001i'd like to call to order please the board of education special meeting review of trustee applicants for monday february 7th 2022 at 5 30 pm if everyone could please rise for our pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you everyone for being here or anyone watching at home and it's exciting night and and thank you to all of the applicants for volunteering their time and treasures and being with us tonight this is our first opportunity for public comment a member of the public may address the board briefly for up to three minutes or request to be scheduled on the agenda of a future meeting please note that
002students will be given priority to speak on any topic the first public participation portion of the meeting will be limited to one half hour 30 minutes normally and limited to agenda items a second public participation portion will be offered at the end of the agenda to allow for any other comment individuals addressing the board should take into the consideration the rules of common courtesy the public particip public participation portion of the meeting cannot be used to make personal attacks against a board member district employee or student betty is not with us tonight so i will just ask the audience if we have any student public comment we have a potential maybe i don't know any other stakeholders in our community who would like to make a public comment okay seeing none we will dig into
003the uh the the big item of the evening trustee candid interview candidate interviews so what we'll do is we'll give up to 20 minutes you should kind of guide yourself for 15 to 20 minutes um secretary jones will show the yellow card at three minutes and the red card when um 20 minutes is up just to allow you to complete your thought we thought we'd give you a couple extra minutes because we have two extra questions this year versus last when we went through this um we invited our student representative julian downey to submit a question and superintendent uh dr latch may i interrupt president stephen i'd like to raise a point of privilege so that so that so the applicants are facing this way could i just switch seats with julian so he's more
004centrally located i'm happy to do that that would be up with julian i did sit in his chair to make sure he had good eyesight so it's totally up to you it sounds like he's he's ready to go he was ready before i even finished my question were you just nominated to the vice presidency of the salinarius otherwise you're otherwise they're straining their neck and they it's it's harder to see that's fine you're going to want to sit here tomorrow no you cannot [Laughter] no i meant here at my spot um just so everyone knows um we do believe in being student-led in the saline area schools district so just like last year when we had our board of representative board of education representative noah socha be our facilitator for our interviews julian downey will
005complete that task for us tonight so we thank him in advance we'll run through a series of questions and then we'll close and see if you have any other final thoughts and we will move on to the next candidate so going first is yaroon spatell if you can approach the podium we have a table there and if you can toggle the mic onto the green light that would be fabulous uh you might be more comfortable sitting down if you if you prefer to stand that's fine too how are you good thank you for being here uh julian whenever you're ready all right so i'm julian and it's evidenced by here um well so how are you connected to sas and describe your involvement with saline area schools through committees and other volunteer activities sure um
006so i have three kids one graduated in 2020 from saline high school and i got a senior right now and a junior my wife is the lead uniform volunteer for the marching band so that ropes me into that so i do a lot of that so august is busy for us and so it's may and then you know before each game fittings and all that fun stuff um but that's really her thing and i just help primarily for me i've been coaching the robotics at both the middle school and the last couple years at the high school so the first robotics teams so we have two middle school teams that i've been involved with for seven years and then the high school team is actually older and my oldest was on the high school team
007um but you know i know all those kids for years and years now and so i help out with that that's that's the primary involvement that i have with sas all right and what is your motivation for applying for this position and what unique qualities will you bring to the board um well i saw the email that it was open and i'm like you know maybe not a bad idea i don't know what to expect i have absolutely no political aspirations i do feel like you know community representation is important on the board it couldn't be it shouldn't be just you know members that are staff and whatever and students of the school and with my kids exiting kind of like you know maybe that's a way to stay involved as well um and can
008you repeat the questions that compare to that uh what unique qualities will you bring on the board so when i filled out the paperwork so the one i guess the one thing is in case you couldn't guess by my name i'm not from the us originally i've been here 34 years by now but i you know attended school through ninth grade in europe and obviously education system in europe is a bit different than it is here and so i kind of bring that perspective to things thank you um what would you want an alum of saline area schools to remember about their education and experience in the district i want them to be proud when they leave this school that they always look back at that and that all 12 years are all 15 years
009if you know k through 12. um you know they're proud of that and there wasn't you know moments that it really like i wish that hadn't happened and things like that and so whatever we can do to make this a positive experience for the entire time in the school i think is critical discuss the business side of governing a school district and what are your experiences with budgeting policy and working as a part of a collaborative team so um i guess big thing for me either to stay within budget or under budget you know at least in my career that has always been critical of course i haven't worked for a public school um and i think financially being being responsible and planning and not having to keep going back to voters every time say
010hey we need a new millage we need new money you know because we haven't planned for xoi you really should you know have a big always have the big picture in mind and and i have seen some things in previous villages that i just didn't agree with you know so i would like to you know see that improve describe a time when you demonstrated the ability to think strategically and look beyond the present situation and develop a plan that led to future success pretty much every robotics competition we go to but no um so you know again if you look at the bigger picture you know what is is the immediate win is that important or do we are we in this for the long haul and so that's the kind of you know approach
011i take to most things my job um the robotics club you know all those things all right and how will you react to people wanting to ban books or media uh or such things and which seems to be a trend around the country um you know if you don't want to read a book don't read it i think everyone should be able to make that choice for themselves um maybe a label on it just like we have you know maturity mature content explicit content on the on media sure put it on there you know give people the choice send out the email to the parent says hey we're going to read this book in class if you're not okay with that you can opt out and read something else i don't think as as you
012know any one person or any one body should say you can't read this that's just not right yes sorry about that um you're in superintendent board of education trustee relationships are very important how would you help to ensure a collaborative working relationship with the superintendent um i'm open to any dialogue anytime you you know there needs to be a dialogue um and i'm willing to you know entertain any viewpoint on on you know whatever the issue may be um outside of that i mean you know i guess i can always be available thank you you went through that pretty fast i was i don't know what to expect no that's okay i just uh those were the questions that we had so if we can just take a minute to pause and if you can
013reflect on anything else that you might like us to know as we're considering your application um not really i just want to throw my name in the hat and you know it's completely up to you guys and on how you want to form the board and and what you want to have as representation representation on the board and you know i'm going to be happy either way so i'm not you know i'm just here yeah all right you're in thank you so much we appreciate your time and your interest all right thanks very much you are welcome to stay or welcome to go whatever whatever oh my goodness well happy birthday to her um moving on to uh interview number two please casey rule casey did i pronounce your last name correctly okay never know
014it's okay to correct us all right so i think you just saw kind of the procedure here um so julian whenever you're ready all right well to begin how are you connected to saline area schools and can you describe your involvement with saline area schools through committees and other volunteer activities we can you might i don't know if the feed would have gotten that at home do you mind repeating what you do sure uh so i'm connected by my son who is in the school district um as part of the classroom and also part of the specialist program through the school and then my connection to the school district is i've been part of the pta and classroom activities throughout his career here so far all right and what is your motivation for applying for
015this position and what unique qualities will you bring to the board sure so i wanted to get involved in either some part of the community that i live in and i figured the best way to do that was in this area i don't have a ton of time to do say like 40 hours a week in like government but i figured the most bang for my buck would be helping everyone here what unique qualification is my entire career has been through i.t and health so currently what i do now is i work taking requests from people and turning those into actionable items for other teams so i figured that might help out a little bit all right and what would you want an alum of saline area schools to remember about their education and experience
016in the district um that they were on the possible best course for their future that there was nothing was left on the table we did the best we could for anyone that walked through those doors all right and can you discuss the business side of governing a school district and what are you experiencing what are your experiences with budgeting policy and working as a part of a collaborative team sure um the business aspect of a school truck i'm not entirely dialed in on that i know we get a certain budget and we got to work within that budget for the items that we need to do in terms of the second part i've been on multiple teams where we've had to break down big problems into small chunks and then do the best for those
017stakeholders some of them i'm not allowed to talk about but some for instance bigger projects involving other big school districts this is about all i can say in getting all of their people tested on a daily basis and getting those results out as fast as possible describe a time when you demonstrated the ability to think strategically and look beyond the present situation and develop a plan that led to future success sure so in one of the healthcare industries that i worked at we had a bigger problem with things not going out in timely manner so what my team did is we all came together met with stakeholders got the bigger problems and then decided that we needed to turn this into more of a smaller chunked message system and so what my team did is
018went to our developers helped them develop that software to push those notifications faster to the teams to get things done all right and how will you react to people wanting to ban books and media which again seems to be a trend around the country yeah um that just like the last applicant said it's we as a group have a decision to make and a lot of educators have already made those decisions whether these are new items that are hot button issues you know i think it's our job to kind of temper those expectations where we can and then address them where they should be okay thank you casey superintendent board of education trustee relationships are very important how would you help to ensure a collaborative working relationship with the superintendent sure so a big part
019i think of any strong team is communication whether people prefer email or text or meetings i'm a big fan of it should be an email not a meeting but i think that's kind of everyone as long as you have an open exchange of ideas in any format i feel like you're setting yourself up for success those are the only questions that we had so i just want to um you plenty of time if you'd like to complete any thoughts or tell us anything that you haven't mentioned already while we consider your application no i think that's it for me thank you all right casey thank you so much casey's son thank you for coming it's excellent to model model the behavior there i know we all like our kids watching us once in a time
020once in a while seeing that volunteerism what's that we get excited when kids come so uh and again you're welcome to stay or or exit whatever whatever you choose um applicant number three christian hoffman peevler did you bring any children i'm kidding i am kidding um you you kind of saw the procedure just make sure to toggle on the mic and julian whenever you're ready all right so how are you connected to saline area schools and describe your involvement with saline area schools through committees or volunteer activities yeah so we've all met before in various capacities i'm kristin hoffman-peevler i am a parent in the district and um i am a current c-ab member as well as a long-time parent volunteer book fair chair what else classroom volunteer and before you go on with your
021questions i have a quick statement that i would like to read and then we can go from there thank you for the opportunity to be here again tonight a year ago when i interviewed for the previous school board vacancy i was so pleased to be here with all of you in our shared passion for saline area schools i was equally pleased to see trustee jones appointed to the board at that time so i was really surprised to learn that there would be another vacancy available and another opportunity to apply for the board at the beginning of my prep for this application i asked whether substitute teachers could concurrently work and sit as a trustee of the board of education the response that i received was no but feel free to do your own research and
022those are magic words for me i am the queen of the deep dive my husband makes tons of fun of me all the time for that and so i um started googling and i found an m live article from 2009 that said that this is not the first time that this particular school district has asked this question and um in 2009 subs were hired directly by saline area schools and not through the personnel hiring firm edu staff which did not actually exist until 2010 so this all led me down the rabbit hole of reading michigan law having conversations with edge of staffs human resources and ended with a query 2 and an email response from the attorney general's office which turns out you can't ask them questions as a general citizen i learned that so
023now i have that for my hip pocket for later on in life based on my research and the changes in the hiring practices in our district i do believe there is room to re-examine the issue of office compatibility but that is for a future time for now this board must and should rely on the laws and policies as they read today my goal has always been to serve my chosen home of celine specifically to be of service to the school district my children attend throughout my time in many district volunteer roles i've seen firsthand the magic within this district from students to teachers administration and staff and at the beginning of the school year i became an employee of edge of staff in order to help relieve some of the burden of the substitute teacher
024shortage for teachers in our district and during my short tenure as a guest teacher i have accepted the request to cover an fmla leave until the end of the school year for a teacher in a specialty role my training as a professional musician helps me put me in the unique position of being able to help teach the curriculum and have it continue without pause for the remainder of the school year when the teacher can't be there i've had a lot of community community members ask me why don't you just give up subbing what's the big deal well my commitment is and has always been to the students and the teachers of this district and while i believe i have the skills and qualities that would be of good service to the board of education i
025have made a commitment to one of our brilliant music educators and i have promised to be there to help continue the work that she does when she can't be there and at this time honoring my promise to those students like eli back there and their teacher is the best way and the right way to serve our students and this district for this reason i respectfully withdraw my name from consideration for the appointment of trustee to the board of education at this time and i hope that this issue of subs as trustee will be re-examined as operating procedures have changed in the last 12 years in our district and in districts around the state thank you for your time being here tonight and for your continued and ongoing commitment to our students our staff and our
026community thanks thank you kristen i'm going to assume then we won't move forward with the questions um i i just wanted to let first so first of all thank you for subbing and anyone who's interested in subbing in saline area schools i'm going to put in a plug we would love to have you so thank you super great thank you for that um and i just wanted to let you know that um we did receive an email reply i did share that with the board as requested and did participate in follow-up at your request and via the forwarded email from trustee jones so uh if it's okay i will email you and follow up and copy our board just so you have some of that information as you continue to do research i do love
027a good deep dive i will say that i know that this board is not lawmakers for the state of michigan and i know that your hands are tied as far as michigan law is concerned and when i say that there's room to re-examine i don't necessarily mean this body can do that work um i think it is a state of michigan thing that is is worth asking and worth investigating because there is a huge shortage and there's a lot of service to go around and i think it would be a good thing for the state of michigan to do but anyway i appreciate your time tonight and really looking forward to your continued good work thanks okay thank you very much um we are moving on then to our fourth interview um lewis barnett hi
028there how are you good would you prefer to sit or would you prefer to stand totally up to you okay no problem you are in charge if you can make sure that the green light is on julian whenever you're ready all right how are you how are you connected to cilian area schools and describe your involvement with saline area schools through committees or other volunteer activities first of all thank you julian and board for giving me this opportunity to answer your question back in our family moved into the saline district we were currently going to lincoln consolidated and our daughter was a senior so it made sense to have her finish there and uh she took one of the classes here with the consortium broadcasting class and that helped her a lot in terms of
029going to central and just giving her some of exposure so i was really impressed that all these schools came together and created these hubs for different programs in different schools so that was the first eye-opening thing that it's like this was awesome and from there our son was in the middle school and um he went to to the middle school here and um he was doing great and um we got to a point where i wanted to be more involved now that our daughter had graduated and i had a little more time i mean i had previously volunteered to do different things at lincoln i helped at a reconfiguration committee i acted as a coach for some teams and i i just didn't have it just wasn't the time but i've gotten to the point
030where i i'd like to be able to give back to the community and in terms of involvement uh i've attended several board meetings and tried to provide some feedback to the board and constructive i would say and yeah i just want to see the school districts excel because i mean yes i have some skin in the game with my son and and i want every kid to be able to excel here all right uh what is your motivation for applying for this position and what unique qualities will you bring to the board now in terms of motivation uh like the first candidate uh i wasn't born here i came here to the states from mexico when i was four and i had some challenges but at the same time there was a lot of opportunity
031here and ended up going to u of m met my wife here and um along the r along the way to here yes i mean i experienced some discrimination but i would say for the most part this country's awesome and there's more good than bad and that's my motivation being here to to just kind of keep pushing that now in terms of unique qualities um analytical thinker uh problem solver um working at the university um i've had to deal with coming up with solutions and collaborating with team members and um so i have that to bring to the table one other thing that i would say as well my ite background could be beneficial as well and yes what would you want an alum of saline area schools to remember about their education and experience
032in the district i would want ellum to feel that this was their launch pad i wouldn't want them to feel like oh that was the best times of my life because i mean your life is just starting so i want to give i would want them to feel that yes i mean this catapulted them to where they would go and for that i mean i would want to make sure that they feel safe that they have all the educational opportunities as well as emotionally growing and just exploring their imagination and their creativity to see where that will lead them discuss the business side of governing a school district and what experience what are your experiences with budgeting policy and working as a part of a collaborative team i mentioned that back in 2012 i worked
033uh as part of a community collaboration or a committee to help reconfigure the lincoln school school district i mean at the time [Music] they weren't being fight or financially they they were having issues and um i was part of a committee that looked for solutions the end solution was that one of the schools had to be shut down two others consolidated and there was a lot of tough decisions there was no winners and it was just a tough time but the end result was that lincoln was after a year or two they were back in financially stable so that's my part in terms of the budget now in the other part can you repeat that other part sorry yeah so what are your experiences with budgeting policy and working as a part of a collaborative
034team uh in regards to the policy uh working at the university of michigan i was for two years part of the voices of the staff which is a organization for the employees to improve engagement and satisfaction and what's interesting about that group is they will take employees from they'll take a doctor they'll take uh they'll just take employees from from top to bottom and just put them in a room and have them come up with ideas and uh this was a very good experience taught me a lot to work with people and so i would say that that was very helpful and i've also worked on committees as well as i previously mentioned with a reconfiguration i mean working with people and just coming up with ideas where you have to compromise and come to
035an agreement describe a time when you demonstrated the ability to think strategically and look beyond the present situation to develop a plan that led to future success one example that i can give is my workplace we had a electronic patient record system that was phased out the company had been bought out and we had to move to a different vendor and i helped in evaluating different products so we had to look at the long term the sustainability and the support ability so we had to look at different facets of it and make sure that it would have a long term and would be sustainable and maintained i'd also like to say that at times we also have to have a tactical plan for situations that might not be able to be dealt in a more
036long-term plan so so having both strategies can complement each other how will you react to people wanting to ban books and media which again seems to be a trend across the country i would say that um i would be a voice and ask the board we would come to agreement and like somebody had mentioned there's some hot topic items in some of the books might be questionable whether somebody agrees or not so once again i mean um it would have to be an agreement amongst the board but yeah i mean i would just be one voice and i i wouldn't know what to say what book so i don't know where my stand would be but i mean i would think and i i guess i would go further and i would say like um
037if it was controversial then maybe we would have to think outside the box and and have something in place with the community to compromise and reach a goal thank you police superintendent board of education trustee relationships are very important how would you help to ensure a collaborative working relationship with the superintendent going back to being part of voices of the staff it's critical to be able to work together because i mean the end goal is the children in this district doing well so it would be in my best interest to work with everyone on the board including the superintendent to make sure things are the best for the children all right thank you is it louise yes i mispronounced it wrong i i apologize for earlier is there anything you have time so the floor
038is yours is there anything else that you would like to say tell us or communicate while we consider your application uh the only thing that i would say is that um i know there's coming here to the united states i mean i i've experienced just a wonderful experience just with the different people and um there are so many differences amongst this but i truly feel that in this country those differences make us stronger and if we can just come together it would just be amazing and um so yes i'll leave it with that and thank you so much all right moving on um to candidate number five jason i probably really mispronounced that how do you pronounce your last name sir okay these all right thank you so much if you can just make sure
039that's toggled to the green light welcome and julian whenever you're ready how are you connected to cilian area schools and describe your involvement with saline area schools through committees and other volunteer activities absolutely first thank you everyone on the board for uh having the special meeting tonight it is so i'm connected to saline schools back when my wife and i got married we lived in the lincoln school district and we began planning at that time and saving and sacrificing to move to the saline school district we knew that we wanted our kids to be in this lean school district we believed strongly in school of choice but we wanted to be part of the community as well so we saved and in 2000 we moved here to uh saline school district in order to get
040our kids ready to attend school other volunteer and connections that i have with the school outside of uh you know when my girls were in school and we were room parents or volunteering uh to co-truck soccer and things like that that's my connection to the community and do you have um any involvement through committees or other volunteer activities uh no okay uh what is your motivation for applying for this position and what unique qualities will you bring to the board i have three motivations for putting my hat in the ring on this one the first one everybody that told me not to do it i if you talk to anybody they will tell you that you can't tell me not to do something that'll just encourage me to do it more my father-in-law served in
041the lincoln consolidated school district on the board of education when i told him last night that i was interviewing tonight he said why the heck would you want to do that it is the most thankless job that you can have why would you do that so that's one of my motivations another one of my motivations is uh when my uh oldest daughter started here in the school district um we were we had moved in and she had taken the placement test for uh either pre-k or young fives or kindergarten and she had scored off the charts she scored extraordinarily high and we wanted to move her into kindergarten the principal at the time really discouraged that um and to the point that had made the insinuation that if our daughter had struggled the school wasn't
042going to be there to help her because the school was telling us that she really needed to be in young fives and that if she couldn't read at age level that she was going to have to be held back and that would be detrimental and that really kind of hit us we had other education professionals look at her placement tests and they didn't know why the principal would say that but we went along with what the school said because we trusted that the school was making the right decision for her daughter um i am happy to say that she's in third grade now and reads at the sixth and seventh grade level so much so that she has a special curriculum for reading so i don't think that she would have been sacrificed or held
043back at all if we had moved her up to kindergarten like we had wanted to but that's one of my motivations is we felt that my daughter was treated as a number and not as an individual student my third motivation is safety i work in the uh private uh public safety sector um a lot of people don't realize that there's private companies that handle a lot of the job that courts and probation offices don't want to do so my experience is in public safety while my daughter was insulin schools she was bullied pretty badly to the point where there was a very public bullying incident that actually involved a parent when we addressed it with the school the school wanted us to see the other side of it and wanted to see the parents side
044of it the bullying incident was so bad that a girl standing next to my daughter actually wet herself so when we were pressed in that situation and the principal had wanted us to see the other side of it once again my daughter became a number and not a student so those are my three motivations sorry to be a downer on that one everyone but those are my three motivations the qualities i believe or the next one sorry i'm referring to all my notes if i don't take notes i'll forget everything i have the memory of a carnival goldfish so i apologize for that um i'm very data driven i'm a data junkie the first five years of my career i spent as a data analyst analyzing all kinds of data would anybody mind if i
045remove the mask or is that okay sorry my glasses are either going to fog or i'm going to continue to adjust my mask i apologize i'm a data junkie i love data i love making database decisions i teach evidence-based practices to a number of government entities around the midwest and i think that is a very important quality because in education evidence-based practices and evidence-based decision-making is at the core of what we do in education i also have a great deal of experience in government procurement and rfp processes and the entire procurement process through the government system i've been doing that for a decade and a half and i'm very familiar with that i do currently sit on two corporate boards one based out of ann arbor one based out of royal oak it's not a
046non-profit it's not a school board but they are two corporate boards that i sit on and as i mentioned earlier i do work in the public safety sector so i'm very familiar with uh what we have to do as far as securing our schools and making our schools safe for everybody what would you want an alum of saline area schools to remember about their education and experience in the district i would say opportunity one of the main reasons we moved to the salinas school district were the opportunities that students have in the schools they are unrivaled second to none we have an equestrian team a bass fishing team broadcast journalism we have everything in the celine school district i would want the students leaving to know that they had opportunity whether they took advantage of
047it or not they had opportunity to participate in some of the greatest programs i think are available in southeast michigan discuss the business side of governing a school district and what are your experiences with budgeting policy and working as a part of a collaborative team so obviously i've never been on a school board but being part of two corporate boards there is a lot to do with budgeting and policy and working with investors and things like that uh the school district is not a for-profit company it's not a non-profit company [Music] budgeting wise i deal with multi-million dollar budgets all the time in my current roles i currently serve as the vice president of one company and the ceo of another i am very familiar with working with the board and investors so making sure
048that we are in line with budgetary needs and things like that is very very important one of the companies i work for does receive government grant funding that's a whole other layer as you guys know when you receive money from the government there's a great deal of checks and balances that have to go on very familiar with that including things like ethics boards irbs and things like that you have to make sure that are constantly in place that brings me into the policy part so obviously i am very familiar and uh responsible for writing a great deal of policy as far as corporate policy goes so writing bylaws policy and procedure i work with a number of government entities to write policy and procedures for them as it pertains to the public safety sector so
049i'm very familiar with that as far as collaboration goes obviously when you're on a board it is a collaborative body so you're already collaborating and i like to look at that as second nature i also look at it from a perspective when i'm leading i like to lead from behind i like to see the discussion come out i like to see and hear other arguments and what i always say is that if i can't make your argument better than you can then i don't know your argument well enough and that's what i really live by as far as collaboration goes describe a time when you demonstrated the ability to think strategically and look beyond the present situation to develop a plan that led to future success so um i didn't hear everybody's answer but i'm
050going to jump right into the covet bandwagon since that's been the hot topic for the last two years working in the public safety sector and as everybody knows a lot of things are made overseas in other countries believe it or not at the beginning of december 2019 i read an obscure article that talked about a sars-like virus that had popped up in china and i made a comment to my wife which i think she's listening right now so she's probably rolling her eyes but i made a comment to my wife that you watch this is going to blow up and once we got closer to january and we started seeing things change from a political climate and a cultural climate when it came to covid i immediately charged my company with spending tens of thousands
051of dollars to secure supplies that we knew were going to come from overseas including ppe drug testing supplies and other electronic goods that we knew we were going to need as part of that one of my companies also creates a software platform that is used by courts around the country we immediately started contacting all of our courts and let them know that once they were going to have to start going remote as we all knew we had to in march of 2020 we actually offered our software platform free to courts and agencies around the country so that they could stay in contact with the people that were in their programs keeping constant communication with people in in rehabilitative programs is key just like in in education having constant communication with our students was key so
052we made those strategic plans and we were able to secure enough supplies of various items to even bring on new customers new government contracts during the time when governments couldn't even find supplies so i think by spending those tens of thousands of dollars up front it was hedging our bet a little bit but i think that was a pretty good strategic move how will you react to people wanting to ban books and media which seems to be a trend so i heard that question when i was sitting down and it was an interesting one i consider myself a purist when it comes to free speech and that includes the written word we either stand for all speech we stand for no speech now that being said there is subject matter that i think we all
053agree is not suitable for a five-year-old or not suitable for a ten-year-old or or uh you know a 43 year old like myself uh but i think that is it important to look at it from a perspective that the school district by its nature has age-appropriate programming we don't teach a second grader algebra two for the same token we would not present books to a second grader that is made for a high school that can appreciate the particular content so quite simply i am not for banning written books i'm not for banning or censoring media what i am for is i am for the school district in partnership with parents making the right decisions of what our students are exposed to thank you very much all right jason um superintendent board of education trustee relationships
054are very important how would you help to ensure a collaborative working relationship with the superintendent so not unlike a board of directors and a ceo there has to be constant communication and open lines of communication when it comes to that i'm not sure what the rules are for ex parte communication between the board and uh and the superintendent or other administration but it would seem to me that it would behoove everybody if there was an open line of communication that isn't always in the public eye and i i know that i have some friends that are watching and hearing me say that right now and they're probably rolling their eyes too but i think it is important to have those open lines of communication and from time to time there are pieces of communication that
055are a little bit more sensitive and need to be addressed not that there shouldn't be transparency but there definitely should be open lines of communication when there are difficult decisions to be made all those decisions are always going to be brought to light eventually but i think that it behooves everybody to be able to stick their neck out and be able to make the right call and have those right discussions if they're done in an open environment within the group and then transparently communicate to the community all right jason that's it from us so just again wanted to give you the opportunity if there's anything that you hadn't previously touched on or that you'd specifically like us to take away as we consider all of the applications uh there is one thing and this could
056sink my chances of of being part of the board but i think it's important to uh to hear it um right now my my daughters do not attend saline area schools uh we pulled them our primary reason for pulling them was our fear of not being able to have in-person instruction and there was also some other reasons i had mentioned earlier but one of the things that i kind of remember when kovit hit and it was challenged for everybody it doesn't matter what school district was it was a challenge for everybody but i remember there's a couple members of the board that during one of the board meetings had like kind of an open ended question of why we saw an enrollment drop at saline area schools and there's a number of reasons why but
057one of those things i looked at was the the school community that we're a part of now several people from salina area schools went over to that school community and my wife is very involved there just like she was very involved in the saloon area schools and during a fundraiser my wife kind of chaired that committee and there was six other parents on that committee all of which live in saline area schools five of which left saline area schools for similar reasons to us and i kind of i kind of take that as as a gut check to me as part of the community because those parents that left saline area schools and went to another school participate they give of their time they sacrifice for their kids and sometimes i think that it is
058lost on the school district that some of those parents for lack of a better term were chased from the school district and we wanted nothing more than to be a part of this community we absolutely bought a house that we couldn't afford at the time and we looked like the clamp that's moving in with the big open box trucks and and moving in but we want to be a part of this community we want to be a part of the school district and i think there's a lot of parents that want to be more active and feel sometimes that they can't be as active as they want to be so like i mentioned that might sink my chances but i think it's very important to be honest with everybody that i am in the salinas
059school district we did pull our children from saline area schools and we want desperately to be able to trust lean area schools to come back and be a part of the community thank you very much for your time appreciate it thank you thanks jason moving to our sixth applicant ryan davidson jenny i can't see if there's anybody back there is there anybody back there yeah jenny with that we'll just make sure that mr davidson isn't in the hallway and hopefully he doesn't believe that he could do this remotely oh thank you candace we're just going to pause for a minute he sent a message to confirm he just said you know thank you looking forward to the opportunity we are running early i know we had um we had said roughly 15 to 20 minutes
060and when we did get off to a good start um would it be okay david if we went with you next okay and we'll see if mr davidson um comes by the end of david's time so again you probably have seen the procedure if you can just make sure the green light's on so our friends at home can hear you and whenever you're ready actually julian whenever you're ready how are you connected to saline area schools and describe your involvement with suing area schools through committees or other volunteer activities sure uh thanks everybody for your time um i think everybody here uh has met me before um i have two children currently in the uh salinaris school district i have a 10th grader and a first grader at harvest in terms of my involvement with
061the schools for the last couple of years i've been heavily involved with advocacy for special needs populations for students of color for lgbtqia students um with various community groups and you've seen me a lot in that capacity at this meeting what is your motivation for applying for this position and what unique qualities will you bring to the board sure so in terms of motivation um i've talked before in front of um this body about some of my motivation for being such a strong advocate in our schools and that goes back to my own personal history and to my own my own kids now but um the number one thing that motivates me is that as someone who who went through a school career as an lgbtq youth who did not always have a great experience
062in our schools i want to be able to be the kind of advocate that was never in the room for me when when i was growing up and that's especially become important to me now that my own child has come out as non-binary that's my my biggest motivation i'm also motivated of course by the desire to be a good part of the community and and someone who's making a collaborative effort to to make our community a better place and not just sitting around and complaining about it what would you want an alum of saline area schools to remember about their education and experience within the district the number one thing is of course empowerment empowerment empowerment preparation i want every student to come away feeling that they've been supported by their school system and that
063they are empowered to move forward in the world taking those experiences with them to to become a productive part of their community an advocate for themselves and for other people in their communities i want them to feel prepared academically to enter the workforce to enter society and to become become good citizens discuss the business side of governing a school district and what are your experiences with budgeting policy and working as a part of a collaborative team yeah thank you and i actually had neglected to to flag up my uh experiences earlier when that was part of the question so i'll kind of incorporate that at this point but talking about um talking about budgeting and finances i've been involved talking about my professional background i'm a researcher and i've been involved since the beginning of
064my career which is i guess at this point been 15 or 20 years with budgeting administrating budgets and in certain capacities reviewing budgets uh for various um publicly and privately funded research projects with budgets ranging from up to uh maybe 10 or 12 million dollars so that's you can look at my cv which i which i uh forwarded to all of you on the board but i've been involved in a few uh dozen projects of that of that uh scale um these are all projects in the um the public sphere so these are uh analogous in a certain sense to education budgets although obviously there are going to be differences but this is talking about writing grants to obtain public funds or private funds administering those grants and serving as a reviewer for both public
065and private entities reviewing other people's budgets to to uh confirm whether those are are within the kind of parameters defined by the funder um so uh talking about policy and uh things of that nature um another part of my professional uh career is that i sits i currently work um at ascension st john hospital in detroit i sit on several boards at the hospital including our institutional review board our daily safety monitoring board our research leadership board and in those capacities what we're really doing on all of those boards is taking uh different streams of often conflicting uh law and policy and implementing those at the local level so we're taking fda policy broader federal government policy institutional policy we have a nested institutional structure so that we have a national governing kind of entity
066of a local hospital entity so we have four different kinds of uh hierarchical sets of of law and policy that we look at implementing at the local level in terms of making sure that our our uh research projects are in compliance with um with the laws and with with uh the kind of ethical standards that we want to hold them to and um making sure that our employees are um fulfilling the the requirements that they would be required to in terms of conflict of interest um and other kinds of fiduciary capacities um so so certainly i'm i'm very very uh strongly involved in policy implementation on that level we also have certain certain responsibilities for developing hospital level policy i'm sorry was there a third part of my question the third part was working as
067a part of a collaborative team sure so of course as i mentioned those are some of the governing boards that i'm a part of i'm also i currently sit on the editorial boards for three different scientific journals those are all bodies in which collaborative work is of course necessary to to further the goals of those institutions describe a time when you demonstrated the ability to think strategically and look beyond the present situation to develop a plan that led to future success so i think the the first thing that comes to mind um is i was hired in my current role at ascension st john hospital to run our research program in um traumatic injury and the reason that i was brought on board to to do that was because at the time this was in
0682016. our institution was what's known as a level two uh trauma center and was aspiring to become the level one trauma center there's a higher level of trauma care as you can imagine one of the areas that that the institution was deficient at that time was in terms of research we really weren't producing much original research so they brought me on board to to take control of that effort we work on a three-year review cycle at the hospital for that for that particular type of certification i was brought in with only a year and a half left in our then current certification cycle so my first steps were to try and come up with a way to not only produce in the short term but to create a productive program in the long run that
069would sustain would both get us there quickly and and sustain us over the long term um i'm happy to say that not only were we able to meet our goals for that first um that first review cycle but in our most recently concluded review cycle um our our research program was actually judged to be our greatest area of strength so i i was i was proud to be able to have taken it from uh something that was was our biggest deficit to our biggest area of strength in about five years all right and how will you react to people wanting to ban books and media well i'm opposed to censorship um i'm opposed to censorship in any form um i that being said i do have a background in developmental psychology my phds in social
070psychology so i understand that there are when we're talking about a school district we're talking about uh constituents or children who are at various uh levels of psychological development so we do need to be cognizant of what's age-appropriate um just for the for the uh cognitive level development of different kids but i think that's something that we can almost always rely on our educators to make a good judgment about and not something that we need to uh worry about as as community members or as as board members so superintendent board of education trustee relationships are very important how would you help to ensure a collaborative working relationship with the superintendent sure that's a great question so um obviously when people in different roles have have very different roles to play with with respect to their
071relationships with with uh different leaders and different different people in different modes of operation so the relationship that it's appropriate to have as an advocate or community member or as a parent is not the one that's necessarily appropriate to have as a member of a governing board as a member of a governing board wearing that hat one always has to be cognizant of openness good communication and above all collaboration because everyone sitting in this room is on the same side of the table in terms of fostering the best things for the district and especially ultimately what everybody is here for is for the students all right those are all the questions we had but obviously you have more time so um please complete any thoughts or um if there's a topic that hasn't come up
072and you'd like to address that and share that with us please feel free thank you all for your time very much i appreciate uh having the opportunity to be here again all right david thank you um candace should we check the email one more time okay oh ben thank you just you never know it was there an accident was there something that actually did happen on the way to a board meeting once believe it or not so we do not want that all right i'm gonna go back hi ryan yes hi come on in no worries um you can stand or sit if you're more comfortable do do whatever you would like and i'm just gonna go to your application here how are you good good um so just to kind of give you the
073lay of the land here so this is julian downey he is our board of education representative from our student body he's a senior at saline high school um so he is our interviewer tonight so the board has created a list of questions julian created one of his own and dr lodge created one of his own as well so we'll go through those and we give you up to 20 minutes this is secretary jones if she shows the yellow card that means you have three minutes left and she shows you the red card that means 20 minutes is up so if you could complete your thought um just to be equitable to give everybody the same amount of time yes ma'am um so oh and if you can make sure the green light is toggled on
074perfect okay julian whenever you're ready hello i'm julian i'm a senior at saline high school and well to begin how are you connected to saline area schools and describe your involvement with civilian area schools through committees or other volunteer activities so full disclosure my wife and i and our family moved here in october we previously lived in milan well we were in milan for seven or eight years i was transferred to washington dc for work and we knew before we even left that we were coming back to saline of all i'm allowed to live within 50 miles from the metro detroit area and we knew before we left before we even came back they were coming back to celine so that's this is where i want my children to be raised this is the environment
075i want them to be in so that's why we chose this city over every city that we had we could have lived anywhere we wanted to so we chose celine before the school year even started our house wasn't finished we were living up north and we made the decision that through the school board sorry the superintendent's office we call and ask our children are going to have to either go to school up in marysville or can we commute them down to saline and we they said we could do that so i drove five days a week five hours plus round trip to get the kids to school every morning go to work and then pick them up and go home and then two weeks in a hotel in harbor to finish that up so since
076i've been here i've our children are in sports already um i coach or help out coaching with the rec league basketball it's the first thing i could get my really get my teeth into quickly so that's that's what i'm doing so besides that i haven't got a chance to do much beyond that but this is why i'm i'm here because i want to be involved in every aspect of my community what is your motivation for applying for this position and what unique qualities will you bring to the board i'm i'm full school i don't have an educational background my background is strictly in law enforcement i will i will not make any qualms about that whatsoever um so i'm probably the atypical candidate for a school board position because i'm having a strong educational background
077but i've seen the highest levels of government at work and i've seen all the way to the to the streets of third world countries so i know that i want my children and every child that i can come in contact with to be better than they are now i want when someone leaves school and goes off to the next step to be their best version of themselves and i think that's very important and i think it's something that we overlook a lot everything that goes on in the world on a daily basis the 24-hour news cycle the constant barrage of negativity i think it's lost and our kids nowadays are bearing the brunt of that and i think my law enforcement and security knowledge that i have from my previous job makes me a candidate
078to help out in a lot of areas in the school district so what would you want an alum of civilian area schools to remember about their education and experience within the district i want them to look back fondly i mean i look back 20 some years i passed my graduation date and it's still some of the best friends i had best memories teachers i still i meet the teachers i met a teacher a couple years back that i had my senior year all throughout high school i went to a very small town so i had him multiple times throughout the course of my four years there and i still call him you know mr leseki and he's like oh you can call me george i don't know you will always be mr liseki to me
079because that is very important to me that you know you still have the respect and but you're still it's so fond and i'm so respect that gentleman so much to this day that you know that i still call him by his full name even though like we're we're not equal we'll never be equals because he he took this little ball of clay and molded them to the person that he is so i want them to look back and say you know what this was this was good i don't you know could have been better sure i could have done some things better but this was really good and now let's what's next let's get let's get to the next thing discuss the business side of governing a school district and what are your experiences with
080budgeting policy and working as a part of a collaborative team budgeting i do have a master's degree in public administration a lot of emphasis was focused on budgeting in that from academic standpoint i started easter and i had to finish up online due to work so my i do have a small educational background when it comes to that budgeting i was in charge of i was a resident agent in charge of the vice presidential residence in washington dc so therefore i was a sole card holder purchasing agent for anything the vice president residents may need at the time and when you get to that level of government there's like thirty seven thousand red patient hurdles you have to jump through so when it comes to policies uh i've written policy um for for my agency
081my new current agency that i work for now i haven't read any policy there but it's because i've only been there for eight months and working as a collaborative team i mean i've always from sports in high school to the military to law enforcement to secret service to now the postal inspection service like we're all part of a team everybody's on a team whether you want to believe it or not we're all in the team of the earth is a giant ball so we're all on that team to start with so i've worked with teams to the nth degree that i can't even begin to describe in any kind of detail describe a time when you demonstrated the ability to think strategically and look beyond the present situation to develop a plan that led to
082future success small example i was phone rang one thursday afternoon might have been wednesday or thursday hey you need to get to andrews air force base in four hours the vice president's going to turkey tomorrow to negotiate a peace treaty with the turkish prime minister landed at noon that day i was giving one minute to look at the the place that i was allowed to look at because uh certain countries don't work very well with with us in the united states uh the vice president landed at noon the next day and we were able to successfully complete the mission without any casualties it's very hard as a federal agent as a member of that team to think about we we're not used to getting told no so when someone has to tell you no when
083you're in someone else's backyard someone else's country and it's their rules it's hard to look past it like no i need to do this i'm securing the second most powerful person in our infrastructure in a hierarchy of government for united states like and you're telling me no i can't do this or you're giving me five minutes so you have to just trust in your team trust in the decisions you're making with very limited time and just make sure you stay on the path how will you react to people wanting to ban books and media which is a trend that we are beginning to see throughout the country i don't think um you can ban books or media because it's it's out there um with the internet everything's forever if it if it's said if it's
084spoken read written it's permanent so i do believe that as adults parents educators children even young adults like we we have a say in the matter we should steer our children certain directions i don't want you know my kids don't watch certain movies yet my oldest is only 11. i'm not letting them watch r-rated movies i mean that's just that's common sense to the most part um i have realized over the years that some people have more or less common sense but i don't think you can ban anything you should just just as a group you work together you find appropriate material and you work within in that appropriateness you can't ban things it doesn't if you banned a book from school or you ban this from a student they're literally going to go home
085on they get on their phones on the internet they're going to look it right up like why did they do this what's what's the big hubbub about this it's it's impossible when you make things when you prohibit things it just causes people usually to go towards them more uh question for me uh superintendent board of education trustee relationships are very important how would you help to ensure a collaborative working relationship with the superintendent uh open dialogue sir i'm a big fan of that at all times if there's anything i can ever do to help out no matter how this plays out i'm always available anything i can do to help and i believe that you know working the places i work you know seeing the president come out of the situation room seeing the vice
086president you know in foreign countries i've learned that it's it's there's a lot of communication that occurs and there's this seems even the smallest communication like sir can i get you this or can i do this it seems to help out a lot so that there's not like all of a sudden there's this giant iceberg that comes crashing through that there's been dialogue up to that point that allows the ease and there's there's that sense of camaraderie or friendliness there's a mutual goal so that way when things are problematic you have something to base it on that way you can work towards a goal and i i don't know if you um sorry i introduced julian dr lotch is our superintendent so since you're newer to the school district i didn't know if you knew
087that so i just would point that out um that's the end of our questions that we had for you um you have time so if you'd like to mention anything else to us anything we haven't touched on already or if you'd like to elaborate the floor is yours i don't know if anybody has any more questions i don't know if that's allowed protocol wise um i just like i said i'm always available my children are the reason i left my previous job for for the current job so i could come back to michigan so i could be more active in their lives so i want to be active as much as i can in their lives and going forward i'm like we're never i tell my wife we're never moving again like they're going to
088either put me in an old folks home from celine from this house or like or this is going to be my it's my last house i i don't want to move again this is this is this was home before we left here and now it's home so any like i said um i i know i'm not a typical candidate but i'm doing this for kids and i i want to lean that way especially as i get elderly in life i don't want to say i'm getting old but i i feel it now more than i used to so i i would like to like start being more active in my children's life and whatever i can do to help out all right thank you and we have a mrs lisaki in our school district i
089don't know if carly is related to your george but i just his wife was a team she's wonderful he was great um okay well thank you very much for your time we appreciate you're welcome to stay we're just going to conclude the meeting or you can go thank you um now is our second opportunity please for public comment a member of the public may address the board briefly for up to three minutes or request to be scheduled on the agenda of a future meeting seeing no students does anyone else have any public comment that they would like to do before we close the meeting okay seeing none our next meeting uh will be tomorrow night our next board of education meeting will be held february 8th 2022 here in the liberty board room at 6
09030 pm i'd like to please entertain a motion to adjourn the special board of education meeting of february 7th 2022 at 6 52 p.m so moved second brad thank you jenny all those in favor please say aye aye opposed hearing none motion carries 6-0 we are adjourned