001uh my mike ritchie and i work for hazard young in the tia and we have been hired by the district to assist them in the hiring process of your next superintendent so uh with us tonight is ryan ruggles and ryan will be giving his introduction here shortly how the process tonight will work um we're going to spend about 45 minutes to an hour we'll keep this open until about 6 30 and giving you a chance to ask questions so what we ask you do if you're here live we ask that you write your question down on the note card and i can walk around and collect them or you can just bring them up to the front table and then i will read the question uh to ryan if you are participating through zoom simply
002put your question in the chat box and then we will grab it from there and again pending time will try to get through all the questions but i think what happened last time is we had a number of questions at the very end and so we didn't get through all the questions however what we will do is i'm going to collect all the cards tonight and we will give the note cards to the school board so they will see all the questions and all three candidates still have one uh interview left with the board so they may ask that question at that final interview and um we'll just kind of see how things go tonight so with that said let's uh let's get started and ryan i'm going to have you just introduce yourself and
003give everyone your background your work history past experiences hobbies interests and why you're intrigued about this position excellent thank you so much mike i appreciate it i appreciate the chance to be with everybody tonight here live and on zoo um i actually got my start in administration right here in watertown in this building i was an assistant principal at watertown high school uh back in 2006. i was here for a couple years love my time here i was it was amazing to go around the building and see all uh the friendly faces from from back in the day they're still here i think the the fact that there's so many staff that are still here that were here when i was here back in 2006 says a lot about this district and about the community
004and that's one of the reasons that i really want to be back here um as i moved on from uh watertown i went to some prairie i was there for nine years as a principal uh at upper middle school um it was quite a a jump for our family i we weren't really looking to move at the time i was loving my job here in watertown uh but an opportunity came to start a brand new school in some prairie and i thought hey i'm a young guy i'm going to put in and see what happens uh lonely got the position was there for nine years it was amazing experience i i loved the work that we did there uh we had staff that came together from three different buildings and we created uh cardinality's upper
005middle school um with three different staff it was highly collaborative with such a such a cool process um left sun prairie after nine years my wife and i i had had conversations for years about going overseas and kind of had an opportunity of a friend through a friend we started having some conversations with with some folks that were overseas uh and then we made the jump we made the leap so we went overseas uh spent some time in uh doa qatar uh i was a middle school principal there my wife taught high school english uh was an absolutely amazing experience something i would uh never give back and i never regret for for a moment that that we jumped and went overseas uh we made some lifelong friends over there our our children learn life
006lessons and we're exposed to cultures and ideas that i i think are going to help them for the rest of their life and they're never going to forget so it really was an amazing experience um my wife had a little bit of a medical scare when we were overseas and decided hey we're going to come back we want to be closer to family so we came back to wisconsin i ended up landing in milton where i am right now i've been there for four years as a director of curriculum instruction i love the work that i'm doing now in milton i have some really amazing projects going on right now including creating a graduate profile that's part of a community process that we're doing uh where we are saying this is what we want out
007of all of our our graduates in milton it's been a really inspiring process it pairs right with our strategic plan and our mission and vision and it's been some pretty cool work i'm proud of a lot of the work that i've done in milton i love my time there i'm ready to take the next step and move into the superintendent role but i'm not just looking to do any role i'm not looking for just any job i'm being very selective so when watertown came open it was a no-brainer being being here before and living here for a couple years my middle son was born right here in watertown um and my wife and i were super excited at the prospects of coming back um personally my wife teaches at janesville craig she's a high school
008english teacher uh an amazing woman i have three children just yesterday my oldest graduated from milton high school should be going on to uw-platteville to be an educator and of course the family business uh and then i have a my middle son is going to be a sophomore next year and my youngest son jacob is going to be a 7th grader next year so we are busy uh spent a lot of time coaching their sports and going to their different activities and i wouldn't have it any other way all right thank you ryan um i'm gonna ask one more question but just as a reminder i know some people may have joined late um if you're here in person there's note cards in front of you please write your question on the note card i'll
009walk around collect those um you can certainly ask more than one question or you can do separate note cards if you'd like for separate questions if you're on zoom just write your question in the chat box and then we will grab it and we will ask it we're going to try to spend about no more than an hour and again if we don't get to your question i'm collecting all the questions and they will all go to the school board and they can look at the questions that the audience did ask and if they choose to they could the three finalists have one more interview yet with the board so they could ask that question at that board last interview so before we get to your questions i know you spent all day in a
010district today you went on numerous tours and so i just want you to talk to the uh people about what you saw what excited you were you surprised by anything any concerns and then just kind of recap your day if you will because they don't they don't know the schedule you were on today so if you want to kind of highlight the schedule as well absolutely so today i had a chance to visit every single school in watertown and it was a it was a busy day but it was a fun day we started in mostly elementaries in the morning kind of worked our way up i had had lunch with the administrative team i got a chance to meet all the administrators and then in the afternoon met with the high school the middle
011school and then douglas was our last visit as well i did had a chance after that to meet with a few community leaders uh a few uh folks from the ymca were there to talk with uh and it was a it was a great day uh seeing some familiar faces uh across the entire district but especially right here at the high school and at the middle school i was familiar with quite a few folks um what really stuck out to me and i i i've done the last couple years i've done a little bit of consulting on the side with uh with a colleague of mine we started something called uh leadership uh compass educational leadership uh and and so we we mentor some educational leaders uh one thing that we look for when we
012do that work and one thing i look for when i do my current work right now within uh as a director of critical instruction is really try to get a feel for the culture of the building as i walk in and to me that one of the things that really stood out here is every single building i walked into just had such an amazing positive culture uh wherever i went it could feel it as soon as you walk in the building i was greeted by people teachers introducing themselves students curious to see who i was uh and the fact that we have three days left in school uh and the schools were engaged and cognitively busy and and doing good work i was just so impressed with top to bottom today with all the schools
013that i visited you know you go to some places and they kind of shut down early right but we saw i saw some good instruction happening today some really good student engagement but the thing that really stood out to me was just the positive culture and i think there's a lot of pride within the buildings there's a lot of pride within the community and i think that's the foundation of building block for a lot of good things to happen great thank you all right first question if the watertown school board wants to do wants to do something that you disagree with whether it has to do with safety curriculum health or anything in general for the school district how would you resolve that disagreement with the board absolutely um well first off i plan to
014work with the board to establish that positive relationship right at the back and i want to make sure that we're open that we're transparent uh and that we're building a common vision it's not their vision it's not my vision it's not uh just this one school's vision it is a common vision what is what is our hope for for for watertown and what we want for all kids uh and with that we we have some hard conversations and some transparent conversations uh so to me i would hope there would be lots of conversation with the board leading up to that fact uh and that wouldn't be uh uh something coming out of left field uh that we something we had maybe talked over uh time and time and again um but also i want to
015know what that again this should be a shared vision it shouldn't be just a board decision it should be just a ryan decision or a admin team decision uh this should be a place where we all want to go together um and i'm a big believer in policy board governance uh that that we work in checks and balances uh that we work together um also that our principals are here to run the daily to run the schools daily like that that's their job and we don't want to infringe upon that we want to make sure that they are put in a place to be successful to do better great thank you thoughts on curriculum transparency curriculum transparency big topic over the last couple years especially with the pandemic uh people wonder what's going on uh
016obviously the world of zoom and virtual education kind of open up that world to everybody to say here's what's happening within our school is as our teachers are are teaching with families in the background and grandmothers and grandpas and and others in the background um you know i i think number one as i answer that question the number one i think about is just trust and and how do you build trust is is by building relationships by listening having good conversations and just being being above the line being honest uh you know i think out there there's some some false assumptions because we haven't told our story and and i'm not saying we as in watertown as an education public education we haven't done a great job of telling our story and if we don't
017tell our story then someone else is going to tell it for us so we got to make sure that we're telling our story we're being transparent about what we're doing and know that we're doing it in the best interest of kids we're not hiding anything from the public and nor will we ever uh and that we're having a chance for the public to come in and have those conversations with us as well all right so uh if there's a question like we welcome parents to come in and talk with us about what's happening because again um we want them to know that we want what they want what's in the best interest of their kids thank you what can be done to foster teacher retention absolutely that that is huge uh especially as we're coming
018out of the pandemic uh what do we do to retain uh to recruit keep training uh high quality educators i think right now in public education we're seeing some free agency that we've never seen before right have we've not had that uh opportunity within our our field to jump to other other districts to to make more money uh for other districts calling to recruit teachers uh something that really hasn't happened a lot in the past there's been some instances let's become in more and more commonplace uh and when when i was a young principal when i was hiring a new english or socialist position i might have well over 100 applicants now i'm happy if i would be in the double digits right now um so a couple things um one no people aren't going
019to leave a culture that's that's positive and that they love coming to work every day and if they're well compensated uh and the benefits are good and it's just an amazing place to be where they feel trusted and empowered to do good things for kids people are going to stay and i commented earlier today on how impressed i was when i visited the high school today just to see all the faces uh from when i was here in 2006. that was amazing to me that tells me that they built a really good culture here and that you're retaining good people uh so there's a good foundation there but we got to make sure that we stay on top of that foundation we stay on top of that that positive culture because you always have to
020be taking the temperature of that culture minding that culture make make sure that that you're not forgetting to have good conversations because it can be easy to lose last thing within that is just making sure that we're really competitive with others around us and within the region with our benefits in our pay i think over the last year especially we've had a lot of folks calling each other saying hey what are you gonna pay for summer school what what are you paying for for special project pay because we know we we have to respond to the needs of the market uh and make sure that our people are being compensated for the good work that they're doing great thank you with all of the challenges over the last two years how will you address the
021mental health issues of our students absolutely and i'd say students and staff and and and community kind of kind of all all in one uh when we're talking about mental health uh i think we're talking about our society right now um one thing that we just started having a conversation in milton around is digital wellness um so we had done a lot of work earlier on um we're one to one district in uh milton uh with apple products you know so we were kind of on the forefront of one to one with innovation uh we started teaching digital literacy uh many years ago uh and within that um did digital citizenship uh and and that was kind of transformed into this concept of digital wellness and with that is the concept the balance uh and
022and how does all this screen time how does all this digital time uh the the factors of social media what does that play how much does that affect us from a mental health standpoint um and just from an overall wellness standpoint so that's something that we're digging into as a district to talk about because we've seen some major changes from the pandemic just the inability to put down the phone uh the inability to just stop looking away from that screen it's it's it's having a major effect on on us as a society especially especially our kids uh now i say that being i'm a huge proponent of technology i really am we we've done something in watertown called the innovation summit where it's all around good instructional technology use uh being creative uh creating projects
023just true innovation but within that topic i do believe we have to have a more serious conversation around digital wellness on our overall health i'm going to take that one step further okay and here's a related question what is your view about technology in the classroom okay excellent perfect lady that's a good lead and there we go um i i think it's integral integral and even as i talk about visual wellness here's the thing we have to talk about because it's not going away like we're only going to be doing more with technology moving forward those phones that we have can do amazing things right we can order a cab on them they can take us anywhere it's my ticket as i get on a plane it's my ticket as i go to a brewers
024game uh it does everything for us i can do my banking on it right that's not going to change that's not going to go away so within that we need to embrace it make sure that we're teaching our kids good citizenship skills uh and how to really utilize their technology in a productive way um i'm a huge component of one to one uh so i definitely had some questions today i know watertown is one to one at the lower levels uh and up here we have enough technology at the secondary levels to be one to one uh and that would be a proponent to increase that uh as long as we're having good conversations around how we're using that technology and that we're embedding it in our instruction it should take the place but if
025it enhances and makes the instruction better that's that's the ultimate goal good thank you watertown high school has a normal school day program the opportunities program and the start college now program how do you feel about other programs or other options that are becoming available for students like dual enrollment credits at technical colleges like wctc and matc that they're offering okay excellent yeah that that landscape is constantly changing and that's a good thing um and i think we need as an educational team and as a district we need to be on top of all these offerings to students we want to make sure that our kids aren't missing out and miss an opportunity that that other districts might have an opportunity for uh with that um i'm a big believer in making sure that all
026of our kids are future ready okay so i i embed college and career into that teacher-ready piece because really it's our job to make sure our kids have the skills once they get to that point in their life that they can go down any track right so if they want to go to college awesome they can do that they want to go military great they have all the skills and that they need to do that if they want to go on to uh a tech school they have the skills they're able to do that so our job is to get them to that point so they can make that decision for themselves and go with that uh i i'm a big proponent of our our technical schools um down to milton i work with black
027hawk tech quite a bit uh they are doing some amazing things as an organization like octet uh they've been a great partner over the years uh we have sought to increase the number of dual credit classes we've had some of the licensure pieces can be a pain for that but but overall they've been a great partner uh and i think if we can help kids earn credits while they're in high school so when they move on they can they can save some money uh whether it's tech or four-year uh boy we have to do that college back in my day i mean i i could work for a whole summer and pay for it that's not the case anymore so i think we've got to be really mindful of that when we're preparing kids for
028what's next thank you how would you communicate with parents and the community i think through multiple ways number one i just wanna i think the biggest thing is to be visible just to be out just to be out and about being part of the community is number one being recognizable uh being at a fence i i think that is the number one piece is just being highly visible and being truly a part of the community um and then i the next piece of that is find out what's been done now what do people want and then find out what other opportunities are there to engage with the community uh when i was a principal i i did quite a few videos um for all my families and i thought that was just that was a
029good way for me to engage with families because instead of just reading a letter or an email that might things might get lost in translation or sometimes people like to insert tone or ideas between the lines uh if i was on a video and hopefully i was sincere my message is coming clear uh and and to me the video was a really good way to get my message across i i've done that a little bit as well in milton as we started our graduate profile uh project i i started that with the video as well kind of describing to to the community here's what we're looking for here's what this was going to be so i found lots of success with that uh and just just regular communication of we're letting folks know what's happening
030we're sharing our positives on a regular basis so people know uh but also know like hey here's here's things to improve upon um for instance our state report card uh there there's some new um calculations on how how the the state report card was formulated for this year uh so in milton we're the highest achieving district in in rock county but because of how that new state report card is formulated with with the different uh different ways for each district depend on their specific numbers uh we were not the highest report card in in rock county uh and our and our in our community had said whoa what's going on so we had to do a lot of uh educating the folks about okay here's what this means all right so if you see here
031we are clearly the highest achievement school within rock county and here's how they came up with that makeup but we had to tell our story and share our successes but at that same point we were very open about why our report card went down that even though our achievement was good that based on how they they calculate a report card the areas of growth is a need for us it shined a light on one of our weaknesses and we said this is us we need to we need to be better at this so i i think as we tell our story about the positives we also have to be very open about what we got to get better at as well good his next question is how do you approach vouchers charters and open enrollment
032so why don't you start with how do you approach vouchers i think number one we want to make sure that we are open enrollment winners all right so what what whatever we can do to increase our enrollment um and that we have more coming in than we have going out to me uh that is a major goal uh with with revenue revenue streams from the state uh and the money trees from the state here not uh growing uh we got to make sure that that we have other means uh and that we can increase our resources so through the vouchers through um through increasing our open enrollment from from outside of our boundaries i think those would be key key goals for us here in watertown uh and how we do that is but by
033multiple means number one kind of some of the things we talked about being very open about who we are and being very transparent making this a culture where everybody wants to be a part of uh and and and as we tell our story how can we brand ourselves and this is an amazing community we going around today our schools have some great things going on we should be telling that story so anybody that is on the fringe of watertown is thinking maybe that's maybe that's where i want to go to school instead hey you want to talk about charter schools um charter school yeah so um thank you for reminder uh i have some interest and and some background within charter schools actually when i when i started here in 2006 uh i i was
034looking at starting a green charter school with several members of the high school at that time we were one of the first to start to kind of play with that idea and look around uh and and while i don't think that school came to fruition i think it definitely sparked some some other ideas within the district um and now uh it's definitely has grown um i think when you look at where the money's going from the state and where the money is going from the feds it's an option we have to think about we have to consider uh especially knowing that one size doesn't fit all kids uh so we gotta have options for our students and charter schools can be a great way to have options for students uh and you know meet their
035needs and have different options for them one of the great things about charters is is you have a little bit more flexibility and on how you can run day-to-day operations so you can be really flexible and clearly not all charters are are created equal uh you know there are some definitely um some folks that have abused it and give it a bad name and that's too bad because i think the majority of charter schools are working hard to do creative things for kids so telling that story and and making sure that uh we continue to support those people that are they're being creative and innovative with our students good okay this next question is the budget question it has two parts so i'll read the whole question and then i'll go back and i'll reread
036just the first one all right so the question is what are your first tier of priorities for the budget and then relatively what might precipitate the call for a referendum so just answer the first part first what would be your first budget tier of priorities for the budget my my first priority for the budget would be getting a good handle with our business manager and our administrative team on on how we're doing um as part of this process um we're working with with mike and pat i feel like watertown is a good place financially uh from what i've seen uh there's uh there's been some good financial management with that i want to dig a little deeper and kind of kind of see where that's at um each every district i've been in has used
037different forecasted models to look forward uh and i would want to find out what the forecast model watertown uses when they're trying to kind of build out and look at what their enrollment looks like and kind of plan forward with with their budget a couple years down the line um what one problem we're having within milton is if you look within the last 15 years our enrollment has kind of gone like this uh it's up up one year down the next up one year down the next so they've been pretty status quo probably for the last 10 15 years ish really uh and that the way that we tackle that is by looking forward ahead always looking at okay what what are our 4k numbers what are incoming numbers with this is the number that
038we have going out for for senior class uh and just really staying on top of what what we have for each number looking forward so i want to know that forecast number and i i just have a lot of questions um i'm not the type that's going to come in and just make it kind of changes right away i i want to find out the history uh and i'm not looking to fix something that's not broken so i definitely have lots of questions about their models um but that would be important to me to dig into that right away okay the second part then is what might precipitate a call for a referendum and i'm assuming an operational operational yeah absolutely well you know that that's worked with our business team and our hr team
039as we're uh taking our um our compensation model and playing that forward is it sustainable um you know we found we had kind of a a dual model right in milton where uh all of our teachers were moving up on the pay scale uh every single year they're they're moving up a length and in addition to that our staff had a opportunity to earn credits and earn hours to move up on the pay scale as well it was amazing for our teachers i i it was a nice system but it was unsustainable as a district like we're we're a a low spending district uh historically we've done really amazing work with what we've had but we just could not sustain that model um so we had to look forward and make some changes to our
040compensation model so i would i would cast forward that our compensation model to make sure that was a sustainable model uh looking well into the future uh and typically those that's that's what those operating referendums are uh it's boy we you know when 80 of your cost is personnel that's what you need to look at good i'm down to two questions left and i can certainly ask more on my own but if you oh perfect okay so again if you're on zoom please put your questions in the chat so what is your philosophy on school discipline okay bless me on school this one right um i got my start uh in education in a alternative school in la crosse uh leadership alternative school and from there i went on to teach in a school within
041a school um so i i have a long history of working in alternative education if you will that was a term back in the day uh and just alternate options for kids um when i think about discipline um think about what are the behaviors we want to see in our kids and how do we teach the behavior that we want to see in our kids what are those expectations i'm a big believer in teaching expectations of behaviors to our kids i think when conversations jump right to discipline uh we're missing the boat um we we know what to do if the kid is behind their reading or behind it right we have you know and any of our builder ministers can say we have these systems set up to support our kids well we should
042have that those same systems set up from a from a behavioral standpoint as well how we support our kids to make the right decisions how are we teaching them to make the right decisions it's a life skill with that uh um we believe in response to classrooms i i think it's a powerful program um pbis i you know back in the day i was a huge supporter and and not saying i'm not uh but i was a huge supporter of pbs but what i don't think it's done is really evolved the way it should have as a programmable girl pbis was a great tool for teaching behavior and we got i think wrapped up as a as educators more in the um approval of behaviors then the said in the hey this is the norm
043for our culture um and i think responsive classrooms is a good response to that they do really good work of what every day should look like within the classrooms at the case day six level um and with that at the at the secondary level i think restorative justice is a good way to go about it trouble with restorative justice it takes a lot of time it can take time away from the classroom but if if you're taking that time to set the expectations really build the behaviors you want to see uh then then i think restorative justice can do amazing things for for schools with that said our number one the number one thing parents want from us besides high achieving other kids right they they send it they send their students house every single
044day that they want they want their their kiddos to to be making the best growth they can be but their number one thing they're looking for is hey you're going to send them back safely that's number one so we got to make sure that we have a a good safe positive learning environment uh that that is our number one goal all right if an administrator would transgress what principles would you follow to address that event progress i'm assuming disagree with you or probably not follow a initiative or you know how would you absolutely address that i i think it depends specifically on situation um let me start with this so i i'm a big believer in alignment uh that i i want our mission and vision our strategic plan to actually be workable livable documents
045not just something that's on the wall uh that no one can refer to that nobody knows what it is it's not related to anything but our our mission vision strategy plans should be revisited it should be updated on a regular basis it should be confirmed uh and with that our schools should set their own goals as based on our mission envision strategic plan there should be that strategic alignment so when we say here's the goal of the district those goals are going into the school and they say okay how what does this look like at shores elementary what does that look like at watertown high school so i want to see that alignment from from the district to the schools to the classrooms now with that um i i there's going to be times i
046disagree with the principles there's going to be times i potentially disagree with the board uh and sometimes we're going to agree to disagree um and if it's in the best interest of kids and boy i tell you what if if our data is great and our principal is pushing back on on something um i i don't have to have the last word but one thing i always talk about is my loose and tights uh you know if we're talking it's something ethical uh something moral uh those are my types that's where that's where i don't that's where i i won't move thank you so what experience do you have in dealing with children and families in poverty absolutely quite a bit um you know i i grew up in sheboygan uh a very blue collar
047town uh all my my friends growing up uh blue collar uh and i i think for from an early age i didn't actually see it uh and then when i when i got to got to college at uw lacrosse i started working at a place called leadership alternate school uh it's within their family and children's center and really it was there uh that it was an eye-opening experience for me um working with students that had been expelled from their from their previous school uh that were on behavioral contracts at their current school uh from some high poverty for from some pretty um uh homes filled with major trauma uh major channel um and to me that that that was a call-in uh and and i really devoted a good chunk of my career to make
048sure that i that i was gonna be a voice for those students and i was gonna be a support for those students be that advocate for a kid that doesn't have one at home or doesn't have one in the community i'm going to be that voice for them uh so so truly uh it is ingrained in my culture and who i am as a person uh and and i think as a as a society as as a community we need to rally around all people within our community that means we take care of all kids no matter where they're from um with that uh i think what we're seeing more and more from some of our students from poverty is we're seeing generational poverty which is truly causing some generational trauma and with with that
049it we've got to wrap a ton of support around those kids with in the classroom through our guidance and student services and make sure that those those kids are in a better place thank you briefly describe how you would go about developing a comprehensive five-year plan for the district and how would you implement it so the five-year plan would be around several areas uh and i would want to be highly collaborative space uh so it'd be in in conjunction with the board using an administrative team i would want feedback from the community feedback from our staff members uh so i'd start with collecting feedback and collecting data uh we want to make sure that we're looking at multiple data points uh and and making sure that we're we're seeing lots of different information here as
050we're moving forward right um with that i'd be looking from an instructional lens uh be looking from a financial lens uh and and how do we again build in that strategic plan that mission and vision work as part of part of that five-year plan as well so in in my experience and and in my philosophy that five-year plan would not only be the budget but it would be part of our our data metrics for moving forward how are we going to measure ourselves five years down the road to say yeah we are proven as a school district we are we are moving in the direction we want to be headed for all kids yeah thank you so based on what we've learned do you think the district needs to be cautious about putting heavy covet
051protocols in place of the future or should we handle it like we do any other communicable disease i think that's a great question because it has caused a lot of device divisiveness over the last two years uh and my personal uh frustration over the last two years has been our inability just to have good conversations around this topic um because folks that that were very scared by copied and and were pushing for more preventative measures uh weren't wrong those that are saying hey let's get kids back in the classroom they're missing our learning we're not wrong so how can we bring those those those sides together and have a good conversation that's not personal that it's not attacking others uh it's not taking people that have been in education for 30 years uh and tearing
052down their legacy because they disagree with you on this topic but how can we bring both of those sides together to figure out what works here in watertown um and and i i do think it's a local decision because uh for those communities that that had a higher rate yeah maybe it made sense to shut down and have a little uh more protocols in place but if you found your metrics and uh your numbers are down uh boy let's let's look at the let's look at our numbers let's look at our data uh let's let's feel the pulse of the community uh let's let's talk to our teachers and and there's a lot to weigh there uh but as i said as i answer that what i really want to convey is um what do
053i start with that both sides had really good points both sides were not wrong um but i but i feel like the ultimate goal here in education is to get kids in school and to make sure that that they are not missing out on some important years in their life and some very important learning in your life i i feel like some some districts have done an amazing job of finding that balance okay thank you we are seeing a lot of threats and acts of violence in school setting lately what are your thoughts and how to keep kids and staff safe in schools absolutely well i saw two amazing things today that would highlight that that watertown's doing some really good things around school safety number one i saw um security entryways in all the
054buildings uh that that's number one uh believe it or not there's still lots of schools out there that do not have secure entryways uh and to me um that that's a shame i every single building needs to have a secure entryway uh number two i saw uh some lays on officers not only the high school but one at the middle school that's an amazing start not a lot of districts have that amount of support some have to share one laser officer for their entire district so that's a really good resource that's a really good support to have within our schools uh so those those are two really good things there uh beyond that is the culture that you establish and and as we looked at other unfortunate events over the years um i think one
055commonality we found was in in some places where it was a was a culture that maybe wasn't uh inclusive uh that wasn't supportive um and the more that we can do that within our school to make sure that all kids are honored all kids are supported uh that's gonna put us in a better place uh from a safety standpoint okay describe specific strategies you would use to promote public support for school activities budget and instructional programs strategies for to get a public support report i'll repeat it describe specific strategies you would use to promote public support for school activities budget and instructional programs absolutely um i'd use multiple means i i'm a big believer in using social media um and multiple forms of social media uh i think with uh at least my age demographic
056facebook tends to be the one that we tend to a lot in milton uh we don't get a a lot of feed for from from instagram or from our twitter feeds but we'll continue to monitor that and i think i would want to do the same here so what what social media feeds get to get the most attention and just keep constant information coming out in that way um i think regular regular uh information coming from the district office and coming from the district of here's where headed here's things that are going on uh is important um and and within that is also balance of not over communicated i i worked with a colleague in the past that communicated so much that sometimes those hey you really need this message was always lost because they
057had over communicated and i think that can be a danger as well so really trying to keep a pulse in the community of okay how much is how much do they really want uh and continue to ask questions to find that balance um the last part i would use would be just being visible getting on the community seeing people talking to folks uh and getting to the schools and sharing the message i for if we're in trouble from a budget standpoint i want to make sure that we're having that conversation early that we're having it with multiple people uh and that there's there's no surprises right as a as a leader and as a dad i don't like surprises next question so we know everyone has a really busy life but how do you go
058about engaging parents and community into the schools as a whole absolutely how do you find that engagement because parents and community absolutely you know i i think what we've seen in a lot of districts is uh some specialized parent support uh you know as as my kids are getting older uh you know we don't have a lot of parent groups anymore like we'll have a a show choir parents we'll have a football parents or swim parents and we don't have a a a lot of school parent groups anymore just to talk about the achievement of the school and kind of how the school is is doing from a cultural climate standpoint uh it's very specialized on on student activities um so i i'd like to see more parent support just from the school lens all
059right who are the who are the supporters of watertown high school of riverside middle school so it's not just about the athletic piece or uh a certain activity uh and with that it's a lot to reach out it's a lot to reach out constant communication just having that open door policy and making sure that you're selling yourself telling your story good thank you so we still have about 10 12 minutes left if you have more questions please feel free to write them down put them in the chat box i will ask a couple more questions and to give our audience time if you would like to ask any final questions um so i know you were again you were all day in the district today i know you researched the district i know you read
060through our comprehensive report you went through the survey um in your opinion you get the job what are your priorities coming in what are your priorities what do you what do you tackle first and then what what do you think is that the urgent need of the district absolutely um well it's been fascinating to to read the surveys and as i'm looking at the data look at the state report card reading the surveys and getting buildings um you know i'm putting it all together and and processing it all and my brain is going a million miles an hour here tonight as i'm processing all uh amazing visits today um i think what i what i heard overall in the survey from the community uh but also from from staff and admin was that we need
061to look at achievement we need to work on our achievement so that's one thing that's really stuck out in my mind uh being from uh a curriculum instruction background uh that's something that i'm excited about i'm excited to talk about because really that's the nature of what we do right we want to make sure our kids are growing uh and then they're they're leaving us and have the whole world in front of them um so i i would see having conversations around student achievement as being a priority uh what what do our staff see as a needs what do they see as the hurdles uh what do they need to support um in order to move our kids forward um one thing that jumped out at me at uh on the survey was that there's
062some discrepancy between how admin answered questions versus how staff answer questions and i'd like to ask some more questions around that kind of dig into that a little bit i i'm a big believer in transparency uh and having open conversations and and you know what those card conversations that sometimes we don't want to have are so much easier when we just have them uh so i want to find out okay why do we have that difference in uh the way staff use things or admin or the way our our staff use things and as some of our community members because there's a few questions there that was quite a quite a difference that's good okay thank you okay another question came in so what is your experience supporting multi-lingual learners and families right now in
063milton i as the director of curriculum instruction i'm also in charge of all of our title programming so that includes our title three programming uh which is all around our english language learners um so i i have extensive uh knowledge work in that area uh even though we don't have a huge el population within milton i work very closely with that population i've been an advocate for that population uh and we're actually going to go up and staff it next year um because we know we know we know our needs are great um unfortunately when we went when we went virtual uh during the first part pandemic a good chunk of our english language learners chose to go virtual as well uh and that's not proved to be uh great for a lot of those
064kiddos from uh from an achievement lens uh so we're rolling some more support to those families and those kids uh and pretty excited for our plan for next year uh as a principal uh i had a pretty diverse school that i worked with in sun prairie uh students from all over the globe uh when i was overseas uh i led staff development for a staff that came from 25 different countries and my student population was from over 60 different countries so i i have a lengthy history of working with english learners good okay i'll ask a final question and you can have a closing and then i'm sure you'll stick around if anyone would like to just meet you or say hi to you for a few minutes okay so final question from us would
065be um there are lots and lots of hot topics today in education so could you rattle off two or three of those hot topics and then what would your approach be to those topics a couple we talked about already today you know one of the hot topics is staff retention and recruitment um and i i think that is going to continue to be a major topic for all education for for years to come uh so making sure that again we are a destination district a place where our teachers and staff want to be uh so getting a bill in that culture so that's one of the biggest things that comes to mind uh secondly schools are a mirror of our society and we we have some some political divisiveness right now in our society that
066is coming into our schools so we have to have some come together conversations overall from a trans transparency standpoint from a philosophy standpoint uh that that we're here we're here for the good of all kids that's what we're here for um and i i see those two things kind of being on the forefront of education for the next couple of years uh the other piece i would i would talk about would be um as we're talking about student achievement how are schools going to change right you know i said years ago when when the pandemic started if we don't learn our lessons from this and if we go back to the end of the pandemic back to its 2018 again boy we learned nothing we did not learn our lessons so what do we need
067to change within education does that mean we examine our schedules we examine uh our credit options for kids uh and what do we need to do differently to prepare our kids for the future uh so those would be three things that i i think are the most important of our time good okay the floor is yours for closing comments all right well first off thank you for having me today thank you for being with me live and thank you for being with me on zoom um i i immensely enjoy my time today uh and i i would be frank i i really like what i'm doing right now in milton i i like being the director of curriculum instruction i work with awesome people we're doing some really good projects uh and but i'm ready
068to take this next step to be a superintendent and i'm ready to take this next journey but i just don't want it to be anywhere i i jumped at the chance to apply to watertown i've been here before i lived here before my son sam was born at the hospital here uh you know the opportunity to come back is exciting to me and to my family i'm not looking just for any job i'm looking for the job and then hopefully i can find a spot and and be here until i retire so that that that's the hope that's the goal um and i i just appreciate the opportunity to to be here all right thank you again thank you for joining and zoom thank you for being here if you have want to say hi
069to him before you leave or goodbye to him um he's here for five more minutes all right thank you mike appreciate all right thank you everyone great questions those are great questions thanks for moderating tyler appreciate it