001I'd like to call to order the Saline Area Schools Board of Education meeting of January 28th. Thank You Zach. Standing as you are abled please let's recite the Pledge of Allegiance led by Mr Brad Gerbe. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America... and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you everybody uh we have two extraordinary recognitions this evening and I'm going to let Superintendent Laatsch lead off. Okay welcome everyone , we are starting tonight with honoring teacher extraordinaire Leigh Ann Roehm,. Though she was coach extraordinary. Well she's that too, but and we're going to ask Leigh Ann to come up in a minute and talk a little bit about the process of the award she just received
002but first I'm gonna say a few words and then President McVey is as well so. I've been working with Leigh Ann for a long time as Superintendent but also when I was Assistant Superintendent of Instruction and she's just the one of the most unique, special, and motivating Educators I've ever met and I've been in education now 27 years. Well 27 years here, 31 years in total. The way she's innovative is like no teacher I've I've ever seen. She spends an incredible amount of time preparing lessons and she does it in a way to differentiate for all her students. She somehow knows all her students and what they can and can't do and then she developed these plans to make sure it differentiate differentiates for all of them which is really special and and it's super
003time consuming. As a former teacher I know that lesson planning was always very, very complex because you're trying to look at the needs of all these students. And not only that, she's a middle school science teacher so she has four different groups not there's not just one group she's got you know potentially 120 students coming in at all times and it's really incredible and also makes learning fun and she does it in a way you know if you walk in her room you will see um hands-on experiments going all the time and sometimes it looks like organized chaos but it's organized learning and the kids love it. It's outstanding and on top of all this she's the beloved basketball coach. I mean you look at the the girls on her team and and she puts
004every ounce of energy into making them better athletes, better students, and just really pours in every ounce of energy that she has and so I'm really proud of Leigh Ann and this latest Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. She's clearly one of the best teachers in the United States and now she has this recognition to to show us all that something I already knew. But I'm glad that the world can know that as well and now I want to turn it over to President McVey. Thank you very much, so I'd like to talk about the process just a little bit I will not make you blush much. So in 2022 I was in Houston for the National Science Teachers Association and in the vendor Hall you know with popup planetariums and little
005electron microscopes of $155,000 no problem no problem right Dr. Laatsch there was this picture of the White House and this these letters P.A.M.S.T. do the cool kids call it something PS PS well I don't call it that uh I'd never heard of it before it's the Presidential Award for Extraordinary Math and Science Teachers or teaching I'm sure you know it exactly what it stands for. When I came back I said Kara Davis for sure we can find somebody that's outstanding in our school district and we very quickly narrowed down on Leigh Ann, I had worked with Leigh Ann and as I said at the last Board Meeting and Kara and Mrs. Odom uh on a group I had 100 we had 7th graders which still I still wake up in my sleep in a start
006and say oh my gosh I can't believe we hadn't didn't lose any in the forest we took them down to the Leslie Niethammer Science Preserve and they worked on an incredible project that combined Science and Social Studies and English language literature and uh technology the kids were taking pictures of mushrooms they were seeing things that unless you slowed down and stopped you'd never see and Leigh Ann brought all that out in the kids later they worked on creating small signs that would then be put around The Preserve uh the money came from the league of sorry the League of Women Voters the um women in philanthropy at Eastern Michigan University I forget it was $5,000 something like that to build these signs and they're still there and for another year or two you made them
007which was fantastic uh so from there it was entirely up to lean and the rigorous rigorous process that you know far better than the rest of us so if you could tell us about the process that would be fantastic Okay can you hear me okay? So I guess the the first charge is to let everyone know what the process was like, so after the nomination, which I was very humbled to receive, I started the process of recording lessons, so my husband is a professional cameraman so he came and recorded three different lessons of mine and then I had to start the rigorous process of writing my application so within the application I had to explain how the five dimensions of excellent Science teaching were shown through my lessons. So I ended up typing. I was
008trying to look back it's between 30 and 40 pages typed was the original application itself in which I had to analyze every decision made, every word I made, why I chose the lesson, why I made each choice, and prove that I had strong pedagogy and just content knowledge so I was hooked up with a mentor from Michigan who had won it in the past who gave me feedback we went through a revision process um lots of meetings along the way um with Pam then when I submitted my application I received knowledge that I was a state finalist so at that point that like a year had gone by realized I was a state finalist and then I had to add an addendum so then I had to type another 10 pages which was just ask
009answering the questions that were asked after my initial application that they thought that the national reviewers would want to see so added on that sent that forward and then two years later I just found out January 13th or something like that that I was I was chosen and um the biggest thing I want to say about this is uh the website says something like this is the nation's highest honor for a science teacher that a science teacher could receive and I can tell you that in no way shape or form do I teach for awards or for honors what I can tell you has been the most rewarding um is is getting to do something I love in this district with the amazing students and many of whom are in the audience I'm so excited
010to see all all of the students that are here that I I happen to have taught and the administrators that have been so supportive and the community and family members that have been so supportive all the way through I feel so fortunate to work in a district um Steve mentioned Innovation I've got to work in a district that allowed me to do my thing and push myself in ways that were not traditional to push my ways to my myself to reach all students and I think in in many districts I might have been shut down with the chances that I took in my pedagogy but here I was I was lifted and encouraged and say hey go for it and so I'm really really grateful to teach in selary schools with with the students that
011are here with the parents that have supported them and me the administration and all of my colleagues that continue to push me so um it's really a word for sling because this doesn't happen if if all those other things don't come to place so I really appreciate it thank you okay thank you thank you I appreciate it thank you so much one of my former awesome students we would like to do a little photograph you know the well Picture Time picture time right over there. Zach always said he was gonna come take over my class yeah so he's coming for my job right oh God love for our for our special special guests in the audience we do this every week we always have like nationally recognized teachers no this is absolutely exceptional thanks Leanne
012for coming and Leigh Ann's family I have we have another recognition oh actually do we we do oh is your Dr. Laatsch has something to say okay yes this is School Board recognition um so the key to a brighter future for our our kids is a strong public education and every day Saline Area School students count on us to help prepare them for a successful future whether they understand it or not they count on adults and across the state ensuring they have access to resources to help them learn keep our building safe and have excellent teachers to guide them it takes an unwavering commitment to our community to make this all possible you our Board of Education are all true superheroes you contribute to the success of our students with your extraordinary dedication to the
013school district you all approach volunteer work like it's full-time job your job is to establish a vision for the educational program design a structure to achieve this Vision ensure schools are accountable to the community and strongly advocate for continuous Improvement in student learning the job of a School Board member is tough the hours are long and thanks are sometimes few and far between too often people are quick to criticize school board members without really understanding the complex nature of their decisions we have to remember to take the time to thank all of you for your untiring efforts the month of January marks the observance of School Board recognition recognition month and it's an opportunity to show our year round appreciation to our Board of Education and begin to better understand how local trustees work together
014to prepare today's students to be tomorrow's leaders we encourage you to join with others throughout our community to thank our board members so specifically I want to thank Tim Austin, Darcy Berwick, Brad Gerbe, Lauren Gold, Michael McVey, Jennifer Steben, and Jason Tizedes for your leadership on the Saline Area Schools Board of Education Thank and I will add we had a chance for um Betty coordinated uh a gift for uh the Board of Education members from getting things from The Hive from the school store which is great so we hope you will wear those proudly thank you thank you very much Betty I'm never taking my hat off maybe just the tag oh the tag the tag the cool kids leave the tags on I am not a cool kid thank you so much Steve it's
015always I whatever thank you uh we have one public comment this evening and she's going to rush to the podium right now hi everyone I'm Kim Jasper I'm the proud principal of Saline Middle School but I'm here um representing SASA um it is Board of Education recognition month and so on behalf of SASA we want to say thank you for all of the work that you do to support the students of our district and to support all of the staff as well we greatly appreciate you we know that in your work as board members you spend a lot of time mulling over technical reading policy legalities and so we wanted to get you something that maybe would be a little bit more fun or lighter reading a little gift card to um The Fine Print
016Bookstore and a very Emily Stickler bookmark to go with. [Applause] it I have a to read list of about 150 books so maybe maybe they've got my book there thank you so much I appreciate it why we all do speak on behalf of the board thank you um we at the point of uh approving the agenda or revising it items can be added or deleted uh and the or the order changed uh at the request of an individual board member or the superintendent they must be the agenda has to be approved before proceeding further do we have a motion to approve the agenda motion Gerbe second Austin all in favor please say aye. I thank you it's 70 thank you very much uh student showcase tonight I'll let you introduce student Representatives I'll let you
017kick this off unless you need me to uh we're happy to have for our student showcase today um Lizzie White, Miss Saline 2024, Madylin Marshall first runner up, Julianna Marini second runner up and their adviser Kimberly [Applause] Bryant. Hello thank you all for having me uh as he said I'm Lizzie White I'm so honored to be the 76th Miss Saline and Miss Saline 2024-2025 so uh I kind of defined what it means to be Miss Saline and what the Miss Saline pageant is in my own words and I define this as an incredible opportunity for esteemed young woman to compete for a scholarship Miss Saline is an exciting year-long commitment to make a difference and serve as an ambassador in the Saline community and what this means to me is basically being Miss Saline uh
018being honored with this title it means that I have to embody the values and traditions and pride of Saline and that's so meaningful to me and I'm so grateful to have been given that opportunity and it was a blast competing alongside so many other talented girls who deserved this just as much as me so I'm so honored that they chose me and the opportunity to be a leader and role model in a community that I've lived in for my entire life is amazing and I've had such a great time so far giving back and I will continue to do so uh furthering my impact on Saline has been great we've participated in so many different things and as I've said I'm so grateful for that and just being a part of this Legacy is great
019I have a trophy sitting in my room and the trophy's cool but what's even cooler is that there's 75 names listed before mine, this has been a thing for so long and it's been honoring so many amazing women before me and it's just so amazing to be able to be listed by these women who are so great and a common misconception about Miss Saline is that it's a beauty pageant you know you put on a gown do a dance and whoever does it best wins but that's not it at all it's not judged on any of those things it's judged on community involvement leadership roles the qualities you deem to be the most important and who you are as a person so to be chosen for something like that is an amazing opportunity so I
020want to get into uh talking about kind of the people who won awards for this year because it wasn't just me so as I said I'm the 76th Miss Saline but my first runner up, Madylin Marshall is in the crowd tonight and congratulations Madylin. Uh my second runner up Julianna Marini she can't be here tonight but she also did absolutely amazing she's a senior this year and I'm so excited to see what she does next year in college and uh alongside the three main Awards, The Miss Saline Pageant also distributes for others the academic award which was given to Carly Pufpaf for maintaining a 4.0 GPA so congratulations Carly, um the spirit of Miss Saline goes to whoever embodies the qualities of Saline the best and I was fortunately awarded that as well and I'm
021grateful for that and Madylin Marshall also won the community service and the Miss Saline Congeniality award uh which I'd like to say it's not normal to walk away with three Awards so congratulations Madylin you did amazing and uh so those are all important to know everyone on that screen as well as all the other contestants who even though they didn't walk away with uh any scholarship money they did an amazing job on stage and some some of them are returning next year so I'm so excited for them before I get into talking about uh what we've done so far and everything about that I just want to thank some people who've made it possible because it's not possible at all without the community support and all the charity that everyone in this community has been
022so kind with giving so all the local community businesses and schools have been so supportive but there are just a few ones that have just really gone over the edge so I really want to thank Katherine Kelly Orthodontics, Renew Salon & Spa, Heidi McClelland Photography, Still Waters Counseling, the entire Coy family, Brewed Awakenings, and Kim Bryant who's here tonight and who's made everything possible so thank you Kim uh alongside the notable sponsors uh the judges are also very supportive and I love them all and they also make this opportunity possible so Amanda Coy and Britney Bryant were two previous Miss Saline who I'm again so honored to share the legacy of. Jeffrey McLaughlin, Mayor Marl and Julie Picknell also were judges who again helped make everything possible so thank you to everyone who's been so
023supportive and giving me this opportunity now I want to talk about what we've done so far because a lot of people are kind of unaware of all the things that we're a part of beyond the pageant so there's been several things but I just just wanted to know a few of them which uh myself and my court found to be really fun and these are our most enjoy enjoyable ones so we were invited and attended the uh Elementary School open houses and that was a blast to see all the kids so happy have no idea what's coming in high school at the open houses it's great to see all their smiles and we had a blast there we were also honored to be able to present the awards at the Saline People's Choice Awards uh
024that was amazing because a lot of the businesses that I was presenting Awards to uh helped contribute to the pageant and my scholarship so that was super fun we competed in the annual Saline Scarecrow Competition and won it so we're pretty proud of that uh our scarecrows were Wicked themed uh we had Elphaba Thropp and Glinda so that was super fun to make I also attended Oktober Fest uh Julianna, Madylin and I were a part of both parades the Homecoming and the Holiday one we also participated in the tree lighting and that was super fun we were at the annual Trunk or Treat and I loved seeing all the young kids in their costumes that was a blast and I could not personally attend this one but Madylin and Julianna were at the Wicked premiere
025for Emagine and they told me that it was very fun so I'll take their word for it going off of that uh We've also we're currently running and have ran uh two fundraisers so far and these are kind of our biggest accomplishments and what we're most proud of so Toys for Tots I actually have a slide about this thank you so Toys for Tots is a national nonprofit organization ran by the Marine Corps Reserve and the Miss Saline organization runs the Saline chapter and we're super grateful for that and it's it's amazing to see all the toys that get raised and this year we're so happy to say that we collected 1,225 toys to make kids smile this holiday season and that is absolutely amazing so thank you to every every business and school that
026housed a Toys for Tots box and thank you to everyone who donated a toy that was absolutely great and we're super proud of it uh next is the Valentine's Day fundraiser which we're currently in the middle of so uh I'll take a minute to inform you all this since it's currently going on and you can participate so it's a fundraiser we're running in honor of Valentine's Day and all proceeds 100% of them go to Ellie's place which if you're unfamiliar with Ellie's place it's a local grieving Center for teens and children and it's a nonprofit organization uh I've volunteered there before and it's amazing what they do there so I'm super happy to be able to be given this platform to give back to such an amazing organization so we started this last Saturday but
027it's continuing this Saturday February 1st as well as next Saturday February 8th at Brewed Awakenings from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. so thank you Kim Kaster of Brewed Awakenings for having us uh basically what we're doing is we're just selling Valentine's Day Tic-Tac-Toe and Valentine's Day heart charms just little trinkets they're a dollar each and uh it's we're also just a location for you to more easily donate to them and we've been pretty successful so far this past Saturday and I'm super excited to see uh everything else we raise in the coming two Saturdays so thank you so much for having me uh if you want to continue looking at our journey for the rest of the year myself along with Madylin and Julianna uh follow our Facebook with it's Miss Saline scholarship pageant and
028our Instagram is Miss Saline Scholarship so thank you so much for having me thank you Lizzie um before before you sit down the board may have a question or two and maybe even the how many how many contestants participate in this yearly?I believe we had nine it might have been eight or nine but that it's usually around 7 to 10 every year. I think that I'd love to see Madylin and Kim come up as well, they are a big part of Miss Saline um I've been a small part in the background but um Kim has really set up the structure for this these past few years and done an incredible job and she's already working on on the application process for next year and every year sort of evaluates where our Saline students are at
029and what we're looking for in our students and adapt applications a little bit as they go but um the applications that the contestants fill out is lengthy uh academics are a part of that and um so all of the applicants really are putting their best foot forward and it's they get interviewed it's a really terrific over all experience for our students in high school heading out to you know job interviews and um filling out applications for schools um they've they've done a really wonderful job these past few years I'm very impressed I'd love to see you guys come on up and just say Hi I'm Madylin Marshall, Miss Saline first runner-up 2024 thank you so much for having us here tonight. I'm Kim Bryant and I'm the co-director with um Molly Coy who could not
030be here tonight um I am so incredibly proud of Lizzie and Madylin and Julianna they have really worked well together this year and doing so much in the community and I'm just grateful to be able to work with amazing amazing students um every day I I received calls um this past week I've talked with a couple of the girls that went out that maybe weren't on the list that Lizzie shared but they reached out to me um to ask me some questions about other things so I appreciate that we are the Miss Saline family and that's something that we're really promoting this year uh Mary Marshall, Madylin mother uh was able to invite her second graders to walk along with us in the parade and we got them little tiaras from Party City so now
031we're going to have to probably get them online next year but that's okay um but um but they loved it and they passed out the candy and they said can we please do this next year one little girl slept in her crown and it broke so Mrs. Marshall went and got her a new one the next day but these you know we're building the family and that is really important to me when we took this over five years ago after my daughter was crowned and in the person retired and I really wanted to make it about family and I love where this is going and we have great ideas for next year too and the application is now live so we're excited to start seeing some applications once we are finished with our fundraiser and
032Lizzie is back from her Costa Rica trip um she's going to put an announcement out to let people know that it's open until June 1st but um so we'll see next year's cohort but we're really excited and um we'll do March reading month in March and hopefully at the elementary schools the girls will be there as well and participate in a few more things that are happening so thank you so much for the opportunity we really love it thank you Darcy for being an auditor and helping in the background um that's been really wonderful too Janet Dillon also is an auditor for us Lori Larson's been an auditor in the past Shannon Casillo who's a former Miss Saline 2004 was one this year so we really appreciate all that extra help thank you so much
033um Brad I think you wanted to say something I wanted to just add something too yeah I just well hold on because I always have a question of the Showcase so so um it it it it's pretty common but first of all I want to speak to a couple of things with you though specifically you are incredibly articulate you are incredibly humble like so well done on that front um I am Facebook friends with with with Mary, Madylin's mom and so I see all the things that you guys are doing in the community and I think you represent Saline really positively and in a great way and thank you for for being an ambassador for us right like you make Saline where we live look good so thank you for that okay thank you so
034much thank you now as a board you're in front of us right so this is your moment Lizzie what can is there anything we can do to support you or Miss Saline I heard about March's reading month and but is there anything else we can do um I would just say I would really love it if like the I feel like a lot of people aren't they are so taken aback by like the pageant stereotype that they're scared away from it and I really want to grow the Miss Saline family as Kim said and I would would love for there to be more contestants every single year because I think it's amazing opportunity for even if you don't win I am literally promoting it to everyone at my school because I think even if you
035don't win it's still an amazing opportunity for you to practice so many skills that are going to be important for when you're older public speaking interviewing the whole process is amazing and I made friends during it too and strengthened friendships that were already already existing and the whole process was really fun so the school board like all I can think of from you is just like continue to support you already do support so much but just continuing to support and promote it because I want to grow that family and I just think it's an incredible opportunity that I want so many women to be a part of because so many women already have been and I just want to keep growing um Lizzie you have such a graceful way about you and I know how
036proud your mom was of you and I just wanted to say congratulations Miss Saline I was really glad to see you on the community award I didn't know that and I know that you have um a really bright future in so many ways and Kim I'm really glad that this was kind of reborn right because it was on a little bit of a Hiatus and look at um uh kind of the the joy and positivity that has been brought back into the community um through all the um examples of volunteerism um to support these girls but also the future generations of the family so thank you thanks thanks very much Lizzie I appreciate it thank you thank you thank you Kim we have one quick bit of business before we get on to the uh
037I'm sorry Lauren wants a photo you want to do a photo no not of the student presentations but we're happy to do one the board members has decided they would like to do a photo so let's do a photo I just didn't let's just put this way if they don't let us have one I'm going to motion and stand to winner good [Laughter] we have a quick bit of business for the Board before we get into the next part uh I'd like to entertain a motion to approve the closed session minutes of January 14th for the purpose of complaints and disciplinary action and collective bargaining do I have a motion uh so move, moved Steben support Tizedes. Thank you. Now go ahead. Who's in uh AP Government tonight yeah okay nice to have you here
038what's must be the end of semester um so what's going on at this point is our board secretary is handing out the minutes from the Closed Session. Closed Session is unique because everybody's ushered out and we keep our minutes quiet, we're the only ones who can see the minutes so that's why we're going to quietly read them review them vote on them and they're not even part of the packet so that's what going on right now you can do a whole write up about it President McVey said blah blah blah thank you and good luck in the semester. I could do that while we're waiting we can only enter into Closed Session for one of eight separate reasons including attorney client privilege, negotiations of contracts, complaints etc etc there's a lot of stuff Emergency Operations
039things like that. Thank You Brad they adult what he's talking about om which is the open meetings act which we all have to follow we are in an open meeting right now yeah I you Michael and when we go into close session we kick you out Zach oh really yes where did St go he doesn't need to be here for the next part but thanks for asking and thank you for your patience we were right on schedule until we went for a photo up what do you know what drags them it's the public comment sometimes goes on a bit but we do try to keep to a tight order I do if you can talk about it without uh sharing too much if you here I'd like to suggest this if there are a lot
040of comments or changes or once uh we could always take it um we could always table it until next meeting and you can send notes to uh Darcy that will work. I might as well just say it on mic because we're supposed to um I think there was a discussion about the removal of the last sentence on the second item um review of complaint possibly removing the last sentence the one that says portions or at this point no the next the next the review the last that review yes okay and then I move to strike that sentence as it's unclear all right then what we're voting on now is the uh approval of the amended minutes um I'll restate the motion for uh recommended motion to approve the revised closed session minutes of January 14th
0412025 for the purpose of complaints and disciplinary action under 8A and collective bargaining 8C do we have a second, support Gold. Support Gold okay all in favor please say I, any opposition great there we go thank you very much and please make sure your minutes are back and our secretary's hands we're onto the next item now uh a report from the ad hoc committee on the superintendent search firms as you all are aware our Superintendent is uh hitting the retirement button at the end of June and "Snow Day" Steve will be replaced by somebody else and we uh rather than do that work ourselves we are interviewing three uh distinguished search firms this evening and we're going to let them make a presentation to us we've given them 20 minutes including time for uh questions
042they have prepared presentations and uh so Darcy is our timekeeper because she's secretary or someone can keep time uh we'll just keep an eye on the clock roughly 20 minutes and and we would like you to your schedule time for questions as well great well um I'd like you to uh come up first we have Ray & Associates are the first off and they'll be followed by M.L.I followed by M.A.S.B Boards there is a clicker there buttons on and if you run into technical issues look at Ben and he'll help you out wonderful thank you very much good evening board members before I begin the presentation first I want to extend my appreciation to all the board members for your time your commitment your dedication to the students the staff the parents the community of
043Saline Area Schools commend you for your commitment as school board members and then I want to tell you what a uplifting and wonderfully positive start to your board meeting so it was wonderful to listened to all of the recognitions and accomplishments greatly appreciate that so with tonight's presentation so we I'm Sheila Alice I am an associate with Ray & Associates and this is my colleague Kathy shonfeld and we appreciate the opportunity to share with you this evening the superintendent search process that we use when in Ray and Associates to help guide you support you and assist you in your search for your next superintendent which is the most important decision that you as school board members make as I said my name is Sheila Alice I am one of a three- member team um who
044if you choose our search firm will be here to support support guide and assist you I live in Northville, Michigan I am your Michigan connection. I bring to the work that I do in the search firm 47 years in public education 21 years in Plymouth Canton schools as a teacher curriculum coordinator curriculum director 21 years in Livonia Public Schools as the elementary principal Elementary director of Elementary programs director of academic Services Chief academic officer and then I went to the Michigan Department of Education I got a call from the State Superintendent inviting me to be his chief Deputy Superintendent I held that position until the very unfortunate and untimely passing of Superintendent Winston then I became the interim State Superintendent and I served in that position for almost a year and a half until the
045State Board hired a permanent superintendent then I went back to my role as Chief Deputy Superintendent helped the new State Superintendent transition into his role. I also was an adjunct professor literacy uh graduate and undergraduate level and I've served on numerous State and national uh education and Civic organization board of directors I retired three and a half years ago went to work for rayan associates two and a half years and love semi-retirement um and with that I'll let Kathy introduce herself thanks Sheila I'm Kathy Shon Felder I am from Cedar Rapids, Iowa in the corporate office of Rain & Associates um we have big shoes to fill tonight past or following all of the awards and following Sheila uh my uh background is not in the education field but I served for 30 years as
046a legal assistant so I come from the law standpoint of things and Dr David Fus is our managing director he's got Michigan ties through his wife's family so he will be assisting us if needed but Sheila and I would be the um boots on the ground team for you um next slide thank you so these are some highlights of obviously your district and you know them very well I like to start off the photo with the little kids as the goal is to work up to the graduation scene at the end so that always makes me smile when I look through the Facebook photos to see the kids and how they start off and then how they end next slide thank you Kathy Kathy if you could make sure you're speaking to the mic thank
047you sorry no that's okay because we because we stream oh okay then I will look at this page thank you so who we are we've been in business since 1975 so over 45 years this is what we have done our superintendent searches and cabinet level searches that's all that we do um we have extensive experience Nationwide and um we try to stay on The Cutting Edge of the search process we have Associates Nationwide and a diverse um field of Associates as well with different backgrounds and ethnicities and um education roles as Sheila is one of those go ahead um we do have a um diversity statement for whatever that means now um but our diversity is more of an inclusive process for diversity regardless of whether it's background or ethnicities or education roles that a
048person has had in the field so we our goal is to bring a diverse field of candidates whether that is as I said ethnicities role um Logistics Geographic areas we take pride in bringing boards um candidates that they don't know about from areas that they don't think about um with Co we learned a lot of things and people mve to different regions for different reasons because of that um so we take pride in that and having a national showing okay so this is your search and so we are going to use your input in this search and if you choose us we're going to use our expertise to guide support and assist you in the search um one of the ways we're going to use your input is we're going to help help you to
049create a search timeline that search timeline will meet your expectations your specifications and it will be tied directly to your District calendar we're going to gather input from board members on the qualities that you want to see in your next superintendent we're going to engage in one-on-one interviews with each board member we're going to ask each board member the same series of questions about your District about your community and what you'd like to see in your next superintendent and we're going to to assist you in creating a compensation package that is both attractive and competitive we are going to ask you to create a profile of your next superintendent and to do that we're going to use the results of the one-on-one interviews that we had with you we are also going to engage in
050stakeholder group meetings so we're going to come into your district and meet with different stakeholder groups that you deem it's appropriate for us to meet with such as teachers administrators parents um community members the most the most exciting ones are when we meet with students we're going to ask a series of questions the same questions to all the stakeholder groups about the district about the community and about what they would like to see in the next superintendent we offer these both in person and virtually we also then are going to have available on your website an online survey and the online survey consists of what are called 31 desirable qualities of superintendent and that survey will be available to your entire Community they will have an opportunity to review the qualities and each group gets
051to choose 10 qual each individual gets to choose 10 qualities we compile that information and by the way that survey is available in English and in any other language that you tell us that your community speaks so we want to make sure that everyone in the community has the opportunity to complete the survey we then bring to you the results of the one-on-one survey we bring to you the results of the stakeholder meetings we bring to you the results of the online survey we help you analyze those results and then we help you to create what's called a c candidate's profile that is usually 10 to 12 characteristics that you deem it is essential for the next superintendent to possess we use that candidate's profile for recruitment purposes we use it for vetting and screening
052candidates we use it for candidate evaluation and we use it then for the uh finalist review so now we move on to the recruitment using your newly created candidate profile we are going to then aggressively recruit and advertise to bring to you the very best candidate we start by informing our Associates of the position we ask for their recommendations and then we make personal contacts with those recommendations we consult our extensive database that Kathy mentioned that we have and we look for a match between the candidates that are in our database and what you deem is important for the next superintendent those qualities to possess we contact organizations at the state Regional and National levels and we tell them we have a position available we also seek potential candidates at State and national conventions and
053then we advertise in local Regional and National venues these are the venues that are highly populated by education leaders such as aasa and uh nasby and any other media venues that you deem it's appropriate for us to uh advertise in we also post uh a ad for 30 days in Ed week at no cost to you then once we have uh once we have the um posting available and the posting closes then our team moves into a very strenuous and exhaustive vetting and screening process we do three levels of vetting the first level is the associates read every single application package the application the resume the um cover letter the letter of intent any all letters by the references and we do a match between the candidates and the qualities that you deemed in the
054candidates profile then those candidates that meet the qualifications we move them on to the second level of vetting and in that level we do a comprehensive check of their work history we call references that they've listed and sometimes we call references references that they didn't list because we got a tip from someone that says you might want to talk to this person um and we search their footprint in social media we look at Twitter and Instagram and Linkedin and then for the very few candidates we do an even deeper dive we do the third level and that is we conduct a dive looking for any criminal activity any sex offender identification any motor vehicle violations as well as others and we also verify their professional degrees that third level of vetting is done with a
055third party um Professional Organization at no cost to you after we complete the vetting process we bring to you what we believe is the top slate of the very best candidates for Saline Area Schools after our very exhaustive vetting because we want to make sure any candidate that we bring to you there aren't any surprises so as Sheila said we will bring these candidates to you one thing that they also do is we ask them to do a one-way video through Spark Hire so that's part of our process for the candidates that we screen and bring to you they have 90 seconds to answer they have there's four questions 90 seconds each that they have to answer so you get to see their demeanor how quickly they think how comfortable they are or aren't um
056in completing the video so you see that as well so when we bring these candidates to you you will receive um access access to every application that came in you will receive individual links for the candidates that we screened as well as their video and we will um ask them a series of questions in the screening what's the status of their contract have they ever been fired resigned let go have they applied anywhere else and then we'll also put together three District specific questions that we get from stakeholder meeting themes so when we bring these candidates to you you will see all of that information and then we will talk to you about what the references said what we found on the internet if anything and we will answer your questions about those candidates at
057that meeting we will work through our scoring Matrix to help you determine um the decision as to who to move forward for first round interviews we provide you with some sample interview questions plus uh when we do our stakeholder meetings we ask every stakeholder group if you could ask an interview question what would the interview question be so we've been in districts before Where We Gather 50 to 60 questions so we provide those to you as well those on the outside perhaps want to know something that you don't think about or it's more important to them than perhaps you there's a different mindset there so that's pretty interesting to see what everybody wants to know and so then we work through that for the final questions um interview questions and we do that for the
058second round as well once you've conducted the first round of interviews we go through the scoring process again to help you make the decision as to who to move forward as finalists um we identify candidates by by um letter until they have been announced and accepted an invitation so no names are released until after that happens with the first round um we can also do stakeholder forums and those kinds of things with the finalists come back in the district to get input and feedback in a variety of ways um and also the second round interview questions so we have a couple quotes um from districts that we have worked with in Michigan um we are working uh with a district right now as well it's just about ready for the interview phase starting next week
059so we'll be done shortly um so this screen just talks about our process interview how we're the largest search firm with the most searches completed um and a large pool of candidates keeping in mind uh Michigan sometimes has a Slimmer pool of candidates because it's not a closed search and the names are released earlier at first round as opposed to just being a finalist so their names come out a little bit earlier which can affect um the recruitment numbers um we notify our Associates of the searches we have a full-time office staff me and one other person um we have a website that gets 28,000 unique visits per month we do the in-depth background check that Sheila is fantastic at in addition to the one-way videos we work through the process of the timelines the
060stakeholder meetings what you're looking for the salary comparisons to give you an idea of what what Nationwide districts comparable to yours in size um are advertising for their positions we can work with you at the end um for contracts if you'd like we do recommend that the candidate have their own attorney obviously to work with your district attorney that just makes the most sense um so that's kind of our process really quickly any questions for us I'm sure there'll be quite a few questions before we get started Sheila I just want to say thank you for being the bridge between Brian Wiston and Michael rice I mean that was a really tough time so thank thank you it was my it was my pleasure thank you so we can go around the table um or
061just go at random I know it drives our camera person a little crazy but uh couple well I guess I'll just focus on one question you have 1600 searches completed how many how many superintendents have you placed in those 1600 searches um those are the superintendent sech and that number has changed since that slide was put together primarily most of our searches I would say 90 95 sorry I'm not used to a microphone because I talk loud um about 95% or more are superintendent searches and then we do cabinet level but that's Lauren how um what percentage of your um candidates come from out of State um you know one of the reasons looking at all the candidates is you know whether you get a more diverse group of candidates looking more widely but we
062also hear a lot that people don't always have interest in as you reference coming to Michigan for whatever reason so uh when you've placed uh superintendent you know what percentage of the time or roughly are you able to attract out of state candidates or of you know uh in the final position or just overall in the application process in the application process we always have a national showing I mean I'm not saying 50 states yes clearly but we always have a national showing uh majority of those people that apply are the instate candidates but they're not necessarily placed um I would say oh my gosh I wouldn't even know the answer to that you want to guess I don't no you're F sorry um I would say probably 80% perhaps are from out of state
063it just kind of depends on the district and what they're looking for and what the candidates are looking for but we do get a national showing with the applications that we get in is that thank you Jennifer hi I had three quick questions um the first question was around um stakeholder and Community surveying are we given the raw data on that sorry so what we do is uh for the the 31 quality survey there are six groups and you have to select which group you identify with and the qualities um that you feel are the most important and then they are allowed to um have comments so you will see the data how each group selected the 31 qualities how they ranked the 31 qualities and then the board has the same survey so we
064compare each group to the board to try and find the qualities that closely overlap so as an example if you're a teacher you likely pick can uh quality 31 which is K 12 classroom experience that typically ranks really high for the teacher group but might not for others so you see each group as to how they selected the 31 qualities okay perfect and then in can I add to that oh yeah and you also get a list of all of the comments that were made all right that was my followup question to that right thank you that that was incredibly helpful when we did this four years ago to have the raw data as well as um the summaries um my second question was um can you talk a little bit about the creation of
065the compensation package that process was different for us last time because we had um we hired an internal candidate so we worked with our assistant um superintendent for human resources at the time along with our own legal team so can you uh uh and we have a compensation usually have a compensation committee so we handled that with them can you explain that piece a little bit on how that um how that comes to fruition and then maybe when the final candidate is selected how you work in tandem with Carol who is sitting right right over there there's always a money person isn't there she well we have that too Miranda uh so um so what what we do is to start off the conversation we um bring in a Michigan salary comp and a national
066salary comp to try and find um the goal is to try and find the enrollment that matches closely to your district and and then also if we're selected for the search I would ask my contact districts that you compare yourselves to because that's often helpful because we don't want to compare you to somebody that you don't compare yourselves to um so the advertised salary would be a range so the candidates are very well of what that range is keeping in mind some people automatically think that they want the top or deserve the top um once we get to that point of the process in the screening we remind them of the salary and then once we get toward the end we have a contract component sheet that we provide to the board that lists perhaps
067vacation annuity 401K all of those things and we suggest taking into account the role that they have currently um on the application we also ask for their current salary to kind of give you an idea of what they're making now and use that as the starting point um we haven't had any contracts fail because of that um but you know that's why we do a range we don't want everybody to think that but if it's a national search you would not be able to do that in all states because of the laws of California and other right right okay and so give you a Draft application to take a look at first to make sure that there's nothing on there because you could have five lawyers in the room and they're all going to say
068something different yeah yep okay perfect thank you so much and then my final question was with regards to um page 13 and 14 um so in the state of Michigan we have something I'm sure you're familiar with the open meetings act and so um I paused just a little bit when I read a little uh on consensus building so I wanted to better understand how we make sure we are in legal compliance with open meetings Act of the state of Michigan and making sure that any of our deliberations are in public meeting at the table um even that initial building of consensus over what candidates to go from um round one to round two and things like that and then we are streaming this and so it's incredibly important that um the community see um
069the potential candidates because they're they become a huge part of our our school and our um our city and our our townships so can you talk a little bit about that and how that piece of the process is in compliance y sure can so um before we get to that point I would provide the board with a non-disclosure confidentiality agreement because our goal is to try and keep it as tight as we can for the sake of the candidates so we would meet with the board in closed session to just talk about the candidates no decisions are made in closed session um but we talk about those candidates and then we go through an explanation of the scoring Matrix we give you an example comparing ice cream flavors that's the example that we use and
070then we go out in Open Session the board completes the scoring we provide you with the scores the total scores for candidates A through G and how they rank and then the board has discussion about who they want to move forward the candidates are identified by letter and say you know you see the scores they're all right there discussion we want to move forward candidates A,C,D, & Fand then we give them depending on the time of the meeting about 24 hours to notify their people and then we would provide you with the head shot and bio to be released once their names are released and then in the final second round or after the first round then they would be identified by name um we encourage only positive things to be said um as you
071know it's Michigan um and then we go through that same scoring again with the finalist so once the candidates have notified their people then their names are out and then they'll be identified that that way does that Mak sense thank you that's super helpful thank you thank you and considering that we've gone just a couple of minutes over we'll we'll give everybody a little grace for the next ones as well I I had one statement one question so uh first of all the statement was I really like the what question would you want ask I like that a lot um and I I assume there's no machine reading of all these documentation documents that come in you just put your eyeballs to the paper and and notes Kathy and me got it thank you so
072much I appreciate that Darcy um but we but we do type our notes so that you don't have to read our handwriting I'm sure greatly appreciate um you talk about uh final interviews and uh the possibility that the board could elect to have the candidates meet with small constituent groups I'm wondering how many districts like take you up on that offer and if you find that to be a more solidifying way for uh Community input at that level most districts take us up on that but it also depends on the district um if you're if we're in a district where the stakeholder um input is very low in the stakeholder process in the beginning then sometimes those boards opt to not do it at the end I've been in districts that do that most districts
073have some kind of involvement it just depends on what the district is like and there's so many different ways that that could look it could be just as simple as one form where we compile questions the candidates are on the stage we moderate ask the candidates the same questions in different order and then people provide feedback through Survey Monkey um it could be individual groups as well but it's it just depends on what the board wants and what your District would be receptive or not receptive to okay thank you all right I'm GNA try to be efficient um I have three questions number one how do you build your um candidate database so the the D database is built um upon people going to our website and registering in that um so I think right
074now I can't we have over a couple thousand people in that but we narrow that database down when we send out the invite to imply invite to apply um based on salary region what kind of role they're looking for um but even though we have a database I would say over 95% of our positions are filled by people outside of that database okay so the database just gets the word out but the people usually don't come from there that apply for the job okay second question one of the things I found appealing about your proposal was this two and five guarantee piece um would can you explain more about that very quickly and the second thing is how often do school districts um exercise it so um we changed our guarantee a couple years ago
075so it's first year one year for any reason we come back and do the search again the second year is of a majority of the board is the same as when the candidate was hired I think you probably can understand why that is the five-year guarantee is we don't poach or re-recruit our candidates during those five years we obviously cannot stop them from applying but we look very hard at that um and as for how often we've had to use it see I've been here almost 10 years and I think I would say probably five one was a death one was a health issue so there's there's different variables but not very often okay and then the last thing is and I want to be very careful how I tread on this I'm the treasurer
076and so money and all of that how flexible is $188,000 and it talks about like in your proposal about if we have certain things our process is flexible so can you speak that a little so our process is pretty much our process unless if you don't want stakeholder meetings and obviously we would negotiate the price down um I know our price is considerably higher from those that you're meeting with I did my research as well so there is some negotiation that can take place uh whether we can come down as far as they are I can't speak to that that's not my um decision to make but there is negotiation and we have in the past so we'd be definitely willing to have that conversation you would okay thank you sure got anything Tim just
077I was going to talk about the price and the we know that there's a big difference I know but other than that very informative I will say haven't been around the block a few times in school districts and in superintendent searches Ray I wouldn't be working for Ray and Associates if I didn't think it was a really high quality organization and firm to work for well considering the time yep I appreciate your uh your presentation this evening and thank you so much for coming in thank you so much for having us it truly was a pleasure and it truly was a pleasure to be here at the beginning I missed those types of recognitions and it was really uplifting I recognize you every day thank you very much thanks everyone if you have any questions
078let us know by the way we wish you all the best because this is the most important decision that you as a board will make so we wish you all the best it's a good database question I like the answer professional he's also Co oh thank you so much thank you it's very warm it's very C I can touch it I caught my polar perfect thank you well thank you very much thank you so much hello hello thank you we know you as the mli guy but if you can introduce yourself accurate I am the mli guy good evening folks uh first of all I want to thank you for giving uh me this opportunity on behalf of the Michigan Leadership Institute to uh do a presentation to you on our our search Services John
079sver in the um proposal that you got you got details about me but just briefly I'm a longtime educator I've been a teacher counselor principal HR Director assistant superintendent superintendent of a couple of different school districts one of 2700 students and five schools the other was 11,000 students in 20 schools in retirement I have taken on some interim roles too last year I was the interim superintendent in Rochester it's a very large District about 15,000 kids 23 schools so I've had the benefit of working in a variety of different types of districts and that's all in retirement I've been doing this work with mli since 2015 and uh during that time I've provided lots of services for public school districts but uh in terms of superintendent searches I've done over three dozen of these at
080this point I'm the most experienced uh consultant in the Michigan Leadership Institute when it comes to superintendent searches so I bring that to the table I'm happy to have the chance to talk about the services that we do provide and give you a chance to ask questions so I understand you'd like to me to keep it to about 20 minutes so I'm going to go through this fairly quickly including questions but the last person the last group went a little over so we we not fret too much thank you okay thank you very much so um I'm going to start with a sample search timeline which again is in your proposal but roughly uh search chch is the length of time is roughly about 14 weeks from beginning to end um that can vary uh
081depending on your needs it can be can't be made a lot shorter it can be tightened up a little bit can certainly go longer uh as you may need but the very first step is I would come in and meet with you and I would bring a draft timeline to you that we would talk about and modify as needed based on your availability what works for your District what else is happening in your District uh we were talking about the other details of the search and to be ready to get things launched the next step for the next two to three weeks is we would uh begin to interact with you and your stakeholders to um help develop a candidate profile and a district and Community profile that would all become part of the posting
082so we will typically do that both with an online survey of your constituents and face-to-face meetings depending on what you want I would take my cue from you in terms of which groups you would like for me to meet with on site although typically that's going to include staff members parents community members even high school students um so I would take my cues from you on that um and so during that time we're collecting that data putting those profiles together and creating the position announcement which ultimately I would get back to you give you a chance to review and make any modifications that you think that we need to one big um question I would always have is for you is to please make sure that I've got everything 100% accurate in in that um
083posting so we would get that out that posting then typically is out for a five week period of time uh again that can be changed a bit I don't like to go much shorter than that at all if we would extend that a little bit based on your needs we can five weeks uh seems to work really well um over time that's proven to be true so once we put that out there it's quiet for you folks because you don't know what's happening during that time um it it can be uncomfortable for you even um candidates request confidentiality in their application so I can't tell you who's applying and sometimes boards will get curious and want to know how many people are applying along the way I can tell you that but I'm reluctant to
084only because that can be very misleading too um it's let's say in a five-week process three weeks in I tell you that You' got six applicants which might start Panic among you thinking oh my gosh why isn't anybody interested from experience I can tell you that there may be people just waiting until those last couple of weeks and so the number can be misleading the other thing about the number is that um it doesn't speak to Quality you can have 15 applicants and if you have 10 of them who are viable candidates that's a great pool you could have 25 applicants and if you have five who are viable candidates not so much so it's more about the quality of the applicants that's what we focus on than is about the number so during that
085time I'm reviewing the applications coming in I'm also doing recruitment in part based on what's coming in looking for people who may be a good fit um have conversations with any and all applicants who are are at all viable and who may uh be worthy of of your consideration um during that time just to to assess their interest ask some some questions get to know them a little bit we can't do reference checks during that time because of their request for confidentiality formal reference checks informally we're doing internet searches um that's where our networking we have an extensive network at our disposal that really helps we're going to know very likely quite a few of the applicants too um either because they've been applicants in other districts or just because in the work that we
086do we have connections throughout the region and throughout the state and we know of these people and if we don't know of them directly we have enough connections that we can certainly learn about them so I'm trying to learn as much as I can about them too to be prepared to come back then and meet with you once the posting closes so we'll come back together at that time um we go into close session and I share all of the applications with you I don't pick some and bring them to your attention I bring them all to you I do put them in three tiers top middle and bottom um the top are those who I think are um have the most relevant experience most qualified and who are the best fit in terms of
087your candidate profile middle tier are those who are qualified could be a good fit maybe don't have quite the experience of the top group but worthy of consideration bottom tier typically are those who either I think are unqualified or or there are just reasons things that I may be able to share with you during that time that I I believe would cause you not to want to consider them but what I share with boards and really stress is that you pick anybody you want to I love to tell the story of the one District I worked with brought them the three tiers um there was one candidate in tier three that they had interest in she was only in tier three not because there was a concern but because they had expressed an interest in
088finding somebody who had central office experience and there were quite a few of those candidates she was a high school principal explain that to the board but somebody had heard good things about her on the board and they wanted to bypass some of the uh those with Central experience and talk to her in the interview process long story short she's now in her fifth year as their superintendent so again I want to stress that it's not my choice I bring them to you I try to help by grouping them that way ultimately it is 100% your decision on how who you want to include and who you want to select um so we go through that process we then get into first round interviews our first round interviews typically uh will include four to six
089people although I do not give you a minimum or maximum number of people that to select I just don't think that makes any sense you need to pick the people who you think are are possibilities for you if that's less than four if it's more than six so be it we set up a schedule typically that will accommodate up to six but again it seems to be somewhat uncanny even telling boards that it almost always falls into the four to six range so with our interviews we uh don't advise that you do any more than two per night which makes that first week sometimes pretty grueling because you're looking at three nights potentially of interviews and I also advise to the board that you don't put yourself in a position at the end of the
090third night of interviews to have to make a decision that night um it's always better I think to walk away have a chance to digest everything you've heard reflect especially on those most recent candidates you don't want to deal with recency bias either plus we uh have a very inclusive process and we're Gathering feedback from people who are present listening to the interviews we give them a chance to give you their feedback and tell you what they think so on that last night of interviews um if you jump into a decision you won't really have had time to seriously consider the feedback that you would have gotten from your constituents either so that first week can be a tough one it could be up to four nights consecutively fairly long nights it is but when
091you think about the gravity of the decision our preference is to we think that the 90minut interviews which is what we say up to 90 on that first night are necessary in order for you to really seriously consider these folks and make the decision you have to and so that's the toughest week in the process but we think it's important that you take that level of time so at the end of that when you come back for that last night you're going to deliberate and and um narrow the field down to finalists typically ideally it's going to be two but not always sometimes we see boards say there are three people you have a tough time differentiating that's fine hasn't happened very often occasionally we'll have a board that will say there's only one that
092we really have an interest in bringing forward if that's how you feel that's what we do again it's not ideal but it all depends on who's in the mix and and how you feel about what you're hearing so you'll make that decision and then we'll come back quite often it's the next week sometimes a couple of weeks later and we'll get into second round interviews in those interviews um we have those on separate nights for a reason we have the candidates during the day come into the district and they spend time meeting with stakeholder groups throughout the course of the day those folks have an opportunity to submit questions that I collect from them I Ask of the candidates in front of them and then they have an opportunity to provide feedback we ask you
093not to be there so that they can be as straightforward as they need to be board presidents can be intimidating same with administrators we'll include administrators but we'll have a separate group for them and kindly invite them not to be present for the other groups um so they have a chance to get their questions asked um and answered and they provide written feedback again to the board there um that evening candidates come for the second interview typically for those it's about up to 60 minutes for the actual interview with different questions that you will have selected we also include a presentation in that second interview we normally start with a presentation for up to about 20 minutes and I'll be working with you you would be the ones to select the topic so if there's
094a topic of particular ular interest would be beneficial for you to hear more from the candidates on that topic than you're going to get in a typical 3 to four minute response to an interview question uh that would be a great opportunity so part part of it's about the content part of it's about presentation style the superintendent is obviously going to be doing a lot of public speaking it could be beneficial to you to kind of see how they handle that too and what their style is so long day for the candidates for you on those nights even though it could be two to three nights for you relatively short you're coming in just for that second interview it could be up to 80 minutes including the presentation and the actual interview and then you're
095on your way so you're not doing any more you're not making any decisions that week um the candidates the other step in the process is going to be up to you too we'll be talking about that some districts prefer site visits which means a subcommittee of the board up to three of you would go to the home District of the candidates and would have a chance to interact with stakeholders in that district and ask questions you get a sense for whether or not what you see is really what you're going to get based on what the people they currently work with and for think about them um the candidates pick the people that you're going to talk to which I know sometimes people can look at that and think well how does that help because
096they're only going to pick people who are going to say nice things about them what I can tell you is through extensive experience I always asked boards if it benefited them and most often they say it was tremendously helpful and in many cases they say it was a Difference Maker even if people are there because there's kind of an expectation they're likely to say nice things how they go about that can be really decisive it's one thing to say something nice because you feel like you need to so you ask a question candidate responds or somebody there responds about the candidate and as you look around the room you see um you know there's not much enthusiasm behind it others maybe are kind of looking down and not uh ready to jump in versus somebody's
097effusive in their praise other people are eager to jump in sometimes you see people crying they're full of emotion at the thought of losing this person it can be really telling so that's an option for you another option is to bring the candidates in and we do a couple of things in those instances we can have a meet and greet where it's kind of an open Forum um it might sound a bit like Hunger Games but we put them in the same room together and separate them um and have an opportunity for stakeholders to come in and informally just interact with them and have conversation and again then provide feedback for you based on that experience we also then would have the chance for two to three of you to help Shepherd them throughout the
098district just kind of give them a tour of the district bring them actually into your schools where they have a chance to interact with students staff members you have a chance to observe that and um get a sense from that as to how they may fit within your District so you'll have some options there that's going to be the very last step in the process so you're going to by that time have a lot of data to consider you're going to have the initial application materials which we're going to share with you on all of the candidates you'll keep the ones the materials on those that you're going to interview candidates almost always will come into the interviews with additional materials that they're going to want to give you and so you'll have that at
099your disposal you're going to have feedback from your stakeholders who watched and listened to the interviews from the first round and the second round you're going to have feedback from your stakeholders from those pre-c interview meetings that they will have had um lot to consider there and whether it's the site visit whether it's the building tour whether it's the meet and greet there's going to be some additional feedback you're going to have from those things to consider too as well as by then of course I will have done extensive reference checks and anything I learned about the candidates that will help uh inform your decision I would be sharing with you good bad or ugly I I'll be doing that all along On the way even going back to the first round if I hear
100something before you make that very first decision about selecting finalist that is of concern I will put that on your radar immediately so that you can consider that um before you make even that decision so you're going to get a lot of lot of data a lot of information and part of our job through all of this is to uh walk you right through it and uh kind of hold your hand and make it as easy for you as possible so we do all of this for um a professional fee of of $8,200 plus direct expenses it's going to be mostly mileage not to exceed $800 um it's funny reactions we get sometimes when boards hear this especially when they consider some firms that charge quite a bit more is how can you possibly offer
101the quality that they do for so much less it's all about what we're trying to accomplish here it's more of a service that we're providing than anything we realize that districts aren't wealthy necessarily right you have a lot of expenses we try to keep this as reasonable as possible um and as affordable as possible so that's it the only uh additional fees would be for the possibility of if you wanted to put uh the posting in National Publications there's an additional $1,400 fee for that which is strictly to cover the cost of those postings there's no profit margin there at all um and then we have um and Associates is a company that will do kind of a personality inventory if you would like to include that in this process C that's an additional $2,000
102which would cover four candidates and then an additional 500 for any additional you could do that in the first round you could wait and do it in the second round or you can choose not to do that at all um so those would be the only possible additional expenses that you might incur um we have a guarantee that um if we endorse the candidacy uh of this candidate and all that means is that if you pick somebody for example from that third group and I'm telling you this is a really bad idea and you go full steam ahead uh you may be jeopardizing our guarantee a bit but I'll be up front and tell you that right there would be no surprise there that's never happened by the way so I don't expect that it
103would um but if if that person leaves within the first year for any other reason other than personal or family illness I would come back and I would help you conduct a second search uh for an expense only basis there would not be no additional fee uh that's something that has happened um in my vast experience I've had to do that once for a school district it's pretty rare occurrence our track record generally has been really really good with that and the longevity of the candidates that have been placed has been great although what I always tell boards is that I'm not going to take credit when the candidates Excel and it looks like you hit a home run that you get to take the credit um I'm not going to take the blame if
104the candidate gets the job and they struggle because honestly ultimately other than that first step where I put the candidates into groups I'm not putting my thumb on the scale I'm helping you but it's going to be your call Totally so in terms of our organization we're a leadership organization our tagline is developing deploying and supporting outstanding leaders that's our business that's what we do the development part of this we have a superintendent preparation Academy we prepared roughly 800 Michigan Educational leaders um nearly 25% of the current superintendents in Michigan have gone through our our preparation Academy um our participants represent the diversity of leadership in Michigan and we do provide Executive coaching at all levels in terms of development um when I say all levels administratively from assistant principles all the way up to
105superintendence we deploy outstanding leaders as well we recruit and consult with prospective candidates we work with boards and committees that you serve to search for the best fit and fit is everything when it comes to these jobs there may be candidates out there there may be some who apply who can be outstanding superintendents maybe they even already are an outstanding superintendent somewhere it doesn't necessarily mean that they're the right person for you they may not be the best fit for you so fit is going to be a huge part of what we're looking for um we do Lead You Through The Selection interview visitation and contract negotiation processes and we use our own proprietary documents and procedures to make sure that this is successful and we support outstanding leaders we do provide mentoring for the
106new superintendent for the first year on the job that would be me I would be the person who would be connected to your superintendent I don't impose myself on your new superintendent but I make clear to the new superintendent I'm available as much as you may need me I've had people formally set up meetings once a month and then I'm also getting texts and emails and phone calls calls which is great I've had people who maybe have their own mentors already and so they don't utilize my service as much I leave it up to them but know that we're available um we do offer Executive coaching for a fee beyond the first year but I have to tell you that unless person's requesting something very formalized and frequent there are people that I helped to
107place um years ago five six years ago who still will reach out on occasion and I'm always happy to help them so once we establish that relationship that remains intact for as long as they would like for it to um I don't know I'm sorry for interrupting I don't know how many more slides you have left but with a hard stop around seven minutes from now okay will we have time for some questions I'm going to go through the rest very quickly and I appreciate that heads up I do app I thank you no worries I I understand your time is valuable so we support districts in a variety of ways I think you have that in your materials I won't get into that uh we stay current with research we provide leadership and governance
108acmis um really importantly we know the requirements of Foia and the open meetings act part of our job is to keep you out of trouble and we will do that and I'm not shy if you start to get out of your lane and kind of you're you're heading for a landmine I will tell you that nicely but I'll tell you that and and my job is to stop you from doing anything that you shouldn't we have a very vast Network and uh our entire team which is totally comprised of former superintendent everybody in our organization collaborates on every search so uh and we we Consultants like me are based regionally so if we have applicants from other parts of the state I can reach out to my colleagues who may know something about those folks
109that I don't so that proves to be invaluable we have roughly a collective experience of 130 years of successful superintendent service that really comes in handy we know leadership we know what it takes to be a successful superintendent um I think more so than you're going to see in any other organization the guarantee we're going to continue with the search until you have an acceptable candidate I explain what happens if they choose to leave if you do contract with us for quarterly governance workshops in the first year we extend that guarantee to two years so why us you're talking to several firms we can all do the job and we're all going to be able to lead you through a search I'll just hit on some of the reasons that we're highlighting experience and knowledgeable
110Consultants all of us have been highly successful superintendents we have an extensive network of outstanding lead leaders our process which we're proud of is very thorough it's very transparent and as I indicated by how much your stakeholders are involved it's very inclusive as well um we have a very strong reputation with a long record of success in doing searches throughout the state we never forget that this is about kids and the impact that these decisions have we're very proud of our customer service in our commitment to doing this the right way I'm very proud of that and we're committed to that um we we actually kind of stole this from feedback I got from a board at one time who said that we made the search easy for them but the decision was exceedingly difficult
111because of the quality of the candidate so we take great pride in that we do provide as I indicated ongoing support well after the search is completed High degree of client satisfaction and more than anything else I think that speaks volumes um I have yet to hear a district after conducting a search that expressed disappointment or or um indicated that we didn't do what we said we were going to do the feedback has always been really good one quick story I'll tell you too a couple of current examples um I did a search the superintendent search in alette schools about five years ago that superintendent is still there but in the this subsequent five years during that time they asked me to come back and help facilitate their strategic planning process which I did I
112was there last night to conduct a board governance Workshop because they had several new board members so I think that speaks to the customer satisfaction in West Bloomfield about three years ago help Place their superintendent they had me come back and Mentor gosh eight to 10 of their administrators throughout the district subsequent to that and Monday I'm going back to West Bloomfield to conduct a board governance Workshop so very high level of of client satisfaction and we are a service organization leadership is what we do it's our business it's our specialty uh we know this work we know what's required and we think uh based on that we can be exceedingly helpful to you well thank you John let's take a Brisk four minutes Worth or five of questions from the the board I see
113a head shake oh our student rep actually would like to ask a quick question too I'll be really quick I was looking at the search timeline and in work uh weeks two through three it says that uh meet with Board and Design staff and the thing that stands out to me most as like a student rep is uh Community groups to develop a candidate profile um how do you determine the community groups that you're going to interview and how what level of uh influence do their opinions have um because uh I've grown up through the entire like Saline School System so has my younger brother and younger sister and they all come to me and be like oh you're on the board can you do this I'm like I'm sure that's true yeah I'll try
114my best and um yeah I was gonna say it and I take their words for consideration but especially my younger sister in sixth grade most of that revolves around getting more snow days but um what level of that how do you determine what communities to interview and get their opinions on and what level of influence do their uh words have so so basically we include um we structure it too I come into the district and we structure it to accommodate their schedule so normally we build a schedule around um teachers student dismissal time and teachers so um I like to break secondary and elementary since they have different dismissal times so we schedule a meeting with secondary staff after student dismissal soon after we schedule a meeting with Elementary staff soon after student dismissal and
115then build the rest of the schedule around that almost always we'll meet separately with administrators depending on the size sometimes we even break up Central administrators and building administrators um we quite often will have parents and community members together if the board desires we can provide a couple of those different opportunities um I love to include high school students um and I think sometimes some of what they have to offer is uh tremendously insightful and really helpful so we pull all of that those responses together in terms of what are people looking for in their next superintendent we pull the most common responses from everybody and we put them together to form that candidate profile so nobody's prioritized over others it's really kind of the collective responses we get so no matter when you talk
116to all these diverse groups what's important is what's rising to the top in terms of what people really think is important and what they're looking for um but we think it's really great to include students and then when we have those um groups that meet with the super the candidates before the second round interviews we like to include high school students in those too all right thank you that was welcome question question if anyone has an urgent question Jennifer um for the extra 2K can you tell me what psychometric you use the um form heal and Associates yeah I I can't give you the details in that I'm going to be totally transparent with you we've begun to offer that service fairly recently I haven't had any takers yet so I haven't had any first
117I haven't had any firsthand experience with healings other than to know I've spoken to the folks from heing I know they're very highly regarded very uh experienced so if there was some interest on the board's part even before you made a commitment if you needed to hear from those folks first we could certainly arrange to have them come in and share exactly what they would do before you make any any kind of financial commitment okay I think I had read that it was the disk survey they use DC that sounds I think that's right I believe that firm but um and then what percentage of outof State candidates do you usually bring to the table there's almost always some presence with out of state and honestly I think whether or not we include that National
118advertising I think if you have folks from out of state who have any interest whatsoever in relocating to Michigan to become a superintendent they know exactly where to look um they do if I as a Michigan superintendent wanted to go work in Ohio or Indiana or Illinois um I would know how to find kind of the warehouse or the clearing house where you could find those postings very easy to do so um almost always though what's interesting is the vast majority of applicants tend to be from Michigan no matter how you advertise these things and the vast majority of the superintendents who are selected end up being from Michigan too sure unless there's anything actually urgent and pressing well thanks BR I'm um if we do have questions I'm sure we can fire them off
119to you John S thank you so much for presenting this and as our students will uh escort you out I'm sure but I thank you for your time this evening I do appreciate it thank you for having me I really appreciate it if you know Dave I I know Dave exceptionally well Dave is a close colleague and uh Dave has finally fully retired so but I'll pass on your best no more searches no not for Dave course just a point just a point Hi how are you good welcome remember yeah thank You okay that's I had read it to the board thank you very much for your patience uh Jay Bennett who some of us know uh from receiving M.A.S.B. awards from you uh I just want to welcome you and uh we uh we're
120going to aim for about we originally planned for 20 minutes and we went over by about eight twice so the floor is yours until 28 minutes from now and then the hook comes out all right all right ready ready to go at your all right well good evening everybody good to see you all uh my name is Jay Bennett I'm the assistant director for executive Search services at the Association of school boards my primary responsibilities with masb are around superintendent search and superintendent evaluation uh I also teach a variety of classes for M.A.S.B. workshops and the like um I am a former board member I served on my local school board in Grand Ledge just outside of Lansing I also served on my Roxand Board in Eaton County so I've been uh right there where
121you sit uh as well so I've been on that other side of the table I'm a lifelong educator uh I started my career uh in middle school and high school special education taught from for many years and so I've been involved in education in one way shape reform since the tender age of five so here we are tonight to talk to you about superintendent search and what M.A.S.B. can do for you um I have been doing search for M.A.S.B. for about 10 years uh seven years full-time uh before that I was a contractor and so I I did searches on the on the side but I've been doing it full-time now for about seven years uh in fact my anniversary is this week uh with M.A.S.B. uh I've done over uh 30-35 searches or so
122over those past 10 years in districts like yours in districts bigger than yours in districts much smaller than yours Suburban, urban, rural across the state I haven't done any in the up um but uh I have done them in just about every other uh portion of the state um so one of the differences that we bring to you as your membership organization is that we are your membership organization we only serve uh Boards of Education we provide you with unparalleled support um I have an office uh of full support from my legal staff from my marketing staff from my search staff uh and so we have a uh staff of people ready to help you out we've done over 700 successful searches uh since we've been doing searches uh at M.A.S.B. we have a track
123record of success we have a national network and promotion we have a close working relationship with the other education associations Masa the superintendent Association is right across the hall from us uh the business officers are right down the hall from us the secondary principles are right next door to us uh and we have very good relation relationships with all of those education associations as well we really value transparency in our process I'm not going to take you in a close session at any point during the search except for two very specific reasons and those two very specific reasons are if you have a number of internal candidates and I don't think that we can talk about this those internal candidates in an open meeting without inadvertently violating their confidentiality we'll go in a close session
124just to talk about the internal candidates the other reason would be if you decide to employ any kind of Behavioral testing of the applicants then we can talk about the results of those tests in closed session but then we'll come back out of closed session and we'll continue on with the process so those are the only two reasons everything else that we do during our searches is going to be in an open meeting we really value that transparency we also have a unique application system called Rellis Rellis was developed by the Ohio school Boards Association it is in used by a number of other School Board associations across the country including very conveniently for all of you Ohio Indiana Wisconsin, Minnesota and I believe Illinois is coming on board this year so as soon as
125I post that job to our system it automatically gets out to those other systems as well beyond the Midwest... Florida, North Carolina, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Alaska uh when I see Alaska candidates I'm pretty sure that that's how they saw the post was because when I posted here at Auto automatically post to that one in Alaska so we have that National reach um and that is completely at no cost to you that's just part of the process when I post it in my system it automatically goes out to all those other systems at no additional cost to you okay so because we are your organization your Association we are beholden to you I'm beholden to working with Boards of Education that's what I do we're committed to helping you find the appropriate candidate with a focus
126on longevity we want to find you someone that hopefully is going to be here for a very long time I have no obligation to place candidates I don't have a stable of candidates that I promised a job to or promised anything to that doesn't mean that I don't know of some candidates out there that have said to me hey you know if if you get that Saline search that's something I'd be interested in so yes I've been getting those calls already I was just up at the superintendent conference uh midwinter conference in Grand Rapids a couple weeks ago I talked to a number of people that were inquiring about this opportunity and saying hey if uh if M.A.S.B. gets that let me know I'd definitely be interested so the word is out uh so you
127definitely have some people out there that are interested uh in this job for sure so the no obligation to place candidates doesn't mean that I don't have candidates that have expressed interest or I don't have those people that I would call and encourage to apply I make no promises uh if you as board members have anyone that you want me to reach out to give me a name when I talk to your staff in your community I tell them the same thing if you know somebody that you know used to work here and then went off to another District but you would sure like to see them come back give me a name give me as much contact information as you got I'll reach out to them and I'll encourage them to apply I'm not
128making any promises I'm not telling anybody that you're the next Superintendent of Saline all I'm saying is put your application materials in the pool let the board decide who they want and hopefully you'll be that lucky one that's selected um so we encourage as many people to apply that are meeting those criteria that you have set we are also ever mindful of the laws and of public perception uh anytime I have a question about legal that I am not quite too certain about I have Brad on speed dial and Brad Brad Banasik is recognized as the expert in the open meetings act across the state so you know anytime I can text Brad call Brad and get clarification anything that I'm not too sure about Brad doesn't like it when I play lawyer I didn't
129sleep in a holiday in express last night so um I tried to stay away from legal stuff without consulting with our legal team um so some assurances for you no surprise guarantee if I hear about it if I see it in any of the background checks any of the reference checks when we release the names of the candidates you're going to get phone calls you're going to get text messages you're going to get emails I know someone who knows someone who knows someone that knows that person you need to route that stuff to me so that I can vet it out I'm going to get phone calls right when those names are released when they're out there you're going to start getting feedback from people who know someone who knows someone they're fantastic they're terrible
130they're awful whatever it is you're going to hear that let me know so that I can vet it out and any Communications with stakeholders I'm going to communicate all that back to you so when I have those meetings with your uh constituent groups your parents your staff your community your students I'm definitely going to relay that information back to you the survey results are all going to come back to you so you're going to see all that input from your community um for sure the quality of the candidate pool if you're not happy with the pool we'll go out and we'll do it again uh I am cautiously optimistic that uh you'll get a good pool of candidates uh you're a very attractive opportunity for sure U as I said I'm already getting phone calls
131about the opportunity um so I'm cautiously optimistic that you're going to get a good pool of candidates if I think about the pools that we've been seeing uh six seven eight years ago we get 20 to 25 applicants of those 20 to 25 10 to 15 of them would be good solid applicants that you would think about interviewing now 15 to 20 applicants and maybe only eight or nine are really good solid applicants that you'd consider but those eight or are good solid candidates so I don't want you to think that you're not going to get good solid candidates you will the pools just aren't as deep as they used to be but the top ends of those pools are still pretty good so there's a a very good chance you're still going to get
132some uh some good candidates but if you're not happy with the pool then we'll go out and uh and we'll do it again uh minimum of a one-year tenure so as long as uh that candidate is here for a year then uh you're good to go if they make it less than a year uh then we'll come back out and do that search for free all right all right board leadership we know that selecting a superintendent is one of the most important things that you as a board of education do uh so we're going to work with you to make sure that that process is as Flawless as possible uh we know that effective high functioning boards such as yourselves are much more attractive to applicants and the candidates as much research as you're going
133to do on the candidates they're doing on you as well okay and when they start to do that research what are they going to find uh and I have all the faith in the world that things that they find out about you as a board and your District are going to be positive for sure the clearer the picture the type of leader that it is that you're looking for the easier it's going to be for uh those candidates to understand and to apply and easier for me to do that recruiting because they know exactly what it is that the Saline board and the Saline community and the Saline staff are looking for in the next superintendent the search process is usually about a 13 to 14 we process we can definitely make some adjustments to
134this we can speed it up a little bit if you want we can slow it down a little bit if you'd want uh but it's usually right around a 13 to 14 we process weeks 1 through three that's when we're preparing for the search preparation includes establishing the search timeline planning the stakeholder engagement meetings make sure that we're meeting with all the groups that you want us to meet with developing that compensation range and the length of the contract publish that preliminary posting We do have a digital brochure that we can customize for your District we can put your points of pride in here we can talk about your uh recent Middle School teacher that won the presidential Math and Science award we can talk about all the positive things going on in the district
135we can put in into that digital brochure uh it would have your school colors your school mascot this is an example from another District but we could easily mock one up for your district with all those points of Pride if that's something that you're interested in it's part of the package no additional cost some boards love to do it other boards like don't worry about it completely up to you stakeholder engagement we have plenty of opportunities to come out and work with your staff in your community we have the survey that we put out there in fact in the folders that I presented to you or or that your president passed out to you is a sample of what one of the surveys looks like um so you get an idea of what kinds of
136questions are in that survey and so that survey goes out uh you put it out on your social media your Facebook your Twitter send it out your email list put a link to it on your website and everyone in the community can then respond to that survey all those results are then uh given back to the board in a presentation we'll have those face Toof face focus groups as well uh after first R interviews There's an opportunity for anyone that's here in the audience during that interview to fill out a feedback form how they felt about those interviews those feedback forms are then copied and distributed to all the board members so you can see the input that you're getting from your uh from your community and your staff weeks 4 through 10 now we're
137talking about Recruitment and so during this recruitment effort we're making sure that we use our instate marketing so the my staff page which is where every education job in the state is posted the Rellis program that we have it gets posted there as well and then we can talk about other places that you'd like to post uh those come with an additional cost but if there's other Nationwide places that You' like to post we can definitely talk about those I can I can give you the breakdown of the cost in those and I can also give you an idea as to how effective they are um hint hint not very um but uh you know we can talk about that and I can give you more de details about that if you are interested in
138using any of those out of state advertising so during that recruitment I will vet applicants and by vetting if you get 20 applicants that have successfully completed an application you're going to see all 20 I don't take anybody out of the pool if they successfully complete an application you're going to see it you're going to see that some of those applicants are probably not exactly what you're looking for you'll see that some are exactly what you're looking for it's going to be a mix but you're going to see all of them so I don't hold any candidates back from you I will break them into two tiers those two tiers are going to represent a top tier and a bottom tier those in the top tier are the ones that based on their resume their
139cover letter their application materials what I know they are the closest match to what you as a board and community and staff have said you're looking for the bottom tier are those that don't quite get there you may see someone in the bottom tier that on paper looks like everything that you're looking for and you may say so Jay what's going on with this one why is that particular candidate in the bottom tier and I'll let you know that well there's there's probably something in the top two that's probably a little bit more appealing to you than that particular individual and some boards will be like okay other boards will push a little bit harder well no really what what is it exactly just suffice it to say I know something about that candidate I
140don't know that's someone that you want to bring out in front of your community and again then a lot of boards like okay we get it some boards will say no a little bit more okay well do me a favor go ahead and you got your laptop open go ahead and type their name in Google I'll give you a second oh oh oh yes now you see why that candidate while on paper has all the all the requisite knowledge and information and job experience that you're looking for there's something about them that probably is not something that you want to bring out for your community if you see someone in the bottom tier that just kind of strikes your fancy and a majority of the board wants to interview that candidate by all means if
141they're in the bottom tier and you think I missed something or you think there's something about that candidate that you really want to get to know more about then if a majority of the board is in favor of interviewing that candidate then we can definitely make that happen that breaking up of the tears is just my way of helping you out saying these are the ones that most closely match what you say you're looking for these are the ones that don't but you're going to see all the materials and so if you decide something different than I do that's completely okay 11 and 12 now we're talking about the interview process so we will select the candidates for interviews we will make sure that we're in compliance with the open meetings act we believe in
142this process unfolding in public we want everything to happen in an open meeting okay we discussed the applicants by numbers so you get that list of 20 applicants they all have a random number assign to them and when I say random number I literally go into Google give me 20 random numbers between one and 100 and then I just assign those numbers to the applicants the numbers mean nothing but I start with the board president board President says I really like 6 18 15 23 72 and 15 all right and then I go on to the other and then we see and generally speaking the board's usually kind cools around the same six or seven applicants so if you've got six applicants that all got four or more votes a majority of the board believes
143that they would like to call them in for an interview then those are the six or seven applicants that we reach out to if you're four more votes on five and you've got a six candidate that only got three votes then we can talk about that candidate and maybe that's a candidate that you know another board member jumps on and says yeah let's let's bring him in so we're interviewing six uh generally speaking like I said after that process boards usually kind of coal us around the same numbers we're only basing that initial reaction that initial selection on what we see in the application cover letter resume the application their letters of recommendation we're going to discourage you from doing any significant uh digging on those candidates ahead of time because I want you to
144come in this just based on what's in front of you in on the paper and my experience as a Searcher uh and that helps remove the bias from the situation because you start digging into the applicants ahead of time it can start to Cloud your judgment a little bit and so we're going to try to remove as much bias as possible by just judging by what we have in front of us now that doesn't mean that I've not vetted those candidates I have that doesn't mean that I haven't reached out to every candidate that I don't already know and talk to them because I will talk to every applicant if there's 20 applicants I'm going to talk to every one of them before the search and get an idea as to who they are I'm
145going to reach out to my contacts there's a pretty good chance because I see every search that comes through our office whether I'm doing it or my Consultants is doing it or my director is doing it I see all the applications so I'm pretty familiar with most of the people that are out there applying for the superintendencies you will attract some people that maybe have never applied for a superintendency before but that doesn't mean that I I don't know them they could be a current sitting superintendent from a district that I'm very familiar with or I probably know somebody that knows somebody that knows them so again I'm going to do a lot of that vetting ahead of time for you uh and make sure that we're presenting a good pool of candidates for you
146to take a look at we do not disclose the names of the candidates until they've actually accepted an interview so if you choose six that you'd like to interview I reach out to all six if all six accept an interview then we release the names if only five of six accept interviews then those only those five names are released the only people that know who's applied are the seven of you your administrative assistant because we give them access to the materials in case you want any of it printed so they can print them here myself people in my office but other than that that nobody knows who's applied unless they you know unless the applicant tells somebody in addition and we do our best to maintain that confidentiality because it is a risky proposition especially
147for a current sitting superintendent to put themselves out there so they really have to believe that they're applying to this job and that if they selected and they decided to interview that it's the right choice for them so those first round interviews we hold those in an open session we recommend that uh you know recommend the questions with the board we work with the board you're going to pick the questions that you want to ask I'm going to have some ideas of some questions that are you know pretty effective based on on what we've done in the past um but you get to pick the questions so we'll definitely work together on developing those questions all candidates in the first round get the same set of questions we want that consistency in the first round
148and then in the second round we can dig a Little Deeper second round we can ask some followup questions second round we can uh you know dig a Little Deeper take a little bit more time with with fewer questions and get to know them even better in that second round during that second round just like the first There's an opportunity for feedback from the community they can fill out those forms during the second round we also allow an opportunity for the community members to fill out questions I will then collect those questions present those questions to the board president and then determine that based on how much time we have left in the interview then the superintendent May or I'm sorry the board president may ask some of those questions of the superintendent candidates uh
149you know if there's 30 questions from the community probably won't get to all of them but maybe we'll get to five or six or seven of them really going to depend on time then we come down to the decision so it's at this time that uh you know after we've discussed all the candidates we've discussed the interviews uh it is at that time that I turn the meeting back over to the board president board president then opens the floor for a motion the motion is going into contract negotiations with candidate X we get a second we have discussion we take a vote if we are successful in a majority vote to go into contract negotiations with X it is then generally up to the board president maybe one or two other members of the board
150to start those negotiations ideally you've had a contract ready to go and you presented that to your finalists ahead of time uh you've already worked with your legal counsel to make sure that your contract is current and up to date uh there's been some changes in the past couple years uh in what is needed and necessary in those contracts especially with the evaluation law that we just passed not too long ago so you want to make sure that you work with your legal team to make sure that have all the appropriate things in that contract for your next superintendent and then once you have come to that uh successful negotiation that final contract needs to be brought back to the entire board in an open meeting for passage okay the search process is not done
151after that uh as your Association as part of the process we will provide additional support to you after the search has been completed so we have a follow-up Workshop uh that we will conduct we come back into the district four to six months after the superintendent has been in place and we'll have that follow-up Workshop it's a successful superintendent transition Workshop we'll talk about communication we'll talk about goal setting we'll talk about evaluation I also have an area rep program that I oversee the area rep program is retired Superintendant that visit every new superintendent in the fall doesn't matter if it's a search that we did if it's a search that my competition did if it was an internal hire if they just elevated someone up doesn't matter if they're a new superintendent in a
152district even if they were a superintendent last year but they're new superintendent in a new District this year they're going to get a visit from one of my area reps and that's an opportunity for one of my experienced retired superintendents to sit down with a new superintendent and kind of say Hey you know how's it going what can M.A.S.B. do for you and so that's another layer of support that we provide to every new superintendent in the state and then we also uh will provide a price break on on your first facilitated evaluation I've been here in this district and worked with your board before on facilitated evaluation with your superintendent we always recommend with a first time superintendent or a new superintendent in your District that you seriously consider facilitated the evaluation uh especially
153if it's their first ever evaluation it does help that process it takes the onus off the board president the onus off the superintendent you have an outside uh voice kind of running through that evaluation process and leading you through that evaluation process we think it's it's pretty effective so those are the things that I wanted to cover uh with you tonight um what types of things what questions do you have what did I not talk about that you wish I had well thank you very much Mr Bennett yeah um let's we'll open up the board Brad you since we cut you off the last time uh thank you for being here and doing this uh will you personally you're saying like I will be screening I will be are you J Bennett conducting our search
154I am okay uh that's the biggest thing I wanted to know okay absolutely uh I can just work our way down the student reps have any quick question based on what you've heard thank you Tim no Darcy go ahead thanks Jay that was a a really nice presentation yeah um Carol left and my question is how do you work with um the assistant uh superintendent for human resources within the district uh either with regards to uh compensation alignment or contract creation do you have any um examples you can give of positive working relationship or do you kind of manage that separately and we bring that to Carol like so there's a couple yeah so there's a couple things so ultimately it's up to the board to set that salary scale so you're going to determine
155what you want that salary scale to be I'll bring you some comparative districts I'll work with the board president to kind of determine what districts would you like me to compare yourself to so that you get a good idea of what the comps are out there right what other Superintendent in similar sized districts in your vicinity maybe even out outside of your uh General geography but in a district similar to yours in another part of the state so you get a good idea of what the pay scale is out there because we know that if you don't set a competitive pay scale it's definitely going to impact the kinds of candidates that you get right they want to see that it's going to be a competitive pay um so I'll definitely work with them uh
156and you know and the board making sure that you're happy with uh with the pay scale uh and that you set the appropriate pay scale for the for the process um for the most part you're hiring a search firm to handle a vast majority of this process generally what I need from District Personnel is logistics making sure that the space that we're using for a meeting tonight you know so uh the space that that I was originally in uh before I came in here they were doing CPR in there with uh with Girl Scout so I decided to step out of the room and I ended up in another room in the office here so logistically we just want to make sure that you know whatever space we have a meeting in there's not something
157else going on in that room right so it's really a lot of logistics um I don't have access to your website so any anything that we want to post on your website I would need someone from the district to you know to do that um I generally have a fairly close working relationship with the administrative assistant uh to the superintendent because that's usually the person that kind of coordinates everything on the other end or at least that's the person of contact and then if she's not the one that has or he's not the one that has access to the website they know who to get it to to make sure that gets up on the website I try to stay to one person one point of contact uh sometimes I don't know if you have
158a PR person sometimes the pr person may be that point of contact and I may just reach out to the pr person person and give them the uh the stuff for the website or the press releases or things of that nature so so so just a follow up with contract creation specifically contract creation I I generally recommend that you take a look at your current contract with your current superintendent have your legal team look at that as well and you know and it could be your HR uh and then make sure that it's appropriate and that anything that was in the contract for your previous superintendent that doesn't need to be there gets taken out anything that needs to be added that's not in there that should be gets added in in uh and then
159uh making sure that that contract is pretty close to being ready to go for your candidates so that uh that helps speed up the process because then once we get to that point where we're negotiating the contract they're not seeing it for the first time they've already seen it have an idea as to what it is and so you're starting that negotiation from kind of a uh you know a fresh start as opposed to them not knowing what's going on okay thank you I asked because because we ended up hiring an internal candidate last time um the contract was created with our assistant superintendent for human resources and the compensation committee yeah um and not with the search firm yeah so you know it's a combination of you know um because it is your district
160and your superintendent that you're hiring I tend to lean on the district and the board to kind of work with their legal to come up with a contract that's appropriate for you all uh it most of the contracts across the state are looking pretty similar uh but there's going to be unique things in your contract that may not be in other District's contracts so before we get to the far end of the table Brad it does have a followup so first of all yes we do have a communication specialist so fantastic so she would be a great resource for you and I remember I think we worked with Jay or not Jay um Brad to help us to like look at the contract yeah that's a very good possibility for I think we did that
161when we went through that process four years ago I have one last thing about um me mentoring support yeah so um a couple we've interviewing three firms and and is there any way I didn't hear you talk about ongoing support for the superintendent but would you be able to connect us absolutely absolutely so there what I generally recommend the boards is that you lean heavy on your on on MASASA right the superintendent Association and they provide mentors for all new superintendent through our area rep program that I have that the retired superintendent visit that's another opportunity for mentorship as well uh because of that close working relationship that I have with MASASA I tend not to step on their toes too much when it comes time for mentorship because you know that's what they do
162they have a staff they have retired superintendents that work for them that do that mentoring so I definitely will reach out to them and let them know hey you know Saline just hired a new superintendent anything you do to help them out would be great I definitely have a conversation with your new superintendent about making sure that they lean on their Association and then I have a conversation with all of you uh to make sure that part of that onboarding process part of you supporting your new superintendent is making sure that they have opportunities for professional development that there's money set aside in the contract for attending conferences and things of that nature and that you as a board uh you know reach out to Masa and put some things in place to get that
163support for your superintendent and anytime you have any questions about that definitely reach out and we'll make sure that you get the right contact information for sure yeah Lauren Jason in the next minute and a half or so uh I have a quick question regarding um developing sort of the profile of the person we're looking for it sounds like stakeholders input is not initially sought is sought after we sort of do a preliminary advertisement so um well so okay so the preliminary posting is basically just this is our District this is the opportunity and that's that right the selection criteria then is created based on the input from community and staff and the board that's part of the survey part of the face to-face meetings that selection criteria is created and then that is added
164to the posting usually about two weeks or so before the posting closes we always encourage applicants to wait until that select criteria has been posted and then apply the reason that we want that preliminary posting up ahead of time is because we want it known okay so this is what the uh timing looks like so they know when the interviews are and everything so the sooner we can get that out there the sooner they can start to plan their schedule plan their stuff they can start collecting their letters of reference they can start brushing up their resume they can start thinking about what their cover letters going to look like and while they're doing all of that they can then wait for that selection criteria to get posted and then they can see exactly what
165it is that the district is looking for and then they can make adjustments to their materials or decide whether or not this is a a good match for them or not so um what I was going to get to was was that it seems like one of the strengths of M ASB is that you have a certain amount of like kind of knowledge of the system and the people involved but uh I want to make sure that we don't have uh too closed of a process and that we're sort of open to a variety of diverse candidates oh absolutely um and so I'm just wondering how you seek um stakeholder input a little bit more specifically and how you make sure that it's wide uh across our community because if we're only talking to leaders
166of organizations or the people who have time off during the day to meet with oh no absolutely so generally speaking I'm going to first make sure that if there's any groups in particular that you want to make sure that I talk to that you just let me know what those groups are and we'll schedule a time and meeting for them the survey that's out there is wide open to anybody that wants to take it so we you know we broadcast that far and wide on your social medias on your email list on the website whatever it is uh and then we have those meetings that are variety of times during the day so we have a lunch meeting anyone that wants to come they can make it in on our lunch great we'll have an
167evening meeting anyone can come in the evening and meet with us we'll meet with the teachers right after they get out of school before they go home we'll meet with some of the administrators during the day when they can you know uh sneak out of their buildings for a little bit and talk to us and then I'm also always open to taking phone calls or emails from anybody that wants to reach out to me and just let me know what they're thinking um so there's any number of ways they can get a hold of me uh and you can always if someone reaches you and says hey you know how do I get a hold of them just you know send them my way and I'd be more than happy to talk to them for
168sure and then how do you compile that information and how is it shared with the board so the survey information is an easy compile because that's all in the survey right and so when I'm reporting back to you those survey results I will make sure that using my notes that I've been taking during all those face-to-face meetings that I intersperse that conversation with you as well generally speaking what I'm hearing in the face t- face sessions is the exact same thing that we're hearing in the survey um if there's things that are different from one or the other that I'll definitely make sure that you hear about those as well okay yeah absolutely Jason don't want to leave you out just one quick question on one of your slides you had uh a part that
169said that the M.A.S.B. will not actively recruit superintendent placed for at least three years is that your placements or is that any placements that's our placements that's our placements and you know but I mean logistically speaking uh boards for the most part aren't going to look too um well upon a candidate that that has only been in a job for a year and is already looking to get out and so usually if they haven't been in a job for two or three years it doesn't do a whole lot of good to recruit them because again a board's going be like well I mean if they were willing to leave that District after a year or two what's going to happen when they come to ours and so a lot of times if we are recruiting
170candidates we're recruiting candidates that have established themselves and quite honestly I don't need to do a lot of recruiting Because especially for an opportunity like this it's known opportunity and they're going to start coming to me or to whoever you're search firm is uh and like I said I've already seen some of that and once we get it posted another reason we get try to get that preliminary posting out as quickly as possible so that it's out there people know that it's ready to go they see when those interviews are scheduled for they see what the timeline looks like and they start making those arrangements to uh to get their calendar is ready to go well great I did have one quick question but Although our visit is almost to an a yeah um social
171media checking social media Footprints used to be a really easy task uh now I suspect ECT it's a heck of a lot onerous do you personally go through and review social media Footprints or do we have a service that you employ to okay yeah so part of my background check process includes a social media check and so there is a program that the company that we use for background checks uh in addition to doing the regular computerized back background checks that check all the databases uh they also do a education verification so if they say their highest degree is a PhD from the University of Michigan then the background company I use calls the University of Michigan talks to someone in the register's office and makes sure that that person actually has a PhD from
172the University of Michigan employment verification if they say currently they are the superintendent of the Smithfield School District then they're going to call someone in the Smithfield school district and confirm that that person is in fact currently the superintendent of the Smithfield school district and then the third part to that is they have a social media scrub that they do and I don't know what service sure how they do it but I get a report back that says hey we saw these questionable posts on Twitter we saw these questionable posts on Facebook uh and you know I share that information if it's relevant with the board uh for the most part I'll just tell you we did the background check everything came clear um if there's something alarming then I will let you know what
173it is uh but nine times out of 10 there's nothing there great well thank you appreciate that it's good to see you again and um I think we'll have to say thank you and goodbye absolutely good to see you all any questions please let me know otherwise good luck in your search and we'll be in touch thanks L have a good night now oh just get my toys together one the questions I posed to the ad hoc committee uh off off mic so to speak was should we um have a discussion about all these folks tonight or just have an initial uh uh review of our our feelings and concerns and uh and so forth or and if it's if we're ready to make a an offer to one of these firms uh I'm open
174to doing that now the only hesitation of doing it on February 11th is that uh the next board meeting is that time is ticking of course um thir if we if we made a decision tonight we'd probably according to their timelines have a superintendent in place or chosen by about miday uh so the decision if we wait till February 11th then we're looking at like the end of May so which gives that person about a month to work out details that said it's going to be I heard the word onerous about six times from all of these people it is going to be a bit of a slog a bit of a marathon and uh I I'm open to your your ideas about the next steps fire fire away uh Jennifer vice president St so
175so yeah Michael Michael's right and if we we take a look at some of the timelines that were provided to us miday I think is best beginning of May is best um I personally would like the opportunity for the new individual to work with Steve even with the core team um while he's still here so that doesn't give a lot of time um and I I can vividly remember how hard it was to schedule the interviews last time we had to work uh with the person that was in Jackie's role before to um schedule site visits and have some of us available we had a lot of um stakeholder Community groups and various groups with our unions and things like that and then once we did get down we had a lot of special meetings
176um and it was incredibly hard with all of our schedules I'm not sure so I I would prefer to kind of get started well I do as well but I just wanted to add uh I've spoken with Steve about this he's not going to be sitting on a beach in Tahiti the day after he finishes here I know but I want to respect his time he absolutely will work with the new superintendent whoever they may be yeah should we uh I have one question for our finance chair and then um one suggestion as to moving forward so uh for Brad I'd like to know where the money comes from for this uh you know process and um you know yeah so that's my first question and then what I was thinking we could consider doing
177is having everyone list their top two just to see if anybody fell out pretty immediately and then we could discuss if there was an obvious Fallout but I appreciate that suggestion Brad well she's putting me on the spot and I think the answer is the general fund that's what that's my inclination is to believe that this is just a general fund expenditure and the general fund would support this unfortunately Miranda has flown so usually she's the one who can answer me what line items and things of that nature I also know that we have dedicated like we have a dedicated budget but I don't think what you I think our budet can grow and change accordingly I think that's where it's where legal is it's where but but to answer your question it it's general
178fund dollars that yeah that's it's usually encumbered in advance so I like your suggestion uh uh Lauren would you want to just go up and down the table uh for is there one that you would eliminate at this point that's the easier one you said look what you top two but let's just say which one you want to cut out let start with Jason yeah thanks uh just going based off of presentation and reviewing the materials I would eliminate rain Associates thank you uh Lauren I was just I I I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with Jason I just wanted to um understand your your rational that just help there's a couple things in the presentation uh how they referred how they referred a little nonchalantly to the uh diversity Equity inclusion statement what that means
179to us now that was a little off the cuff um the presentation as put together the materials were in my opinion not well organized I do a lot of presentations myself hard to follow not very structured uh in my opinion um and price point which isn't always a deciding factor for me but it was double what anybody else is uh they're also not based here in Michigan whereas the other two are and I tend to lean more toward firms that are localized uh and I know that they have representation that is familiar with the area uh but M.A.S.B. and obviously Michigan Leadership Institute are based here great well I appreciate that asking for notes on our reasons so thank you Lauren did you have a uh I would eliminate mli I thought the presentation was
180was not as comprehensive um I thought I mean I could talk about why I liked the other two firms better a little more easily but I just didn't think it was as comprehensive of a of a presentation I'm hoping I'm not biased by the fact that they were the ones that we didn't have time for questions um I didn't think that they talked very well about background checks uh I didn't like the fact that they were sort of random about where they were advertising professional sites throughout Michigan and I I feel pretty strongly as you can probably tell from my questions that I really would like us to not be insular in our search um and I feel like that sometimes harmed at least my experience as a parent in the community and a Community
181member uh i' I'd like to see us look uh widely and so for that reason I felt like they were least able to um give us a whole lot of um uh a wider search and they specifically said they weren't going to give us very many details they were going to look at things I just think there was a bigger chance that there was some bias that was going to come into how they were um evaluating candidates rather than giving us more information thank you Jennifer vice president St so I'm going to employe a slightly different tactic that I learned the last time we went through the superintendent search and it was about keeping it positive in public and and um looking at both um mostly positives right I guess there's always room for improvement
182in any proposal to to other points made um so I tried to narrow it down to the three top things that I thought that were positives for us to consider of each and then I wanted to give my opinion overall so with Ray and Associates I thought that they had a really good um uh circumstance with the three levels of vetting um one of my fears in any hiring situation is that there's something out there that's unknown and I felt I felt a little comfortable with that so I like that I like the bigger geography that they cover um to to Lauren's point and it was the first time and it was the first time and it did come up later but I I thought it was a respectful um discussion around the no poaching
183um the average 10 year right now of a superintendent is 3 to five years that's like nothing um when we think about how long Steve has been in this district and how long we we had the opportunity to work with Scott so I thought that that was pretty respectful given the climate um mli I really liked how they said um how John was talking about um the site visits that we could go to their districts and I I I've seen it happen with mli when we used them last time and they came here and so I felt very comfortable with that and um I like the idea of us going to neighboring school districts or or school districts where candidates might be coming from that we're seriously considering and how they work with their teams
184there um I liked the mentoring um on the job the oneye and Executive coaching that is provided um for fee um and the interview process with them and how he laid it out is very in-depth it's it's very in-depth so I thought that was strong masb they're very familiar to us and they're familiar with us um it is our organization as a school board in our state and I mean I liked hearing that superintendents were talking to him at the recent conference that's a positive that they feel that there's a trust and we have built a trust with the organization um I really like that um he he flat out stated this these things need to happen in public that's important to me that transparency with the community and and having that for our staff
185going through this the last time the amount of emails that we received from our staff was was huge and um them being able to be a part of the open process is really attractive I thought Jay seemed like very hungry and ready to go and with the timelines I thought that was good I liked the ideas of the follow-up workshops and the mentorships so um and thinking of those things I think with this particular um superintendent search I would be more um apt to go with M.A.S.B. this time um not at this time all right thank you um yeah I would a minute quite easily not terribly easily about Ray and Associates uh the price point based on what they were offering and everything else they said uh the the price point was still way
186too high plus they still had add-ons all of them had the guarantee of the one year all of them had a no poaching I mean it makes sense uh at a certain point superintendent searches and executive searches do kind of boil down to a system I don't think anyone is going to be more outstanding than the other uh but I do trust uh Jay's first of all his Network through M.A.S.B. and the people he spoken with I actually ran into the entire M.A.S.B. team at a Michigan virtual University Summit in Lansing the other day and we had a chance to chat they get out and about um when Jay also Mr Bennett also said that they would he give a priced break on the facilitated evaluation it was Jay and his team who wrote that
187form that you know Jason sadly and dar sty didn't get to see that but the the evaluation form that we worked at the new one he they he and his team developed that I like the the broad reach that they have through revelus this has come up many many times like it well it came up in previous searches are we going to get the candidates we're looking for diverse broad pool and um I get the sense that Revis and the other tools that he has will get it out there um I'm so I I I'm actually I'm strongly supporting uh M mli and M.A.S.B. I'd be happy with either but I'm quite happy happier with M.A.S.B. thank you um I think I'm probably more in alignment with uh Lauren's reasoning I I would um I
188am most comfortable with M.A.S.B. um I liked the breadth of their reach and and their familiarity with process and um connection levels um I uh I also I think what stuck stuck out for me for both M.A.S.B. and Rain and Associates was the community input portion of those which I think is is probably one of the most important things that we need to consider when bringing in a new superintendent um I loved the 31 uh characteristics um assessment and how they uh disaggregate the data based on um the groupings um that was one thing that I didn't hear from mli which was that they pull the most common responses well you know we need to make sure that all groups are represented um and that we're not necessarily eliminating them because they aren't um more
189numerous um I liked mb's um survey that he included in the packet I thought that was um fairly comprehensive and I can see where we can add to that um I didn't see sort of any information from mli what they would be looking for or how they would communicate with um the community um so that's I guess that's where I'm at if I had to rank it would be M.A.S.B. and then Ray and and ml thank you I appreciate that Treasurer Gerbe um so before I get going yeah there were a couple of things that I will say first of all I concur entirely with your guys' feelings about mli and I concur entirely with Jason as far as what you said about Ray & Associates so like thank you for that you've done my
190work for me um now I will say one thing that I found a strength about Ray is that second guarantee of the majority of your board and you had a separation I do think there's value potentially in that because these uh these searches are expensive and I would not want to be doing one again one within the next two years and two I certainly wouldn't want to have an annual expenditure of $10 to $12,000 or even $18-$22,000 on a every other year basis so I I will tell you I found that to be a pretty strong uh the strength and the mli thing I could not I I really like the idea of the mentoring and I think that um Mr SV who who spoke to us tonight would would do a solid job of
191mentoring so I I did like those pieces um that being said if you asked me to choose a firm tonight I would give my strong preference for masb um the biggest reason quite frankly I'll call my shot is is Jay Bennett um I really think they're prioritizing us right like that is the vice president isn't that of of searches I think he has an ear to candidate pools I think he has the ability to have those conversations and he's who they go to kind of right to do this kind of work and so um I am I I connected with him I liked his presentation and I'll be honest you I just think it's a good opportunity to have him leading our search as well so um I'm strongly in favor of MB at this
192thank you Brad and Tim so I took a lot of notes throughout the uh the interviews and a lot of things have already been said here that I I agree uh with a lot I would probably pull out rain Associates that would be the one I'd pull out um and the uh I tend to from what I'm hearing here as well I think M.A.S.B. probably has the the broader reach and if that is a concern of you know this this board then I think that would be the better choice of the two at that point I'd like to just take a minute because I sort of followed the structure of I thought we were doing which is to only say I think Jason and I so um you did you followed the rules the whole
193purpose I thought was to then debate too and not come up with so um so I would just like to I don't think it's going to make a difference because you know I see that the Ray and Associates dropped out of several and that's you know I stand by that I would say that M.A.S.B. would would be my second choice um but I really really liked that both of those places survived the in gave an opportunity for the entire Community to speak and what I will say about M.A.S.B. again seeing that there is a consensus among other members of the board I I'm I really probably my first choice would have been Ray because I uh liked the vetting that they did I thought they were really specific about how they vetted people in a
194very 21st century fashion uh I thought the fact that there were two people on a team working with two very different types of experience was very useful I thought that the fact that they were not necessarily um in a network actually may have you know to disagree respectfully a little bit with uh with uh Gerbe I do think that uh the M.A.S.B. um person's best strength which is that everybody knows him and he knows everybody is also his biggest potential weakness and I just want to caution this board about that because uh it can narrow your search very quickly so I and I really liked the Ray and Associates said that they were going to speak with every board member individually versus just speaking with and dealing with the board president or a couple of
195members of a subcommittee because I think if you speak to each one of us individually you're going to get a more honest and specific um and we all represent different portions of the community you know whatever so we all have different viewpoints and that's hopefully what makes us strong and best able to represent the community so I'm not necessarily asking for any change but I just wanted the opportunity to explain why I liked bringing Associates and I'm hoping maybe at least a couple of those things we can sort of take forward in our dealings it sounds like we have a reasonable consensus for MB I'm hoping maybe we can take those preferences forward I I appreciate that Lauren I have a note that on M notes here that if we do go with anyone other
196than Ray that we in insist that we have board interviews either individually or in small clusters but for for time sometimes we may have to do it that way but yeah thank you very much I appreciate that Darcy yeah I just I just wanted to emphasize I really did think that Ray & Associates um came with uh the intense appreciation for finding the best fit in that they are looking at a large number of factors of what it would take to bring in that fit and I felt like it was glossed over um it's very interesting about that because I actually made notes about the fit that mli was bringing up they they seem to be spending a lot of energy on making sure that the candidate would fit with this District I felt like
197the the Ray & associates explained how they were going to do that rather than just saying that's a goal they told us how they were going to do it what it involved um and and again just involving the community it's a it's a community we're an interesting District in wash in medium I I just do what I'm I just do what say it was a discussion item for well right no and I just learned a lot from what Lauren said so I also would like to hear um the the points that uh that uh Lauren and Darcy have brought up regarding Ray are are extremely valid and and I think it is important to open up to a lot more in the community and get a lot more transparency in that process I I agree
198with that um and then something you said Brad too um the 2-year guarantee thing is is an interesting point um you know we're going to go through this process we're going to have a superintendent and 18 months later we're going to go through another election what if the board turns over what if what if people don't like the superintendent for whatever reason so that's an interesting perspective there too um I go I if we're going to break the rules and say who our top choices uh I I would I would go with MP um a number of things I uh and I also agree that uh Jay's strongest and weakest point is the network um it can get tunnel vision I know what that looks like but at the same time knowing everybody in Michigan
199and having the benefit of reaching every state in our Midwest as well as Florida North Carolina all the all the ones that he mentioned Kansas Nebraska trying to remember all of them uh Alaska uh that would be interesting but uh you know that that's still a national reach and I think that still uh you know brings it in and then one final thing about rain Associates and I thought it was a great question that Lauren asked was how many candidates come from outside the state and they they didn't know that right away and not knowing it I expected them to shoot low and they shot at 80% that is a huge number coming out of state and if that is the case and we have five candidates we by the law of large numbers we
200can look at four people coming from out of state for which we're footing the bill now so now we've gone from an $188,000 bill with extras to now into the $35,000 range and I think that has to be a consideration not that we don't want to look for anybody but Jay also pointed out um uh and mli also pointed out that this could be a destination district and anybody that is looking to move to Michigan is already actively looking so we don't my perspective has always been you have to want it to deserve it so if they want this position they're already looking here we don't have to necessarily advertise so looking at from that perspective if they want to come from Alaska to interview for this job because they want to be in Saline.
201I I think they're going to find us I can absolutely concur with that I know that uh there are search notifications that pop up all the time I was in a job search a while back um I was get notifications from all over carefully tailored to my my background and my interests and you know that if they're interested in Southern Michigan you're quite right they've already been notified there's a potential opening so even before it's posted Lauren was J himself maybe everybody else knows his background a little better than I do just everybody else sort of said what like was he a superintendent at some point or I'm not sure I was trying to look for his resume and I don't really I mean even on I'm just not sure I don't know if that's
202important or not but I go ahead I'm not I'm not 100% sure that he was a superintendent he did start as a board member and was a teacher for years and years and knows districts very well oh yeah I wanted to hear teacher or principal or well and can I ask um because the amount of money for Ray & Associates was very high and very concerning to me but they indicated a willingness to bring that price point down is that how would that process work if we were interested in going with them right yeah uh I mean they expressed a willingness to bargain but because in in recognition of the fact that they know their prices are high yeah and that yeah um I don't know the answer to that question before we get into
203that I I would say this um I I'd be willing if we're going to keep right in the pool to do that but I mean I think if I heard us like M.A.S.B. was at least in the top two of all of ours and Ray was eliminated by a bunch of us right so not sure that I'd want to invest that time and then wait and start our search later to get a response from them that's just my personal feeling or opinion it's it's valid and I wish they were cheaper because it would make them easier to consider but for me like that would be a Restraint of that um I I have a question regarding that specifically and Darcy brings up an interesting point the the cost proposals were included in the RFP response
204so a question that I would pose if anybody wants to answer it would be if the costs were closed uh which happens in a lot of uh RFP processes would that would that have swayed any decision on Ray because I think that's an important question to ask without knowing that Ray was twice as much just sitting through the presentation now mind you I don't think the presentation was very good but Darcy and Lauren have brought up very solid points regarding Ray & Associates that being said if I didn't have twice the price tag in my head reviewing the materials I may have a slightly different opinion and what's that well well it you know uh it's it's a little difficult now like I said I didn't the presentation I didn't think flowed as as well
205the materials that I read prior to the meeting I liked what I saw the presentation didn't come off as good and I think um you know the best presentation was from Jay and when you're trying to place a position like this you need your Advocate to be a salesperson I didn't get that from Ray & Associates I got it a little bit more from mli I definitely got it from M.A.S.B. and and looking at it from that perspective the person advocating for us for this role was someone that can sell so not that I think it needs to be sold but that was a big thing for me but without those prices being there I would have had a different idea just looking at the materials prior to the presentation I appreciate that J um
206I don't know if we need to keep hammering away on our pluses and minuses uh although I did take Delight to know that uh M.A.S.B. would be interested in hearing our ideas hey we we we really want you to look at this superintendent people have approached me already saying hey I really hope you this this so and so down in this District I I hope you've reached out to that person and it sounds like Jay is wide open she's yeah I'll call them up and um so go ahead I just wanted to say uh Lauren I really liked your idea about um whomever we select that we can incorporate um different facets of of the proposals because I I think there were several really glowing things about each of them and and kind of put
207put it together there weren't um out of the realm of possibility on some of the asks I think thank you I was trying to land the plane but I think I did a go around uh so I'm want to open the floor if there anyone would like to make any motion at this point um I would like to make a recommended motion to um approve M.A.S.B. is our superintendent search um partner I'll support Tizedes. Tizedes supports Sorry Brad she snoozed um are there any further discussions about this well hearing none then should we put it to a vote all in favor please say I I I opposed right well thank you I will uh I have drafted two letters I will send uh them out to the appropriate people uh this evening and I'll CC
208the board or BCC the board well thank you very much everybody um well well I'm I'll give my hearty congratulations to Jay and I was it was actually a treat to meet uh the other folks as well so I've lost my agenda there we go thank you Mo get Steve back Carol you want to get Steve oh you don't have a pass do you to get into the back office I'm just teasing thank you I'm so glad you're here I didn't have a question though even though I'm not supposed to ask well you know what we're kind of between things right now fire away people want how does that that's why that's a very good question and you know you're a valued member of the community and it's going to come up smiles the first
209thing they said was they will they'll well M.A.S.B. assigns random numbers to the candidates so we can have open discussions about candidate number one candidate number 10 and then once they once we've decided to interview them then we'll open up the names to the community so you're quite right he's got to be very cautious uh when you're bringing in um you don't want to let your your own home District know you're looking for a job elsewhere I I get that and they get that too that's why it's a very delicate process thank you very much for asking that question uh well let's keep on rolling um I would I guess I'm next on the agenda thank you so much for promptly asking about uh committee assignments I'm going to go through them really fast really
210quickly um Finance this year thank you very much Treasurer Gerbe is going to chair that followed by Tim and Jason tis is on the finance committee uh please reach out to those folks uh to schedule the meetings um policy once again like last year there were five people who wanted the job and uh we had some interesting uh discussions chair Lauren is stepping up as chair this this year for policy woohoo can we have a you woohoo yes uh Darcy Berwick will join that committee and I'm going to be sitting in on that one as well evaluation compensation committee uh an extraordinarily important job especially when we start drafting a contract uh Brad Jennifer and Jason thank you very much for stepping up grievance we only meet once every 5 years uh but Brad uh
211myself and Jennifer Steben uh citizens for equality Community. Darcy Berwick has stepped have you already attended a meeting no not yet February uh Tim thank you very much once again for Chamber of Commerce monthly morning meetings uh sometimes they have coffee sometimes they don't I don't know uh foundation for Saline area schools once again Jennifer St will step up on 7:30 in the morning on Tuesday Mornings makes for a long day for you Mark long day for anyone else who attends here I'm going to carry on in board associations uh one note the Washington Association the school boards uh is looking for a new leadership slate and they we've asked Darcy Berwick to serve on that committee uh I have been relieved of my duties as legislative relations chair because the past president rolled off
212his board he retired Tom Rollins and Lincoln so now I'm back to being past president so I'm still on the board still doing stuff but uh the board is changing all the time the sex at Advisory Board Lauren gold has offered to step forward DEI advisory committee Lauren also I'm I'm getting a little nervous about over taxing you Lauren well let's over tax you then all right and I'm G to pop in no I I was just saying I think I had said that if somebody else wanted to do something like wellness that I could do that so I don't know all right well we'll put Wellness as a question mark um Wellness is a question mark is the next committee uh at this point they don't meet that frequently U Darcy has how many
213three times a year Well Darcy's volunteered to step Darcy brick I'm really cautious when people say they don't meet often and then covid to comes by you know I don't they okay I'm just say yeah I was just I was just told never to ever say that okay thank you and finally uh oh there's is a new committee that we are working on developing with the Mayor and Elle Cole the interim city manager Steve L myself uh City of Saline . We're not sure how that's going to work we're still in the early stages of that so since we had had I've been at initial meetings with those folks thought we'd just carry through uh cares during one of our board meetings with Brian Puffer here we said we should have a rep on that
214committee thank you Darcy for stepping up um now the last thing I want to say is that uh now Jennifer Steben. is not on either of the two standing committees however I have asked her to please step up uh to be the liaison with uh well I guess Jay Bennett now and masb there's a lot of work that has to go on behind the scenes coordinating scheduling helping to d a lot yeah drafting the contract and if anyone followed uh vice president Stan's uh candidacy for school board they'll know that she often spoke about how she stepped went through all the process of finding the last superintendent so you well are familiar with the process and uh so you're going to work with that and we'll lean on you for coordinating those things going forward
215um so thank you all for your service to the board on that um open we're open for public comment I see we have we've already had one um sorry i' again I've lost track of my well we I think we have a Administration then board updates followed by the consent agenda thank you Steve welcome back thank you I I have one important board update actually um and it relates to some of the news we've been seeing about immigration and some of these other areas of uh really uh supporting our students so fostering a safe inclusive and supportive educational experience for students continues to be at the heart of what we do in selary schools we're closely following the rapidly changing National messaging related to immigration enforcement and we are working closely with our director of
216Safety and Security Dan Carrick and District legal teams to ensure that we are taking appropriate steps to protect student privacy selary schools doesn't collect immigration or citizenship status upon enrollment we are working to equip our principles front office staff social workers counselors seal coaches um and so forth with protocols and resources in case they are needed Additionally the executive order regarding gender ideology doesn't require any immediate or specific action by local school districts at this time selary schools in consultation with legal guidance continues to uphold and follow our transgender and gender non-conforming student policy in support of our students thanks thank you Steve um go down up and down the table starting with the students I just wanted to mention an upcoming event for February which will be the Polar Plunge with the connecting Club
217it is February 19th during Hornet time at the high school and anyone can join in fundraise and then they can choose if they want to jump and it's super fun and we fundraise for the special Olympic so if you're thinking about joining you should and I'm jumping with my friends this year so yes but what was what was the date again February 19th can I just triple check that am I jumping this you say if you can't do it that they need to change the no no I'm G to cancel my class no no I I I'll be there I will I I am announcing now I will once again jump into the the bucket of cold water and uh Tommy you going to join us too all right I will I don't know I
218I'm not going to make any guarantees that I'll wear a tutu or anything like that so Bradley you're Brad you're going to be teaching and and other people have other day jobs but I was able to get that morning free it was such a fun experience last year thanks for jump thanks for stepping up and jumping in Kate appreciate that and I'm going to set up a team on the Polar Plunge link so you can all fund me all right great Tim so just want to um give a shout out to the um Clark construction and uh the work they're doing at the uh S.T.E.A.M. center and the Weight room over there at the high school we toured that this uh earlier before this meeting and U making great progress looks great and um really
219excited for our uh robotics team and so forth that have been kind of stuck in a closet for years now they actually will have some space to actually to work also um want to give a shout out to looking at the um HR report and seeing that Nate Lampman is retiring he has been here for so many years touched so many uh lives and and people and um such such a great um you know music teacher and I know we have other ones that will follow uh behind him him but uh he has uh made an impact on a lot of people's lives thank you Brett good stuff and we literally saw the closet that they work out of today so um all right so a couple of things I guess um I want to
220thank all the visitors who came to to see us today you know Leanne said something that I think resonates with and and and as a teacher I relate to the idea that she's surrounded by a staff and surrounded by individuals who Inspire her let her take risks do all of those kinds of things that's good then that's she's great and and and I and I'm so glad that she chooses to work for Saline like how great is that for our people for her fellow staff mates all of it so um thank you thank you to the Miss Saline individuals and you know leadership sure is a strength for our teachers our staff our students all of it so I'm excited for that um I want to thank the I want to thank Betty and I
221want to thank um and Steve and anybody else who was associated with this really generous this is an awesome appreciation gift that I'm receiving this year and I'm really H really excited about it um what an awesome visit of the high school I you don't have a true feel for how big and massive and like it is until you're standing in it and you're like dude this is going to be a kick butt wait room you know like it's just you look at it and you think like then you go over and you look at like this is where the competition You Know Field is actually going to be and there's going to be a garage door right there and there's going to be prep there and then I'm in like superintendent latch's ear during
222the visit like well hey maybe like we could host you know big time events and so like this is going to be a really cool thing for our families to to Really experience and maybe it could be a generator of Revenue it could be a generator of some opportunities for us it could be a generator of just staying first class and now students come here and see this WOW Saline is a destination place and when I'm choosing somewhere if I got to move or if I got a you know that Seline that was a pretty sweet place with that competition place so anyway I just think it's a really cool opportunity so um and then the last thing I was um told that if I didn't say my children would be very disappointed they love
223snow day Steve for this past week um a an almost unprecedented double um cold/snow I day I'm so glad that you were able to um to keep that promise they want me to remind you that in November you were all for that and uh they just wanted you to know that any future charity is also greatly appreciated but um oh I did hear about that he h a half court shot you're right so anyway but thank you uh so Steve on behalf of the Gerbe kids and I think I can say all students and staff and everybody thank you for a double ice snow day I day secretary Berwick uh I will Echo what Tim and and Brad have said thank you very much um the tour of the uh S.T.E.A.M. edition of the high
224school today was very exciting can't wait for that to be done um I know that the robotics teams are very much looking forward to their new spaces as well as Science Olympiad I did want to say uh thank you to Lizzy and Madilyn and Kim from coming from Miss Saline um there is a lot of work that goes into that and they do a lot of community work and as Lizzie said you know it's not just a pageant there is a lot to that application Pro process and a lot of skills that uh applicants develop along the way um and that will happen again at uh Summerfest but that application is live on the website now thank you thank you very much I'll take the anchor leg um with the risk of sounding repetitive I
225also really enjoyed the tour today um thank you most of all to the voters who made that possible for our students and for our staff to thrive I was just chatting with Cara really briefly before I came in here and that high school is such a heart of this community I am up there very frequently and every night it's bustling with you know any type of Club sport I see staff up there all all the time it's truly a wonderful positive center of our community and to see it grow in this way is uh a real treat especially for having two kids in that building so thank you uh I would Echo the kudos for the tour um and thank you for my uh new Saline hat and um I love the bookstore so I'm
226excited to have an excuse to go in um I wanted to honor uh Martin Luther King Jr um and uh the recently uh observed uh holiday and I just thought I would close brief comments with a quote about education from um MLK Jr. which is uh intelligence plus character that is the goal of true education so thank you for uh the families teachers and students who are working every day to learn in all ways and um you know embody that here in Saline well if I don't say something about the tour I'll be the one that doesn't so that was a great tour uh but I knew everybody was going to say that uh a couple things I mentioned it last meeting uh with the with the coach that have been coaching the robotics team
227for 10 years doesn't have kids in the school district right now but participates uh same goes for Leanne we have these these people that just give so much of their lives to the district we need to bottle that somehow we need to figure out a way to replicate that that'd be fantastic um and then uh for uh School Board Appreciation Month I would like to uh thank Lauren for for being a fantastic pediatrician and serving with her uh uh with her abilities here on the board Jen uh for going back three years and talking to me after I stood for board the first time and uh uh talked me through some stuff and uh taught me about the board a little bit uh Michael for the great uh words that you gave me after the
228first meeting I really appreciate that uh it was it meant a lot to me uh Darcy for spending all of uh Saturday before last with me at the M.A.S.B. training I appreciate that uh Brad when I was running for uh coming up to me and uh telling me thank you for running and that it takes a lot of courage and you're 100% right and Tim for encouraging me to run the jury is still out on that one uh but uh I do appreciate uh I appreciate everybody on the board uh we all know I'm only two meetings into it but I know how much the board has to sacrifice to do this so I appreciate all of you you guys so thank you very much Jason that was the sweetest thing thank you um don't
229get used to it yeah don't worry uh I just wanted to well I'm gonna say something nice to the whole board I'm G to be the guy who doesn't talk about the tour because although it was awesome um I just want to say thank you to this board this evening during our discussion over M.A.S.B. Ray & Associates it was a considered conversation it was calm it was respectful it it was thoughtful we all shared our opinions and uh although we may have missed up you know you were on the right track for setting up a process thank you Lauren I appreciate that but we got there and I appreciated the way we did it so thank you ever so much uh because we're going to you know it won't always be such smooth sailing and
230uh you know I appreciate all of your efforts I'd like to open I'd like to entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as printed that Mr. Tim Austin, support Tizedes, thank you JT and all in favor please say aye, oppose? No opposition thank you very much I appreciate that. Items on the next agenda sir? Our main scheduled report is going to come from Dr. Rowe, it's going to be a CTE update regarding countywide efforts to increase access and opportunity in in CTE program. Thank you very much and please look for your Thursday board notes, we're looking at a retreat this June or July and I've I've given us a wide selection of dates for you to shoot down. Thank You No public comment, the next meeting of the Board of Education will be held
231on February 11th at 6:30 I'd like to entertain a motion to adjourn at 9:36. So moved Steben, support Tim Austin says yes all in favor say aye, thank you very much everybody we'll see you on February 11th if not sooner I appreciated that statement.