth a budget amendment to the team okay so just so stay

071tuned for that um our next thing talked about where we're you know there are two things that we are obsessed with in finance and that is foundation allowance and student enrollment right like those are the two things and so we talked uh a good amount and we always talk about this and I'm sure we will just tracking enrollment um whether it's it's headcount whether it's Trends um our people do an incredible job meeting steveen Miranda of giving us you know like forecasts and looking at Trends and making predictions and being good about budgeting and so um I I could tell you that and again I want to save some of this on the 25th but we should end up realizing um a lesser enrollment drop than we forecasted for um and so that's always good

072news right like it's always good when we in revenues then should have more money than we thought we would have so just it is tracking in that way again I'm I know I'm being really vague but official count days and you I mean I guess this upcoming count is actually for the 25 like fall one but long story short it's tracking in the good way and on the 25th uh we'll try to be a little more specific with that but it looks like if I gave you like some rough numbers we budgeted down 110 and we're looking closer to 70 so if there's a 40ish I don't want to like please don't lock this in in stone yet but like give us the freedom on the 25th to to actually make the presentation okay but

073we did talk about that um there is some Scuttle butt and some talk about um how Federal funding and how some of the freezes in EOS and some of that um and then there was app pause right so um we're still kind of trying to figure out how that applies to idea we're trying to figure out how that applies to Head Start some of that kind of stuff um and so we need a little bit of time on that but again that's like on a pause now the thing that's got a bigger thing of our our eyes on is some of our grant money that we might realize in some of the ways in which we may not realize some of the grant that we had seen before so we may have to have some

074of those kinds of conversations and it's only February and the finance team will meet till you know till the end of the year and we'll have those conversations going forward so that is that uh we talked very briefly for about five minutes about Governor whitmer's initial proposed budget again that is her first lob of the tennis ball across the you know the net and it does appear that Governor Whitmer is um proposing education being a priority she is proposing um a pretty robust uh you know uh increase per pupil but at the same time like the devil will always be in the details and it's the governor working together with the legislature and that legislature is now bipartisan so like there's going to be some things that happen through that process so we talked about

075that and uh that was a full hour and I think I've hit on all of the marks so if anybody from the finance team thinks I left anything out please timee in I'm sure they will well thank you very much Treasurer gerby I appreciate that uh We've shuffled around the agenda just a little bit to to put um Mr Bennett a little later uh so Administration uh comments and board updates follows now Dr Lodge right I'll start with uh just one and that's that we're really excited that our Unified sports program is really taking off under our special education leadership uh both the administration and our and our teaching staff and it's been great to watch and see all the students um who involved in this in this case basketball so we have another unified

076event on Friday at the high school and that's at 10:15 I'll be roughing again with um special education director vulker and um looking forward to it because um I'm just going to enjoy this one now that I'm out from under the um agreement I made with Coach short when he hit that half court shot at the last one to call a snow day so looking forward to it and we're a 5050 for a snow day on Thursday I'll just say that now I'll get a lot of emails from the students that's what I'm going to tell them you should collect these emails and share them with the I think we should take a vote right now [Laughter] student lead no I'm just kidding yeah um there's another tool called udio where we actually I created

077the Ode to to snow day Steve and uh is an AI generated song maker um we'll go up and down the board table at this point we'll end with Jason and start with Tim if you have anything to report not a lot but um I did sign up to go to the chamber legislative lunch on the 21st um just kind of hear state of the communities and stuff like that um also wanted to mention um I you know black history month is this uh is this month and I read a book called American history in black and white and it was really quite eye openening to to read and kind of understand kind of the history and and learn some of the names of people that had a huge impact on our on our history

078um that you don't hear about every day and um so that was kind of an interesting book to read I appreciate that Tim I wrote it down all right uh so I just have one thing that's on my mind I my my kid this week was talking about how excited he was to go to Spanish club and then I asked him but you're not in Spanish and and so like my point is this it got me thinking about all the clubs and organizations and things that people do for kids in our school district just because kids like them and want to be a part of them and want to have somewhere to be and they just think it's fun and they just think it's good to be with their friends and all that kind of

079stuff and that happens because of incredible advisers I'm sure it happens because of engaged teachers all of that so I just wanted to give us I guess a shout out because I found myself thinking how cool is it that my kid has clubs that are things that are just he just likes and are fun form so thank you for to the people who put effort into those clubs uh so I did do a marathon uh masb class so thank you for my diamond pen um and uh weather willing I will be going to the car's um board meeting tomorrow evening and if you could please just give me a heads up on snow days because I'm going to start getting texts from my nieces any minute now just 5050 5050 yeah but that's not going

080to cut it the audience may think that we are well aware of these snow days we find out when you find out because I'm not driving around the streets at 4:30 in the morning as like Dr lotch is to to see if he can still stay on the road um I just want to say thank you to the district uh I spend uh every two years I go to the National School boards Association in Washington DC and this was uh and I appreciate it going I spent two two and a half interesting and intense days in DC listening to a number of presentations actually remarkable how many of them were dealing with AI they were just as there were just as many dealing with executive orders from the White House as they were dealing with

081artificial intelligence which uh I thought was was most interesting we also had a lot of presentations from our very own Jennifer Smith who is our legislative Le liaison if you see you probably have received a lot of her emails already from masb she's she's great she's very knowledgeable and she's usually the one who's tapped to give a lot of the updates I also wanted to share I did get a chance to listen to and actually speak with Senator Peters and Senators Senator slotkin at the Hart office building uh the ninth floor is very nicely done they do they do breakfast really well in that building um one more thing yeah there um I could I could talk a great deal about AI but I'm not going to but I just want to say thank you

082it was an interesting experience a lot of networking happened and um I just nope that's that's it I I hope you all got your nsba pens thank you very much uh and apparently you were supposed to get some noise makers if you had thought of it but that's okay well I thought I actually have pom poms in my car if you really want me to go get them but um we did put the noise makers away on Saturday but I'll lead with that I I wanted to really thank Steve for coming by to our competitive cheer Invitational on Saturday um the the varsity cheer team has headed into districts this week um and it means means a lot to see a superintendent out in the district attending all sorts of different events I loved that

083him and Dan lupai were right in front of me cheering I got the photo yes I sent it to Jackie um and I just wanted to thank you because I I know how busy um everybody is on the weekends and that you made the time to stop by and support both the middle school and the high school girls meant a lot um when I we do activities or clubs or sports or things like that it's such a wonderful thing to be able to show off that high school and to show off um the the real positive nature that our student athletes or students in clubs or students in music um exhibit uh we have a really good reputation when when folks come and we host events so thank you for attending that um Steve I

084and others started our day today with our um monthly foundation for Seline area school so I'll I'll give a few updates from there the student Representatives did did mention I think it was them that mentioned this possible snow day so that has already come up today um I would invite um our staff to remember that we have $30,000 in remaining grants that they would like to give out this year so if you have ideas please look at the foundation uh howtos on submitting Grant requests for buildings or for individual classrooms um our big fundraiser is coming up on February 28th I sent all of you an email today if you happen to be able to come or would like to um possibly support through the live live um auction link that's going up on February

08521st in case you can't come to the event on the 28th um invited Brian Marl in the city as well um we want to get as many people as we can at Travis point on the 28th to just have a good time support the students um and uh see some Dueling Pianos which I've never been to one of those before so I'm very excited and um I think it's Katie nig's cousin that's doing it is that right yeah I don't know so should be fun um let's see uh some ideas around things that they're auctioning off I heard uh University of Michigan football package for four Victor's lounge access radio show access our elementary um families will love the Kalahari Suite package on the auction on the silent auction so some pretty cool things um

086keep it in mind for your schedules um I did attend two masb classes this week for the winter intensive and when I logged into the portal I found out that I just achieved level four masterboard member so I knew you'd be happy about that Michael um and then the last thing is I know that our district and our unions are talking about our calendar for 2526 I would just please ask that before it comes to the board um we're mindful of all holidays um and scheduling of activities I uh know we had a move with homecoming last year appreciate that but if we can kind of take a look at that before it comes to consent that would be Fant fantastic um remembering those special dates for everybody thanks Dr go um I'd like to

087First acknowledge public comment tonight regarding uh the importance of uh moving forward with leadership regarding um uh restorative justice and um healing the community and moving forward as a community uh with um our diverse student body and our diverse country and mind uh thank you for speaking up I will keep your uh words in mind as we move forward with this process um along those lines I had plann to speak tonight a little bit about Black History Month and I just thought I might highlight uh a few things that I did not learn about in high school growing up in Michigan uh in the 1990s um that I think my kids or at least one of them uh did learn about uh in Selen area schools um so I wanted to mention the uh Tulsa

088uh race Massacre and the Black Wall Street um and the successful uh community that was disparaged during that time I wanted to mention Dr aian sweet of uh Michigan uh a physici in Detroit who um was attacked uh by a mob of people unhappy about him integrating his community and placed on trial uh I wanted to mention Madame CJ Walker uh known as the first uh female millionaire in this country um these are just a few people that I've been thinking about this month and uh I am grateful for our teaching staff uh continuing to highlight uh history that too long has gone untaught and I'm grateful for this month and the opportunity to highlight it I need to start doing better with the CBA classes because darc is making me look bad so thanks

089Darcy uh since Brad since uh Brad brought it uh brought it up about clubs I had a really uh great opportunity to have a long discussion with member of the community last week uh that you know we we we kind of see things very differently but I think talking to those folks uh you know gives me a lot uh bigger look so we talked about activities in clubs and some of the obstacles to that so um uh Dr lch was uh uh great with his time with giving me uh some feedback on that and I'm going to be working uh from whatever angle I can with the advisers of the clubs to figure out ways to get more kids more involved in the clubs especially kids that uh you know might be a little bit

090shy and might not you know want to you know there might be an obstacle to them so I want to I really want to work with the advisers on figuring out ways to get more kids more involved in the clubs that they would really benefit from uh and that is the conclusion of my update well thank you short and sweet I just I two things I forgot one is that Michigan had the largest number of Representatives at the national school boards Association and that on February 19th it is going to be 19 degrees for the polar plunge and you can still fund me I want to thank vice president stean and I was Brad last year funded me and I appreciate that so little no not much pressure but some pressure and oh okay and

091as Dr lot said last year freezing for a reason all right uh we are going to go on to the consent agenda at this point now um and I'd like to entertain a motion to uh ex authorize the consent agenda as printed so moves debbon supported tisses thank you to J's uh all in favor please say I I hi oppose excellent thank you very much we items on the next agenda Dr lch yes we have a budget amendment like trusty gerby mentioned and then we also are going to have a um enrollment and school of Choice update thank you we have uh the final public comment of the evening a board member member of the public can address for up to three minutes and uh we have one speaker Sabrina patello apparently I tried to

092make your name too fancy last time but I got it right this time right thank you so much e thank you I appreciate that so back in September my son was racially targeted that's been five months ago I haven't heard anything from Seline I haven't they haven't said anything to the students the athletes the parents no Community conversations nothing but what I've been doing is I've been reaching out and talking to people we've been speaking talk to people that are action oriented people who care about this community people who care about the horrific Legacy of the Injustice in the Seline area your silence is loud and clear you remain silent and active and waiting for this to blow over but I'm not that person to let it go I have two boys they need to

093see me stand up for them when nobody else will I gave you the benefit of the doubt a few years ago when my oldest son Joshua was a part of racial epiic with Seline football team you made some strides back then however it is so different now no accountability no transparency no communication if you truly cared if you were truly concerned things would be different I played Sports basketball and ran track and I remember those days of coming to Seline high school and the things that we heard the things that we had to endure and my sons are going through the same thing that was 50 years ago 50 my experience as an adult and as a parent and now my children are experiencing the same thing I'm saddened I'm saddened that I gave the

094community and the school board an opportunity a few years ago I'm sadden because it seems to be the flavor of the month let's just say what we need to say let's do all these initiatives but we really don't think they're going to flourish once the news coverage has vanished so did the conversation transparency and the work I've spoken before you a few times spoken to the school principal Dei I even spoken to a couple of board members excuse me one board member all conversations were met with sympathetic empathetic emotions everyone appeared to be attentive understanding and ready to act but what I've encountered is everyone pointing the finger of why they can't do this and why they can't do that all talk no actions no ideas no communication and no transparency I am not going

095to allow this to be swept under the rug it's not in my DNA when it comes to my children when I say my children I'm not just talking about the two that I gave birth to there's other children at Seline high school that need you to help them again your silence is loud and clear your actions are loud and clear your inactions is loud and clear I'm sorely disappointed new leadership is needed along with someone who knows his or her job and the respons ability to all students the underserved the overlooked and the undervalued thank you thank you Mrs [Applause] patello we're now uh the next section is it's all you Jay uh Mr Jay Bennett is going to be walking us through the uh timeline for the superintendent search and uh Dr lotch has

096volunteered to uh to hang back while we uh have this conversation alth it's not necessary but it's fine yeah thank you J we we had to dial it down to 15 minutes that's fine just joking yeah I can I know you you're so flexible you can handle anything this is a test I know you said that's fine I should just stop while I'm ahead thank you Mr Bennett absolutely she's here all right well good evening everybody so I dropped off a PowerPoint uh in front of you it's uh it's what we refer to as our planning document and we've got just a couple things that we need to go through before we get to uh our timeline and some other materials so our objectives uh tonight are to review the search process to clarify the

097role of the search consultant that's me plan a detailed timeline for the search the work product that I'm looking to come out of this meeting with tonight are a detailed timeline a preliminary posting and a salary range our agenda for tonight we'll talk a little bit about the search process make sure we understand what our roles are we'll talk about qualifications of a superintendent we'll talk about adoption of the calendar and the search plan and then we will adopt a preliminary posting and when I say adopt that's a loose term uh there's really no need for any formal adoption per se just as long as we're all happy with the timeline and happy with the posting and everything then we can go forth and and do all right so search process as we talked about

098in the uh in my first presentation we're looking right around 14 weeks or so weeks one through three preparation that's where we are now just for reminders about the open meetings act this entire search will be done in Open Session only two exceptions uh that come to mind we at the Top If we have a number of internal candidates that I may take you in a close session to discuss internal candidates only just so that we don't inadvertently out them as candidates if we decide to as a board employ any kind of Behavioral testing of our applicants then we can talk about the results of the behavioral testing in a close session but other than that everything else is done in an open session selection of candidates is done in an open session the interviews

099are done in an open session uh everything else that we do related to the search will be in an open session okay all right so during the preparation phase this is what uh the search firm does they prepare the timeline and the process they prepare the salary comps they draft the preliminary posting they facilitate the stakeholder input they create the online survey and they promote the opening and I just noticed is it a possibility that your presentation that I printed off for you is different than the one that's in front of you it is so uh you got the old version this is the new one so I'll make sure that I delete that old one so we don't accidentally print that again uh same information just I cleaned up the presentation a little bit

100on this but the information still stands okay so during this time the board is responsible for approving that timeline in the process making sure that set a salary range that is appropriate approving the preliminary posting identifying those stakeholder groups promoting the stakeholder sessions basically just communicating the process so I have worked with your uh administrative assistant and your communications director to kind of put together uh a list of those groups that we're going to meet with we'll talk about that when we get to the timeline make sure that all those groups are the ones that you want to make sure that I meet with and see if there's any additions to that during the preparation phase the district is responsible for posting the the meetings posting the preliminary posting so we generally recommend that you

101create a web page specific to the search somewhere on your site and then on that website on that subset of your website uh will be all the information related to the search so there'll be a listing of all the meetings there'll be a link to the online survey uh there'll be links to you know anything related to the job posting all that on one page so anyone from the district can go to that one page and see everything related to search we will uh talk about the stakeholder feedback sessions and so I'll work with the district to make sure that we have the appropriate spaces for those the appropriate locations for those the appropriate time for those work with the district to promote the online survey through your social media through your email lists and

102then again on that website as well and then we'll continue to promote the opening and when I say promote the opening you're just putting it out there that it's out there and then it will then link back to the actual opening that I've set up for uh the applicant for the applicants during the recruitment phase the search firm that's me compiling and presenting input to the board drafting the selection criteria posting the criteria promoting the opening collecting applications recruiting candidates researching candidates so the survey results will start to come in to me the uh notes that I take for the face to-face meetings that I have I will compile all of that and then bring a presentation back to you I will mock up a list of selection criteria based on the things that have

103kind of percolated to the top of the survey and kind of come up in those meetings that I've had face to face you will have an opportunity to look and work through that selection criteria with me once you are happy with what that selection criteria looks like these are the things that we as a staff community board are looking for the next superintendent I will finalize that document that gets attached to the posting once that is attached to the posting anyone that is looking to apply for the job will then be able to see exactly what it is that you're looking for and they can then make sure that their materials reflect that so if you're looking for somebody with administrative experience then they will make sure that they reflect their administrative experience in their

104cover letter and in their resume it will also give them an opportunity to look at the posting and think to themselves well maybe this isn't the right fit for me at this time maybe they're looking for more experience than I have maybe they're looking for different experience than I have and so attaching that selection criteria to the posting usually a week or two before it closes allows them that opportunity now we'll have the posting open much earlier than that because we want them to have time to collect all their materials update their resume at least get a kind of base cover letter together collect our letters of reference that they want to uh that they want to collect and then once they see the timeline they can then set those dates aside so if I'm

105going to get interviewed I know I need to keep this night and this night open for the interviews that kind of thing so that's why I want that posting to be out there as soon as possible even though it may be a couple weeks before we get the selection criteria attached um and then even a couple more weeks before the posting actually even closes uh as far as the recruitment so uh you know if I mentioned this last time I I apologize from repeating myself but um when I was up at the uh mid Mid Winter conference for the uh superintendent Association up in Grand Rapids I was already talking to people that were asking me about the Seline posting because they knew it was coming the Seline job the Seline job the Seline job

106now at that point uh we hadn't been awarded the contract yet uh but I did talk to a couple people about it and just said hey you know if it comes my way then I'll definitely keep you in mind and so I've already got some names of some people that we're going to reach out to I've talked to some people even tonight that have given me some additional names um when I have those face Toof face meetings with the various groups that we'll be talking about I'll make sure that I encourage them to supply me with any names that they'd like me to reach out to and you know again to you as board members if anything comes up anybody you think that you want me to talk to definitely make sure that you get

107those names to me I will do some initial research on the candidates I'm going to implore all of you once you get access to the application materials that you stick to the application materials that you don't do any investigation on your own uh and there's a couple different reasons for this the most the the two most important are one uh as you do more research you open up yourself to more opportunities for developing a bias towards a particular candidate all right and it's not necessarily an over bias um but you know you may start to find out more information it may kind of start to shade you one way or the other by focusing explicitly on the application materials the resume the cover letter their letters of reference the answers that they give to the

108questions in the application then you're looking at an even playing field for all of your candidates and that's what we're trying to strive for at least for that you know for that first round of of interviews and whatnot the other reason is I would hate for you to in your research inadvertently um out a candidate before they have had an opportunity to decide that they even want to be a candidate in your uh in your pool every application that is successful meaning that they have answered the questions uploaded a resume uploaded the cover letter uploaded three letters of reference and hit the submit button you will see when I release that information to you okay we only release the names of those candidates that have actually accepted an interview so if you look through and

109I'm just throwing this number out here for the sake of Simplicity if you look through 20 applications and decide you want to bring in six for interviews I will then reach out to those six if all six accept then we will release the name of all six and then they are known the other 14 candidates names are never released the only people that know that those other 14 candidates are there are the seven of you myself your administrative assistant I will give Betty access to the materials as well so that if any of you want anything printed off she can print things off for you I will caution you though 20 applicants figure two to three page resume page for a cover letter three letters of reference it quickly adds up we're talking about hundreds

110of pages of printed material and so you have electronic access to all of it it's very easy to read through electronically on the computer I would recommend that you read through electronically on the computer uh but if you don't have access and you would like something printed out then Betty will have access to the materials as well um so those are the only people and then you know people in my office um they will have access to your applicants and we'll know who actually applied if we reach out to those six applicants and somebody denies or declines an interview uh then only the names of those five applicants will be released and so we won't release it again until they've actually accepted an interview all right so during the recruitment phase as a board you're

111going to consider that stakeholder input you're going to revise and approve that selection criteria that we talked about you're going to start working on the contract language now I know it may seem a little weird to be working on the contract language before we've even had an opportunity to offer the contract what I want you to do is take a look at current contractor the current superintendent with your legal firm whoever it is that you use for uh your legal consultation and have them look through Steve's contract and say okay these are the things that we you know can probably keep in there these are the things that are out of date these are the new things that we need to add in contracts because since the new evaluation law there's been some things we

112need to make sure in contracts and by having at least a base contract ready to go you can present that to your two or three finalists and that way they have some time to look at over ahead of time and then when it comes time to start negotiation you've you know you're two three steps down the road instead of starting from zero right so if we can have a contract ready to go for your finalists uh so this is a perfect opportunity to look through your current contract clean it up get it to where you want it to be and then kind of work from there uh any time anybody reaches out to you with any interest in this job I want you to redirect them right back to me because remembering that we can't

113have board members cannot have any contact with applicants so just if someone calls you emails you thank you very much call J thank you very much email J same with uh with the office if you know Betty starts getting phone calls or your communications director Jackie starts getting phone calls again they can just reroute everybody right back to me reroute them to the web page go to the web page find Jay's contact information reach out to Jay you'll continue to communicate the process just make sure that your community is aware of what's going on related to search during the recruitment phase the district is posting the meetings posting the selection criteria promoting the opening and then again directing any candidates right back to me what's that yeah don't they though yeah future superintendent all right

114so remember uh reminding you of uh some of the qualifications they must have a valid administrator certification they must acculate 150 hours every five years in order to renew you can hire somebody without a certification and I think we did talk about this maybe not in the my last presentation but uh most likely if you hire somebody without a certification it's most likely be one of three cases it's going to be an outof State applicant that maybe they're an administrator in the state that they currently live in maybe they grew up in Seline went to you know University of Michigan got a teaching degree went off somewhere else to teach now they want to come back home right so they have a certification outside of Michigan they do not have one currently in Michigan Second

115would be if you hired someone that has recently retired and their certification has lapsed but they're looking to get back into a superintendency then that would be somebody else that would have a a that wouldn't have a certification the third uh and the least likely of the three would be if you hired somebody from outside of the traditional K12 public school system so if you hired somebody that's a college administrator you hired somebody that has uh maybe they started off their career as a teacher maybe they were an accounting teacher and then they got out of teaching we got into Banking and now they're a bank president but now they're looking to get back in you know in the public education as an administrator every now and again something like that happens but for the

116most part most of these superintendants that are hired in the state of Michigan are from the state of Michigan and most of the superintendents that are hired in the state of Michigan have the requisite K12 teaching and administrative background that we would expect every now and again we get an outlier but for the most part that's what we're be dealing with because of your relative proximity to uh to the Ohio border uh there's always a possibility that you might get somebody jumping up from Ohio uh that has an interest in you know I'm working in Michigan that's a possibility generally speaking our out ofate applicants are usually coming back for a reason aging parents grandkids kids in you know at at the University they want to be closer to things of that nature for the

117most part though you're going to get Michigan applicants for this opportunity if you do uh go down that road of hiring someone that doesn't have that certification you have to get into the moac system you have to put in a rationale for why you hired that non-certified person so they have an out ofate application or uh Administration they don't have an instate whatever it is you have to verify that they have at least a bachelor's degree and you have to assign them a mentor now your Mentor could be a retired superintendent it could be someone from the ISD it could be someone from Masa but you have to assign them a mentor they then have six months to start the process of getting the appropriate certification and three years to finish it and the state

118will tell them once they upload all their materials into MOX the state will tell them what they need to do in order to get that certification here in Michigan if we are looking at those candidates that do not have a super superintendent experience they have no superintendent experience what kinds of things are we looking for in the materials we're looking for evidence of advanced degrees they have a EDS an ed of PhD we're looking for evidence that they've been preparing themselves to be a superintendent so they've been through masas Horizons program they've been through the mli sups academy something along that line right they've been preparing themselves to be a superintendent we're going to look for a history of district-wide responsibilities in their current or pre previous jobs that are similar to what we' expect

119of a superintendent so if they've been a building administrator or a central office administrator were they responsible for a budget were they responsible for serving on the negotiations team for contracts things of that nature so we think about what a superintendent was uh you know does on a daily day day-to-day basis and then we look at their background and experiences and see if they have similar experiences and that's going to be for those candidates that again they haven't been a superintendent but they have been an administrator in some way shape or form during the interview phase search firm is going to screen the candidates I'm going to facilitate that winwing process with you we'll do our background checks we'll assist an interview prep we'll notify the candidates for interviews we'll collect Community input on the

120interviews so during this process and during the interview process as I said before I want you to take a look at only the materials trust in the fact that I have been through some Google searches with these candidates I have talked to each of these candidates I probably know a vast majority of them or at least have seen them in other searches I will reach out to people that I know that know them uh I'm going to do some vetting of them for sure we're going to have those background checks for our five or six finalists the background checks that we do while they are extensive they do not preclude the district from doing its regular due diligence so once you go to hire that person go to you know enter into contract negotiations with

121that person bring them on board as your next superintendent we want you to use use your normal HR procedures just like you would for any other employee so we want you to run the background checks that you would normally run we want you to run the misconduct checks for those Michigan employees we want you to do all the things that you would normally do so we don't want you to treat your new superintendent any differently than you would treat any new employee in the district when it comes to all the preparations and onboarding okay the background checks that we do it's going to be at the typical it's going to do all the electronic so it's going to hit all the databases make sure they're not on any of the databases it also has a

122education verification so we ask for their highest degree if they say they have a PhD from Michigan State in educational leadership then the firm that I use will call somebody at the register's office at MSU and confirm that this person did in fact graduate with a PhD from that University there's also employee verification if they say that their current job is assistant superintendent in Smith District then they will call Smith District talk to somebody h r and verify that that person is currently the assistant superintendent of whatever they say they are it will also do a social media check that is part of the uh background check process as well uh they employ some algorithms and Ai and who knows what else and then they send a nice report to me that breaks down all

123of the uh questionable M you know behaviors that they have online um all that information is going to remain with me and unless I see something in that information that I need to present to you as a board board you're not going to see it except for the final person when you hire that final person I will download that file I will send it to Betty and then she can make that part of their personnel file but you won't see any any of the background stuff unless there's something that comes up as you know problematic and then I will let you know what that is and we can talk about but otherwise we'll keep all that information to ourselves um but if I see anything on there that rises to the level of something I

124need to mention to you then I will um my favorite so far is uh some did have a misdemeanor for baiting of deer and it came up in the in the check that they had a misdemeanor for for baiting of deer which is illegal in the state of Michigan that's a misdemeanor fence baiting of deer and so I'm like okay so I had to report back to the board they have a misdemeanor for baiting of deer and so things pop but not very often B so if you put out if you put out carrots in your backyard and you're trying to draw deer in so that you could hunt them yeah you're trying trying to draw them in to make it easier to hunt and so yes you're out there throwing carrots and whatnot in

125your backyard to attract the deer so then you can boom boom boom yeah illegal don't bait deer okay so during the interview process as a board you're going to review the resumés figure out which candidates you want to interview you're going to firm up that draft contract language you're going to prepare for those first run interviews conduct those interviews and then consider Community input once I grant you access to all the applications I will also send you a tier of the candidates so again just using the number 20 for Simplicity sake if there's 20 applicants I'll look at that list of 20 applicants and I'll determine based on your selection criteria based on conversations I've had with you based on uh the you know the job experiences and resumés of the of the applicants okay

126so these eight are going to be in the top tier these 12 are going to be in the bottom tier all that's doing is kind of signaling to you that I've been through their materials and based on everything that you have told me and it's in the selection criteria I think these are the you know the eight best of the of the 20 you can interview anybody that you want top or bottom of the list okay you have that option there'll be numbers next to each of the candidates the numbers are completely random I literally go into Google give me 20 numbers between one and 100 it spits out 20 random numbers between one uh 20 one and 100 and I just assign them alphabetically and then we come to that meeting and I start

127with Tim and I say Tim give me your top six and Tim goes I like 8 15 26 18 whatever and so I go down the line I get everyone's numbers we then tally them up and would you know it nine times out of 10 you've all kind of coalesced around the same five or six applicants right if they have a majority of board support if four or more of you would like to talk to that person then I would consider that to be someone that we want to interview if we have say five candidates that have four or more and then we've got a six that got three then we can talk about whether or not we want to bring that six candidate along to kind of round out the field if someone really

128if one of those three votes really wants to Champion that applicant to the rest of the board then we can do that or you may just say you know what we've got five that got majority of the votes let's just go with those five and so we can talk about that when we have that meeting but that's how we'll kind of start that meeting out when we talk about the applicants we're only going to talk about them as numbers uh and like I said if we have a number of internals and I think we need to go into close session we can do that but for otherwise we'll stay here in Open Session and just talk about the numbers and just kind of see where we fall okay if you see someone in that bottom

129tier that really piques your interest you may say to me Jay you know why is number 15 in the bottom tier and my first answer will be they don't quite match what you're looking for I don't think I think you've got better applicants in the top and then you may say well you know I'm looking at the numbers here and I'm looking at the resume and everything and it looks like they have everything that we're looking for you know why you know why are they on the bottom and I okay well again I just think that you the applicants in the top tier are probably better reflective of what you're looking to bring forth to your community and staff and after that most board members like okay but occasionally board member really starts pressing okay

130I really wanted you know 15 what did okay you know what take your phone out go ahead and and Google them I'll give you half a second oh oh okay all right and then you start to see what it is that that I knew about that candidate and then you're like yeah maybe that's a candidate that we don't want to bring out in front of our community cuz because that's what we have to remember that we're only going to interview someone that we're ready to hire I don't watch no courtesy interviews we're not going to interview someone just because we're curious about them we're only going to interview somebody that we're ready and willing to hire and I tell my applicants the same thing only apply for a job that you're willing to take because

131nothing is worse than thinking I'm just going to apply just for the experience and then you get offered the gig and you're like oh uh well I really don't know because then I'm like okay well I not sure how I'm going to put you in my next pool because I had you in a pool they offered you the opportunity and and and you said no and I mean and it wasn't because it was an unfair offer it was because you didn't think that you were ever going to get it and you really didn't want it to begin with and so why did you apply for it but so it happens not all that often thankfully all right so during the interview phase the district is going to ensure confidentiality of the applicants post the meetings

132uh request those unprofessional conduct checks for any of our Michigan folks manage our facility Logistics this room will be just fine for interviews I think we can do the interviews in here uh unless you think that we're going to get more people than we currently have chairs for here um you know we can oh yeah we can open it back um I think that this room would work just fine uh I would Envision probably putting the applicant on a table here kind of you know facing you a little bit but then also so that the rest of the audience can see them as well uh but this room I think would work just fine for the interviews okay all right remembering that we're not going to check on our candidates until we get to the

133second round during the second round search firm is going to facilitate the identification of the finalists notify the candidates for the interviews assist the board again in interview prep collect the community uh input collect the community input on the interviews and then plan site visits so after the first run interviews after every interview everyone in the audience will have an opportunity to fill out an input form okay I will then collect those input forms I will give them to Betty she will then go and run packets for all of you and then all of you will get a packet with all the input from anyone that's here in the community during those interviews I would ask that you plan on scheduling one opportunity for public comment and that it be at the beginning of the

134meeting and then we get into the interviews the opportunity for public comment about the interviews are those input forms okay and trust me you're going to get feedback Beyond those input forms you will get emails you will get phone calls you will get text messages from your community about how they feel about those interviews as soon as we release the names of those applicants you will get phone calls you will get text messages you will get emails about those I know someone who knows someone who knows someone that works with them and they're fantastic I know someone who knows someone that works with them and they're awful you're going to hear all of that anything that you think is relevant I want you to forward to me so that I can vet it out so

135if you get something really nasty that you think you need to have vetted then just send it to me and I will do my best to vet it out um nine times out of 10 a lot of it is just I mean there's some crazy stuff out there there's some really crazy stuff out there my my favorite is probably um I couldn't trust them to do the dishes I don't know how you could trust them to run your district and I'm like that was clearly a very uh disgruntled ex spouse and that's the what they emailed the entire board and made sure to copy me as well and the board was like what we do with this I'm like I mean whatever you want but I mean it's a disgruntled spouse I'm not sure how

136much validity we want to put in their opinion um they clearly have an agenda they were clearly unhappy with how they were not doing the dishes and that's really all I have for you um but talking to some of my colleagues that do this work in other states I've I've got some incredible stories about vindictive boards that were really upset with the way their superintendent left their district and wanted to make sure that they never got another job ever and would follow that applicant you know follow their former superintendent around to the districts that they would and they would call reach out to those boards and just tell those boards about how terrible and awful and it's just like okay so yeah you're going to hear that kind of stuff hopefully nothing to that level

137um but anything that you get please send it my way and I'll do my best to V it out for you especially if it's something that is really Troublesome to you uh let me know and I'll see what I can find out during the interview phase the board is going to identify the finalists you're going to research those finalists identify questions specific to each finalist conduct the interview consider Community questions consider Community input first round is very structured five or six candidates 15 16 questions same question for all six candidates 55 minutes that's it no follow-ups nothing right and that is to again provide that Level Playing Field when we get into the second round then we have the opportunity to ask some personalized questions to those candidates based on things we heard in the

138first round things that we discovered when we did our background checks and our reference checks um things that maybe have re have surfaced uh you know in that first interview you talked about that program that you implemented please tell us more about that in the first interview you uh referenced this particular situation please tell us more about that second round allows you an opportunity to provide follow-up questions as well so if you have a follow-up question that You' like to ask then you can ask that um again I I want you to just be mindful of uh you know the legal things related to the kinds of questions we can ask I'm sure you're familiar with most of that kind of thing if you have any questions about that please let me know and I

139will uh give you my input and feedback on that we will also collect questions for the second round from the community so I've got a little placard they can little piece of paper they can fill out with a question I will collect those I will look through them quickly I will then pass them off to the board president if I see anything in there that is repetitive to something we've already talked about tonight or uh that I think is inflam atory or is particularly um sometimes the questions are very pointed and you know exactly what they're trying to get at and this is probably not something that we want to do so I will kind of set off set those off to the side let you know your president see them but then hand them

140over and then depending on how much time is left uh and how many questions there are I mean if he gets 25 questions we're probably not going to get to 25 questions but we may get to three or four of them um but we'll present those to the board president and then we can go from there on those and again after second round another opportunity to fill out those input forms those input forms collected copied and returned to all of you I want you throughout this process to listen to your community to listen to your staff to consider their input but I want you to remember that at the end of the night this is a board decision okay this is what you were one of the things you were elected to do hire a

141superintendent fire a superintendent evaluate a superintendent by law you have to do those three things right and so it is ultimately your responsibility as a board to hire the superintendent so yes take their input into consideration but remember that at the end of the night it is a board decision during this interview phase districts going to be posting the meetings posting the press release managing the facility Logistics and then copying uh those Community input forms that we talked about between first and second round wide open I encourage you to do all the research that you want to do reach out to board members if they are a current sitting superintendent president to president uh board member to board member if you know people that work in that District in which they work feel free to

142reach out do all that due diligence for sure once we know that they're moving onto the second round during the decision-making phase I will make myself available to answer board's questions just to be clear I am available to you during the entire search to answer questions uh and then I will help facilitate your decision-making process this is not Jay's decision uh I may have an opinion and you can ask me but I'm not going to tell you what it is because again this is your decision this is a board decision so I'm just here to facilitate the process the board is going to decide on the candidate to be offered the position you're going to vote on that superintendent contingent upon successful negotiation you're going to start those contract negotiations so that motion is very

143simply I move that we enter into contract negotiations with candidate X to be the next superintendent for the you know Seline Public Schools based on successful contract negotiations generally speaking the board president and one or two other members of the board will head up those negotiations the full final contract has to come back to the entire board for passage um but it's usually one or two of the board members that uh that do that negotiation and then I always encourage you to work with your legal councel as well to make sure that that process goes as smoothly as possible the district Tri during this time is going to post our meetings post the press releases and then work with HR on our normal onboarding processes we want to make sure that we are reaching out

144to your stakeholders and getting their input so we do that through the survey that we've talked about we do that through the face to-face meetings that we'll that we'll talk about they have the opportunity to fill out the interview forms after each round of interviews first and second they have an opportunity to put forth questions after the second they have an opportunity for public comment at the beginning of every meeting and they all have an opportunity to reach out to you via email text and everyone so there are a number of opportunities for you to get that feedback from staff and Community throughout this entire process during the support phase after the search has been completed the search firm is going to make itself again available to answer your questions at all times we will

145uh I'll come back in three four months after your superintendent has been so sometime this fall come back we'll do a successful superintendent transition workshop and then we'll check in with new superintendent periodically throughout the year as a board I want you to make sure that you have a plan for onboarding your new superintendent I want you to participate in that superintendent transition Workshop I want you to help establish your first year performance expectations and we'll talk about some of that in that uh successful superintendent transition workshop and then again be a good boss check in with your new superintendent periodically um I can think of a district in which they were replacing a long-standing superintendent and one of their first board me uh board board meetings after that they came to the board table

146and they were clearly perturbed and they were perturbed because no one had made coffee and the reason no one to make coffee is because the superintendent that had been there for 15 years always made coffee before the meetings well the new superintendent didn't realized that the new superintendent didn't know that and so here the board members are looking for their coffee and no one had their coffee and they were upset and then they found out that that was just something that and so that's a small example but there are any number of examples of things where when a long-standing superintendent has been here and has you know kind of we were used to how they do things we now have to remember that we have a new superintendent and we need to take some time

147to get to know how they do things and then if we want or have expectations of our new superintendent we need to be explicit in that by the way it's your responsibility to make sure that we have coffee before every meeting got it we'll do all right during the support uh phase the new superintendent is going to take an active part in the onboarding process C they're going to schedule and participate in that successful superintendent Workshop work with your board to establish those first year expectations and then reach out to masb masasa for any kind of support that they may need the stakeholder groups that we've been talking about your staff your parents your community timeline so before we get to the timeline uh this is my opportunity to uh remind all of you that

148I do this on a regular basis and so sometimes I kind of get ahead of myself and I I kind of speed through some of the stuff and so I just want to take a minute to reflect and just see if there's anything here that you would like me to talk more about if you have any questions or concerns uh and then we can get into the timeline so anything yeah I do have a couple of questions absolutely um I just was noting on the search timeline that we sort of speak about parents and Community but I just would really like to highlight that we should speak to students in recent alumni I think you mentioned it in your initial presentations and I think it's a really unique Viewpoint that would help us in figuring

149out the kind of direction for the district these especially like recent alumni or older students will be the parents maybe of the next absolutely so you know clearly anybody in the community can you know can participate in the survey so your students can participate in the survey community members can you know participate alumni can par participate in the survey um and then any of those community community meetings I mean any of the meetings technically you know anyone can attend generally speaking um you know the elementary school teachers feel more open and free to talk amongst other Elementary School teachers and the secondary teachers you know same and community members community members like to speak you know when they're with other community members uh and that's one of the reasons I ask board members not to

150come to those meetings because they tend to speak a little bit more freely when there aren't board members around right um and so yes we can definitely encourage any of those groups to come to any of the community meetings if you want to set aside a special time or a special place to meet for some of those groups we can definitely talk about that for sure well I just didn't notice in any of the breakout sessions anything specifically to for students not obviously I think the littlest kids it's not or the middle schoolers but you know for the high school students the yeah so but you know I and on on either of those two days that I'm in District we can definitely set aside some time uh to meet with students for sure uh

151and that I would just ask that you know much like if you've been through a strategic planning process um you know we encourage uh you know a a wide variety of students as possible you know I don't want to just talk to the student council um which I'm I'm sure the student counsel are fantastic I mean the two that you had up here tonight fantastic young uh young adults for sure uh but uh you know it's very to a student body as I could get you know for the best yeah and then my other concern was just the part about there being the like sort of secret file of you know anybody who's been in a leadership position for any number of years is going to have some a secret file yeah they're going to

152have something that people did not like right it may not be but it really seems like there's a certain amount of like gatekeeping over that information you're going to do until we actually pick the person because you said you would have something and you would only pass it on once it was in their personnel file and you would decide which parts of it that's how I was understanding would be Rel for us to know okay let me just finish so I just have learned over the years that what one person considers to be important or relative relevant or one person's like well that was an ugly divorce versus there was an accusation it wasn't just the dishes there was an accusation of spousal abuse maybe it wasn't substantiated that is the kind of thing that

153like if I were voting on a superintendent I would certainly want to know about and not just have like well we didn't think it was really I know that guy that guy's a great guy there's no way he would do that and then it doesn't we don't know about it until it in the superintendent file sure that gives me like that statement gave me great concern so I just want so let me let me just CL me just let me clarify that and I and I appreciate that so what I was referring to is when we do the background checks if anything pops in the background check I'll definitely let you know but if everything comes back all clear then there's no need for you to see the to see the background check everything came

154through all clear you can trust me that I you know if something pops I'm going to give it to you for sure um that instance that I was talking about a misdemeanor for baiting for deer to me is probably not something that's going to disqualified candidate but I'm going to let you know because it popped in the background check if it the background check comes back clear then I'm not going to release that to you if it is not your final candidate then I'm not going to release that to you either because as a board you only have that one candidate that you have now decided hire that file becomes part of their personnel file um so I'm not going to release the other five background checks to you like I said if something pops

155I will definitely let you know about that but I'm not going to release the other background checks to you you're only going going to get the one for the actual candidate that you end up hiring could you clarify what you mean by something pops so if in the background check when I get the background check if there is nothing criminal in it it just says clear if there's something criminal then it will pop it will come up and so if they do the background check when they do the federal background check if they are on a uh if they've committed a felony they've committed a misdemeanor that will pop in their background check then I will let you know that they have a Fel felony or a misdemeanor that has popped if they have committed

156if they're on any kind of registry then that's going to come up in the background check I will let you know they're currently on a registry um so any of those kinds of items that come up on the background check that is not classified as clear I will let you know about those and what if for example a candidate had a settlement with someone who accused them of sexual assault and there was no criminal liability but they had had a settlement with the NDA is that something that you would bring to a board's attention if I was aware of it yes uh but I'm only going to be aware of that so you you know if they've never been committed of a crime then that's not going to come up in any kind of regular

157background check right if it's not part of a misconduct check so when the when you as when you check for you know misconduct checks uh for any state employees for any you know Michigan Public School Employees uh if you do any misconduct checks anything that pops in the misconduct check you're going to find out about as well um so there is I mean you know there are examples of of individuals that uh have been accused of things were never prosecuted so that's not going to appear in a background check uh there may be stories out there and if there are stories out there then I will provide you with with the stories and the links to the stories and you can read for them read through them and and make your own determinations um but

158I'm definitely going to uh make you aware of that material as well we also have to remember uh that because these are open meetings any discussions that we have about any of the candidates are in an open meeting and so what I don't want to do is put you in a position where you may say something that could then put you in legal Jeopardy uh with you know with your comments um so that's why we try to just kind of tread that line because we know we have to do this all in open sessions so we just need to be mindful of what we're talking about so that we're not unnecessarily dragging people through uh the mud okay can you just clarify real quick because I maybe I misunderstood it but did you say you'll

159only give us their background information if they're one of our final candidates so for your final candidate I will give you the entire background check that was that was conducted by our company so that you can make that part of their personnel file but the other ones unless there's something in there that you know that you need to know about that was illegal then there's no need to turn over because you're basically just going to say clear clear clear clear clear clear okay yeah but you will let us know because that may make a difference of whether or not you'll absolutely absolutely if if something pops in those background checks I will let you know for sure for sure and just to be clear we only do background checks on the five or six applicants

160that you've selected for uh for interviews okay the other ones they're going through the application they are taking it upon themselves to check the box that says yes I've never committed a felony yes I'm not on any you know any uh offender list right they're filling out those applications and answering those questions and so we're going to take them at face value once you then select those six applicants then those six applicants will all get the background checks those generally come back pretty quick the computer stuff comes back almost instantaneously the education verification and the employment verification that's all the dependent upon how quickly the company can get a hold of somebody at the University or at the school district and get confirmation from them so that can take a couple days the social media

161check comes back pretty quick as well okay so I'm sorry this my last question I just want to make sure I'm understanding so in terms of like the gatekeeping of what we see versus what you see like in the social media so let's get getting away from Criminal things yeah if you're aware that a candidate had been involved in something that got a certain amount of negative publicity but you know I mean it could be totally reasonable but just I would just rather know about these things versus not know about them absolutely so that's the kind of thing I mean it may be that they had a fair but if they were involved in some level of controversy correct we would have access to that you will you will know it so and that's one

162and that's one of the things I was talking about when I you know when I said i' break him into my tears if I see someone that and I or I know someone has a very controversial background and there's gonna be a lot of information out there that problem that person is probably going to end up in the bottom tier and that's probably one of the reasons why because again I'm trying to save the board from bringing somebody out in front of their community that is going to be problematic for you right and so I can alert you to that information for sure uh and again A lot of times you know you're going to pretty much coales once you look at all their materials you're going to pretty much coales around the same the

163same candidates um but we can we'll definitely for sure we have that no surprise guarantees so you're going to hear everything that I find I'm you know you get all access to all the materials for all the candidates uh I don't cherry pick no if there's 20 applicants you're going to see all 20 you're going to see every bit of information that they have submitted uh in their uh in their application packets Darcy has a burning question no I've got uh Dar two quick questions I think one of the the factors of weighing in favor of of masb when we were picking search firms was the online survey and and you seem to be more in depth than the one that had been done previously are we going to have any input on what gets

164asked in that survey uh I mean we can talk about it it's it's pretty uh it's pretty standard um you know there's a a list of traits you know that you that we have them rate um and uh and everything um you know you have an opportunity as board members you can take the survey yourselves um and you know once we've uh made the survey live if you see anything that you would like change or correct it or if you want I could even I can get you out a copy before uh before we go live if you'd like yeah okay you know I think seline's a a unique district and and may have things that we're looking for in particular uh and the only other question I had was that you mentioned uh during

165interviews we will have opportunities for people who are here to provide input yes um for me I appreciate that but it raises an accessibility issue for me with parents who have are at home and can't make the meeting because they've got four young kids or their kids are at clubs and we do stream online um can that input be also made available online for those people who are watching so my general recommendation there is that if anyone viewing online would like to provide feedback then they are more than open to they can email any of you with any of their feedback that they would like and that's how I generally handle that just let them know that you know any feedback that you have please feel free to email the board president and let them

166know how you feel about that I I hesitate to putting out anything else other than that because what I have found is that if we put out a survey or something like that that's online then anybody literally anybody could then participate in that but if we stick to if you have input please feel free to email the board president uh you know then you can do that or they could even email me you know they want to email me and then I will then forward that information along to the board president so I think that that's a good way for any of those that are viewing it remotely want to we also have Prov that com back they can we also have a collective board email address there you go yep thank you yeah absolutely

167thank you Michael I was I was going to say the same exact thing we our our procedure is typically that they would email okay perfect um so just logistically I would recommend that we do use this room because um to Darcy's Point people will be at home and we do want it streamed um the position of the cameras are such that our our great friend Ben can recommend they did sit in the middle last time because of the main camera but you can talk with them with them about how the position my main concern is what I what I don't want is for the Community that's here they just see the back of the of the applicant's head because that's not now I have had it in the past where some districts have put a

168screen kind of like behind you so that anybody or even off to the side here so that people in the community can then at least see the face of the this is a good setup oh absolutely to Darcy's point for those individuals at home that that might have that need and if I can interject just a bit we just had a little sign language with Ben he can easily set this room up so that it works fantastic um so a few other questions um can we please see the raw data from the surveys not just a distillation of top themes Etc but so when you say when you say raw data what are you what are you asking for y so the last time we did this um I I think the most impactful thing

169one of the most impactful things for me was to read the individual lines of open comments uh from the community and I referred to it several times when I was got checking myself in some decision making and I thought it was very beneficial to hear those voices so there are no open-ended there are no open-ended Comon Center Serv okay so to Darcy's Point earlier I I also would like to possibly have um the option to tweak survey things and and open form something because I'd be really interested in what people say that was that was really good last time so just a piece of feedback from me um couple other things it's slide 15 on mine I I'm not sure what slide it was in your deck but it's it starts off professional accomplishments that

170a board should look for in superintendent candidates yeah um um I'm assuming we have the ability to put in a minimum or a desired qualification specifically okay um because of the size of our school district the ranking the reputation Etc I think that that's something that we should consider consider absolutely yeah no when we go through and develop that select criteria we'll talk about exactly what it is that you want and what your expectation is related to that for sure okay excellent y um public comment at any open meeting absolutely I heard that um do you know what a typical um attrition number is for if you get X number of candidates who apply for a position how many fall off early on in that process is that something that you uh no you know

171if they if they go through the process of applying for the job uh you know so every now and again I'll have one or two that will start the process and just not finish it uh but that's fairly rare okay so for the most part if they apply for it they apply for it and I only know if they actually hit the submit button now if they're active in the system I routinely check the system and I can see most recent logins and I can usually tell uh I'll look at the name and then I'll open up their file and I'll look at their address and I okay well I bet they're looking at the Seline job and so then I'll reach out to them and say Hey you know what's going on you haven't

172applied for anything yet but are you looking for you know are you looking at the Seline job what can I tell you about it I just kind of gauge their interest so I definitely monitor anyone that logs in the system anyone that starts a new file in my system that I'm like okay well they started a new application in my system reach out to them see you know what it is that they're looking at we have a number of jobs that are open right now uh and so I just want to kind of help direct them to the appropriate opportunity so all right perfect then my last comment for now before we get into timeline and have others um that may want to comment is um thank you Lauren because that was the very first

173thing I saw as well um I would specifically request and ask the board to consider having a session for the students at the school totally open to other schools Middle School Etc um I I think we say student I think we should mean it this is the most important thing that we will do as a board and their voice is incredibly impactful for all of us um we have Hornet time we have a huge Auditorium where they'd all fit like we can we can figure it out ABS um so I I would ask that students are definitely considered as their own group because to your point if Elementary School staff like to to be together the students like to be together and they don't like surveys so while we're talking about the survey so before

174I forget um any languages other than English that we would like to see this in Spanish anything else that we can think of I think I'd ask for suggestions from Carol our assistant superintendent of Human Resources surve okay then we should probably model the process yep easy easy enough to do just wanted to make sure so yes that's very simple just coming back to the student thing there were several other groups that I would love to see specifically called out whether they're combined with certain groups I think it's important that they're um they're included slash invited and it could be that they go to community or or what have you but I would really like them to be specifically invited this includes our foundation for Seline area schools our um our CQC which is our

175um Coalition for equality Community um those are two standing board committees as well as the ones you have listed here with Wellness cab c Etc well cak is in a board committee and de de um I'd specifically like every building PTA and PTO invited for um uh a session and then the students was the other one that I PR much and that's it okay all right okay all right because I would tell you that I really would appreciate those groups especially the students being yeah absolutely given dedicated time as part of the input session yep no problem at all okay s okay so what I want to make sure we might need a minute this is a different one than we have oh okay okay sure no problem jble they're reading I think the changes

176the distribution plan is it looks like that's the only difference okay Jackie it does look awfully cool though okay so we're good with that then all right yeah J I did have a question um at some time at some point in the proc I'm going go back to my old form now at some point in the process we are developing a profile for candidates yes and when is that is that during the board Workshop develop selection criteria that yes that's uh the board uh Workshop recruitment tentatively right now March 11 March 11th great okay I have one one I if you don't mind U let's say that something concerning does come to us look we're not going to try like you said to to go research and look into people but I also know that

177I have a you know people will see me and will reach out to us and they will right so what if we do find something that we find concerning okay um can we request to go into closed with you or do we at any time or just bring it bring it to me and then I will vet it out and then I will just report back to the board in an email what I what I found out so I what if it happened an hour before we're going to interview or what if it happened you know like anyway yeah so we'll just have to take the time to figure out you know how how much Credence we want to lend to it so I can think of an instance in in which uh a board

178member came to me and said okay so I heard that candidate X did XYZ and I reached out to everyone on the reference list I reached out to the current administrator I reached out to their current superintendent I reached out to everyone I could think of I reached out to The Advocate themselves I asked them all the same question did this person do this nobody could corroborate the story and so I went back to that board member and I said okay I vetted it I talked to 12 different people I talked to the candidate themselves everyone said that this never happened and I said so I don't know if that person that told you had they you know had their own particular act to grind or whatever it was I said but I can find

179no evidence that this thing ever happened and so then it's going to be up to you then to decide okay so he checked into it couldn't find anyone to corroborate it so is it something we consider is it something we not and so that's kind of thing that we have to just kind of you know think about if it comes to us at the last minute then we have to decide so do we want to take the time to V this out or do we want to consider this in our decision-making process or do we just want to cast it deci side and possibly even address it you know through the interview process what I found to be successful in a lot of these kinds of things is I let the candidate know okay so

180this is a concern that's been brought forth figure out a way to kind of weave it into your interview so that the board can get an understanding as to exactly what it was that happened we work with candidates all the time take this as an opportunity to tell your story right and so get in front of it if something happened out there and you know it's out there don't pretend like it's not out there because they're going to find it so take the time to address it and to just hit it head on so that the board can then decide okay they've clearly dealt with this issue and they're ready to move on and so are we yeah thank you I just wanted to make sure we're protected from you like slander and from any

181type of legal so thank you absolutely okay so February 11th uh which is us right now right here so we've done that wooo okay I have meetings scheduled on the 19th and the 26th featuring these groups and so anywhere here clearly on the 19th uh I've got plenty of time there between lunch and 3:05 that would be a perfect time for me to meet with some students so we can work with uh with Betty there to put me in contact with or to set it up with you know someone at the high school and just let me know where I need to be and then I can meet with students during that time for sure um Jay and just to go back to our PTA PTO CQC possible SAS and any other groups that the

182board rest of the board could suggest and they could fit in here I think the students are their own yeah yeah entity yeah absolutely absolutely so uh so that would be an opportunity on the on the 19th uh you know between lunch and that 305 then I'm meeting with the secondary so if I'm meeting with the secondary at 305 then it would probably make sense and maybe meet with the kids last period of the day before they go home uh and then be there for the secondary teachers you know right thereafter so so we can figure out how that how that could work there okay um and then that parenting Community night meeting there we can you know let the PTO and ptas know that that's when we meeting with the community and encourage them

183to to attend and to come out to those I I will caution you uh and and this may not be the case here uh you know it's different in every District I go into some districts and I have these Community meetings and three people show up and it's for a variety of different reasons there's sporting events going on that night there's musicals there's plays there's whatever else but we have the survey and that's the survey is an opportunity for them to take it at their you know at their Leisure right whenever it works best for them so I don't want you to be too disappointed if the community groups aren't quite what you want them to be but you know I could be wrong and maybe we get 25 30 35 40 45 people to

184show up for them which would be fantastic um but based on you know my experience in even larger communities than this sometimes I just don't get the you know the output to those Community meetings that you know that I'm sure you would like that I would like uh but we're still going to offer those opportunities um but I am cautiously optimistic that you're going to get uh a pretty robust uh response to the survey and so that's where you're going to get most of your most of your input I had a quick question about that Jay yeah um and to kind of echo what uh Darcy and Jen had said about the survey and having a short form answer which it doesn't in the standard format there's unless I'm missing something there's 's only the

185one opportunity for the parents in community that one evening like you said there could be something going on can that be something that could also be virtual so we have the opportunity at 6:30 on the 19th we have the opportunity at 1:00 on the 26th and then uh technically those two meeting that meeting at 6:15 and 7:15 for all practical purposes that's a community meeting as well we've got those specific groups that are coming in for that but any of the community members that want to come to that are more than welcome to come to that as well these are all open meetings so I would encourage community members to you know think about that 6:15 to 7:15 on the 26 in addition to that 1:00 in the 26 and then the 6:30 on the

18619th so that's three opportunities for them to come in in addition to the survey one of the reasons I will I will be up front with you one of the reasons that we quit using the open-ended comments is because uh it had been our experience that they were turning into uh just open disparagement of employees and community members and everything else and as soon as we release those comments to the board they are subject to Foya and so once they have been released to you they're then subject to Foya and then they can be released to everybody else and so we were not getting any kind of valuable at least not a lot of valuable comments back we were getting a lot of just absolute I mean just railing against previous administration railing against current

187Administration uh this district is never going to be this this district is never going to be that I mean just just lots of just not very helpful I hear that I guess though that when we do listening sessions here current superintendent Lodge makes it a point to say you know what are we doing well and what are areas of improvement so I think we could phrase it that way and we can we can definitely do that for sure and looking back there were a lot of compliments about staff as well I yes yes disparaging remarks but also positive and impactful but I just want my my bigger point to that just to remind all of you that because I present those comments to you they then are subject to being Foy and Jay I guess

188the one concern I had when I hear you say that these are open meetings and anyone can come I guess back to special ed and maybe um Julie vulker can speak to my concern I guess it's very important to me that we have a great special department and that they they and their families get dedicated time is that something that we can make sure that I mean I don't see the staff on here um the special ed staff and I and I just really want to protect the cak parents um to make sure that they've got a chance yeah to come to the table and be heard yeah absolutely okay absolutely Julie do you think sorry is that something that we need to have with staff or or am I just overly concerned yeah okay

189I just yeah just want to make sure that that time is protected for that okay absolutely yep could could we maybe provide it an inclusive list to Jay of all the groups that we want to make sure are included because I've I've counted six additional that are listed on here uh not least of which the students so I I think maybe we should compile a list yeah and I would just ask that in addition to supplying it to me Supply it to Betty as well so that the two of us can kind of work to figure out because she's going to know those groups better than I as far as who they are and where it's appropriate to meet them and what time it's appropriate to meet them and all that so definitely just you

190know uh copy bu an eye on those and we'll figure out how to get them get them in and and figure out those meets okay so are we okay with those dates 19th and 26 remembering that this does not apply to board members so you have no responsibilities on the 19th or 26 to show up to any of these meetings in fact I encourage you to I ask you very Polly to not um so we're good with those two sorry clarifying question if I just saw heads because can I I get micophone go right ahead it's just important for me to clarify that these dates at your request have not been shared with any of these entities so we paused all communication so these are just virtual holds on a calendar that are now 7

191days out one of which is likely to May might sorry Steve become a snow day one is a holiday like I'm feeling very pressed to have any reasonable turnout especially given the additions of these groups and the the the jigsaw puzzle that Betty and I will have to figure out and starting these on the 19th I also don't want to delay this timeline but I needed to say that out L what do you recommend I have no idea okay I don't I don't want to impact the whole search process well no but but that's why bet and I were feeling really rushed to get this communication out to these groups last week and we paused because we needed your voice here but I'm but I'm going to defer to Jay and say I'm not sure

192at this juncture than so we can we can make we can make any adjustments of the timeline that we need to make that's not a problem we can we can push these meetings into uh you know into the week uh into the week after um if we need to we can extend the survey out um you know we can push whatever we need to push that's not a that's not a problem at all so can I make a recommendation so the the next compelling event for the board is March 11th when we have the board Workshop So within that time time frame can you reverse engineer to pick two potential better days before March 11th absolutely absolutely are we limited to two days I'm just looking at this okay it's a big sure it's a

193big undertaking for two days I mean putting for example Wellness commit I mean yes I hear you that people may not show up but you're putting the sex ed committee with special ed group and wellness all in an hour sure that just just seems like a big I kind of agree with thirsty that seems like a very that's a big group that's like 20 minutes each for all of special ed that seems maybe we need another day yeah and that's and that's that's completely fine um you know the uh yeah we can we can definitely do a third day it's not a problem I would prefer that method or at least if it needed to happen right just so that everybody's voices could be thoroughly heard no problem so then and now you're going to

194say right we need to schedule it I so there was a specific request to meet with DEC I think that came from De members when they got specifically called out Betty and I said we need to make sure that we are also making space for our other District committees in my thought deic already has a standing meeting on one of those dates that's why that was being capitalized at that moment my thought was that we would specifically invite any of those representatives to attend during that time frame but we did had no expectation that everyone would be able to make it at the time frame that we set up like de again has a standing meeting on one of the dates proposed right yes if it shifts they may or may not but right I

195wouldn't expect that all of the members would be able to attend so I would recommend that we keep the 26th because that was that was an important meeting that that the board president had asked specifically for so we can keep the 26th and then we can create two other meetings between the 26th and March 11th uh in order to make sure that we hit the other groups does that sound reasonable and the 26 I think is enough time between now and then uh if we get that out okay so then we'll we'll ask the 19th we will go with the 26th um I will a bit pressed for time you could just leave it have continued discussions and if at the end of the day you say oh no that might work out better like

196day if we're not there it doesn't matter yeah yeah and then we'll try to find some dates between between then and the 11th so I'll I'll work with uh I'll work with Betty and Jackie to figure that out and uh and we'll go from there okay I think our our voice was not necessarily the date our voice was the kind I knew there was stuff missing off here sure okay absolutely absolutely all right so we're good with that uh so we're good with March 11th keeping that meeting that will be part of your regular board meeting I know it says 75 minutes there but you know we can generally do that uh a little bit quicker than that um but that's just kind of a round round number there so we're good good with that

197we'll continue to close the post on the 8th uh that's a Tuesday we close posts on Tuesdays at four o'clock because that gives me some time uh for those uh L last minute technical issues that always seem to crop up when someone Waits until 3:59 to uh hit the submit button uh that gives me some time to clean those kind of things up you will then get access to the candidate materials on April 18th and then we will have a board workshop on the 22nd in order to determine uh some interview questions we won't necessarily determine the exact questions at that time I'll just kind of get a feel for the kinds of questions that you want to ask and then I will put together a set of questions in an interview guide I will

198submit that back out to all of you for input we'll then make the tweaks and then we'll make sure it's ready to go for the interviews we will also at that meeting on the 22nd select the candidates that we like to interview so are we all good with April 22nd yes yes that's that's a standing meeting so March 11th is standing board meeting so is the 22nd so is May yeah I I try I try my best to kind of line them up because I I know that you were already anticipating that meeting so the best that I can do to line those up is what I try to do yep and then we've got first round interviews on the 29th and 30th those are generally six 7 and 8:00 those two nights work okay

199for me yes yeah I I've shared this in advance with everyone I think we're okay with it but but I just six o'clock I had had five for the first one but six is f you mean usually I mean we could we could bump it up if we need to uh but six o'clock usually gives everyone an opportunity to uh you know to get home from work and everything no it's fine thank you okay and then uh we have May 7th for uh second round interviews we're good there um actually I had a question about that one yeah so I just wanted to better understand this flow so I'm not saying it doesn't work but it would potentially not work depending on the flow answer so you have them on May 7th interviewing with us

200in the evening for 75 minutes each assuming there's two finalists but they don't visit until after so can you just explain why they wouldn't visit before they visit that day May 7th it says TBD though okay so that that's that's a visit that's for us that's a visit to their district for you if if that is something that the board desires to go visit their District that would be on a date to be determined so let me give you my two cents on this okay so on the day of the interviews May 7th depending on staff availability because it's going to be staff that would be responsible for this this is not anything that board members could do based on staff availability and the willingness of staff to do this we can have the two

201or three candidates come in for tours of the district but like I said that would require some staff members to then take them around the district we would then deposit them uh somewhere in this building in a couple classrooms or something from say 4:30 to 5:30 4 to 5 something like that for an open house so that each candidate is in two you know in a separate room people from the staff and Community can come through can meet with them talk with them ask questions of them all that and then they're already here and ready to go for the interviews that night okay so that's how that day kind of looks all right if you're not looking to do the visits to the district then we can just stick with the open house and then

202go into the interviews okay so we can discuss that we don't need to nail that down tonight the possible site visit to the candidates District so this is something where two or three board members go off to the district in which that person is coming from a couple things here if they're a current sitting superintendent then maybe you go and you talk to some people and you get some good information it has been my experience that you generally hear one or two things you hear about how incredible and great they are because that's absolutely the truth or you hear about how incredible great they are because they want them out of town very rarely do you ever hear that they're awful and I can't believe you're even interviewing them and I can't believe we're stuck

203with them right you just kind of you don't generally get that kind of information if they're not a current sitting superintendent if they're a building administrator or a central office person then the board may not know them all that well the community may not know them all that well especially if it's a secondary principal and you know you only end up talking to people that have elementary kids they might not who the secondary principal is and so sometimes going into those districts I've not found there to be a lot of I mean nothing that you couldn't probably get with a phone call um so something to consider if it's something that you want to do by all means we can work to set up uh a visit with uh with with that candidate's District uh

204but it's a mixed bag at best we found that the tours and the openhouse work very well those same input forms that we use for the interviews I provide a stack of those at each of the you know each of the rooms that the candidates are in so people can fill those out I'm there to kind of monitor uh the two rooms and direct people you know where to go make sure the conversations kind of flow and and stay on topic and uh and whatnot and then I'll collect those input forms and then get you copies of those uh and you may even get you know again text messages emails phone calls hey I went to the open house today and I saw this candidate they were fantastic I really think you should you know

205take a good look at them uh so you'll get that input from those as well so I think that that has been very effective the site visits to the candidates districts I'm kind of meh on those but that's up to you can we go back to the May 7th because yeah I would just propose that we have a discussion about having that on May 13th instead and the reasons are twofold number one I paused when Jackie came up here because she's saying um you know with the the delay in discussing things till tonight maybe that might move move those dates back a little bit so then that might move other timeline back a little bit um also May 13th is a standard board meeting so we would normally have that um available and on our

206calendars for all of us to for sure be here and then also the last time that we did this we did have the board come for breakfast and kind of um it was a social it doesn't break om if it's social and we're not talking about the the job um and then Michael I think you and I stayed and we we minimally went to one meeting because I remember we had we were out here we did like a little reception welcoming them for the day welcoming the candidate y okay and you you posted it as an open meeting you H you held public comment before I don't know yeah see any anytime you have contact with an applicant it's an interview and all all interviews have to be done in an open meeting okay because

207I thought I remembered that we had some type of breakfast not sit down but it was just like it was right out here yeah no I have pictures of Michael and I standing out here yeah there was a meeting yeah I would I would be reluctant to have any meeting with the board because I remember we talked about the open meeting at the at the specific time and I think I I feel like we checked with Brad bassic could yeah if it's possible I do like the idea I don't think the board has to be babysitting and walking around all all day of course but something welcoming them and then coming kind of coming back I think is a nice um Hospitality touch because I one thing I don't want us to lose sight in

208because we have a lot of requirements and you've done this a lot of times they are also making a decision they are a customer right abolutely we want them to be attracted to our school district we want them to feel like they were welcome and they can see themselves and and perhaps a family here too so if we could do it I think that that would be ace ni idea I don't want to break om yeah so let me let me step back something to think about yeah let me step back for just a second so as long as we have the conduct the community sessions that we were talking about and we're still getting all those done before we have that recruitment workshop on March 11th then that shouldn't impact any of the rest

209of the of the of the uh of the timeline if I could also say May 7th is works much better for me because May 13th although it is a standing board board meeting it is a standing board meeting we have work to do yeah and it's two 75 minutes with the candidates interviews during a standard board meeting is generally not is generally not recommended apprciate and the other thing is that I don't like to have that much distance between first and second round for a variety of reasons that we don't need to get into right now but uh it's just it's a lot of time uh I would hate for candidates to get cold feet between those two times I would hate for candidates to have other opportunities for other jobs between those two times

210um so we try to keep the first round and second round pretty close to each other so that we can get it to and then the other nice thing about that if we do it on the 7th if at the end of that meeting on the 7th the board thinks that they still need some additional time to do some research and make some decisions then when we come back together for your regular board meeting on the 13th that would be an opportunity for you to then formalize a decision if you were not ready to make one on the 7th I was just going to Echo that I think having it the same night as a board meeting is too much by the end yeah these meetings when they get so long my ability to stay

211super engaged and you know I just want to have it's like a really important day the interviews should be the only focus of those of those meetings okay thank you I appreciate everybody's feedback I just I I'm always cognizant of how many special meetings this can add and and away from families and and children absolutely and and and again and that's one of the reasons that I did everything I could to line up as many of these meetings with your board meetings as well but the interviews are almost always going to be special meetings above and beyond just because of the of the nature of of interviews so so it sounds like we're good with the timeline we're going to make those adjustments on the stakeholder input sessions make sure we get those three dates

212get everyone in on those dates so I will work with uh with your team here uh to make sure that we have some dates that work for all that okay good with the timeline all right oh you like a yeah Oh it sounded like you were wrapping up at that moment nope oh could we just pause for a minute for a little bio break absolutely thank you you bet without objection five to 10 minutes please five minutes s right thank you e for e e e anytime Ben sorry bio adjusted thank you so much we are we've returned after exactly five minutes is thank you Jay yes please uh four to seven years thereabouts so for districts like yours about four to seven years it used to be 2.75 so that's pretty good well I

213mean you know so general you know uh urban districts three to five Suburban rural districts five to seven um it just kind of depends on uh you know on where you put yourself um so I am sending a copy of the survey to your board president and I will then ask him very nicely to then share it with the rest of you um so that you have that I would ask that uh if you want any changes to it that uh you get them to me sooner than later so that we can kind of wrap this up and then get it out uh so we can start getting um some feedback from your community so again sending a PDF copy to your board president he can then share it with the rest of you you

214and then if you got some questions that you want added let me know yeah yep course I you know thank you make sure that that actually went it'll be a fast turnaround I'm sure okay so I I gave all of you a salary comparison first thing I want to ask you is uh are you satisfied with the districts that I use for comparison I actually would not recommend those school districts it's always good to see what our neighbors have but generally um we have a slightly different list that we Benchmark against okay so what districts would you like to take a look at um could we come back if others have immediate ones I would suggest the ones we Benchmark against academically outside of our ISD so I I actually talked with um Steve about

215that last week and just asked sort of are we still been marking and he said they sort of haven't done it recently and then it was it was curriculum based so not necessarily like what I look at here is population wise um yeah uh and so I guess I'm I'm wondering if there are more districts outside of Wasa that compare population sure so I can tell you I just to uh follow I like that too Darcy yeah so let me give you log the metrics here give me a second and I'll tell you uh some of the districts that would so I think that you know you are correct and the districts that we have here are uh you know your peer districts similar size to you in your general vicinity so if we look

216at districts could you turn your mic on please I'm recalling we benchmarked against Nova Northville you're right Gross Point South I don't yeah I don't recall that specifically but it's probably true there then there were some a little further away as well I think mome maybe yeah like maybe like a Rochester and right I think Troy might have been in there Troy yep and then either Birmingham or Bloomfield it was a B I don't remember okay so I can tell [Music] you all right so someone had mentioned noi so uh let's see here noi okay Novi we're looking at a Medicare gross pay of 232 when you look them up that's very helpful when you look them up can you also say their enrollment uh so for Novi enrollment is going to be what's that

217you just said is that salary Insurance pension annuity together all in Allin 383 okay Allin 383 but we're concerned with salary and annuity so salary was 232 when you add in FICO retirement medical dental vision life and everything then that gets you to the 383 all in the enrollment number there uh yeah I'm looking that right now just a second I mean could we also make this like just so that we don't get to In The Weeds right now like we do have a compensation committee team right so my feeling or my wonderment is if we couldn't convene the compensation committee get Carol's thoughts on some benchmarking like when we did this for Steve that's what we did and we had had at the time it was CT Ellis gave us like what he thought

218were were good benchmarks right and then we went from there so so maybe that saves us from like getting two in the weeds tonight about every school district that might we might want to know right so uh Novi is uh 6700 so what I can tell you is uh you know I gave you the comparison districts um here from you know from your area uh we can definitely look at some other comparison districts uh based on current market based on what is happening in other districts based on other salaries for other districts uh I tentatively had a proposed posting salary based on what your current superintendent is making based on market right now I had it at 165 to 185 now 165 might be a little low we might want to possibly think about 175

219to 195 uh you know we could go up generally speaking we don't go below our basement we can go as high as the board is comfortable with so we can go well above the top end of the scale but we're not going to go below our basement um So based on area districts based on current market uh 165 to 185 I think put you in competitive space if you wanted to uh up that a little bit 175 to 195 I think again put you in a very competitive space um for districts your size in this area I agree with Brad that I would be in favor of a compensation committee and then bringing it back to the full table with time to research this talk with Carol and um I'd like to review what we

220did last time because I think that's exactly what we did last time and if that was four years ago with the rate of inflation I'd want to think about that as well does I just want to know from Jay though does how does that impact you know that you had put on here that you wanted to get out a preliminary posting so like can we do a preliminary posting with a salary kind of two I I would not I I generally recommend against putting out a preliminary posting without a salary because the first question I'm going to get is what's the salary going to be and so uh once I have the salary then we can include that in the preliminary posting and get that out so I'd be more than happy to just hold

221until you decide you know what it is that you'd like to put forth as a salary did you get any information there me yes uh we were looking at the contract from 2022 we' since updated it Steve yeah I pulled I pulled the transparency report so whatever you had on the transparency report on the web page so I me I can give you the numbers later but okay thank you do we need a salary number or can we put a range a range a range is fine a range is what I would need to have a do we really need to have a whole committee meeting just for a range then when I heard a range I actually thought we don't need to go now District by District like figure like if we did 165

222to 185 it's highly likely we're somewhere in there or above it I think our floor of 165 I mean I will flat out tell you like is a good like it's reasonable meaning like we wouldn't want to go below that floor I do not believe I would like to have the information from the school districts that we mentioned Northville Gross Point um I would like to add Plymouth Canton because their numbers for enrollment to the point earlier might be similar to ours what you want to do oh the enrollment numbers of Plymouth Canton M uh Plymouth Canton is 14,000 they're thereabouts a lot bigger than when I was there no they're they're much bigger yeah no pouth Canon is a monster um but but I I think only looking like I would like some diverse

223schools I would like outside of was County as well I I just like more information than benchmarking against the four I mean they're great they're are neighbor friends but sure um we can we can Benchmark against any of the other districts that you like to Benchmark against uh I'm fairly certain that you're probably going to still come right around to this to this range only because some of the districts that you've already mentioned Novi you know as you uh you know I think what did I say was 383 was their total imp package um I mean that's much higher than than what you'd be offering Allin for for your candidates so I think some of the districts that you were looking to compare to um they're much bigger and much more there's just a lot

224more there and I just think that those those salaries are going to be much higher sorry I'd like to Benchmark against similar sized potentially similar um uh makeup of uh you know we're primarily Urban not a city just something similar along a couple of those characteristics but I caution us about going like District by District right now so I guess or at least that's my reading of the whatever you guys want to do it we can go through every school district around um but like I would say like let's get the there the three of us are compensation committee correct like what if Jay if we got together and we got a salary range to you within X deadline you could give us or tell us when you would advise that and then we can

225do our homework in the meantime is that would that work or do you want to do this right now in Open session for sure that is completely up to you I am here as long as you'd like me to be we can definitely go through some of this right now if you'd like to put a pin in this and come back to me with a salary scale preferably by the end of the week then I can get it posted by the end of the week um that would be my recommendation to the but I mean seven of us and you guys tell me so I know someone had mentioned someone had mentioned Gross Point uh so gross point 6,400 students so a little bit bigger than yours uh and when I did that search uh

226that posting was uh 285 uh to 330 that was the salary range that they or some within there yeah I believe it was 285 to 330 was their salary range yeah and they have two high schools I I don't think that that's a range that you would be looking at for not total no that's not total comp that was just salary salary yeah total comp was was north of 400 if if we're going to discuss I I don't see a likelihood that we're going to be much different from our research of 175 to 195 I I don't anticipate us being significantly off of that I mean we can we can research it more but we can certainly go higher if we needed to you can always go higher if you need to for sure um

227and you know and if candidates if I'm starting to hear from candidates that it's an issue right then I'll definitely let you know we can make adjustments for sure but I think 175 to 195 165 to 185 somewhere in that vicinity if we we could even go 165 to 195 if you want to keep 165 as your basement um you know I think that's a pretty deep basement but um I know right and 195 is is higher than even our recently amended salary for our superintendent so that's fine so I think it's a I think it's a decent range yeah you know I mean and that is one of the things that I've been talking to boards about is that it you know I I don't want boards to be surprised that they may be

228paying their new superintendent more than they were paying their outgoing superintendent and that's just because that's the market right now um yeah um I'd like to say that then we just put 165 to 195 and I feel pretty strong they will fall in that range somewhere just just so that if Jake dude let's get going I mean let's start drumming up interest for this job I guess it would be my I agree I think we need Michael back to do the if we no we don't have toot no okay yeah okay I what I I still think we should look at a few school districts that have approximately like I just did a Google search I see Jennison has 5,000 I see Grand Ledge has 5,000 like I think it's just prudent to be able

229to look at some other figures I realize that some of these are much higher than we would consider but I still think it's a good idea to look at some I'm also thinking about employee retention because if there's a huge Delta between what we're paying and other what other very nice school districts like some of the ones we've mentioned are you know what if I could make 383 and go to nobody that sounds pretty good so I think we should be cognizant of not being afraid to to vary too far from where we are I remember when we did it we also had a kicker for a doctorate I would like us to think about that as well sure um is that included in here as as part of our salary line or uh well

230that would be up to you I mean you know when you when you do the negotiations if you want to add anything above and beyond the salary whether it be an annuity or an additional uh stien for an advanced degree that would be you know part of the contract negotiations um so Grand Ledge uh superintendent uh Medicare wages so that's your basically your salary 21978 total comp 328 so that total comp of 328 is still quite a bit higher than um than your your comparative districts that we've got here and they are at about they're at their student population is just over 5,000 but there are other issues that it's hard to tweeze out from the base numbers like if you're superintendent has been there for 25 years or 20 years uh Grand Le superintendent's

231been there for three all right that's okay that's a whole different story yeah that that's my that's my home District so that's why I know that so are we are we content with 165 to 195 for the posting We want to go 175 to 195 195 sounds like a decent R 175 195 is there a reason we're at 195 and not two only because I don't know our people's is just more dra there's sort of a reason um one of those reasons is that the fact that our other our assistant superintendent uh finance and and HR if we went much higher they'd also need to get a salary bump as well so we're going to stick with I think as a cap at 195 is a okay am I wrong or Jason I want to

232know what Jason has to say I was just I was just laughing going back to to retail pricing structure that was the reason I was I was laughing because because because Lauren is Right 200 looks a whole lot better than 195 it does but then things get discussed yeah if there's if there's other salary implications and I think we need to consider that okay so 175 195 okay all right so see anything there for this particular we're not looking to we're just looking to give them just kind of a a flavor for what the district is uh and you know we want them to do some of their own research as well first paragraph is pretty standard second paragraph is a little bit about the community third and fourth paragraph is some information about the

233district and again this was compiled with some input from your staff so take a few minutes to take a look at that and let me know what you're thinking thanks Jay um I don't think we're GNA really we should not do any word smithing at this point um even though Charming is a lovely word we were just asked for it and I actually have a few things I change and Lauren too Dary too I don't know we were just named the best weren't we like the best school for athletics so that would be one of my ads okay and CTE that would also be one of my ad desert and and something about our recent Bond and investment in Steam I think is is very good um I would flip paragraph three and paragraph two

234because I think the differentiating differentiating factor in our school district is exactly what is being modeled in paragraph two so if you're looking to pull someone in um you should pull them in with with that not we're 45 miles west of Detroit I would just flip them I think it's important for a commute kind of perspective but um it should be about the district so Athletics steam CTE and then flipping paragraphs two and three are what I saw okay done okay um sorry paragraph two hearkens me back to my real estate days um do we even need paragraph to yeah because it gives people and I yeah I think so because it might give people idea of drive and how long it you know it would be if they were looking in a Down River

235area or in a you know what I'm saying it might give them some feel on that piece of it from a quality of life standpoint sure okay well if that's the case maybe a shout out to the University of Michigan and and Eastern really like between two major univers you know I don't know yep I think that's point but there's nothing there's nothing about us being right by the University of Michigan which is like the premier University in the state of Michigan sorry I'm glad I live where I live or perhaps more expansively no I think that's a good point because a lot of people that live in Seline are connected with Eastern and connected with washon Community College connected with um the University of Michigan I think it's a good point maybe folks would

236want to move here because they have a child at one of those schools Etc so I think it's I think it's a good selling feature done all right anything else all right I will add a couple comments based on those I we get that up and running so speaking of getting that up and running so when I post it I'll post it in two places right off the top I'll post it to my staff which is the website that every education job in the state of Michigan has posted on that is free of charge I will post it to our application system Rellis which will then automatically post to the other states that use Rellis nice enough for you Ohio Indiana uh Wisconsin Minnesota I'll use it and so it kind of does a nice

237job of of blanketing the Midwest uh and then it'll go as far as Florida and Alaska if we start to see applicants from Alaska I have a pretty good idea of how they found it um I would recommend above and beyond those two which are at no cost to you I would recommend two additional posting places both which will come with an additional cost although fairly reasonable uh for around 270 5 each uh I would suggest that we look at a I think they're 30 or 45 Day postings to the uh job boards for the National Association of black school Educators and the association for Latino administrators so those are two national organizations that host job boards uh that we have seen a pretty good return on um for as far as applications you know

238from those two spaces that's an issue that's come up up in the past uh in previous search and uh is always welcomed yeah so any issues with using those two job boards and like I said an additional and I'll let you know exactly how much it's going to cost but I last I checked I think it's around 275 or so for for each of those above and beyond that we can consider something like top school jobs which is a nationwide uh posting for school jobs that one is a little bit more pricey right around $475 to $500 we've not seen a great amount of return on those National Association for administrators so basically your superintendent Association at the national level they host a job board as well similar cost but again not seeing a lot

239of return on investment uh you know for those we just don't get a lot of applications from either of those two sites we have as I said seen some applications come in from the other two that I mentioned so unless you really want to go with one of those big National Publications um I think that if you stick with local the state one Rellis which is going to get it out nationally to some extent and then those other two job boards I think you're going to cover pretty much what you're looking for um if you want to go with the other ones we can definitely do that uh but like I said it's going to cost you probably another thousand dollar and I just don't know that you're going to see the applications come in

240from those I don't think so um would you like us to reach a decision this evening yeah just so I can you know I can post is the sense of the board that we're g to we would be find with adding those two Latino and black administrators okay yes please off you go then Perfect all right and then if if the applications are not coming in like I think they should be and we want to take a look at possibly going broader then I'll definitely have that conversation with you but I am cautiously optimistic that with those four placings those four postings that we'll see the application pool that you're looking for super thank you all right else um I do want to say real quick the at the front the pl or posting Board

241of Education uh Darcy's the secretary oh okay I don't want to be the secretary no all right so Darcy is secretary and then uh Tim you're just a trustee okay just a trustee did you want to throw in some doctorates in there to make it sound like we're really snoody I mean that's completely up to you if if you'd like to add titles that's fine but U I will make that adjustment as well this is fine okay so just a recap quickly next steps I will work with the district with your uh with your team to finalize ATT additional two dates make sure we hit all the groups that we talked about tonight so we'll get that squared away we'll get the survey out to Michael should have that now so he can get out

242to the rest of you fantastic so please as soon as you can take a look at that and then propose some open-ended questions i' caution you to limit it you know let's not get it too too crazy out there I will get those added and then we can get the survey out there as well okay I will refine the uh preliminary posting here I will get a posted probably tomorrow uh and then once I have it posted I will send all of you an email with a link to the posting so you can get in there you can see what it looks like um I will send it to those two sites that we talked about and I will just you know when I get the press releases for the uh for the community meetings

243and for the other meetings I will copy you on those as well um as we go through this process I will be you know generally emailing you on pretty close to a weekly basis a bi-weekly basis to kind of let you know what's going on as the applications start to come in uh you know there'll be kind of a quiet period there um as I'm just kind of you know doing my research and collecting applications and whatnot so there won't be a lot to report back out to you so if you're not hearing anything and you're getting nervous feel free to just Reach Out say hey Jay what's going on right but I will do my best to kind of you know keep you in the loop as to what's going on um any questions

244or concerns at any time during this process please feel free to uh to give me a call or shoot me an email or shoot me a text however you want to reach out to me that's fine uh and I I'll be more than happy to uh talk to you and answer any questions that you got I will say that a vast majority of these applicants will wait until the selection criteria has been added before they actually submit and that means that's usually a week or two before the posting closes um and I will get a number of applications the weekend before that Tuesday that it closes and the Monday before the Tuesday that it closes and the Tuesday before 4:00 on the day that it closes so a lot of those applications will come in

245late um so if you ask me for numbers I may not tell you just because I don't want to scare you off uh but uh early numbers will just not be there but they'll start to come in as we get closer to the closing date for sure okay well I'd like to thank you the community would like to thank you for being diligent and making sure every everyone's voice has heard this process we appreciate it AB yeah absolutely anything else I can do for you tonight thank you all right thank you I'd like to entertain a motion to enter into Clos session of the board of education at 955 PM for the purposes of considering a confidential attorney client communication pursuant to Section 8 h of the open meeting act joining us tonight will be

246Carol diglio Jackie Martin and Attorney John Cava uh this requires a two-thirds roll call vote so I'm just going to go down the list and say I or nay uh Austin hi Berwick gerby gold hi McBay says I Ste hi tiidus I or tiidus tises close ties oh my gosh and one of these days one of these days thank you very much uh we will adjourn now without uh we'll oh what's the motion does it do do we have a motion thank you thank you Jay do we have a motion we hope to open at some later time there will be no action after afterwards and we hope to return to open session by I'm going to be optimistically say 10 after 10 I'm very Optimist no I think it's GNA be at at 10

247after 10 so do I have a motion please it was that Tim I'll support it Tim instead no you didn't Tim and Jennifer steans all in favor please say you already said I thank you thank you very much uh Ben thank you e e e thank you very much I'd like to entertain a motion to adjourn the regular Board of Education meeting on February 11th 2025 at 11:05 p.m. gerby moved seconded his tises move um are there any opposed thank you very much thank you everybody oh I get to tap twice thank you