Wyandotte Board of Education Superintendent Interviews - 6/19/23

001I'm going to say we are Wyndat, why do you want to be Wyndat and why do you really want Well first off, I'll say I have the time to spend downtown this afternoon on two meetings and I don't want to get rid of you. So if I don't get a job, I still might seem to be hanging out by the waterfront. Just because I spend time in bigger systems, it's not where I came from. I grew up in Saginaw, before that Longmont, Colorado, which back then was a small town. It's still right across town, much bigger now. So I love Wyndat. I can tell you that when I'm looking at different opportunities, one of the pieces that's always stood out is staff. Staff can make a break in any type of district or any type

002of situation. And all I hear over here is hungry staff. And so those are the perfect type of opportunities because they need to be supported. And that was my experience when I came over to Harrison, dealing with some troubles around previous leadership, but also with an enclosure. When I came into Wayne Memorial, it was a very similar situation where people had just had a part, needed somebody. And those have been kind of my process throughout my career. So why do I want to be Wyndat? I love the idea of a smaller district. When I say smaller, it's a one high school versus some of the multi high school districts that I've worked at. As it stands right now, one of the great things for my superintendent is on Mondays and Thursdays, we're out in the

003buildings. And so I visit all of my secondary schools. I do the secondary side of the job. My partner does the elementary and crossover a bit. But I'm in in 7th grade schools every week. And so here, I'd be able to be in every school every week. And that would be a great opportunity. And it's about the people. I didn't talk a little bit about it last time. I've taken some tough calls. I've taken a call when one of my teachers lost her son in a car accident. I've been there where babies are born. And I believe that that's a teaching goal. That's why I wanted to. But I believe in what I've learned through my research and through conversations with connections that I've made. Tell us why WIND-UP. Are you the best candidate to

004be the next superintendent? And feel free to add in anything else you haven't shared with us so far about your experience. I think that that wide range of experiences is part of it. But I think the biggest reason. I've been away from the actual part of the teaching. If you had a chance to read some of the endorsements that I had shared with you last last week, or if you had a chance to talk to anybody, I believe that they would say that that is straightness about anybody else. I've seen leaders who've lost. They forgot what it's like. So sometimes that has been the situation in the building principle when I need to shoot my staff. Delivering in such a way that you would process it. And it's a big guard. And you can't talk

005to the actual superintendent. You can talk to one of their assistants. Or, I'm not that way. In my interviews today, last week, you called out, I don't like that. And I got that from George, who was my mentor. And he was the kind of superintendent that I could call up at any point in time. He had trouble, but he didn't feel alone. And that's something that I modeled in my own leadership. Anytime I'd give out my cell phone number freely. Because there's no time stamp. When you're in superintendent role, there's some imbalance, obviously, for everybody in personal life. But there's not set hours. And it's one of those things that you're going to step up. And when the call comes, you need to answer it. So, I think that those are the reasons why I'm

006very much in attendance. We support our teachers. Our teachers determine and support our students. And then that's where we thrive. So, if I wanted less losses, go back to a classroom. And just work on serving my class full of students. So every step of leadership means that you're accountable for me. And I'm ready to take on that accountability. And I'm ready to help lead. Well, I think I talked a little bit about it. The open door policy is definitely the key. It's something to live into. It's something that the first time you try and shut somebody out, that's the message that goes out. So you have to be very careful. You have to really live into it. And I think asking the questions. Pretty much, in my principalship days, and again, it's a comparison on

007a much smaller level. But pretty much every email I ever write is, if you have any questions or concerns, please let me know. It's something that's changing. We're going to dismissal one day because we have construction problems out in front of the school. Or if it's something big about changing the policy. So I think that constantly asking people how they're doing invites that. Just like being present is something you can't. There's a particular set of steps that you do, other than I've been doing that for my entire career. And I couldn't give out my talk to the secretary first. Until I had explained to my secretary, I said, thank you, I appreciate it. But I want people to be able to reach me. I heard that earlier today that somebody felt frustration that when they

008ask to talk to somebody in particular, and then someone else calls back, I've been on the phone with that particular person. That's who I hope will call me back. You ensured that you implemented such plans with fidelity. I'm going to answer the second part of that one first. My biggest, in both measures, that I had spent the majority of my administrative career in, was in Farmington I was there and also helping to identify the goal area, identify the strategies that actually take place in Westland. But I think that any time I hear about a new initiative, I sometimes earlier in my career didn't quite understand where I was coming from. But it was always that piece. And that really goes back to that first question about understanding what it's like and never forgetting what it's

009like to be a teacher. Because the strategies that we're going to put into place need to be implemented in the classroom. And we don't have any input from somebody who is actually teaching in 2020, post pandemic. Under the parameters that are in place today. Then we're not going to make sure that that input is also that filter of how every step of the way. So an example is a new attendance policy that we're working on. Regular student services right now, we put together a whole protocol to try and improve attendance across our district. Some people wanted to kind of call it quits and be done and send it off to get approvals. But it wasn't done until we had every role I'd be sure that they understand. There's a lot of layers to it. So

010sometimes it's not the fastest process. All of those steps are important and we really want it. Describe your approach to improving student achievement specifically. Tell us what data you typically use to evaluate student learning and the educational methods that you get it for. So the two biggest areas school-wide, buildings and three different levels used and have been the data to make those gains. I talked a little bit about it last week. Most recently, last spring at Wayne Memorial, we had a school-wide testing that every new teacher in the building took. It was kind of dumped on that and every new teacher figured out how to administer in their own classrooms. It started with explanations to all of the staff that we all contribute. So in science, it might be math and reading. They all helped

011to set the base because our students at the high school level especially weren't putting the effort into these tests that we wanted them to. And it was an explanation to them that while we look at all these things, for a lot of the students at Wayne Memorial, they're going to be college first. It was getting them excited about making room. And we had the school-wide testing today. We had an incentive for any one group to bring their ticket down and we had immediate feedback. The test ends and shows us a sheet or shows a screen. And so we had directed the students to, we had bowl sheets made out for each student. You can run that out and run it by student. We gave those out, put the kids in front of the test and

012told them what we wanted them to do. It was important how we were slowing, we were stopping them from running the school that morning. And then if they got a better score, the teacher signed off on it right then and there. They brought it for lunch and for that particular one, we had an incentive which was chips. We had lots and lots of bags of chips. We had to run out and get them. So we had over 70% of our students show up. Now, some of that was because they hadn't tried in science, but what it also gave us was baseline. And to move backwards, right, I already had a stronger baseline in the upper elementary school. We used that as an opportunity to get, like, if you're losing weight and you know you're doing

013the right things, you're excited to get on this. And so we shifted it with the kids to say, you're doing all the right things during the day. This is our chance. You're going to get out in the fall and you're going to get in the winter. And we celebrate the growth because that gave a set to me, MSTEP, or some of the other pieces. Because when you finally get the results in summertime, those kids are no longer 24 hours. And there's where, when we train our teachers to do that, when we train our teachers to be doctorate level, it's there that's a major one. It is one that I was a doubtful, I've seen it move from the upper elementary. Didn't have it when I was at the upper elementary, back when I started my

014career. But you can teach kids that throughout the years, you're going to, we're going to celebrate it when they do it. It's not always with an external motivator. We are as adults, if we know what we did last time, if we want to improve, it's intrinsic. Maybe you just weren't feeling it that day and didn't reach that goal or didn't improve by that one point. How did you keep them motivated or help them to feel okay about themselves? Yeah, so the tipping point, and I remember it well, we set up the morning like the exam schedule. So it was a 90-minute block, a 10-minute break, and then I'll call them out before lunch. So it was the 10 minutes, and the dependent kids came out and they were like, I got you, I got you

01522. They were, that's what the conversations were for them believers. It was them for the first time, so for our group that didn't make it, we had encouraging conversations with them. And we told them that we were going to get it. So they did, now even though I'm the director of student services and I'm not in that building, they did it again this fall. And so I don't know the direct data on if there are still students, but it was screaming to the teacher at one point. If they didn't have such a good day, we did have kids ask, can I take that again? And we had to work with our assessment. It's not something to beat yourself up about. It's not something to mourn for a long time. We're going to get back and

016do this again in the fall. And so it wasn't there on that particular day. The piece again was weaving it back to something. It's not assuming that I explored. And then I said that if it's an identifying of a deficiency, then it's something that's okay. We coupled that with Khan Academy. So there's software out there that will actually feed right into your database or right into Khan Academy. A personalized and free learning plan will hit the deficit areas. We have to embrace every aspect of living there, to shopping and paying taxes. Windup helps schools not require staff to live within our district. So if you are selected as the next superintendent of Windup, how will you ensure you are visible and accessible to the Windup community? Interest rates and everything else from a few years

017ago. So right now I'm about 30 minutes away. Not that. More than I would like. So if that doesn't happen by the way, that burden is on me. The end result still needs to be that I'm seen and that I'm visible. How far I drive to get there is the part of it. And so there's a management trick to it. There's a piece of balancing and finding times to make things work. And planning out your schedule in such a way that you get a couple events on the same evening. How do you evaluate the climate and culture of a school building during business? I think it goes back to that feedback of talking to the staff and the teachers. I get a sense for whether or not people are having a rough day or having

018a... Sometimes they need to find a culture in the building, but sometimes they might... I think check-ins with the administration. There's one aspect of that at a particular time in the day. So the important piece there is to not make snap judgments based off of one piece. To say that you walked in one time and you saw something that you don't perceive to be... Well, that climate's bad. Over time, that climate is going to be picking up on it. But again, being visible, you get a sense on how welcoming it is. As soon as you walk in, then you're a little bit out on that. But most anybody who walks into a school, you get a sense of whether or not you feel like it's a welcoming place. And it starts with our front lines,

019our secretaries, our office staff. Are they welcoming? Are they smiling? Are they friendly? Taking us as the most important thing right now in that area. The timing of communication. Expectation across the district that comes from the superintendent on down that in 24 hours or by the end of the next school day, that you're going to get a response and you're communicating. Those are some hard and fast principles that we can put in place that will help build climate culture. But back to the question of how do you engage it. It's a series of observations that comes from having a relationship with a number of people. And if you really want the truth, yes, because they know everything. I learned that before I even started teaching. That it's held true. Dr. Anderson, thanks for following up

020on me. So something you've said just kind of stuck in my head. You said you shouldn't make snap judgments and make an assumption that the climate is bad based on one thing that you saw. Do you think it's possible to make an assumption that the climate is good, maybe you're missing something? And can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, I think that, yes. I think that I fell short in that full response. So that quick judgment can happen one way or the other. If that happens and you make that judgment, I think you're on some blinders. Some obvious things that you didn't notice. Not looking for necessarily one particular person or one group to be responsible for what is taking place. But just to understand. And I think it's something that comes with

021experience and time and education. That you start to see that every group and even the best buildings have hard times. And some of the buildings that are really struggling have some, sometimes have some superficial pieces that look really, really good. But maybe they're not on point. I think back to a specific example, although you love it. You love it, teacher. A man passed away a few years ago, but was just revered by the community. It's great for kids, but it's math education. Because he was so engaging that he caught up in a story about a current event and learned math. So I think that everybody would be like, that's a fantastic teacher. You have to be able to stay in control. Health challenges for many members of our community, including our students, especially our students.

022Please share with us your vision for expanding emotional well-being opportunities for Wyandotte students and our staff. What is your philosophy and experience in this area? And tactically, what types of interventions or programs would you want to explore? I think it's critically important. In my role right now, like I said, I think I've shared it before. I'm the discipline officer, one of the two discipline officers in the district. We bring together a committee for every discipline hearing. So it's not just me. We have somebody from our special education representing the committee. We have somebody from our social-emotional learning. And then we bring together our principals so that we can hear the case and have a committee consensus on it. Our SEL person, Amanda, often will interject and recognize the need in one of those situations. And

023one of the great tools that we brought on in William Westland is Carouselus. I'm not sure if you guys have that, if you do. We really do promote that. In our hearings, I would say 90% of our hearings, that conversation advocates Carouselus at some point. Which, as you know, helps to knock out some of the barriers to actually getting the help you need. So getting that appointment set up. I think the other piece, the guidance center, when I was sitting outside for a meeting recently through the Wyandotte paper, I recognized a dual that works for the guidance center. And Carrie, Carrie is on our Champions and Winged Advisory Board. So they have opportunities for mental health services. I think our piece there is to, as schools, the good news is in the last 10-15 years,

024the stigma has been erased. But it's more acceptable to get help. I think that exploring every downriver opportunity in the local area would be, not just our students, not just our staff, but the families of our students. Wyandotte community, and what benefits do those various methods provide? The obvious one is newsletter. That's been a habit of mine for many years, that on a weekly basis. It's also been an editorial opportunity to know me as a leader and what else. It's also times to step up and deal with tragedies. I remember one that I wrote to my community after seeing the book. Because I was struggling, too. And I was struggling not only as a school leader, I was struggling as a dad. That means that I was openly committed and had the wrong feelings. I

025must grapple with certain pieces of that. So I think that the written form of communication, while it's not always the best, is probably the most efficient to get the word out on a regular basis. But a comment that came in the evening was, sometimes we forget. I've been in email conversations where we have a veteran writing up the phone and calling five and four done on this issue. It could take up to seven days if we're not communicating in between. So definitely the written communication. Video messaging is sometimes an engaging way. So we have YouTube, we have TikTok, we have some of those other tools that are out there to get our message across. I'm not sure about global access. There's something that is watched in the area. Being able to get our message across

026there. But I think that social media, another one as well. So I think that it's a matter of using every tool available. You have to get stronger. You have to be able to work with your audience. That's a skill that's developed over time. So I'd say those are the big ones. Thank you. Please share your experience in working with restorative justice. That experience influenced your view of diversity, equity, and inclusion. One was at Harrison High School. The final year before Christmas, we had a six suspension and it happened at Harrison High School. That was a lot of work for restorative justice. The trick that we learned there, not a trick, but the piece that we learned there is that if you're not careful about victims' situations, getting the space that they need, and I think

027that was somewhere earlier in the presentations, but sometimes things happen and you can't immediately apologize for it. You need to have a little bit of space. And that's where Revenue Post 6 was. There needed to be a break. The person who had something happen to them needed it. But I'm happy to say that it was because our staff was really embracing it. They weren't looking at kicking kids out for wearing a hat. We broke away from the hat rule. Because our students at the schools, that was what was setting them up. Way, way back, I've been an administrator for 20 years. When I first became an administrator, we used to kick kids out. If they were late to class, they got a detention. If they skipped a detention, they got Saturday detention. If they skipped

028Saturday detention, they were suspended on Monday. So if you beat it all the way back, it was you had to kick out for being late to class. And that was totally, it wasn't helping them to improve. It was giving them more of what they wanted. So I think that the work around restorative justice and restorative practices is something that evolves over time. And the more turn of the suspension that you come up with that are effective and impactful, the less times you actually have to use suspension. Which, when suspensions do happen then, because they will still happen in certain situations, they are a bigger deal. You keep piling up more and more suspensions. So another piece was when I came into Wayne Memorial in the year from the previous administration to my year, we cut

029suspensions by over half. And again, our particular group of students, what we found was engagement increased. They didn't feel like they were being put out of the school community in which they were supposed to belong. And did they make mistakes? Yeah, I've made mistakes in my life. A mistake, again, the majority of people want to feel remorse for that or feel bad about that and want an opportunity to try and make it. And giving students those opportunities whenever possible is not just good for them academically, it's good for them socially, it's good for them mentally. I was the type of kid that a teacher sent me home from school, I probably never would have recovered. I did get suspended, but I think I had trouble. I don't know if I can tell you the times

030I got in trouble, and what I got in trouble for. And I just still carry on the vision. And so I think we need to be careful. And that's not just for our kids, but for our staff. When something happens, people need that opportunity. They're probably being consulted. If they really do a good job, they're going to get a better lesson out of it. Can I ask a follow-up? The administrator at one of the schools, the policy was set, okay, but the principal at that school felt that he could not, or she could not make that decision. And it was always getting stepped on. Are you the type of person where it sets the policy and you let your administrators do what they're supposed to do? I think that those, if I could ask for

031clarity on that, are you saying that the superintendent or the public wanted less, quote unquote, consequences? But the policy was set, and that administrator always felt that they were getting stepped on. Allow them. One of the pieces that I would want is some development and team building in my first 90 days to work with the staff that we are. We don't have any policy that feeds us in it. If it's a disagreement on what should happen, I think that there does need to be a level of support to a building administrator to agree. And if you don't agree, that's a conversation, a closed-door conversation. I think chain of command is important because you can't be very hard to be a building administrator. People, and they're going above you or going around you, and you're getting

032your decisions. So I think that first off, though, is to be careful about policy being set because I think that every situation has a different set of parameters. And you can have guidelines that are things that may happen within a range. I think some of the best code of conduct policies that I've seen that have run through legal betting and stuff like that generally have a range of stuff, rather than if you fight, it's three days automatically. Sorry. Well, yeah, those circumstances sound really, really justified, but we need to have that opportunity. And that's part of the new process. It's part of the law. It's conduct investigations that gather all the evidence. But back to your piece, I think that that's a conversation that needs to, in certain cases, you may have to support them

033in that particular situation, but you have a conversation about next time or something. So I'd love both to express themselves. Can you tell us a little more about how you did that? Well, one of the things was I was handed a sheet of paper that was exactly what I just spoke about. It was, when a kid does this, they get this. When a kid does this, they get this. And one of the pieces there was that I was fortunate that not just, I wasn't just new, but all of my assistant principals, myself, as it would happen, we all came in the same year together, and they would really talk about lots of things for us to kind of, nobody was clutching onto. So that was part of it. And then part of it was every,

034some of our toughest kids were puzzlers. And once we figured out what was really going on, some of our toughest kids became our biggest turnarounds. I can name a few of them that I can think of right now that just, we struggled in man by September and October. You're like, we are at war. But by December, they're coming up, and that's how well they did, how proud they are that they have been in class. And by the end of the year, so it's, some of it is carrying on the restorative practice mindset. So as the building leader, I was able to do that and come in and say, I'm not going to send the kids home, these things, because we can get an impactful response if we do this instead. So the target is right

035here, taking off. We're not getting suspended to be a target. But anything you're going to do a little more school, if you don't like that, then it will show up on time. That was a big one. Your restorative justice practice influenced your view of DEI. I just want to make sure you give me the opportunity to finish that. My time in Farmington, I was a white male that took pretty much every box on the white privilege checklist. I'm a tall white man. At first, I was defensive. But the time in Farmington really, though, helped me to recognize some of my implicit bias that I was carrying into my practice. And I talked about this last week, some of the regrets I have. So a lot of that is based off of implicit bias, the certain

036things that I felt like certain kids needed to go home for. So from a DEI, from a diversity and inclusion standpoint, I think that the more you embrace restorative practices, the more you start to recognize when something is more of a difference than a problem. And with that, you then become more understanding. And even if you're just understanding that you don't understand it at all, that's a big step. Our students grow up in a world that's not like what we grew up in. And for our students who may be working through some identity issues, they have a compounded layer. For our students who have a special education background, they may have a barrier that's in addition to what other students are getting. And I think that the more we embrace that we serve everybody and

037that things are different, the more understanding we become. And another specific example is I remember my sister-in-law coming to me and I spent, at the time we had a rule about heading here, and it turned into a two-hour battle. And that's progressed. It ended up being that when I was all set and done, it turned out that it was one of his few possessions. And he didn't want to let go of it. And I've had this idea with phones where kids are like, no, this is my life, I need this. But I all of a sudden tell them, I said, okay, you're going back to class now. And my sister-in-law looked at me and was like, you're not suspending that? I'm like, why? It took us a while until I got there. And so I

038think that that's putting yourself, that empathy keeps putting yourself in someone else's shoes and understanding that you don't understand. If I left my cell phone in the car, I'm okay, I know it's there. But for those students, if they lose their cell phone, they may not have the way to talk to their parents because the parent works the night shift. And they may need to check in with their brothers and sisters. It's a whole story that we don't know about. And if we think we do, then we're missing the book. There are indications that the number of new people entering the education field is falling. And that seasoned teachers are leaving the profession. How would you position Y.2A, best recruit new teachers, and B, retain and reward existing staff? The attractive piece, all the pieces

039are coming back further. I think that a supportive environment, if there was an article years ago, and I don't know the exact title to it now, but it was basically saying that people weren't quitting jobs because of the work, they were quitting jobs because of loss of the way that they... I would say the same goes for our healthcare industry, and for our police force, and all those pieces. Lots of jobs. And there are really, the number of people in these professions are. So when people are looking for what's going to make their choice, sometimes it's the intangibles. It's having a supportive administrator in the building, and having a supportive superintendent above that. Having a place where they feel that they belong. From an attraction standpoint, I didn't become too automated. I had some real

040experiences and some challenges of hiring. When Harris was closing, it was hard to hire people because they, at first glance, didn't understand we were doing a district hire. Why would I want to go over a school that's been closed in two years? Wayne Memorial was, I never had a full signing department because any time a teacher would be out there, they'd get snatched up by the seven other districts who wanted some of the city certification. But what I found was, too, is that we were also missing the boat because we use a lot of automated software that sends emails to scheduled appointments, scheduled interviews. And where I started having the most success was when I called up candidates, and they could hear my voice that I really wanted to talk to them. I really wanted

041to explore the options of them coming and being a part of the team. And that's how we got some of our great hires in the last couple of years, was with a voice-to-voice conversation, and they could hear that we were really eager to have them be a part of our team. So what I'm really inspiring are also, and there's, like I said, there's other communities that, and this is a piece of Wayne Westland that we got from the candidate that orders us on one side and the boating orders us on the other. So some teachers from the other communities wanted us, but some of our teachers may want to go to some of those, quote-unquote, easier districts or better, supported districts. So we had to work extra hard. Here in Wyandotte, you're that place. You're

042the place that, if all the factors are similar, it's a great place to live, it's a great place to work, it's a great place to be. So we need to tap into that, and we need to really show people that. And then, important enough, I heard that in the eighth grade, too, that a young man showed up in Miami and said, well, I know so-and-so, and the connections are reamed throughout. So in our teacher organizations, people will hear from my colleagues, well, that's a great place to work, I love coming here. And they may be in the neighborhood, it may not feel that way right now. The way that the hiring has been used to be once a teacher was in the district for 10 years, that it was financially really going to make it

043happen well. Now you can make moves. So we need to be the place where teachers feel supported and we'll keep our numbers. Do you have to rate Wayne Westland's school system? I don't remember if I knew the actual rate. We lost a few. I had some experiences that were fully supported, but they're now shocking. So I would say that in my four years, though, the majority of my staff was a bit here and there, sometimes for a spouse or sometimes for, you know, they take a totally different tire or take a totally different reason. But the majority of the staff felt the support there. And people only change. I mean, that's one of the scariest things, though, at the end of this morning about the possibility of just the change that just comes with, you

044know, like, I really enjoy the people that I work with and the friendships that I have. I did in Farmington. I did in Wayne. Every time I moved, and every time it's been okay, I've made new friendships and kept old ones. But it's scary, and I think people, if you give them a reason to stay, they will stay. That's different for you. Have you been engaged with specialized programs like CT, advanced classes, special education, and remedial services to meet the needs of all students? Yes, that's been one of the advantages, I think, of being in bigger districts is that right now, from an EC standpoint, Westland has our political education center. We service 13 different districts. So they all come there, and the majority are students. I spent half the day at CareerTech. So I've

045had a great opportunity through a collegial partnership with the principal there learning more about the CT world, because when I was in Farmington, we would send our kids to OSPC, which was Oakland Schools Technical Campus, which was somewhere far away. So I knew my kids went there, but I'm very, very lazy to go over and see how it operated. The William V. Ford Building is right next door to Port Austin. So when I do those building visits twice a week, I'm able to go there to John Glenn just walking. So I'm there a lot. From an AP standpoint, that was a big push for us at the memorial, was to be a strong conference. In high school, it was to have strong AP numbers to make sure we had the offerings. So in that particular

046school, I worked very closely with our AP teachers, and we had AP nights, and we had question-and-answer sessions, and we had active campaigns to get some of our reluctant learners who we knew could do the work and get them into those courses so that they had to tell them that it would be okay. From a special education standpoint, I spent a lot of time in special education. If you were to ask any of the teachers that we interface down in those sections of the building, that might be the best one on that list, but I think it goes for all that for us to be a really comprehensive and the best district around, we've got to make sure that we're getting all of those. So we need to put just as much energy into our

047AP classes as we are into our learning. And you and Wyandotte have the glowing things that they're learning about, Joe Wright Center, and just the things that are happening in this district are really exciting. But again, I'm focusing on one of the expensive about directing that we've been ready for our various learners, as you said, because the career paths are also different. It's a good growth piece. Ten years ago, a lot of districts were just trying to send kids to college no matter what, and now we're realizing, my nephew is an electrician program and very well for himself. You just said, you keep saying things that get stuck in my ear. When you talked about being a familiar face in special education classrooms and then currently, can you talk to me about your feelings about

048inclusion in particular and unified classes and the experience you have in that sort of work? Yeah, when I came to Harrison, we had a buddy's program, and it was already established before. And what it was, it was our seniors who were kind of done some of their coursework, but elected to be a buddy and actually spend their classes and be in a special education classroom. Thriving the program, just to create opportunities for not only that senior, but for the student that they were working with. Now, they weren't. They were actually helped. They replaced their professionals. They didn't have to do any of the medical needs or anything like that, but they just were an opportunity. And friendships developed from that. And so, I was in the process of bringing that to Wayne Memorial. Two of

049our teachers in our SSI classrooms that we had 18 SSI classrooms at that moment of getting kids in that same pathway of those opportunities come. It's also a piece, when I was at Power, it was kind of a real estate issue. We had an ASD room, and they wanted to add a second ASD room. And so, I made what was arguably one of the best and not the best room. They had a whole space. It also had a dishwasher and lab stations and there was a science room. Some of my science teachers were a little bit upset, but it was important that they were front center and that they had the resources. So, I do believe in it. You've got to really mean it in such a way that they have the resources. Three more,

050quote, scripted questions to get through in about just a little over 15 minutes. Does that include questions set to include? You have three scripted questions left and you have 15 minutes or so total. Total? Yep. Okay, one, two. Do we have any questions then? Let's just, I think you can do three, but everybody now knows that we need a couple. I'll read fast. All right. Please describe your previous roles and initiatives to increase school safety and increase stakeholder comfort, district safety plans, and actions. I am the lead for the district crisis team for William & Simon Community Schools for all 21 buildings. My partner and part of the district crisis team, we ran an Alice training for our teachers. We've trained over 1,000 people this year in three different sessions. We are constantly going through

051our emergency operations protocols. We're looking at an app right now that, with all four app, that will be able to do some of the work we have in our bonds, put schools into lockdown, remotely competed. So we do monthly crisis, each building has a crisis team. So they all, we have a monthly meeting with the representative from that. And then we also have our district crisis team for technology and our facilities. So I actually have a lot of that one, but a few minutes later. My role, so director of student services is the safety inspector. I think that I'm going to model a lot of things, which is conversations about how they're doing, their goals, their aspirations, and looking for opportunities to put them in situations that they can grow. So I would narrow it

052down to a school principal, George Heishad, tapping on the shoulder, said I really want you to do this, because I probably still would have said no. And I'm glad that I didn't, because it was really a little point in my career. One of the biggest compliments I just recently got is from a teacher who, he's still on his journey, he's been applying for assistant principalships right now, and hasn't gotten that that he will. He had shared with me that he feels like I'm one of two mentors in his life. So I think that a lot of it is being at this thing here, and I've been down the path that they've been on. So they have a challenge or a problem I want to discuss with me, so I'll talk through it. In the past

053few years, many school communities have faced painful divisions and deep disagreements between people over a variety of issues. What strategies do you think are useful in healing community relationships, and what could that look like, and why? We've, you know, is that I had a three or four letter email a day. Every single time we reply, he says I have to do this, like, you know, some of it was in the game, let's talk. I think schools are a good thing. I think the one thing you can get around is that we're all bears. We're all part of the same, and while we have differences, we all want the best. We want the best for our kids, regardless of what they want the best for their kids. So, I think that it's a good place to

054be when we're leaving school, because we're that entity today. What else about your experiences? It was one year, I taught fifth grade right out of college. For middle school, I didn't want that, because I went to school being an elementary teacher. I did so in Benton Harbor, and with the kids, I would still be there today, it was just the kids. It was leadership in that particular situation. They all have those pieces, but, so I only taught one year, but teaching experience, I taught one year in fifth grade, and then I taught eighth grade. And then, etc. The way circumstances happen. What have you learned, or do you have a philosophy regarding contract negotiations with district bargaining unions? Those are the ones we agree upon. We agree upon what's in the contract. They're not things

055to be tested or pushed. Not to say that we didn't move in an organization, we just did it the right way. So, I think that we're always going to be able to get more out of an association of administrators in Farmington. It was more begrudgingly for the Administrator's Association in Westland, they'll try to do something else to do it. But, so I've done a little bit of both, so I've been on that side of it. I've been in mutual space bargaining, I've been sat on the Farmington, it was the district side, and so they were agreeing on something that was going to be a right flight for administrators. So, as far as the negotiation piece though, I think it's open communication too, and it's a little bit trickier now with some of the memberships, you

056just want to close shop and do as easy as you could always talk to the President about what was happening. Some teachers or other bargaining units don't want to necessarily be represented by the bargaining unit and dealt with that before you. But, as soon as you know that they are, it's keeping people informed ahead of time so they don't step on the contract or the person's rights or Do you have any experience with outsourcing or district cuts? If so, what is your opinion about outsourcing and stack downsizing? Please tell us your experience. I'm not a fan of them. I experienced outsourcing when Farmington moved away from our external groups and went to that third party cleaning system and the problem was every time you would complain, they would just fire that person and bring in

057somebody else who was equally or less motivated. You can't go in Westland and their facilities are and what you find is a lot of community members, that's their source, that's their job and they have held onto them being district informed because they went to school in that same system and if you take a drive by the way, if you take a drive by the way, you can't support the sun on the first day and it's always like so my experience with that is that it's a board decision but I'm not giving it to people somewhere but If your current district tried to test you to say which opportunity that I have thought about for a while, that I started for presidency and I've been blessed that my current superintendent had come into this new role

058because I was finalist in a position last spring and that was a piece that I didn't have in my experience or in my resume and so this year he provided me that opportunity he wants to step down and have his place he wants to be like, no! I think that that's it's been a bowl Groups and teams, and how do you bring people back together? How do you approach division amongst groups or teams and how do you bring people back together? We experienced that first year at Humber Elementary School we learned a lot about team partnerships because teachers together with philosophers didn't work, it was a nightmare to split up but I think you bring people together again by as part of leadership, as part of that opportunity to bring people together for a kind

059whole while we're here I think that schools can be a unifying force it's not always as simple as that a lot of times you get some confident strategies that you've got to put in there take time to listen to both sides and maybe help to communicate something that they can't articulate to the other party on their own sometimes as a leader it's that listening to both sides and helping them recognize that maybe they're not they're actually really pretty close just a couple of little things and then allowing people to be accepting of that difference, but focus more on the things that everybody who is in Winewater right now comes here to help kids but Thank you very much for the time and effort you have committed to this process Thank you, thank you very much

060I would kind of say it's what the last couple of days we used to talk about I'm not saying people writing down rules is any different or any less but I really like in hearing the question and already processing you gave a great answer on it so I didn't doubt anybody for writing the question down but I think that takes a certain skill set to have to read that just overall question wise it kind of gets all the points I really think it kind of got to a level now where this is it's next step so it's a great hand Thank you I think the reason I think the reason why you can answer so quickly is you see honestly, and I like that because if you can respond quickly the future becomes you're speaking

061from the heart, you're speaking from experience and I like that and I think when you said this was his last step he doesn't want to, he wants to be here he wants to be here for the long haul so we need somebody that's going to be you know, being part of the dedicated to this it's just correct yeah, he said I only want to do this once and that's something we've been looking for is something that's going to stay so that clicked with me right away a huge team player he didn't use the word I very often it's always we and I think that's really important for us that it's a we he had a lot of good experience with student achievement as well I think as a teacher person myself, I like that he

062said that it's important to just not forget what it's like being a teacher you know, his teaching personal teaching experience was shorter and somewhat in the past but I think even here maybe that's your most unforgettable year the teachers will probably tell me I'm great about that I just think that's important I appreciate the humility in that in not coming in to say I know all the answers or I'm going to solve all your problems it's more about I'm going to listen and tell you what my experience can bring to it certain practices and crisis training is essential if you've had anyone that's had that everything that goes on in today's world the things that can just happen and cause a crisis in your district which I hope they have one and I was told

063he handled it very well and accepted COVID and had done nothing like COVID ever and they said he went back down he took all suggestions and he also they also said that he was afraid to take a pause when he was in a meeting a lot of it processed and hear somebody say something he would take a pause and think on it and reflect on it and then talk about it and maybe go with that idea versus his and think about it as well and so you're talking about the reference day and we will have a chance just to let the audience know to do some highlights from the reference checks as well after the second candidate he's also had a lot of content with negotiations so I just had he was talking about different

064students as differences instead of a problem differences instead of a problem I really appreciated that because there's always a why so getting to that why why student monitors have why is the student acting out and understanding the differences that each student has instead of just focusing on alternative classrooms I wrote down you can't fake being present and that is 100% true and I want to see that in our next leader someone who is exceedingly present we switched to remaining wonderings that you might have he does look like I always wonder how he's going to be able to do everything with winter coming with the end of the year it's a little dicey is he going to be able to make all the big amendments and do everything I would want to see maybe a little

065more realistic approach to that part as I understand it both candidates look pretty much the same currently but he did say he was the most looking yes right yes so we'll just leave you alone it worked I just have one wondering there was about and also it was touched on but it wasn't I thought that was too hairy you were kind of time crunched at that point I just didn't press it but I did kind of think that I kind of wanted to experience all of our schools being involved in the classroom the lack of elementary classroom experience but it's that a teacher is a teacher and whether you teach one year or you teach 34 years it's an experience that you never forget and one thing that I learned and I'm sure he would

066probably come back with something similar is that it doesn't matter the age of the child they're all children and we're all here for the same reason well welcome back thank you now I have to step in my first question is as you know we are Wyandot what is going to make you Wyandot why do you want to be the next superintendent of Wyandot Public Schools I guess the first part what's going to make me Wyandot and it's what's already started for me and that's the people that's the people that I've got to meet tonight was a really good start I got to go around with Carla visit all the schools on the outside she walked me through the high school tonight or earlier today but just really getting to know people I went out, the

067first thing is the community meet and greet we should have done that out at the river water park, what a beautiful beautiful area so I went out there earlier today got to talk to some people out there and you guys answer is the same as it was Thursday night when I talked about this people talk about the people that live here and how friendly they are that's what will make me Wyandot is really starting to get to know people and understand that that is the common thread again that I keep hearing is people, people, people you're going to be Wyandot, what makes you the best candidate to be a superintendent of Wyandot Public Schools that's what you guys have to figure out tonight not so much me I've got a skill set I'm not a

068traditional administrator you guys know my background I had a choice coming out of college it was either go be a college basketball coach or go to law school and my dad sent me down and he said son you can make $60 a day or $60 an hour I took the coaching piece because I love being around kids and we talked a little bit about that on Thursday night I think the other thing I learned just in talking and researching a little bit I think you guys really need something to bring people together to create good community relations to create trust to be visible I got to talk to a couple of teachers tonight and one of them mentioned that they talked to a teacher in my district and she made the comment that I can't

069remember how many years but I was the first superintendent 26 years at a time in her classroom I think it's important that whoever this person is is that they're visible that teachers see them, staff sees them and I think that's something that I could definitely bring I'm a de-escalator I can de-escalate situations pretty well one of my people on my resume in the testimonials they said basically I'm a visionary with common sense and I like the way that she shared that I do see the big picture a lot of times even though a lot of times you have to work on the details putting those things together but I am a big picture person and I think no matter who you choose you need a big picture person to be able to see the whole

070picture as you work to put the pieces of the puzzle together I like winning I'm very, very in trust and what I mean by that is it can be from a religious standpoint as well but just from being a superintendent I've been in that spot it's been 52 years and sometimes you have to just take a chance and you get that and now our district's definitely better for that so you have to take some chances and I'm that person that would take chances if you're looking for somebody to be in a suit and tie every day that's not me and here's what I've learned about people and being approachable because I am approachable I was inducted into a basketball thing or athletic golfing down at Armstrong Atlantic State University where I coached for 10 years

071and I was in a men's wear out store I got a couple of suits I needed to and when I was talking to a young man he told him what I was doing I was a principal at that time and he said, you know Mr. Mills I remember my principal in high school and he said the days that he didn't wear a suit and tie I could go talk to him I'm not a leader by position or by title I lead through collaboration my dad used to say things that make sense usually happen and so I try to fall on that side of let's do things that make sense so I think that's a lot of things that you can get in me again I don't mind I might take chances to risk the celebrate

072table that we did I had people say table will never come together for something like that and it's something that brought the community together and I kind of got a nice little thing where one of my former students when I was at Ipsland High School as the assistant principal and the athletic director he came up to me that night and he asked if I remembered him and I think I shared his story with him but he made the comment he said Mr. Mills, you made the biggest difference in my life and those are the things that you hold on to whether you're a teacher or whatever it's when you can make a difference in someone's life that's important so I would hope that if I were chosen that I would come here more really hard

073and make a difference in a positive way not for me but for the community and the school district Thank you So I guess both questions are going to tie together what makes you the best candidate for the minor superintendant Why do I not come to schools? So you're already a superintendant and you had a lot of success there so I guess I want to get into a little bit more why do I not? You answered the question I've had 14 board members in two and a half years in two and a half years that's challenging as we all work together and we're a cohesive group that's been something that's been really challenging and to be honest with you this is a two-way interview, right? I'm kind of interviewing I wind up as you guys interview

074me Wind up reminds me a lot of where I was where I was at for 16 years and that's Tecumseh Tecumseh's a little more girl but you guys have that small town feel to where everybody talks about just the close knit of the community I like that I like being in football games on Friday night I like watching our kids participate I love going to concerts I'm so excited that you guys have orchestra not everybody has orchestra and that's something that I really looked at and thought you guys have opportunity here you have issues just like every school district in the country has we all anytime you get so many people together everyone has wants and desires we're not always going to get it right but we work to get it right and we do

075those things so I see opportunity that's what I see do I have to live together? Absolutely not absolutely not but I just see something that maybe be possibly a better fit and again part of that better fit is connecting with you guys we're a team and we have to work together and we have to be on the same page and there's certain responsibilities that I have as a superintendent that I have to give you guys the best information that you can have to make good decisions and to do those things I don't know if that helps answer you've also had stability here even though it may not feel like it at times you guys have had stability here the average life span of a superintendent I think Casey from the image I can't even verify

076this it's about 3 years that's scary that's really hard to get anything going I am the ninth superintendent in 20 years in Tampa and so those are the things that are hurting all of the public education so I guess that's as honest of an answer as I can give you I want to connect and I want to be part of the team and I want us to go win together I appreciate you very much Mr. Mills I think you're going to have to seek inspiration from our president here and probably pick it up and make this so folks are having trouble with that I was hoping they wouldn't hear my answers you caught me good evening Mr. Mills, good to see you again how do you plan to encourage and hear teacher and STEM voice

077and perspectives I think it's bigger than that I live with one I've got two kids that are either teachers or gonna be teachers I hear from them what I do is I go into our teachers classrooms and I talk to them I listen to them I think just being visible the comment I made about the first superintendent that person felt valued and so you have to feel valued you have to make people understand that they're valued what's the saying, people don't always remember what you do what you say, but they remember how you make them feel and I think it starts with that I think it's valuing our teachers I think it's things like in the fall and the spring I'll do a staff and a parent survey so in the fall after we get

078school opened up I want to know how did we do it where did we miss the boat what can we do better for the fall opening of school same thing, I'll do the same thing when it comes to the spring how was your school year, how did it go so I I wish I had a little fancy answer but you guys it's really connecting and listening and giving people that opportunity to do that I do do coffee with the superintendent and I do that in a building, a different building every month and some of our teachers have had the opportunity during their prep or it was able to be worked out they were able to come to that as well along with the community members and it's similar to this forum right here it's just

079people sitting around talking trying to figure things out together and being able to share what's going on I mean that's, you gotta be visible you just gotta give people the opportunity to be heard the other piece I would say is you gotta do that with your community and you gotta do that with your kids I am a big proponent of student voice and one of the things I think was in my packet that I showed you guys, but I meet with every senior so not at the end of the year I start probably around January and I'll meet with five to eight seniors at a time and you guys sometimes it goes 45 minutes, sometimes it's like you guys gotta go back to class but I know we have good teachers in our buildings but

080our kids are wonderful teachers as well and valuing student voice and hearing from our kids makes a big difference so not just our teachers incidentally guess what our seniors every year guess what our seniors say is the most important thing in their experience in our school district anyone take a guess? Teachers Teachers make the biggest difference in every school district and I think that's something just to keep in mind as we move forward and answer your questions, we gotta hear from them as well Thank you Please describe your role in strategic planning in the past how have you ensured that you implemented such plans with fidelity? Let me just say what I'm doing math we are gonna be embarking on a five year strategic plan in late September early October to prepare for that, we've

081got an outsider coming in to help lead that so it's more objective we will do survey we'll be doing some things on those lines the first person will go and talk to teachers they'll be in every building and talk to our teachers to start gathering data and doing that, we'll also provide some of the data that we've collected through our surveys another thing that we've done and I think this is really important is we've done a utilization study and we're just getting ready to present that but basically a utilization study it's showing how all of our buildings are utilized it's showing a building assessment in terms of what kind of shape our buildings are in how are the boilers, how's the roofing how's all those things and then it's also gonna share a ten year

082enrollment projection on every one of our buildings and so when you do strategic planning when you do those things, that's just an example of data or information that you want people to have so you can have rich conversations about different things in the desert we would also have all of our data for the curriculum piece our testing whether it's MSTEP, whether it's IREDI whether it's PSAT, BSAT and we want to look at that and so we really just prepare for some of these areas that you really look for in a strategic plan and then you bring a lot of people together and you have good conversations so have you participated in that obviously I knew you said that's something you're bringing to Taylor and I but have you done it elsewhere we did it twice

083in Tecumseh my role was one superintendent kind of running that and then having a third person come in but I've seen it happen about two different times and all have been successful but the key with strategic planning you guys is you can do all the compliance stuff you want to and put all the things down on paper you want to, you gotta get stuff done you gotta move on that and you gotta get outcomes you gotta get results I talked to you about my office my whiteboard and outcomes are really really important I've got 60 things up there right now and whether it's a board member that comes in a custodian it doesn't matter that you see all 60 of those things that we're working on and what the update is kind of go from

084there that's how you get things done a strategic plan doesn't do you any good if you don't get something out of it the whiteboard needs to to come to your head twice and get ready to embark on it thank you can you describe your approach to improving student achievement specifically tell us what data you typically use to evaluate student learning and the educational methods that data forms gotcha talking from a data standpoint first we use IRA I think you guys use NWA maybe kind of similar IRA is a diagnostic test so for instance I take a test, I answer a question, I get it right it makes the next question a little bit more challenging or the other way, if I get it wrong it lessens the challenge of that question and so we do

085that every fall, winter and spring and then we look at that data we're having one of the things I negotiated for I know you guys think I'm crazy I'm about culture and climate and in our teaching negotiations we negotiated in weekly staff meetings and the reason for that is for things like what we're talking about if you don't have time to spend and to work together as a team to improve curriculum, to improve your data from the testing you won't move the needle and so that's one of the things that we did now we're very careful, we're not going to waste time and that's one of the things we track every one of our principals they put down basically their agenda so we're able to see what the agenda is because we're not going to

086waste people's time time is too important but what happens when you bring people together in churches, they don't meet once a month you bring people together in a community and that's what you do with a school district if you want to make a difference together and do some of those things on your own but generally my experience, everyone likes working together but the time has to be used wisely, it can't be a waste of time or that's where the frustration really sets in the other thing I would share in terms of improving testing and some of those things are instructional practices Taylor does not have a instructional framework and so that's something that I was really, really well trained at Tecumseh I got the opportunity to work for two superintendents one really helped me for

087about five years or so on how to be a building manager and I got to learn a lot from that by the way, I don't know who's in charge of your maintenance wow you guys, this place is spotless I've been in a lot of buildings and a lot of school districts on the outside and the inside of the person is thankful because that's something you don't want to take for granted but it also represents how much pride you guys have as a community and as a school district and I think that's pretty exciting too so I was really well trained in effective instructional practices and engaging strategies and we had a gentleman that would come out from California and he went through, took all the administrators through we had instructional coaches and then we implemented

088into each of our buildings so I was responsible I learned from my second superintendent for about five years how to really be an impactful instructional leader how to help support the teachers and have those conversations so I was really, I am really well trained in that surprise, surprise, we're bringing that to Taylor one of the things that I've learned from teachers is they want to be supportive, they want to get better they want to get better in all the different areas that you can get better so we're halfway right now and next year will be the second half of us implementing and then we'll have an instructional framework that means if the teacher moves from let's say a middle school to a high school all the language is the same and it's based on 50

089years of best instructional practices the research is there and it's things that our teachers know having an objective or a standard and measurable objective having some of those things on the board and then there's more to it what we do is we're not there yet, but this is what we did back in light industry you do data talks and you walk through and there's certain rubric, there's certain criteria you're looking for that you've been working for and that's a way to monitor that and you have teachers with you and then those teachers, they go to the next staff meeting and they look at what they saw like one or two good things and then make an area that we can really work on as a building so there's a whole system to it and it's

090important that you put systems in place really good systems they last the test of time I know that a lot of other people are gone from Tecumseh different leadership, all those things guess what's still in place there? the instructional framework because our teachers saw value in it so those are some of the things that I think are important looking at test scores, looking at data and moving the needle I have a follow-up can you share just now that you were well trained in engaging in instructional practices and how to help support teachers how is the instructional leader in the building can you talk a little bit about any experience you've had in the classroom, either college level or K-12 yep, scariest moment of my life I was a college basketball coach so you guys have

091been teaching I've been teaching basketball all my life since I was young teaching younger kids and doing those things but the department chair he got me and said, Griff, you're going to teach some classes and I promised him I came out the first time, I was in a full sweat it's not easy until you get the hang of it and it's funny because my teaching style back then is more so of what it is now with other people I was more of a facilitator I taught 10 years at the college level they were happy with my work they asked me to teach at Armstrong a college one-on-one success class so I did that, I taught basic health more out of that physical education the attendance strength training, a lot of those things when I told

092you I worked for two superintendents the one that helped me really become a good instructional leader it doesn't matter if you're certified in science or math she said it's all about instruction and so she really helped me see that and see the importance of it curriculum, we all go through curriculum but there's an arts and science in teaching and I feel like I understand what we're really going through thank you for being here today so superintendents are viewed as vital community boosters our school district patrons are to embrace every aspect of their school district from living there, to shopping, to paying taxes Windup for schools does not require your staff to live within our district so if you are selected as the next superintendent of Windup how will you ensure you are visible and accessible

093to the Windup community? first thing is we have looked so just so you know that we've looked at rentals, we've looked at houses we've looked at all this stuff that we're seeing right now as you guys know with that said we also saw there was a tri-club, my wife does triathlons and she saw there was a tri-club and she was pretty excited about that too but it's you guys are high school principals I mean high school principals and yours I'm sure can attest to this you're at all the events it's a start early and end late type of thing when you're not there, you're there for your kids and probably because you just love watching them so I mean there's a lot of ways to connect with the community there's a lot of ways to

094connect with kids there's a lot of ways to show support and become a part of that community I've done that several ways in all the districts that I've looked at so I'd be at band concerts, I'd be at fire concerts I'd be at orchestra concerts I'd be at athletic events I had the pleasure of having three daughters and all three of them were different and they all did different activities I was also an athletic driver so I've been in a few after school activities as well so the other thing is you need to enjoy it like if you don't enjoy doing that then it's work and it becomes just a lot different the other thing for me is three kids are all from home and so my wife and I are dinesters whatever that means

095I think we're still as busy but now I don't have to I've got two assistant soos and both of them have small children and so I'm pretty flexible with them because I used to be there and I want them to be there for their kids and go support their kids' activities as well so I handle do I make it to every single thing? No, because you do have to catch your breath every once in a while but I enjoy going and watching kids perform doesn't matter if it's music athletics or art shows but it's something you need to enjoy doing or you won't be very affected by it and it'd feel like work I would give you a value in the climate and culture of school building primers and we're serving food next thing you

096know there were two kids that got into it so there's certain things that you can see you also have a feel for it to some degree so you can walk the hallways talk to people I got to hear some things about climate and culture tonight in some of the conversations that I had so listening to people is important going and watching and seeing those things are important and there's certain things to look for the other thing that's important is go in the classroom because there's things happening outside the classroom and there's things happening inside the classroom and get a feel for that how do we spend our money? usually that's what we value how do we spend our money? and it just makes me think of I mean there's so many opportunities here for winding

097down kids it's phenomenal so I mean from a culture standpoint again just kind of wrapping that question up listening to people watching people inside, outside watching athletic events watching at band events you'll see people be excited and you'll get a feel for what those things are thank you you had talked most of your assessments were I would say more informal do you have any experience with more formal interviews talking to staff to evaluate how administration is doing that kind of stuff yeah that's a great question one of the things that my administrative assistant Sean she worked 14 years in HR and so she's now my secretary and I lean on that a little bit together her and I came up with an exit survey so anytime we have somebody that retires it doesn't matter if

098it's a bus driver or a custodian a teacher, a parent we send that out we send a letter thanking them and we also have that survey piece there and so we'll look at that that's really important I do have some interviews with every senior and it's not just about the high school it's about their experience I've had kids that started in pre-school all the way through 12th grade and I've had kids that have moved in maybe been there since 7th or 8th grade but I want to hear about their entire experience in the elementary, middle school, and high school good question that's really important is getting a feel for why people leave why people stay for 30 years all those things I don't need your questions thank you extremely serious mental health challenges for many

099members of our community especially our students please share with us your vision for expanding emotional wellbeing opportunities for YMAC students, staff, and their families what is your philosophy and experience in this area and tactically what types of interventions or programs would you want to explore or what have you explored I'm sure you saw this here wonderful, wonderful, wonderful program I get updates I think it's monthly on how much usage that we have had and that has been a blessing for our school district in terms of that we just signed about a year ago six months ago a contract with Star Commonwealth and Star Commonwealth will be coming in we just had our first training today with our principals and a few other people and there will be another training tomorrow but every one of our

100900 plus employees will get the initial training, it's a two day training or six hours full in terms of trauma informed care and be able to recognize it not to treat it, but to recognize it it doesn't matter what your zip code is nowadays people will go through trauma and people are handling that very well and so having some things in place like what we're putting in place for that is a really, really important thing now you have to look at resources you have to look at different things, every school district is different and so you can't say well we did this in one place and we're going to do this in another because you have to have those resources to invest to get more of the priorities, right where do we invest our dollars

101so here's our contract with Star Commonwealth there will be two other levels of training and basically one of the other things that we did all through grant dollars is we decided to hire somebody that would oversee this and I didn't want it to be a flash in the pan, right we're guilty of that in education a lot where we start something and after a year or two it fizzles out we hired a resilience director and then we also hired four resilience coaches and it is I've had some conversations with MDE and MDE's kind of keep an eye on it because they like the concept but we're going to have somebody that oversees that and the best way I can tell you what they do they're like the fire department when there's a fire when our

102elementary kids are having a meltdown or somebody's having a problem right now they're still learning so they'll go in together and they'll work they may go into a classroom for a student that's struggling or maybe two students only which doesn't happen here but I think it happens everywhere else, right but how do they help kids work through that a lot of times our teachers don't have the time to make that happen because they're dealing with some other things so giving our teachers and our families and our kids some support in terms of that is something that I'm really really proud of and very excited to watch it unfold so every one of our employees in our district all nine of us and then there'll be other levels of training as we go through this What

103methods of communication would you utilize to engage with the Wyandotte community and what are the what benefits do those various methods provide? I mentioned this already but coffee with a suit it's a great time, it's just like this format where we just sit and take about an hour they've been going longer though about an hour and 45 minutes we just sit and talk, I listen I do my best to answer questions get people information something else we do every two weeks it's called Spotlight, Superintendent Spotlight and basically I do a video it's about two minutes, anything longer than that you're going to lose people but every two weeks basically just do an update of what's going on in our district some different initiatives some different things that are happening that's been effective, that reaches about

1045,000 people about 4,000 of our parents and roughly about 100,000 of our staff so that gets out to people it really helps them understand some different things for my board, I do my weekly updates I know you guys are familiar with that maybe a weakness for me is maybe I'm too transparent but I just figure if we're all on the same team you guys need to know at least what we're dealing with there's some of the things that are going on the board will text them as a group text and they know not to text back but if there's an emergency if there's something happening then they may hear on social media God love social media it creates some challenges that we haven't experienced before and so I'll do that just to communicate just to

105keep them in the loop at staff meetings going to staff meetings and listening to teachers when I go to a staff meeting I just want to sit there and just listen and going back to your question about culture you don't learn a lot about a building by just sitting there and listening I don't want to be the focal point I'll give them a chance at the end if they have some questions or something like that I'm just going to listen and learn and I think that's something that will be really important once people get back in school when they do have a staff meeting maybe I can show up for some of these and maybe do a survey for the teachers to be honest with you and kind of see what what they're looking for

106and what are some suggestions that they have I don't know if you guys subscribe to this or not the smartest person in the room keep in mind as you try to problem solve you try to come up with ideas everyone in that room brings value and their opinion matters I have a question for you what kind of capability do you have are you looking for a colleague directly? I grew up my family's phone number was a thing called the phone book and so I'm comfortable with that and I'll be honest with you people do not abuse it I think people just appreciate that I'm honorable enough to do something like that and I mean if I have to I guess I can walk in there I'll have to get one of my kids to show

107me how to do that but no, I'm more comfortable when I do that you know what sometimes all it takes when you listen to somebody that's really frustrated and you try to help solve whatever that frustration is and that last piece of just saying hey this doesn't fix or something doesn't happen give me a call or text me and I've had some parents do that I've also had some parents who text me and just say thank you, thank you, thank you you got this day care for me I wish every single one was like that I wouldn't be truthful if I was telling you that we solve every single problem but we solve a lot of them and then that phone number, that's a great question as well is that going to be invulnerable? I

108think it's going to be invulnerable I have another call out question for you so sorry in terms of email communication if you were to be having a disagreement or maybe somebody was disagreeing or not on the same page of your email how many emails would it take for you to pick up the phone? I don't do social media from the standpoint of posting all kinds of stuff on Facebook I looked on it today or the other day because my kids did some poster fathers do, right? and so I had to text them to thank them and do those things, I appreciate them doing that but no, I I don't know, I think it's old school I think it's just professional communication it's kind of what we're doing here it's just looking across the aisle of

109somebody and just having a conversation too many things can be taken out of context through emails and things like that I don't find that very effective I have no more questions Will you share your experiences in working with restorative justice practices? How has that experience influenced your view of diversity, equity and inclusion? Great question, I'll be honest with you I've never had any restorative justice training with that said, it's one of the factors when we deal with discipline and those things so I understand that component I understand what restorative justice is I understand those things I think in education you guys and again I hope we don't get mad at me for saying this, I think we have to be careful with the labels on things whether it's people, whether it's programs I mean, restorative

110justice really what you're saying is explain what's going on and try to figure out and find a better solution of people getting mad at each other and fighting and doing those things when you start putting labels in the world of politics and all the divisiveness comes into so many things and I think so many good ideas by labels being put on maybe aren't as effective and don't move the way that you want them to move so I'm pretty careful of that to be honest with you I don't really know what it's true that we're doing that just about being selfless we can put a label on it and all those different things but I just don't think it's effective with labels to cross that point a little bit not necessarily bringing up that it's a

111label but how does that restorative justice kind of practice influence your view of diversity equity, inclusion how do those two things play together I think we want everyone again, think about this don't want everyone to have access to the same resources I mean that's a really important thing I may not put a label on that that's what equity is and don't respect and not discriminate against them whether they're a student with a disability whether it's their skin color whether it's any of the things that make us all different we don't want people to discriminate against that I'd love to live in a world where there's no labels on people and people just, they get along I know that's not realistic I would love for that to be part of the culture and climate buildings and

112a district where people are angry people can't get along I think it's really really important that I model getting along with people our board models getting along with people one of the leadership things that I really truly believe in I really believe it and I share it with our administrators all the time I think a really strong leadership trait is when somebody gives you their worst you still give them your best and I think that's so important in the roles and positions that we have there'll be people that sometimes get really frustrated and I think we have to look through that parent's lens or that staff member's lens as a superintendent you have to look through different lenses as you listen to people as you try to empathize and try to problem solve I think

113that's a really really important thing that all superintendents have to learn to do if they don't know how to do it already Thank you There are images that the number of new people entering the education field is falling and that seasoned teachers are leaving the profession How would you position why you left to A, best recruit new teachers and B, retain and reward existing staff That's something that we did not just for teachers we did it with all of our staff in Taylor they all got sizable raises and so that was the first thing you have to be competitive if you're not competitive right now people are to some degree chasing the dollar it's not just an education but I was an econ major in supply and demand there was less supply of teachers out

114there having to help us with special education that's a really that's a bucket that's really drying up in terms of having those supports for our kids and that's scary to be honest with you when you read some of the different things out there they're calling it a crisis they've been calling it a crisis for a while I think our state is trying to do some things and trying to give us some flexibility I think there's still some things that hopefully they can do I see nationally we're trying to have a possibly there's talk about a whether it's $50,000 or whatever that is but a starting salary that people can make a decent living again you guys we have to value our teachers I'll speak specifically to them because that's what I'm hearing from kids that's

115the most important people in their lives I think creating support and culture and climate I'll keep using that word for teachers that they feel so good and that they feel like they're making a difference that's so important a lot of times when we just get caught up in the day to day we don't celebrate some of the victories that our teachers have every day with kids they work hard they work extremely hard in a very challenging world a lot of times they're doing a lot of the parenting they're doing a lot of different things that our kids don't get all the time and that's not every situation it's enough situations that it's taxing on them to think we have to be careful putting so much pressure on test scores I think we have to be

116really careful of that I'm a guy that played athletics I was in the choir in middle school I played the keyboards I played the keyboards for 10 years I took organ lessons I'm pretty well rounded in terms of just a lot of different things and that's why I like going to a lot of different events but I think helping kids become more well rounded giving kids some of the different support like the emotion, the social support some of the things that I talk with again will make the environment better even more better for our teachers that type of thing going into their classrooms and letting them know you see them and you see what they're doing again I'll go back to the effective instructional practices our teachers value that we also had instructional coaches and

117we have those in Tigger as well and a teacher knowing that they have somebody that will help coach them and you know my background I believe in coaching people to get better and that in education is really valuable I've had teachers ask some of our instructional coaches will you come in and count my questions will you come in and count how many questions I'm asking will you come in and see how I'm questioning if you want to keep kids on the hook for learning if I were to ask you guys a question and I would say Cindy, what's 2 plus 2 Cindy's going to have an answer you guys are all checking out and I say what's 2 plus 2 Theresa so all of you have to sit there and try to think what that

118question is that's how you keep kids on the hook for learning that's how you expand that learning base those are some of the things that our teachers are learning and will continue to learn if they don't already know it it's a great reminder every student has different learning needs have you been engaged with specialized programs such as CTE advanced classes special education and are legal services to meet the needs of every student yes I think you elaborate yeah I have let's go CTE we have our own CTE program here in Taylor we have added several programs over the last year cyber security being one of those we have a law school program our machine shop program we can't find a teacher we went from 254 kids last year to around 570 kids this year I

119have a high priority in terms of CTE now what we did we invested in the CTE principle like I said earlier that's solely what she does and it's important you identify the right people and put them in those positions Carly is the biggest CTE cheerleader I don't want to say that in any disrespectful way she takes her kids to the middle schools introduces program centers she takes her kids to the elementary introduces the kids to that program man we started to get involved as educators we started focusing on college bound instead of career ready and the CTE component as well so CTE yes I've got a little bit of experience in that and high value for it special education I was in every IEP every single one generally about 120 to 140 number one I

120love the kids number two I have a fantastic special education team of teachers in that high school number three what a great way to build relationships with parents and help problems on make sure that you're trying to help them meet their kids needs one question I always ask at the end of the IEP what goals what do you want to see your child do at the end of this year I think that's a really important question to hear from a parent because it may be different than anything we had talked about at that point AP classes 11 started out at MC with 8 my last year there we had 16 and those were all face to face those were 16 different AP classes done some other things with AP I love kids and I had

121to make a tough decision as a high school principal I wasn't happy with one of our AP teachers who was like a 30 year veteran and those AP scores were about 2.84 on average and this teacher was getting on the best of the best and there was somebody that my dad told this person needs to be my AP teacher so the prepounder and then he taught the AP you guys this first year the numbers broke at like 3.87 the next year about 3.98 the next year over 4 he's been nominated for teacher of the year but getting people in the right seat that wasn't a popular that veteran teacher didn't necessarily like that decision but sometimes you have to make tough decisions for the veteran of the kids and I'll take that in every day

122and I know the kids are going to excel with that so special education I mentioned that CTE I mentioned that my experience with AP classes I think I mentioned that was there one more thing? remedial services I think I experienced it can come in a lot of different ways it can come from I'll tell you the best way the best way that I have found is working and philosophically you don't agree with it at Tecumseh we call it Indian hour in Taylor we call it Griffin hour and we haven't fully realized how to use this time it's another period so we have 7 periods so it's a 7 period in our class day and it's 45 minutes and it strictly is this 2 things it's for support so if you need to go back to

123your class and have that teacher reteach something it's for support, it's for that it's for social emotional support if you need to go down to whatever the Beaumont center in the high school to the counselor's office to any of those things to get that type of support it's for that and then the other thing it's for is so support is one of the things the other thing is positive connections I talked to a parent tonight and they talked about the band program and the student had struggled and all of a sudden now they're part of a band they're part of a positive group and I think we all know either through seeing some of our friends do this or even our own experiences if we're not part of a positive group we'll quickly become part

124of a negative group and so having opportunities for kids, we had over 30 different clubs and activities at Tecumseh and so it was really important for kids to determine what the club is and we had a staff member that would oversee it we had a sewing club, we had a Pokemon club we had a chess club you know, things that an old guy like me wouldn't probably come up with but it's not for me, it's not for the adults in our buildings it's for kids and so from a remedial standpoint I think that's really important I'll tell you the other thing I did and I would put this in the classification of this again, philosophically, it's just something different I took my high school staff through a book study called Fair Zones Equal and we

125kind of went through that one of the takeaways from my staff and it wasn't a directive some of them just started doing this and then the peer pressure started to mount but I think we all know when you take a driver's test if you fail it the first time you get another chance if you're going to be a doctor you get another chance if you're going to be a lawyer and you don't pass the bar exam you're going to get another chance but in education, you take a test on Monday and you fail it, you usually don't get another chance and so what our teachers really bought into not a directive, but they bought into it they would work with kids if they didn't do well that first time because what's the whole purpose? is

126it just going to get through the material or is it learning, really the focus if you're going to test somebody on information shouldn't they get it? and so we gave kids that opportunity and let's talk about culture and climate Frank, I'm going to keep coming back to your question that really changed the culture from a teaching standpoint and we're really focused on learning so many times we focus on all kinds of other things does a kid have a hat on? does he not have a hat on? which was kind of an interesting thing to me we didn't allow hats in the high school and you think about it you think about the University of Michigan or some place what a kid to wear sometimes to college classes a hat so our focus was hats and

127not learning so when I told kids you could wear hats guess what they did, they stopped wearing hats they did just the opposite so I think we have to be careful sometimes with our focus and what we're really looking at we've got to keep the main thing the main thing and that's learning we're a special education student so the focus of special education is very important to me what is your experience with early intervention and your stance on unifying classrooms but again I think what works for the student I think it always goes back to that whether it's a special education student or a gen ed student what works for the kid, I wish every student had an idea to be honest with you and really personalize their learning I guess some kids are geniuses

128with their hands some kids are geniuses with their minds some kids are geniuses in music or art or some of those things so I really think it depends on the student and what's best for the student and it's ok to change some things it's ok if you see something's not working to make that adjustment and move that student into a different place if it wants so I guess that again I focus on the kids and what's best for them not every student is the same as we all know I've got three daughters, they're all different I don't know how that happened I think my wife screwed that up somehow, not me but love them all and they're all very different I just want to give a time update we've got about 20 minutes left we've

129got question 13, 14, 15 that's scripted 20 minutes left got it, thank you so please describe your previous roles and initiatives to increase school safety and every stakeholder comfort within district safety plans and measures great question very pertinent question so you guys have in like in my packet I think you guys maybe you saw the work was the focus it was kind of a tee and I created that based on listening to parents when I first got into Taylor and hearing the concerns that they had safety then and I'm sure it is for everybody was number one and so as you guys saw in that packet I shared with you we did some different things probably the biggest thing was what I talked about earlier was the boot and it's just a phenomenal piece of

130safety for our kids not just to keep people out of the classroom or whatever but there's just a system in place it's not scary talking to elementary kids about active shooters and with the boot they have Bobby the boot the gentleman who invented this and is out all over the country now doing this his daughter is who the boot was made for she had a really bad experience did I share that with you? ok her experience, the way it got to the boot I'll be real quick on this in case you didn't know about the time so his daughter was a track star she's a runner and she was out running one day and she was attacked by a guy about 250 pounds and her dad taught her if you can't break your pinky and

131by draw blood and so he tried to choke her out she played dead, she broke his finger, she did it and she got up and took off running and he wasn't going to catch her when the dad found this out he went out he left there not to the happiness of the police he went looking for the guy just like I think any of us would he was having to be the track coach in that small community and he saw a couple of his kids out running he said hey have you seen the guy in the subscription and they said yeah he's right down there he took off after the guy the guy saw him, the guy ran into this guy's apartment and shut the door and he had his boots up against the door

132and he could not get in and so that's how this guy came up with the boot the dad did try to go through the drywall he got stuck there the police helped him out, the police got in there and got the guy in and did all that so she runs his company we were the first in Wayne County to do this and I'm kind of proud of that I like I like leading, I like things work well, we've had some teachers come from other districts because of that because we had to do it, they felt safe when I talk to our seniors they feel safe so it's not just a door stop it's also there's a community there's lights that either glow red and they'll say intruder intruder, intruder and there's a whole system that

133I can talk all night to but it's just a really really good system we spent 1.8 million dollars and we did it all out of not out of the general fund we did it out of grant money money the state has been giving us and it's just it's been really good, I want to say that I hope we never have to use it from an active security standpoint the other way our teachers use it is they have a tablet in their room and they can put it immediately in lock down if they need to if they have a medical issue something in that says medical issue everyone in that building within 5 seconds they know that there's a medical issue and someone knows to kind of go and help so it's just a great communication

134base our police as I mentioned to you there I haven't connected them yet but our police will be connected if we have an incident we go into lock down and they're coming hard if that happens and so what we've done is we've kind of I've slowed the hold down a little bit just to make sure this year that our kids everybody was comfortable with it and we put a policy in place if a kid pulls a boot that's a problem if you're doing it as a prank and we had one or two they saw it was a problem, we communicated that and it's been good we may have accidentally had a teacher their tablet that would set it off other things that we've done on our main web page you can go on it and

135you'll see safety and harassment form it's something that people can click on and they can do it anonymously or they can leave their information on there but if there's an issue, a safety issue it's been wonderful it's helped prevent some fights because sometimes you just can't get a hold of people so I have people monitoring that keeping an eye on that so that's something that we have as well we also increased the security in all of our buildings and unfortunately with elementary we haven't put security there yet except in one of our buildings it's something that is an appropriate response for us at that time it's something that we're looking at for all of our elementaries this year is doing those things again, it's about resources though and how you use your resources and every

136place isn't the same every place doesn't mean all the same things that other places need as well and that's why the state gives us different dollars and we qualify for different monies whether it's grants or whatever it is those are just a few of the things but man, that's number one I used to be out with my kid to get a good education now, first, it's time to send my child to school and get him back safe and go from there thank you please describe how you mentor and support new administrators so everyone who are administrators they have a mentor that's the first thing that we do someone that we think we'll connect with them well new administrators it's really just like we support our teachers from that standpoint whether it's me or one of

137my assistant principals we meet once a month with each administrator one on one and spend roughly about 45 minutes to an hour setting goals and seeing how things are going but really focusing on them the challenge is we all want to talk about work but really we need to talk about that administrator and some of the things that are working well and not working well and it's just monitoring that person and just being visual and listening to them and checking in as a high school principal I do that with my new teachers as well I meet once a month with them and a little bit more early on as they came into the building and went from there but I wanted to hear how it was going what they needed and go from there if

138administrators aren't prepared that can be a real problem and so making sure that there's kind of an onboarding for them and I wouldn't say it's strong right now where I'm at or working on the onboarding piece but it's been strong in other places I obviously had assistant principals as a high school principal that worked for me and that's a major responsibility that I took on to make sure that they knew what they were doing I work with them if you had a discipline issue sometimes it's better to have two people than one but try to model that for them and then go from there it's almost like gradual release over teaching in the past few years many school communities have faced painful divisions and deep disagreements between people over a variety of issues what strategies

139do you think are useful in healing community relationships and what could that look like and why not yeah man I've always heard don't air your dirty laundry in public right so if you can find out what these concerns are and have conversations outside of the public eye that's a good first step and then I mean we have a policy if someone comes to an award meeting and they have a concern you guys a lot of times it's usually the meeting or it could be a destiny that will follow up at a later time if the people are willing to stay after the meeting I stay there and I talk to them and I listen to them if someone feels they need to come to an award meeting then they deserve a conversation and they deserve

140to be listened to and instead of spending three hours you know we may spend an hour but then we may say lets connect or here's my cell phone number if it doesn't get better give me a call so I don't know I guess I'd go back to labels you gotta be careful with all that right what you put out there what you talk about I just think there's a better way to have these conversations without bringing something to the other stuff we were very fortunate I think we've all been through the mask thing and all that with COVID right we were really really fortunate in terms of how our community responded to a lot of things and it's obvious because we have less people watching our award meetings and when there's controversy you get more

141people that's human nature it's not a criticism, it is what it is trying to be ahead of some of those problems I guess this is the other thing I would mention being ahead of things, I meet once a week every Monday at 12 o'clock with our teachers union, the leadership of our teachers union and kind of the same concept of trying to stay ahead of community issues or different problems there we do that with our teachers union and all four unions know that if they want that same type of thing we would do that working, I think it helps in a lot of ways but building that relationship and working together we've solved a lot of things and we're really a good team to be honest with you teacher support with few to no aides

142what are your standards in regards to school of choice and number of students per class number of students per class is contractual so it's whatever that contract says at Taylor it's 28 for kindergarten, 32 for up to 5th grade and 6th through 12 it's up to 35 we don't have those numbers in there but contractually we can go up to that you guys I understand the money piece I understand that question but our country is one of the few countries that worries about class size it's an interesting thing I'm not saying that makes it right or anything along those lines but a lot of other places have a lot more kids those kids can be different, the situations are different I get that but with good classroom management and support you can do a lot

143of things and again if our building principles, I would hope that they keep an eye on those things in terms of if they need to make an adjustment if the numbers are too big that type of thing I would love to go to the classrooms and see and see what those situations are like if someone has an issue with how many kids and it's a struggle and the building principles have problems figuring that out as well so I'll put our heads together I don't think there's one magic number when it comes to how many kids should be in a classroom philosophically the younger the kids are you certainly want the classrooms to be smaller without a doubt the older the kids get, probably not that's important if you're talking philosophy the other thing I'll add

144to that, I talked about teacher support and one of the things that's hard to do is I'll take parents, we struggle finding parents and we've gone to third party with the blessing of our union and some of those things but actually filling all the positions is harder and when they're not filled, it makes it extremely harder on our teachers and the classrooms and those things so making sure that we do the best we can to support and have that support in there for them, I think is really really important as well you might have missed it it said, what are your standards in regards to school of choice and number of those students per class yeah, I think again the school of choice based it's dependent on the district we don't get a lot of

145school of choice for all that in Tecumseh we did I think you have to see what's best for the district what kind of school of choice is coming in communities they fund bonds, they fund a lot of those things, a lot of times community members don't like paying that extra tax and then having other kids whose parents aren't paying that tax come in and benefit from that so I don't think it's just a black and white answer, I think you have to really take a lot of things into consideration including the finance piece I mean, like it or not I'd rather pay less people more money than more people, less money and I think people are deserving of raises and so these are some of the things that you have to take into consideration as

146well as teaching and learning and those things, is there a balance challenging question, have you ever asked that I'm kind of mad at you for making me finish on that question that's a hard question to release thank you so much thank you, yeah, thank you very much we have our second candidate Griff Mills, let's do some any strengths you want to highlight with Griff Mills strategic planning, we had an experience with strategic planning talking about, you can have all the plans that you want, but if you're pushing to put in place, then it's what does it work about, but that strategic planning he has really good ideas I enjoyed when he said that kids are wonderful teachers I think that's something that has been a guiding point in my life I've definitely learned more from

147my students than I've probably taught them in the last three years I think when it came to him pointing out a significant answer, or a simple thing I think he kind of talked about he loves kids, that's obvious he mentioned that many times it's nice to know he's talked about him with his knowledge in that that's kind of a big argument you don't see a lot of new schools being built anymore you'll see renovations, but it's kind of common for one to go from the bottom up so that must be kind of important next, do you want to rise up yeah, I liked the idea of a resilience director and coaches, I was intrigued by that I just was wondering if somebody he's asked about about exit interviews and personal exit interviews, it sounded like

148there was a survey that was sent out that's very impersonal to me exit interviews should be face-to-face collaboration what could we have done, what did we do greater than what to do sending a survey or a letter is very very impersonal it doesn't tell somebody that they were appreciating while they were there labels on things to learn more about things I agree with being cautious with the labels and we should be to an extent, but especially when you get into the high school the students are talking labels and we need to know enough about those labels to know how to work with the students correct which kind of leads me into TI too, I didn't hear I was sight-stepping there as well he was talking about equity about diversity, equity, inclusion and it's pretty interesting

149since Taylor is incredibly diverse I mean incredibly and it's a very big distance so to carry his point he really didn't touch on that for me and I felt like maybe some of the questions were not as thoroughly answered as maybe he did the first time I agree, I thought you had a lot more to say about inclusion on Thursday and I know you don't want to repeat and waste your time but a few times I did hear a loop to that and then go a little further and I thought I'm wondering about that too I'm wondering a little bit about someone who does not have elementary experience at all being able to advise elementary principals and support elementary staff I think that was for me I'm not sure how I didn't get a great

150answer on that so I'm not sure how he would do that I believe in his he provided us with more structure and I want to say that there was there was an assistant from the district but he's going to the candidate that is chosen is going to have to make this all by themselves so you've got to be able to be have enough experience and kind of fix to get through what we're going through we gave you all the opportunity to share the reference check the conversations you had around reference checking for those of you in the audience know that your board members worked through the weekend to contact references and get other perspectives on these two candidates so I wanted to give you all the opportunity there are things that you have to share

151full summaries of all your conversations but they're particularly impactful things that influence what you're thinking, you want to share I can start, I called references for both candidates I called one he spoke, Jim spoke about his mentor, George former superintendent, retired superintendent and I had a lovely conversation with him and George said he's ready that's what he told me and he said he's a lovely human and he he said if he makes a mistake as a new superintendent he'll own it, he'll fix it and I just appreciated that and then I I spoke to two people who worked under him as employees one is a current administrative assistant and one is a teacher in a building in Tecumseh and they both also had a lot of things to say, it's actually the secretary in the

152other room, wondering if she said something unkind about him if maybe you could not hire him because she liked your boss very much and I told her that wasn't how that worked that was a lovely sense of it and then we went on to have a very nice conversation so great references here for Jim Anderson, I did speak to their current superintendent and he said he's absolutely ready he's kind of taken him under his wing and feels like he can trust him and kind of similar to what the contact for Teresa had said that yes he's very forthcoming and he could make mistakes like everybody else does but he owns it and he takes great pride in his work Riff Mills, I did speak to him one of his assistant superintendents and they said the

153district would be lost without him, they said that he's the best superintendent they've had in 20 years I think more specifically more than they said he's done in terms of the bond and you know I did ask why they thought, why he thought maybe he was leaving typically after a few years you know he didn't say that he's kind of a guy that does like to you know he sees the good and maybe he sees when the districts need help and you know he doesn't think that he would ever use us as a stepping stone to go anywhere else but I think that you know he's basically a second favorite he was on the bond commission with him and he said that he was hardworking and had to open their policy but he did tell

154me why he was leaving and I did not solicit that answer that he has no board support so that's why he's looking for him he said he's approachable and very nice and extremely hardworking I'll break things in regards to that when I talked to both people about Mr. Anderson they were almost identical in their comments but their policy approachable like I said earlier he takes a pause when someone sets up the room and they're talking about a problem, a procedure, a policy whatever they're discussing and they'll think about it and then he thinks about it what everybody else says and it doesn't have to be what he wants but he'll take that moment to say oh you know we have to talk about this too so I felt that was very important particularly when we're

155going into a new strategic planning process it'll fall here and why not and we need someone like that and he also talked about how you're going to implement something when you've got an idea first where you talk about the idea if you don't know how you're going to do it it's never going to go off the ground so he's very open-door and no set hours no set hours and he had to think about accountability and visibility and do his best to get even though he lived in it's away really you might have a continent office over there you never know but he is into trying to move here but I understand the interest rates but it's highly linked I had two reference calls to make and both of them were very, very good I talked

156to a teacher who was a union rep and worked with him worked with Griff for 10-12 years prior to where he's at at Taylor Mountain and he said that he was excellent to work with he was relaxed a people person, a listener didn't make rash decisions and always put the kids first and I guess there was a superintendent searching where this person was at the current time but the timing was proper for that and he was really wishing that Griff would have been when I asked him he had the opportunity to work with Griff and he said absolutely so a lot of good things with James Anderson I talked to an assistant principal that worked with him and she said that he's an excellent leader he's outstanding and with diverse cultures and he celebrates differences

157and offers equitable opportunities he's a team player he's not afraid to admit he makes a mistake and he learns from that he'll take that as a growing stone and will use it intentionally to make himself better and make his team better when I asked about the three strongest qualities she had trouble trying to find just three and she talked about kids being first in the importance of relationships and vision and the ability to help staff understand and keep kids first as well when I asked her if she felt he was ready for this she said absolutely out of all of her time and education he was by far the best mentor and administrator she could have and when asked if she would work with him again the answer was in a heartbeat I have one

158for each one for Griff and one for Jim I have an assistant principal with Jim and basically just grading reviews just talking about his leadership and basically saying that definitely he's ready he's already had one superintendent he made a finalist I'm not sure where it was at he said he's going to be a lost that means a lot for Griff I talk to a principal that's the head of the teachers union grading reviews to basically said how he deals with the unions in second very fair and that was with one of the assistant superintendents had this experience at that time so Jim took it upon himself to like reach out and say okay this is where I want to go this is how I need to get there to get that position and within that

159position the other thing that this assistant superintendent function was that so he's a student services director he said with that he has learned how to his personality allows him to easily work with both parents and other students in situations which may not be so nice right because he's working a lot of times with discipline and also within that role is to manage principals, teachers unions so it brings in a whole cross-functional team basically that he has to balance and exceptionally well repeated a lot of the same things that others said too we've gone through this process tonight we had our two final interviews had the chance to ask those scripted questions we got some audience questions along with lots of I know you read the two batches from there you went over the reference check

160items as well it would seem to me that you may be at the point now to entertain a motion and maybe do some deliberation but for that discussion that's where I exit stage right or left and turn that discussion over to our president okay Superintendent candidates today included the second round of interviews with two candidates from the position of Superintendent of Why Not Public Schools. At this time the discussion can be called after the motion of support on choosing the final candidate. I move approval of Dr. James Anderson as Superintendent of Why Not Public Schools commencing on July 1st, 2023 subject to execution and adoption of a mutually acceptable agreement. Support. Discussion. So depth and breadth and I welcome the opportunity to work with them I've thought about them like five or six years everyone

161in the district once they made everyone very happy very excited. I could have stayed on the phone with this gentleman this Superintendent from Wayne Westland forever he just would not have stopped telling me about it and ignoring the fact that Jim Anderson has done so I think it's important to the feedback that you received from Jim from the yes thank you for your feedback it was essential and you kind of made it just truly truly appreciate that thank you forward to working with James. One of the things that kept going on in the back of my mind is culture, our staff, our people and I feel I have a good a good feeling for that with being working here in the district for three plus years and I really think Jim is going to be

162a good fit with our people. His first interview I was very impressed and even with the second one it basically ratioed. Number Sirkiewicz? Yes Number Cain? Yes Number Martinette? Yes Number Ted Osby? Yes Number Webber? Yes Number Danversley? Yes Number Will be on Tuesday June 27th at Wyandotte City Hall one session for girls will be at 6.30 and the meeting will start at 7pm Madam Raul? Madam President if I may could we take a moment and thank Casey for everything she's done for us. Thank you