001okay okay go ahead and flip it okay sounds good uh well welcome everybody uh welcome to um uh this march 3rd edition of our aps uh equity uh committee meeting uh those of you who are joining for the first time but you know this is a a new uh committee of the board uh that's just getting started and so we have a lot of work that we want to do and endeavor to do you know as we move throughout this year um so the first thing i want to do is uh pivot immediately um to um the approval of our previous meeting minutes um those are attached in the agenda uh wanted to ask if there are any objections to approving those meeting minutes so if not what we'll do is um and mr penalty
002couldn't even wrong here but i believe what we can do here is just you know ask for a motion to approve uh those those minutes and get a second and then we can you know take a vote as far as you know all those in favor can say aye and those nay and abstain that's that's how that's how i'd like to do it is that sound feasible to you sir um we did have discussion at the board level about not taking votes okay our minutes and other committees i'm not saying we can't do that dr hall no that's fine our minutes have been summary minutes from other committees and about the only action that we've taken has been like second reading kind of thing however it's summary based minutes i think you can do that
003um because the minutes are just a reflection of the meeting that we had so that being said yes i think you can do that but i did want to bring back the reflection of the board meeting sure i can't remember but so okay so no no so so this is good housekeeping so as we move forward we'll have this figured out um so so in your estimation then and i asked this question because you know you're you're the board parliamentarian here so wanted to ask this question as well so are you okay with us just you know uh asking for any objections to the mediums and then moving on in the agenda that's perfect okay so i'll ask the question the objections to the meeting minutes that were posted from last meeting okay there are
004no objections noted so we'll move forward then in our agenda so the next thing i'd like to do is before we jump into our first discussion topic we want to talk we'll first want to welcome uh miss hughes um the principal from brookdale high school wanted to welcome her to this committee um miss hughes if you want to just take a moment and you know i think we all know you but if you just want to take a moment just maybe you know say you know just say a few things about yourself we'd love to again welcome welcome and i would love to hear about you but absolutely hi everyone you probably are used to me by now like how did you have energy at the end of the day today i don't know i
005know i don't know um my name is nicole hughes as you know um originally born and raised in connecticut went to all east coast schools and happily migrated to find a home in akron ohio um three years ago and so we've begun the exciting transformation work at brookdale for grades 6 through 12. we like to say uh the best and the brightest go to booktube and we definitely proved that in the city championship [Laughter] and so for those of you who don't know i am married my husband is the regional vice prince uh president for olympus incorporated and we have two children and one on the way one due in june that's awesome that's awesome i i i appreciate your your your humility you you didn't rub it in our faces that you are a
006yale graduate as i recall right you said all east ho east coast school so um you know you gotta you gotta rep the yale rep rep i believe whenever you can because because that's a hell of an accomplishment so again we don't want to want to recognize that and also say how great how glad we are to have that kind of talent in our in our school district so again um welcome welcome um and so then moving forward in our agenda um you know i wanted to sort of spend a few minutes talking about um sort of meeting structure and uh sort of sort of where we go from here um and so so as as some of you are are aware you know in our other board committee meetings we have uh senior staff
007who act as the uh drivers of those meetings and really act as the facilitators right sort of you know uh sort of lead those uh in concert with our board chairs uh and so for example mr pendleton you know is runs finance uh you know we also have uh dr wins woods who also uh leads uh facilitates our uh uh uh i in inp meeting uh and so it only makes sense for us to sort of move to our to our expert in this space uh ms carla chapman and so as we move forward uh mr chapman is going to assume that role she'll be facilitating uh these meanings and so putting together the agendas and so you know i would ask that as she reaches out just that you do for mr pendleton and
008others and that she reaches out that that you give her your full cooperation and uh as she as she's acting on behalf of the board um and then also um i wanted to also talk a little bit about um sort of sort of high level sort of where we're going and and and i'm not going to get all this right and so i'm going to ask ms chapman to jump in here at the end and kind of take us home and then and then she can go ahead and facilitate the rest of the meeting um you know but you know what we're really looking to do with this committee is to uh really understand and examine the the work that is either underway or in development or in planning as it relates to equity right
009and so so you know every you know department you know has you know uh equity-related initiatives that are that that they're maybe currently working on and so we want to make sure that we're providing a venue uh and a platform uh because really the goal is to provide again that platform and venue for those departments uh department heads you know to be able to uh come and present what they're doing as it relates to equity and to have this many sort of active sort of a um a sounding board um or i think the term that we used earlier miss chapman was critical friends uh at times you know and uh i like that phrase uh and i think also it's also you know kind of part two is we also want to make sure
010that we're providing opportunity for folks at the building level to be able to present uh not just at this committee but also working to establish sort of a schedule and a cadence um for uh both this community as well as the you know as well as our our regular board meeting as well um and i reference the opportunity for buildings for zen is because i know to mr alexander's point we had talked about having the opportunity for us to hear about what we're doing that is directly impacting students right um you know a lot of these things can happen in parallel don't have to happen consecutively so um so anyway uh you know and and you know and as that work you know the other part is too is as we move this work forward
011and we have that scheduled cadence and groups are presenting of course the goal is for it to connect back to our aps advanced document uh and to tie into um you know and it's ultimately tied back to our our district focus as a whole um so so having said that i'm gonna pause there i'm gonna ask miss chapman uh to jump in me uh and kind of add and fill in the gaps of anything things that maybe i didn't talk about or miss and then i'm gonna ask miss chapman to go ahead and move forward in facilitating our meeting today all right well thank you dr hall i think you summarized it quite well again senior staff will know that we are on a regular schedule to present updates to the board on work that
012is taking place within our departments i would like to use that same format to have department heads or their staff who are leading equity initiatives come before the committee i have called them with dr hall critical friends these are people who support the work but who will also ask questions and have us uh consider our thinking maybe identify new opportunities and ways to support and so coming soon we'll begin to develop a schedule dr james in our last meeting shared that he wanted to start the work with human resources and in discussions with him and kathy mcveigh and her team we've decided that hr would be the first group to come before this committee with those updates that doesn't mean that in between your time before the equity committee there won't be opportunities to share
013with me to work across departments one of the good things about this committee is that it is interdisciplinary and so to have folks come to share their information i think lends itself to the opportunity to hear and to get feedback that may not have been considered by folks through a different lens perhaps finance we always look for ryan for solutions right but i also think that um we as we consider what type of systemic solutions are required to address systemic issues that an interdisciplinary body of people who have various uh kinds of expertise really are are situated well to to have those kinds of dialogue so um we have before us here today and then at the board level i just want to say um mr dr hall mr alexander dr akbar mrs mckittrick as
014you you know look at policies and how to expand those to allow for various levels of support that we might learn might be required and then of course the superintendent working hand in hand with all of his senior staff to ensure that we are all aligned to ultimately what is the advanced aps three and three goals so um tying our work back to advanced aps always when we're presenting um and providing these updates and we talked about it could also be building level programs it could be principals who come before us with strategies with ideas with new programs that they have been working on within their buildings that they might want to share with us very similar to how we bring principals right now um on special projects before the board so does that make
015sense to everybody my and my thinking yeah okay i think it does miss chapman too if i could just add one more thing um you know you know it's important as as you're moving the work forward as well and miss chapman discussions offline too um you know that i'm a firm believer that that everything is measurable um you know and so and so i think it's important in this space especially in this space you know to always so the questions that i'm going to ask a lot um are going to be around uh really two things how are we measuring progress so what are the what are the metrics or kpis that we're using to uh you know you know to really kind of you know determine whether we're making progress on a given initiative
016and how do we know whether or not what what does success look like and then and then also i think kind of that you know the other thing that's very important here is timelines right so wanting to understand okay in what timeline you know are we working to accomplish things in right that does not mean that that that if you if you present a timeline that that that come hell or high water you have to meet that timeline right because again you know we're all we're we're all wearing multiple hats and things are in their computing you know it could be interest but it means that the timelines act as a guide and of course if something happens and we need to extend that that's fine too uh but again it's one of those things
017we're going into it want to understand two things really again measurables and timelines so so as you sort of move forward in these conversations and whether the departments and print and principles and by the equity level that's where i'll be coming from a lot of the times is one understanding again measurables and timelines so anyway i'll turn back over to you thank you okay um and dr hall finally i think we landed on monthly meetings and more if needed in between so i wanted everybody to know that so you'll be getting that schedule soon um as we map out those meetings and the presentation schedule and so uh on the superintendent's recommendation we have with us kathy mcveigh from our human resources office who are going to provide some updates on equity strategies taking place
018within that department kathy well good afternoon everyone um i did put together a few uh slides um that i wanted to share is everyone able to see that yes white okay it says advanced aps yeah priorities in three years um so as we were talking uh with the advanced aps the three priorities in three years um we're going to provide you with a brief update from human resources on our work in this area all of it of course with a lens towards our district focus and the foundation of providing skilled employees to the district so today's agenda the fourth areas that i'm going to briefly discuss are the uh is ar el our alternative resident educator licensure program our progress so far in the employee resource groups a little bit of discussion on the equity
019audit that we're going to be doing and then the new positions that we've created for the district to help us support the work that we're doing so for the alternative resident educator program um and as we've presented previously in a board meeting is the human capital grant that we've worked on the lot over the last year um that grant was in the amount of fifty thousand dollars it was a one one-year grant um it did get extended um because of covid fortunately um so that we could continue to expend the money in that grant um the goal of it was to of course diversify our educator workforce and some of what we did with that was a focus on a grow your own program where we worked with and supported current employees in the district
020by providing assistance with tuition reimbursement or tuition discounts mentoring of the employees assistance with the prep courses so that they could move forward to get their educator license we worked with um five or six individuals in this program this year who were substitute teachers and educate or educational assistants down the road our goal is to work with aps students as well we did have two employees that recently completed the program so we were really excited about that and actually um the two were approved at the last board meeting for teaching positions in the district and the third individual is very close to completing the program and will probably be coming before you in the next board meeting or two to be approved to be hired part of the work also is a continued expansion of
021that program we have recently applied for another grant to help us continue with this work that's also being provided by um ode and that grant is supposed to be an amount of 75 000 so we're hoping to be able to to get that here in the near future i think there's a decision supposed to be made on that sometime towards the end of this month on whether or not we're going to get that grant so some of the things we want to do to continue to expand that would be having with the candidates that are in the program having monthly meetings with them additional trainings with them training them on uh otez the teacher evaluation system is what that is and what that's all about additional professional development um to provide for people too because
022in um in all these cases there are individuals who have not previously gone through an educational program at a college or university so they don't know what to expect as far as like lesson planning or classroom management or what is a teacher evaluation and how does that work and how are you measured um for everything that you're doing as a teacher so we think that that's something that would be uh really helpful to be able to provide for the employees that are that go through that program um some of them that you know have no idea what to expect on the on the assessments the state assessments that they have to take through ode in order to become licensed and so um those are some of the things that we have already helped uh people
023with and plan to continue to do the other thing as you know that we've been working on and carla and erica glover have worked a lot on this with the development of the employee resource groups we started off um by sending out a survey to employees in the district regarding their interest in employing resource groups and if they were interested in what type and then finding out what types of resource groups are they interested in we had approximately 160 employees who indicated a very strong interest in developing um employee resource groups so there are some steering committees that have been developed and are continuing to be developed um for people to just kind of get this thing running and off the ground on what groups are we going to set up and how are they
024going to what are they going to do as far as community work um meeting within the district to move the work forward and so two groups that that are being worked on and created now are the a group for the our ar el candidates um through the alternative licensure program those they'll have their own resource group to work together and with each other and then an lgpt group that is also in the process of being developed and so that work will just continue over this next year as we create those groups um the other thing that we're looking at and working on is the district-wide equity audit um carla and deborah folke and i have been discussing it working on it and working with jim leonard in our purchasing office to put together the art
025the design of the rfq that is going to be going out um we broke it down into three major groups from all the information that we had and from the equity policy um one of them of course being human resources and then the three big areas to address within human resources is our recruitment and retention um practices and then our job design classification and compensation and then benefits and work life integration and flexibility the the other large area we looked at was the community relations that we'll look at issues related to community to government relations uh social responsibility and then family and community engagement and then the the other the other main group is going to be the business affairs group which will be cover supplier diversity and products and services so we've been working
026on that rq and our goal is to get get that finalized here sometime by the end of the month and get that and get that out um we did kind of we did look at uh timelines on that uh to get this done so we figured that from march through um august would be the time frame to for it for it to be done and set up and then hopefully having results by october 1st it's kind of there's some lofty goals there because i do think it will take some time to get the audit done and it may take longer than that it may be that we just focus on one particular area under each of those three groups and then continue to move on from there as we work through the process and the
027new positions that we've developed in the district to help us move forward with the work is the chief diversity officer position um that is uh referenced in the racial equity policy that job description has been completed and is going to be presented to the board for approval at this monday's board meeting we also recently obtained your approval of the board's approval for a learning specialist for diversity equity and inclusion and also family and community engagement manager position that will work out of carl's office those positions were posted we've interviewed for those and we're in the process of finalizing the selections for those those two positions so that's what i have in a nutshell for uh quickly for today so we'll open it up for any comments or questions kathy i just wanted to add a
028a couple of comments on the um erg there are three emergent groups so there's the a-r-e-l lgbtq group and um also the educators for social justice group that is forming with leaders in place and and now pursuing recruitment um and the equity audit work that we are all engaged in now really is a combination of the ohio department of education's comprehensive equity analysis tool and the greater akron chambers adoption of the greater cleveland partnership equity tool and so what we did was merge those two um guideline documents to come up with those categories for the equity audit and then finally the a-r-e-l because i know you're going to ask dr hall there are some measurables associated with the a-r-e-l which is five um a-r-e-l candidates moving into full team full-time teacher positions each year and
029and there are some challenges with that that kathy can speak to um that may allow for that to extend longer or may require that it go longer than one year but that's the goal this year was a perfect example of you know covet delayed um and just delayed everything and it delayed you know testing couldn't be done ode uh even you know extended the time frame for when teachers had to renew their licenses if they were up for renewal this year because of code but so that they could have additional time to take any coursework and professional development that they needed to do to get their licenses renewed so it was the same thing with this this group of people and um and so sometimes people do get off track because life happens with people
030and and so we just you know we just continue to move people forward and and get over that next that hurdle and so that we can help them or they may need some additional supports along the way that that um in order for us to help them so that they can uh get their license and and that may make delay things sometimes so i i've got some questions but i want to uh but i always ask questions so i want to defer to the group first i think dr akbar has got a question yes um i know we we've talked about this before and i i might have missed it today uh so if uh i did if you can just uh repeat it i'm sorry if i missed it but um you know we
031talked about um moving away from ventures and access uh all the problems associated with that um where are we on coming up with a new screening process use from our process yeah it's my hope that we determine that through this through the audit through the equity audit process my my goal is that they would give us some recommendations for alternative interview uh questions or because that's what they will do they will come in and they will take take a look at our current practices and processes and they will make recommendations to us i'm just wondering i understood that part i'm wondering if there's a uh something that could be put in place uh potentially um because we already know there's uh equity uh challenges with that program if we continue to use it um but
032it's going to take a few months maybe half a year to actually do uh we can probably uh eliminate that from our process and come up with a temporary process um just so that we we're eliminating that from our um that barrier from from uh hiring from the hiring process it's a pro it's an it is an interview process that we are already um not to say that we're not we don't i hear what you're saying dr akbar but i wouldn't suggest changing midstream for interviews that are already taking place for next year um and so we we figured time wise that with this with this audit if a recommendation if a recommendation is made for a new interview set of questions um that we would then begin to implement those for for the following
033year just for consistency's thing but i we also have other methods in place where we do have moved diverse candidates forward in interviews but we can we can have further discussion with that about that we should because uh i know a year ago we we brought this up it's been a discussion for a whole year and so i would hate to continue to use that a whole new crop of uh this year uh since we've uh kind of known known about this for a while the issue so i'm just wondering if there's a something that be put in place temporarily to to eliminate that okay we will get to that um and again there's it's there's this the screening interview we do have checks and balances in place to make to ensure that we are
034making sure that we look we are interviewing diverse candidates um because it's minority recruitment has been a goal of ours for a number of years and we have increased our numbers um and our goal is to continue to increase those numbers by putting some of the other things in place that you know we've been talking about like our own program and things like that um i see miss hughes uh has raised a hand yes and my questions are more um clarifying and forgive me for being new and perhaps um this has already been discussed but can you clarify for me if the phase of the current phase of the equity audit was more of an internal self-assessment and then the department is looking forward to an external audit that will provide additional information or are
035we just waiting for an external audit nicole this is an external audit process that will go out for bid patients that have that particular area of expertise and business affairs human resources and community relations community relations we did conduct kind of our own personal internal assessment by department with various people that we sampled from within these departments to contribute to that but it's very subjective too right based on one's lens and experience so we we do the superintendent has asked that we um look for folks who have independent auditing credentials okay so you like to take a look at that i might have then answered my second question and forgive me for having very much of a school-centered data-driven mindset so in the schools we have our students take a diagnostic or a pre-assessment and
036we do use that early data to drive our short-term um you guys call them kpis and we call them our 90-day plan goals and so i was just wondering if human resources had already identified some short-term um kpis that were placed on a a current timeline based on that data and if that were the case was that data that was going to be shared but it seems as if right now it's probably internal or subjective data is that correct carla but i think that there are ongoing kind of um dialogue and discussions and kathy you can speak more to this erica and i talk often um about processes and practice and i know kathy you have an internal team you want to speak to how you guys are coming together to have those conversations as
037well yes we i mean we often meet and discuss you know our practices and procedures um to make sure that we're moving forward uh tracking our our interviews the number of interviews that we that we do um the number of you know our high number of hires that we have every year so that we have we have that data to look at um and we we also we're tracking you know the diversity all across the district as well um i kind of got i kind of got lost in what what exactly your question was uh nicole so you might have to explain a little bit a little bit more but um i i think i was wondering what short-term or um intermediate data was driving your current set of decisions um and then wondering how
038you expect your uh decision data to be triangulated over time um and again i have a school lens so i think of it as what was your pre-assessment data how did you respond as you keep collecting data throughout this process how are you adjusting your response and how does that ultimately align to what you hope to see on the equine target um that's not in your control versus what you may be surprised by with the equity audit that won't be in your control i think one of the things with the equity audit too i think would be you know when they take a look at for example what our interview question our interview questions for example um what um what is it about the question or that or the answers that we're looking for that
039that might be viewed as potentially racially biased when that we may not see um and i know like carl and i've had many are er carla eric and i've had many uh conversations about what it what about this question could be viewed by a diverse candidate different than than what i would look at it the answer that i would give on a question um and so we've had a lot of those questions we've had a lot of conversations following all the diversity training that we do that we're currently doing in the district um following those we've had our own departmental debrief from those meetings and what we can take away and carry from that um but we are constantly looking at we look at how many how many people did we hire last year or
040the year before what number what was the number of diverse candidates that we hired and what can we do to increase our diverse candidates even coming to the district to begin with to apply because one of our huge challenges is that the candidates just aren't there and every district across the united states and with us in ohio are all competing for the same candidates and trying to get people into their districts so um it is just it's a nationwide uh problem for districts that um when it's then that's why we started looking at to grow grow our own program through the human capital grant so that we could look at developing our own employees so that they could be trained and developed to become teachers for our district and nicole and kathy if it's okay
041with you i can jump in a little on kind of the self-assessment um which was taken by an individual within the human resources office but um as a group back in 2018 17 or 18 we came together um some school improvement folks human resources staff um myself and maybe a couple of others to look at our practices and one of the things that we knew we needed more focus on and to pay more attention to was kind of the comprehensive data analysis right with within human resources that would look at multiple sources so that we could identify needs based on that information we knew that there was a need to look at comprehensively how we're attracting recruiting retaining and supporting staff how we use millennials in focus group discussions to better understand their professional goals
042and i'm reading right from the list that we all kind of debriefed on a few years ago establishing partnerships with colleges and universities was a goal kathy already mentioned the prioritizing and hiring of a diverse workforce and so those were some of the things we identified as a team when we looked at the ohio department of education's comprehensive equity analysis tool and so it was more process oriented and i would say more subjective than what we are going for now yeah um so if i if i if i can so so thank you for that i just had a couple questions as well so first uh mr thank you for the presentation i appreciate it um and i also i want to say i appreciate that you didn't have 30 slides um that pick up
043the entire meeting and then left them time for questions at the end so i'm thankful that we had a nice succinct presentation that left plenty of time to kind of have this kind of robust discussion right i mean so it's probably one reason why we put this community together it is able to have these kinds of conversations right um and none of this is about is about weaponizing data um or finger pointing right it's about kind of you know having those you know those constructive conversations around how do we identify and um process and oddly move together in a way that is hopefully consensus-driven right you know um that we all kind of get sort of what the issues are and and kind of and come together um having said that i just had a
044question you know um i actually had several um and so i'm gonna i'll ask two questions and i'll stop and i'll go back to the to the group to see if they've got any questions that i don't want to hog the rest of the time but my first question was um you know with respect to the to miss hugh's question um and thought i may have missed this in your answer earlier um uh what did you say that that we had done an internal assessment already that had determined that this was an area of opportunity for us we have um well i don't know if you if i would call it like an assessment but i would i would say we've had many meetings within my department with my managers um to discuss um everything
045about the equity that we've all been talking about for the last several months like i indicated after we have all of senior staff has a monthly diversity training series that we're doing and i included my staff in that so that we could have those discussions and look for those opportunities and so we've um had those debriefs and we've looked at what we're what we're looking at what we're doing and we're talking about what we're doing we're looking forward to doing the audit so that we can get the feedback that we're looking for on how can we um you know improve our interview process how can we take a look at our our job descriptions for example to make sure that they're not biased anyway in any way to um maybe and that's probably going to
046involve you know rewriting some job descriptions um and so um we look at it as a way of expanding upon the work that we have already already been doing so because remember we have been um you know we're members of the camera organization up in cleveland that we sat on that waiting list for several years to get on that group that does a lot of work with minority recruitment um going to um historically black colleges and universities that we've done several years ago but haven't done recently so we're talking about do we need to go back and do that again um to see if we have any better success with that um we've talked about looking out of out of state um again that was something that was done um a number of years ago
047that that we have not done recently um going through different organizations um just to be make ourselves more marketable in the past we've done things like advertisements in um within uh i'm trying to think of the name of the magazine i can't think about the top of my head but it was a nationwide uh recruitment um for minority recruitment that we ran advertisements in that um and we still do that um sort of that point then so sorry yeah sort of that point then to your point it doesn't sound like there was ever any sort of formalized assessment of our current interviewing tools is what it sounds like you're saying and the reason why i asked that question because i noticed that when we were talking about the external vendor um i noticed that you
048said that um that you use the word if so if so if the vendor would determine that they were inequities in our in our interview questions and hiring a process then we would then move to act and so i'm trying to reconcile that with dr akbar's question um which was you know in please correct me if i get this wrong but i think you were sort of asking well we know that that we've got concerns and issues with our current process um why would we not move to put in place an interim process that maybe is more equitable in the in the interim um but it sounds like what you're saying is that we haven't necessarily done an assessment of those of the current uh interview questions to have made a determination that it is
049in fact uh that equity is in fact an issue um so that so that's so that those are the those are the positions that i'm trying to reconcile um and and just you know if you'd like to comment i just want to give you that opportunity to comment yeah i know i have to be honest i know i have not had an assessment done of the ventures interview questions that and why that was going to be done through the audit that we're going to be doing gotcha right after that okay okay roger roger that i appreciate that okay because i i was trying to reconcile the two um mr just raised her hand mr miss mcgintree thank you so you talk about the the ventures assessment tool can you walk us through a little bit
050what kinds of questions are asked and what kinds of answers you're looking for the questions that are that are asked with the ventures interview are questions that are supposed to get at the candidates drive their um their reason for wanting to be a teacher so um it will get the questions we'll get at are are you that person that you're you're getting into teaching or you want to be a teacher because you care about children you want to see them grow you want to see them develop that you want to see them succeed um as opposed to on the opposite end of the the spectrum the teacher that um that's in it because you have great benefits and i get my summers off and i get my winter break off and um and i quite
051honestly have had people answer questions to that effect like why why do you want to work here well because i know you guys have good benefits i've actually had that happen um and so though the questions are are developed towards are you that are you that person that that you because you want to help kids and you want to see them grow and develop that's your child center and it's that you're not self-centered and are these questions asked in an interview or are they written and are they open-ended questions are they given choices how how are they they're they are asked in a face-to-face interview okay right now it's been virtual of course because of the pandemic but in general it's a face-to-face interview okay thank you yeah there are other other questions that anybody
052that anybody may have see two hands i'm not sure who was in first um mr alexander i think you may have been in by a hair over dr akbar you want to jump in first okay yeah i i'm trying to listen to what was being said too and trying to reconcile and i was wondering have we maybe even reached out to the national school board association council of urban boards education who may have some information on that or have we reached out to osba who could probably give some information uh up front as to uh what dr akbar is saying i mean they may not be able to give it to us in a timely manner to restructure what we want in a short period of time so we may have to wait but at
053the same time that might be a good idea to just to reach out and see what they have at this time and it might be wise for us just to go ahead and wait until we get the audit done and that way once we get the audit completed we'll know exactly what we need to do and then we should move forward at asap yeah i can contact them sure dr agbar and then ms mckittrick yes um uh i won't belabor the point um but i i do want to um just emphasize um the challenges with uh using ventures so there's there's three major crutches to the challenge um which i did share with the owner of ventures and uh i never received a response um so that leads me to believe that the questions of
054the methodology is uh valid um the first question is it it it basically norms it does annoy me uh for pre-screening so i think that's the other thing that i i'm not sure if we've talked about is the pre-screening that happens before the interview process um that basically kicks some people out of even being sent to uh principals or whoever the hiring manager is uh and so that's part of the problem is you're doing uh i think it's a 26 if i'm remembering it correctly 26 questionnaire type of pre-screening where a person completes it and basically says you know what their thoughts are it norm it norms it based off a national set of data which we know it's going to uh invariably uh you know be against some norms of cultural responsiveness to people
055who are not white we just know that we we know that inherently because the norms are different the other thing that i think is important is that the way in which it it discusses values and it and so the question is whose values uh um align with does it align with and and i would venture to say those values uh based off what i saw from the methodology uh is based off a norming system and not uh on a culturally responsive and so there's going to be challenges there when you think of diverse candidates if you don't hold uh middle-class white ideologies about teaching then you won't get through to actually be interviewed and so that's a challenge that we have um why i'm harping on this because when we think about equity gaps this
056is one of the largest gaps we have when it comes to hiring to get candidates to the tables of principles and hiring managers if we are pre-screening them inequitable screening system and this is when and this is the only reason why i can't let it go because we get too many candidates who fall through the craps because they don't make it through that pre-screening okay that's part of what i was going to ask because the first example you gave of a question that would be a pretty easy one to score right but the questions that are perhaps more nuanced uh the value system that they're being held up against if it's a white middle class value system then like dr akbar said it's going to eliminate candidates from the very beginning because it's not taking
057into account cultural differences so that's that's my concern as well thank you okay i'm sorry go ahead um i think that dr akbar and miss mckittrick said it perfectly but i did want to reiterate so my first question was more about the continuous improvement process that the central office is using because we already know the process that the schools are using my second question was was actually going to be how does the work in human resources align to the work in the schools um and dr akbar you said it perfectly when you use the example of culturally responsive teaching and learning i can give an example because i do have the specialty opportunity to add a little bit different elements to my interview process and we found that in some of our um culturally responsive
058teaching case studies some candidates have have opted out um a booktalk or of culturally responsive pedagogy um once they understand um the difference between an inner city school and an outer inner city school and so that again goes to the question of how is hr aligned with the work and the needs specifically in the schools and perhaps as we are moving forward in this equity audit process to consider a sample of building principles as a focus group um that can provide constant feedback um and not just within the equity audit that happens maybe once a year or biannually but on a regular process perhaps even quarterly i like your idea nicole the focus groups i mean we do we do now when we move candidates forward to building to build to the building level to
059the principals the principals and the staff at the building that are on the committee on the interview committee do have opportunity and do create their own interview questions that align to the culture and and what's going on in their each individual buildings that then allows that candidate like you say in some cases withdraw from being considered because it's not quite what they were looking for um and so um we we do do that but um we we know that we need to to bring in a new system it was just like i was mentioning earlier through the equity audit it was our hope that we would ferret that out but we could certainly as dr uh mr alexander said um contact osba too and see if they can help us out with something in the
060meanwhile while we wait for the audit to happen i think my hand is raised i can't tell you can't see your own hand can you yeah mr chapman's hand is ringing i think one of the things that um i'm excited about and i'm not going to put karen giejick on the spot but i think the dei learning specialist is a real opportunity to do that alignment work between buildings and central office departments um and that that is i think um karen you can certainly chime in a key aspect of that work is to build that that coherence across the district so that um we're being informed at the central office by the buildings buildings are being informed by teachers a central office informed by all i think you summarized it perfectly you know that it's
061our hope that that role is cross-cutting and not just in teaching and learning but really reaches between and across departments so thank you mr alexander no i i didn't have my hand up oh yeah it's still erased i'm sorry i know where is that that we didn't mention it thank you i appreciate it yeah so i'm just doing a quick time check i know that we've got five minutes left uh you know you all know i i prefer military precision uh we start on time and end on time so that's how we show respect for people's time um and so um so having said that so in the last four four minutes last four five minutes here i wanted to ask me so there's been a lot of good commentary and as i told ms
062chapman one of the things that makes me crazy um you know in some of my previous jobs is to be in a meeting with those great conversations when there's no follow-up and there's somebody that's capturing you know the good ideas and ensuring that maybe there's movement there so the question i had is you know ms hughes you know mentioned the the focus groups i know mr alexander talked about you know the osba component uh ms mcmahon i want to ask you like are there are there items or um activities that we can start to um engage in in the interim while we're waiting on the equity audit to take place in the complete so for example mr's idea around some of the focus groups because i think the alignment i think the alignment piece is
063huge i think it's an excellent point um you know so so so other in your opinion mr bear are there things that we can do in the interim uh in concert with certain folks on this committee um in the interim um to address some of the concerns that have been raised today um i think the focus groups that uh that nicole talked about um certainly something that we could start pretty quickly um and to involve a couple people from my department to uh to talk about our interview processes um we can um stop using the stop using ventures um here in the in the next week or so i think we could um quickly convene a team to figure out what we're going to do in the meanwhile like uh mr alexander said contacting osba
064um maybe some of our other partners um to to help us with that um i think he may be uh connecting with uh esc that we work with um getting some assistance from them with that what you said enc educational service center that we work with there are many resources there that we can tap into to help us with this gotcha and i and i think adding these kinds of things to the 90-day plan right the 90-day plan process is not lost on central office nicole so i wanted you to know that we also have plans that we work from to monitor and hold ourselves accountable um so i think that those are the kinds of things too we can we can look at for um holding ourselves accountable to the work that um we
065wish to do roger that so having said that then mr chapman's been asked were you able to capture the those three or four items that miss mcveigh just kind of just just kind of ticked off as the things that we could kind of start to do in the interim um okay yeah great great great great because because i i'd like to follow back up you know and we can work with you miss chapman mr veda kind of figure out an appropriate time to follow back up on how on how that's going um you know and get more of a progress update so um so i'll stop talking ms chapman if you want to take us home so our next step will be to publish the schedule of meetings ensure that you are all invited next
066up um and voluntarily so uh is student services with dan rambler and so we'll be hearing from his division next month and if there are any questions in between time please feel free to reach out i'm reaching out to everyone as we continue this work i'm taking guidance from superintendent james and assistant superintendent mick williams woods and all of the other senior staff members as well um i i have crowned myself persistent agitator more than a year or so ago and i'm quite comfortable in that role i have lots of friends so that's helpful too um and i think that's it for me dr hall if there's something else you want to say before we wrap it up it is 5 30. no i think i think i think we can wrap so again uh
067mr chapman thank you for for your engagement and thanks for agreeing to sort of facilitate these meetings as we move forward uh i want to thank again uh special thanks to ms mcveigh again this i again i just want to say again this was a great a great this was a really great conversation um it was very robust and i i liked miss chapman as we move forward i think it was nice to have a shorter presentation and more time to discuss um you know and so uh so so maybe we can you know you know trigger that moving forward where maybe it's 10 to 12 minutes present and then we save the balance of the time uh for discussion so have you said it we're at 5 30 um i i will wish bid
068you all uh the best uh of evenings and uh we'll talk with you again real soon thank you all right everyone have a good evening okay carla take care ice that knee you