July 15, 2025 | OKCPS Board Meeting

001All right, welcome everybody. We do have quorum now and in the respect of people's time, we're going to go ahead and get going. Thank you, Coach Carol and AJ for being here with us and taking your time to help us get through effective goal monitoring and start our progress towards effective board governance. Craig, I'll go ahead and if you'll call the role and call the meeting to order. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. And if everyone would please silence your cell phone, we would appreciate that. And if you need to have a extended conversation with the person next to you or on your phone, please do so in the lobby. Please note spontaneous comments from the floor are not permitted. Individuals who exhibit uh disruptive or distracting behavior will be asked to leave. Finally, those who

002are speaking tonight, please note we are live streaming. Therefore, please always speak into your microphone so the folks on the live stream can hear what you're saying. And if you would please, when you're not uh making comments, if you could turn that mic off, we would appreciate that. So, with that, I will call the role. Paula Lewis, >> present. >> Carol Thompson, >> present. >> Lori Bowman, >> present. >> Jessica Safuentes, >> present. >> Dana Meister, Mike Shelton, >> present. >> Juan Lakona, Meg Melhaney, >> present. >> We have a quorum. >> All right. Thank you. Okay. So, it is a work session. Um, just for people listening at home and for live stream purposes, we generally try to hold very true to a 2hour session. We are a few minutes late getting started. So

003that would be 7:35 instead of 5:35. Um, the the board could decide unanimously to go a little further, but that is traditionally it. We have uh one main topic today 2.01 01 discussion on the OKCPS board's transition to futurriven student outcomes governance, student outcomes monitor training. Um, so I'll recognize Superintendent Pulk and we will move from there. >> Good evening everyone. I just want to say thank you for being here um, Chair Lewis as well as all board members as well as those who are in the audience. With that being said, I am going to uh give the mic back so that we can stay true to our time. Thank you. >> Okay. Then I will turn it over to coach Carolyn AJ. >> Good evening. >> Uh the conversation this evening is about monitoring

004progress towards goals. Um and so all we'll be spending time over the next couple hours is really digging into now that you as a board have done the work to adopt goals, what will the process look like for monitoring? you have a copy of this document at your uh seats. Um, and so I'll put up on the screen. Um, but you you can certainly also follow along with your local document. Uh, and so the first thing I just want you to do is take a moment and uh read the first section of that document. It says, "What is goal monitoring?" Um, and so take a moment to just look over that that one section, just two quick paragraphs, and then we'll talk about it. as you were reading through this first section about what is

005goal monitoring, what jumped out at you? What is goal monitoring? Why do we do it? Why do school boards monitor progress toward their goals? What jumped out at you about this first section? Board members, superintendent, >> alignment. Yeah, the importance of alignment. Uh the reality is you are in a resource constrained environment and as long as you have a finite set of resources, every time you act as an organization in an unaligned way, you're detracting from your collective ability to accomplish the things that you say matter most. So will there be times when you choose expenditures that are unaligned? Certainly. U if you replace the light bulbs in the schools, that is not magically going to cause children to read. But you've made the calculation that if there are no lights here, that's probably going

006to make it harder for them to learn how to read. So, we are going to do some things that are unaligned. But when you choose to do so, you need to be really judicious with it because every penny that you spend that's not directly aligned to accomplishing the goals while under the guard rails is actually making a little bit harder to actually accomplish the goals. And you've chosen challenging goals for the superintendent and her team to accomplish. And so alignment matters and part of monitoring progress is to push for and ensure the alignment is actually happening. Uh what is goal monitoring? Why do boards monitor goals? What jumped out at you? And by the way, thank you for going first. >> Well, I think that the um phrase breaking the cycle jumped out at me

007because that just acknowledges that it's that it's difficult work. like we're we're gonna have to break some of our habits of um you know the the revolving door of initiatives and thinking there's a silver bullet and instead keeping ourselves really focused on the goals and um instead of falling back into our rhythm that we've kind of the way we've always done it. >> Um as a board and I realize not all of you are here for this but you own it because you are the board. as a board, you are accountable for the fact that this district has an appalling record of going through superintendent. >> Um, and I don't say that to be disrespectful, but to be clear to you, every time you change superintendent, you should not be surprised when there's a new

008bevy of initiatives and programs and silver bullets that come along with it. That lack of consistency, that lack of alignment that comes from constantly churning through superintendent, that constantly churning through initiatives absolutely undermines the likelihood that you'll ever accomplish any of them. And so having this conversation not about can we have a let's just swap out the folks in the seats and see if that magically fixes things, but having a conversation about continuous improvement. What are we doing to actually break out of this cycle of the flavor of the month and get into a cycle of continuous improvement? That is a critical part of accomplishing the goals you intend. That's a critical part of why a board would choose to spend its time monitoring. Uh who else? What jumped out at you from this first

009reading? >> Well, I'm going to go back to the superintendent stability. The the district has in the past 35 years had significant amount of turnover in superintendent. However, I would argue that the only reason we can be here tonight is we have stopped that turnover in the last 10 years. And it's important that we understand how that happened and how to maintain that stability. And so for me, if you're changing programs or if the board's not aligned in the goals, that's where the pressure on the superintendent comes. And that's where you change superintendents over and over and over. >> Yeah. If it feels like the board is constantly changing the goalpost, that is definite incentive for the superintendent to find a board that knows what they're doing. >> Um, and so for the board to

010say like, here is what the expectation is. here's what our standard uh of excellence in the superintendency looks like because your goals are also your evaluation metric for your superintendent. And so for the board to say that and then say and this is what we're going to stand by according to you for the next 5 years. When the board behaves that way, it absolutely has an effect of turning the page on uh a history of behavior that uh really did not set you up for success. other things that jumped out at you in this first section about what is goal monitoring. >> I've got something. Um, and uh, AJ, I will say your pragmatism is refreshing by the way. Um, but yes, the revolving door and that full sentence, I mean, really stands out to

011me. Um, the matching between goals and reality, the lead by example, and also that the report should be at a sixth grade level. Yeah, there are a lot of things that you want to make sure that you all as a board are attending to when it comes to effective goal monitoring. And so we're we're going to dive into some more of those. Uh if you take a moment uh read the next section called how is goal monitoring beneficial. So if you uh I know some of you have already got started on that, but go ahead and read that section. How is goal monitoring beneficial? It's just four quick bullets. Uh and then we'll talk about that. [Music] What things jumped out at you from this section about how is goal monitoring beneficial? What jumped out

012at you? >> And don't be surprised if I start cold calling folks because it's like that sometimes. Well, I think that organizational alignment jumped out at me. The fact that if we lead by example and then the superintendent and her team are doing the work, it's going to align with the the investment that's also been made in the principal and the assistant principal work that you all have been doing over the last couple months. And so it can like if we're all on the same page from board down to the I mean nearly the classroom level at this point we're getting down into school leadership then we can all kind of back to I think our initial like be in the canoe rowing in the same direction. Um and so that jumped out and that's

013the power of this process I think. >> Yeah. uh leading by example is an important opportunity like the that the fact that a lot of people think that the most power that the board demonstrates in the organization is policy. My experience actually does not suggest that's the case is that culture is the most powerful tool that this board wields in terms of sculpting the future of the organization. Like if your policy says this over here but your practice, your actual adult behaviors say this over here, my experience is very clear. staff will follow uh what you do, not just what you say in policy. Um and so the the behavior of the board leading by example is a powerful access to creating the type of culture that you want in your organization. >> Who else

014what jumped out at you about how is monitoring beneficial? >> The monitoring reports. >> Hey girl, be close closer to your microphone. Thank you. I think that receiving the monitoring reports is really uh that will clarify a lot of things between the board and what's going on in the classroom. >> And in the past uh we've asked and not received, but we know that's not going to happen again. And so it's going to help direct drive the direction of where we're trying to go with our goals. >> Yeah. We find it problematic if board members have to chase down basic information about progress towards your goals. Like that is that is just an unacceptable condition for uh an organization to create for its board members. And so this intention of this process is to actually

015flip that. You should never have to go chase down and beg for information about your goals. Information about your goals is literally placed on the calendar so you know exactly what's coming and when it's coming. Uh that you don't have to go find it. It is going to find you. That is absolutely essential part of this work is that effective goal monitoring has to be a predictive cycle of information transfer from the administration to the board. Board members should never have to question or wonder when and how they'll get information about their goals. It needs to be automatic. >> What else jumped out at you? >> I'll go. Um, I like that it's mentioning urgency should match the current reality because I think often times at the board and I'm, you know, work in corporate

016America, so we probably move too quickly oftent times. Um, we want to stop and wait and we're almost riskadverse to the point where it, I think, hurts our the outcomes of our students. So I do like the the call out that you know if there is a huge gap between where we were expected to be and where reality says we are that we need to you know have a appropriately urgent uh shift in our strategy or approach. >> Yeah. If you see that there's a huge gap between where you thought you would be and where the data says you are currently and the superintendent's response is we're going to keep doing what we've been doing and pray over it and hope it works out. That would be cause for concern. Uh you would you would

017expect that the strategies would be calibrated to match. Okay, we we're we're almost where we need to be. We're just going to keep going and we think this is going to get us there. That makes sense to me. We are nowhere near where we need to be. I would expect the superintendent to show up and say actually like we here's some of the major changes that I'm making to get help us move with greater haste than we have been moving. That's that's absolutely what you should see as part of monitoring. Uh there's a few board members I haven't heard from. There's a superintendent I haven't heard from. Uh uh anybody else um anything about uh why monitoring is beneficial or you know what goal monitoring is that's jumped out for you? I've got some points.

018Uh yes, the lead by example. I also underlined the urgency um that the current reality demands. Open and reflective, grounded in student outcomes, the sixth grade level thing. And then this last one I think is really important. Uh the make adjustments and continuous improvement strategy. Uh that is to say that this process is dynamic and um it's constantly changing. And so we kind of feed off of and I think you have feedback loop as well in there. We feed off of our data and what what is actually happening um and try to react in I guess real time as opposed to having a report once a year and >> exactly. >> Yeah. Unfortunately, this is how most boards across the country operate is once a year they get information. Um it's a post-mortem. It's data

019that is, you know, four to months old and there's nothing really meaningful that you could do about it now. U and it's not necessarily the most relevant data to be making decisions on right now. That is how most boards operate. This board has chosen that is not how we're going to operate. Uh that we will be monitoring on a monthly basis, spending half of our time really dialed into are our children growing. Um and that is an important part to your point of the continuous improvement process of leading by example for that. Uh other reflections board members, superintendent, >> as I wait on um my board member to gather his thoughts, I'll share what jumped out to me and continuously jumps out is in regards of the continuous improvement strategy. So that tells me that

020it's not something fixed, but it's going to take all of us uh from where we are within our leadership at this particular point. And because we're monitoring it, we are collectively looking at the same thing. uh we could do well and not know why we're doing well. But when we talk about a continuous improvement strategy, that tells me even before we begin, we know what we're looking for, which is always important in regards of the the growth pattern. Any other reflections? So, one of the things that's been mentioned is that we're going to have to have monitoring reports. We're going to have to actually have data uh that is provided by the superintendent to the board that says, "Okay, here's exactly what your goal is. Here's where we were. Here's where we expect to be

021and and here's the reality of where we are in the middle uh at at this point." Uh but those monitoring reports there are certain rules that they have to abide by to actually be of quality so that you can do your job as board members. Uh and so if you want to jump down with me uh a couple sections to a section labeled effective monitoring reports uh if you uh take a moment and look through that uh read through that section and then we'll talk about it. We're going to go through this uh step by step to talk about what are effective monitoring, what are things that you as board members should be expecting are present in the monitoring reports uh when you receive them. So go ahead and read the section on effective monitoring

022reports, then we'll talk about it. What is the first criteria of effective monitoring reports and why does this matter? >> The goal. If the goal is not specific or in the interim goal being monitored, then you can't go forward from there. Like you have to know what you're monitoring. >> I realize that sounds super basic to folks, but trust and believe. I have seen so many monitoring reports where I looked at I was like, I have absolutely no idea what this thing is talking about because it just didn't clarify what is the goal, what are the interim goals we're actually looking at. And so you should expect to see that uh usually front and center at the very beginning of the monitoring report. Uh what's the second uh requirement of effective monitoring reports? >> The

023data. >> Say more about the data. Why does that matter? >> Well, it's going to be of the three previous reporting periods and preferably on a line graph, which means that it has to be the same source. So, you can't adjust the data that you're collecting or presenting based on like what makes you look good. It has to be the agreed upon data that has been outlined in the interim goals and and um to use as the backup for where we are at any given in any given monitoring report. >> Why do we encourage uh monitoring reports to include uh up to three previous reporting periods? Why do we encourage that? Anybody >> see the progress? Yeah, you're looking for a trend line as a board. You're trying to figure out does it look like

024this? Does it look like this? Let's hope that it doesn't look like this. But you're looking for a trend line. And and what's important about that is the that trend line. There should be some intuition in just about anybody's mind of like this probably means that something positive is happening. This is probably worrisome. this is probably uh means that we have some real problems that we need to ch tackle and it and that should and presenting the data that way should make it uh fairly easy for anyone in your community to interpret like you shouldn't need you know a PhD in instructional leadership to understand are we on you know is the data suggesting that you know we're moving the direction we need to move or not um and so that's why you want the

025previous reporting period so we can see a trend but it's you want them presented in a way that it makes it easy and accessible for the largest swath of your community as possible. Other thoughts about the data? Anybody else? Other thoughts about >> maybe a question or a thought. I mean once we get fully into it that you would have three quarters of data for that specific goal but once we start in the very beginning we may not have specific data at I mean there'll be data but it's not going to be directed as specific to the goal because we wouldn't have been running the superintendent wouldn't have been chasing that goal down. >> So it depends on what your interim goals are. Um, and some of your interim goals, even before your goals were

026adopted, you've already been these are these are data sources you've already been collecting. But there's probably some of your interim goals and almost certainly some of your interim guard rails. It's going to be brand new data collections and so absolutely there the administration will present whatever data is available and there may not be three data points available. The first data point they provide for you may be in the spring, you know, the very first time a new assessment comes online. Um, and so that's certainly the case is that when you're first starting this out, uh, it may be a little anomalous to begin with as new data is collected, but once you're in the swing of things, you absolutely want to be able to see that trend line as soon as that data exists. >>

027Other reflections about the data um, and I certainly want to encourage staff if you have particular insights on this since you all are living in this world, uh, feel free to, you know, raise your hand or chime in on something. I know you all have been kind of going through uh you know Carol and I have been putting you through your paces on this stuff and so if there's something you feel like would be for the benefit of the board feel free to jump in. Other reflections on the data. Thank you AJ. in regard to setting the annual targets. So if we have for instance an interim goal that is three or four years out and it's a responsibility of the superintendent and the staff to determine what those annual targets would be. Do you

028find because that's going to then determine if the particular data collection point in the reporting period is above the line or below the line. Do you find sometimes that the staff has to come back after that first or second reporting period and re-evaluate the overall initial prediction of where they thought they would be or is there guidance that you would give to that conversation on the front end before annual targets are set? >> Yeah, let me start uh at the top of the ORC chart on this one. Board members, I think it was last month you adopted your goals and guardrails. U and excellent. So you are off and running. If you bear anything in common with your colleagues around the country, sometime in the next nine months, you're going to look at those goals

029and guards like if I knew then what I know now and and have thoughts about, you know, is there something we should tweet? Like is this exactly what we meant? Is this capturing exactly what we intended? Like those things will come up in your mind. This is a normal thing. Like I said, this happens with most of your colleagues across the country. This is a very normal line of inquiry that comes up. And so don't be surprised uh when that's the case. Staff often have a similar experience is you'll get nine months in, you'll get a few monitoring reports and it's like, you know what, this really isn't as strong of a set of data as we thought it would be. Um and it's not going to be as predictive. It's not going to provide

030the board with the quality of insights that we originally thought. Absolutely. That is a normal thing that comes up. So that that experience happens. just everybody buckle up. That's normal. There's nothing unusual about it. That's just how these things go. It's the learning process. It's why we call it continuous improvement. The second part of your question though is really, okay, so if we have that experience, what do we do about it? U sometimes our coaching is going to be do absolutely nothing about it. Stay the course. Um that that'll often be our coaching. Uh but sometimes if the result of your insight is that we're actually just providing like objectively bad data to the board uh then our encouragement is going to be you need to go have that conversation with the superintendent and then

031superintendent if you agree then you're going to have to have that conversation with the board. Now there are kind of rules to this game. The moment the superintendent comes to the board and says, "I want to modify some of the interim goals," that opens the door for the board to say, "Yeah, well, maybe we want to modify some of the goals." Um, and so that is a pretty serious thing to unleash. And so staff, I wouldn't bring that forward unless it this is absolutely necessary that we make this change because we're just giving the board really bad data. Uh but if it's just data that you don't like as much as other data that's available, our coaching is probably going to be stay the course. Other questions or reflections about the data in monitoring reports?

032Questions or reflections about the data? >> And just to be clear, what we mean by bad data is like maybe this isn't predictive. We don't mean data that happen to not meet the target. That's a different sort of problem. So by bad data we mean gee this isn't the metric we thought it was. >> Okay. >> Yeah. Thank you for that. Uh whether the data is telling you the things that you would hope to see is not relevant to my points. I the board needs to receive the data the good, the bad or the ugly. Uh but if the staff figures out, okay, this interim goal is not actually predictive of this goal. We thought that they were aligned and now in practice we realize they're not aligned. That is a different story. >> I

033was going to ask that because like how you get data for the interim goal that could that in theory could change if that was part of the evidence in the plan. Like we needing different data for this interim goal. That's different than saying the interim goal is not predictive of the goal. So the superintendent could change like I don't know another thing that would be NWA. But if all of a sudden NWA wasn't providing the information they needed, the superintendent opt to change how they got data for the interim goal. >> That's a a very appropriate example. >> Okay. >> Or if or if a new version of your state assessment comes out um and there's absolutely no predictive quality between NWA and your state assessment, that's another thing that would certainly trigger uh concern

034from your staff appropriately. So, and we've actually seen that happen where the state the nature of the state assessment shift was so significant that the board contemplated a request from the superintendent for a change of interims because of that. So, yeah, there there are it's not >> that would be part of the monitoring port down at evidence and plan of like, hey, this isn't going the way I thought it was and this is the plan moving forward or something. >> Other questions, reflections about the data in monitoring reports? I've got you. Um, so in terms of like the targets, so the annual targets and deadline targets, um, I do like that model, um, because it kind of helps to refresh us, um, where we're headed. Um, it reminds us what our goals are, um, pertaining

035to each of the data points that we're going to be looking at. Um, and then just just the clarity of it as well. So having the same kind of report every time um just with different data I think is is going to help um just everybody involved. >> Yeah. It brings down the mental load for board members so you're not spending all your time trying to parse through uh a dissertation's worth of obscure reports. But no, okay, we've seen this before. Now I just need to connect the dots to come bring us up to the present. Um, and that is just a it makes it a lot easier for me as a board member to really make meaning of the data rather than spend all my time waiting through the data. Absolutely. The next step

036in effective monitoring reports is the interpretation. What is the interpretation and why does this matter? Um, and this is probably the part that is most often kind of misunderstood or confused by boards. Um, and so why do you like if you already have the data, why do you need the superintendent's opinion about what the data means? What's what's the interpretation and why does this matter? >> It's her plan. It's the board's goals, but she's in charge of implementing the programming to go along with it. And so the board gets to determine whether they think the data is moving us in the right direction trend-wise. But we need the interpretation from the person who's the expert on that. >> So it's definitely helpful to have an expert interpretation of the data. Like you have your own

037interpretation of the data which you can build from uh just looking at the line graph but it's helpful to know if the your expert is seeing the same things that you're seeing or if you're seeing the same things she's seeing. Certainly. Uh why else? Why would the inter why would it it matter to have the interpretation with the superintendent of what she believes system performance is relative to the goal? Yeah. >> Let you know if you the board and the super he wasn't talking. I'm sorry. >> I'm sorry. Sorry. It does not uh does not uh say this and I really hadn't heard this but it is also uh relays a message to your constituency that your your bigger audience your bigger deci uh your gives confidence to your district that we're going in the

038right direction. So your superintendent is the person that would carry that message out that the district is going in the right direction. >> Yeah. If your school system is actually improving, even if that's not immediately apparent to everybody in the community, knowing that from the office of the superintendent, it's like actually I do have a view of the full set of data. um and looking at it from the big picture, I absolutely do see that yes, we are making growth. That's a valuable thing to communicate. Or if the superintendent says, "I have the big picture um and we're not yet making growth, but I've got a plan that's going to get us on track to cause growth." Like, that's a powerful message for a superintendent to to send. Um and that as a board, you

039want to hear that from your superintendent. You want to know from them their professional perspective on that. Anybody else? Why does interpretation matter? >> I'm going to add the importance for me as superintendent to understand because this isn't just me. This is the entire organization and as I uh help hold others accountable. Uh I need to be able to understand next steps. uh and I share so often as the visionary as a system uh li you know builder I have to turn to those who are doing the work and if I can't explain it to them I promise you we will not be moving and so it's very important that I can speak in regards of if we're doing well or if we're not because others evaluations also aligned to this work and so how

040can I then turn and evaluate someone else if I don't understand it this is pivotal in regards of the leader understanding so then I can then uh help the others also understand because from the boardroom to the classroom this is the work but I could actually bottleneck it if I don't take the moment and be able to explain it also. But I'm also a big enough girl to also say, "Hey, come here. What does this say to you?" And we become one in regards of our thinking because this isn't once again me. This is me hearing from the board once the board has heard from the community in regards of what they value for this community in regards of education. So I must understand it so that others can then um help with the work.

041>> Yeah, this is a you all don't have this problem uh because you chose an instructional leader for your superintendent. Um, but we work with boards where the superintendent can't explain the data, can't explain the instructional strategies. Uh, and just to be blunt, that tends to be problematic. Like if if your chief executive can't describe here's where we are, here's where we're trying to get to, and here are the strategies we're going to roll out to make sure our teachers have the support they need, our principles have the support they need. If your superintendent can't explain that, that's that's an issue. not an issue I expect you all will encounter uh but an issue that far too many school districts encounter um and so knowing that the superintendent is fully you know versed in the

042data and has arrived at a meaningful interpretation of it that she can communicate that's an important part of this process uh just to give you a heads up for most districts uh the superintendent's interpretation normally comes in the form of like a red yellow green indicator like my view as a superintendent of system performance is that we are red we are absolely absolutely not on track uh for what we intend or we're yellow. We're kind of there but we're not there yet. Or green. Yeah. All of our predictive data says that you we are going to get to where we intend to be. Or sometimes it's text based instead of color based. It'll it'll literally say, you know, we're on track, off track, partially off track, things like that. Or sometimes it's numerically based or

043maybe it's three stars, five stars. Whatever the superintendent provides, there should be some clear indicator of this is these are the different status that I could uh put forward as uh my interpretation and of those this is the one that represents where I believe where I believe system performance is today. Um that is important information. You want as a board your superintendent literally to be predicting the future of your organization. Uh why do you want her to be able to predict school system performance in the middle of the year? Why is that so important? >> You start working on budget for the next year. So if you're having to change where your alignment is and you also want to know if you need to change curriculum or anything else if you're if you've purchased something

044that's not working, this is that's the time in the spring and that early summer is where they're moving through that. >> Yeah. If the superintendent doesn't know what the performance looks like in the middle of the year, by the time she figures it out, it's going to be too late to make meaningful changes uh either for the current year and even for the following year. Absolutely. And then the final uh piece of effective monitoring is the evidence and plan. The evidence and plan. Uh what is that section? Why does it matter? >> Goal is just a goal. if there's no plan to attain it. So at some point >> board members, why does that section matter that you have that in your monitoring reports that you receive from your superintendent, there is clearly evidence that's

045uh indicating and supporting the superintendent's interpretation and some type of plan to be responsive uh to what superintendent's describing. Why does that matter? Board members, talk to me. So I keep thinking about uh the word system and kind of you've also said school system >> um as a as a whole and so I mean it is it is uh I think providing clarity that our superintendent um knows the framework in place right now. So it could be the curriculum, it could be the teams that we have, it could be the people, maybe the skills on our leadership team um and many more things. uh maybe even our our students um the cultures in different schools and how all of this plays into what is going on with our data. >> Um and being able to

046be adaptable and if there's something that is within her purview to change um >> she can she can have a plan. And so if she knows exactly what her tools are in the toolbox, then um we can see maybe what what the future's going to hold. >> Yeah. The thing about the plan is that you want to ensure this is where we go back to the thing we discussed earlier that it's sufficiently aggressive to uh address whatever the current reality is for students. Like if you are pretty close to being on track, then I'd expect a plan that describes, yeah, our strategies are working. We're going to have to ramp them up a little bit, but this is going to get us where we need to go. Um, if she has everything indicated as red

047as her interpretation, then I would expect something that uh something in the plan that speaks to her belief that everything is far far far from what your intention is. Um, so as you're reading through the plan, that is a judgment call that the boards are making like is this sufficiently aggressive? uh to match the current reality of our students. Uh any other questions or reflections about the monitoring report and the four elements of an effective monitoring report? Any other questions or reflections? >> I have a question. So in the number four, the evidence in the plan, this would be and I'm just going to throw out like for a post-secondary goal, you're like this is where you'd say, you know, we know our metrotech relationship is not where it needs to be. And so our

048strategic respon like one of our responses to the fact that we're not getting there, we're gonna bolster the relationship we have with Metro Tech and ensure that those communic you know on the school level it's happening at all of our secondary campuses or something like that. It's very specific. It's going to have specific strategies like increase focus on our metrotech relationship to is that >> Yeah. So >> part of this process is your administration u in addition to the board adopting the goals and guardrails. The administration uh the superintendent adopting a set of interim goals and interim guardrails. Then she works with her staff uh which in this case as of this week is um making its way not only to the principles but also to the assistant principles works with them to identify what

049are the initiatives that we're going to use what are the the specific strategies and inputs that we're going to deploy to try to accomplish the interim goals that we believe will be predictive of accomplishing the goals. And so what you'd probably expect to see in the monitoring report is uh some type of root cause analysis. Hey, this is the strategy. this is the initiative we deployed that we believe was going to get us there, but actually we've actually gone through and evaluated. We recognized that these two key aspects of the strategy actually never got implemented. Um, and so we're not going to give up on this initiative yet. What we're going to do is as your superintendent, I'm going to make sure we double down, get these things done. the next time we bring you

050this report, we will be implementing this initiative with you know fidelity and then we'll be able to see from the data is the initiative working or was did we just pick an initiative that wasn't uh well suited to the needs of our students to begin with. Uh so that type of conversation here's the strategies that we've invested in here's what's worked and what hasn't worked and in response to that here's what we're going to do next is essentially what you should expect to see. If if I may share, I'd like to go back and hone in a little bit in regards of the current reality and um piggyback off of what I heard um board member uh make state in regards of a sense of urgency. And when we look at that scoreboard, so to

051say, uh, depending if it's pre-season or if it's third or fourth quarter, um, would be in regards of what to expect our next steps to be. So knowing where we are in comparison will be significant in regards of how we monitor and what we do next in regards of where we are in the game itself. And so I wanted to highlight that as you say current reality for me that's our scoreboard our dashboard of whatever it is from transportation to food service academics where are we in the game makes a difference of collectively what our next steps will be. >> Let the record show it only took Dr. Pulk 40 minutes to make a basketball reference. I've been holding getting ready for Friday. >> Other reflections on effective monitoring reports before we transition? >> Just

052a clarifying question for me. Uh in the guidance it it references if not on track then it would be accompanied by a root cause analysis. in your opinion is a root cause analysis uh as part of the either the superintendent's interpretation or as part of the e the evidence um would you recommend having a root cause analysis even if the data is trending in a positive direction um so that the that it's clearly articulated to the board of maybe why the data is is so positive or do you recommend in the monitoring report just having the root cause analysis if It's not meeting expectation. >> Yes. So no matter what the data says, what this isn't indicative of is should the administration be doing its homework. So the admin so if I'm if I have

053your particular role in the organization, I'm doing a deep dive and running some type of root cause analysis. U regardless of what the data says, I want to know what worked and what didn't work, why it worked, why it didn't work, and everything in between. Now that being said, the requirement that this framework creates uh from the board to the administration is if things are not completely green then you have to absolutely show your work. Um but if everything is green that becomes uh decision of the superintendent. Most of our superintendents just keep it in there as just a normal part of process that they show their work. But we have had some superintendents who have uh declined to include that um when everything was green. Um and I think for you know reasonable you

054know purposes largely trying to preserve the time of their staff uh is my suspicion. Um, and so what this so what this is not suggesting is should the administration be doing this type of work regardless of what the data says. I I would I would submit to you you should be doing your homework even when it's not required to show it to the board. But what this is saying is that the only time it's absolutely required that it be shown to the board. Imagine you pick a red, yellow, green indicators. If everything is green, this is saying it is not a requirement. Uh but if anything is not green, this is saying it is absolutely a requirement to show your work. >> I could only imagine uh board chair if we did have a a

055lot of green and things were going because I heard you make reference to finances. So and in previous coaching sessions we've talked about if something is going well and we were able to give an extra dollar to it, could we expect x amount of percentage to it? So I could when I heard you speak earlier that's where my mind went when you talked about that financial aspect. So when we talk about the evidence and looking at the scoreboard and if it is all green how do we repeat that for sustainability and add a little more and uh Miss Sethfield I'mma call you out and and ask you to explain a little bit more of that because we've had that conversation. So may I hear your voice? just where do we use that information to look

056for opportunities to also accelerate? Um, if it's working, we want to do more of what's working. And can we do more of what's working across a broader scope or at a more rapid pace to close gaps um even more intentionally for our students? >> Yeah. And and really the best way to know that is you're going to have to somebody would have to run some type of analysis to figure out, okay, things are green. Now, we need to figure out why things are agreed. Uh, you wouldn't just want to assume that you you would want to do some amount of analysis on that. Um, which probably would include some type of root cause analysis or something of that nature. >> I just think that's great feedback. We ask our principles to do root cause analysis

057on 90-day plans. Yeah. Um, to identify their big rocks and problems of practice. But, um, what a great piece for us to Adam to add that piece when they're having success around goals that they've set. >> Yeah. Other reflections on effective monitoring reports uh before we transition a >> question one. So when the monitoring report report comes to us for said goal, does that come when the agenda comes out to you? So if it's three or four weeks ahead of time and does that fall into the same category of like you've had this monitoring report given to you for seven days you have to ask the questions they have seven days to give it and does that fall into that same category is one qu is a question >> so we're going to move on

058to the section about effective >> then move on back up then I got another go back up >> effective board member participation >> so then on the root cause analysis I've had the privilege of serving on a board during 100 year pandemic. If you don't know what is going right and something 100, it happens every 100 years. It could totally turn you red. But if you hadn't done that root cause analysis and presented that when things were green, it would be really hard to go back to the public and say >> it's that guy's fault >> because you hadn't said what was going right that that disrupted. >> Yeah. >> Just a thought. >> Absolutely. >> Yeah. The please. Well, and just on track or off track, part of when we get deeper into this

059document, we're going to talk about what are appropriate questions and what's working and what's not working will come up either way because part of what you're doing is making sure that the superintendent that you as a board are doing is making sure the superintendent has a handle on what's happening because you know it's possible not in this case but that it's working and they don't really know why. And that's almost as problematic as if it's not working. So that will come up. So you can't really avoid it to some extent. >> We often talk to about telling our story and helping to show our taxpayers where their money is going and what the plan is for the money. and that effective that monitoring piece the plan and the plan and the uh I went blank

060on my evidence it will lead our our constituents to the conversation that needs to be had which is about outcomes for students and to me that's the number one reason in my mind is number one is students learn number two is that we continue the process of saying this is why we exist We only exist to educate students, scholars. >> And to me, that's the biggest piece of the effective monitoring reports for me. >> Which brings us to effective board member participation. So, if you want to jump down, uh, superintendent, you'll probably notice there's a section with your name on it. Uh, you and your team will want to read that. Uh, but for right now, we'll jump down to the effective board member participation section. Uh if you can take a moment and read

061through that section, then we'll talk about it. What's jumping out at you about effective board member participation in the monitoring conversation? What's jumping out at you? >> Yeah. to do your homework. And that goes without saying. If if you're not reading the agenda before the meeting when it's published a couple of weeks before for us to read and then you come to the table with a question that's not even on the agenda, this is the same practice. You should know what's what's on this calendar. You should know what the goal is for that month. You should know what we're doing. You should know what the superintendent has to say about it. You should have read it and know it. Do your homework. >> And this and your monitoring report should come to you far in

062advance just like the rest of your uh you all have indicated you want all of your uh information for your meetings. How far in advance? We haven't officially got there, but per your book, it was three, like we were supposed to have an agenda prep right after the business meeting. So, you'd have that whole 3 to four weeks depending on the calendar. >> Yeah, we recommended somewhere from 7 to 14 days in advance of meetings. Um, and I've got a strong bias myself on the 10 to 14 days rather than the 7 to 10 days. Uh, but you need to have all of your information for board for any items that the board's going to discuss or consider. should have that 7 to 14 days in advance. >> I think we're already at 14 days,

063aren't we? Real close. Yeah, we're there. >> Yeah, >> we started backing it up. >> And >> we did. Yeah. >> And when that happens, then it empowers board members doing their homework. It empowers uh the board to hold that as an expectation. It's one thing to expect that when you gave me 24 hours to actually read through a 500page board packet, like that's just not reasonable. But if you've given me 14 days, then now it's on me. And I you have a perhaps a better board chair than I was. Uh because I was ruthless with mine. Uh if board members showed up not having actually read the information, submitted questions in advance, been prepared to participate. Yeah. I I just ask them flat out. Would they ask questions already been answered? Like like that's

064already been asked answered. Did you Did you prepare for this meeting? Did you read the materials? What were you doing last week instead of loving children? like those are the questions that I would ask. Um, and it made it very clear. Like I said, I'm I'm not as kind of a human as your board chair is. Like, but it was important to me that folks take the business of our children seriously. >> Um, and that does mean that you have to do your homework. You have to prepare that there is work outside of these meetings. itself. U as long as the board is receiving its information well in advance, again somewhere in 17 to 14 days, uh you will get to the point where we'll do some work with you all around your uh policies

065and uh our encouragement is that you will codify that and just make it plain for your administration. This is exact timeline we expect. But once you have that, you know, in black and white, now it's on the board members to actually do the work to love on children by doing the homework before the meeting, not at the meeting. >> And may I take this opportunity to give a special thank you to the staff members who have adjusted and to be prepared two weeks in advance. Uh that's not an easy undertaking. And so when they have done that, got the information in a timely manner for the board clerk to ensure he does his due diligence, I don't want anyone to think, boy, that was easy. >> It was a major adjustment for us. We're going

066to continue to do even to the point where we have protocols now in place that what can go on the agenda if it's beyond that window of time. if it can wait till the next meeting, it must wait. So, I just want to because we're talking about doing your homework, there's some pre-work that's going on that I do not want this team to not um get acknowledged for making that shift. And it wasn't easy. >> It's a tough shift. It's a really tough shift. >> Thank you. >> Yes. I also like that it it's the keep the conversation going and not gotcha. I mean, this is not the board trying to like, aha, you did not meet this interim goal and therefore you're like, this is we're all in this together and this is a

067conversation and if you know we have a monitoring, if we're talking about a um specific goal, I mean, we're not here to prove the team wrong. We're here to um review the information, listen to what the the district um has to say, and to be in conversation with them about um their next steps and making sure that we're all still on the same page about the urgency that we have um on behalf of our students and community about getting to the goals. But this isn't a game of gotcha. I think it's nice to see it written down that that's not what this is. This is um you know a cordial you know productive conversation that will be ongoing for 5 years. >> Yeah. You can hold a superintendent accountable without it being a nasty conversation.

068>> Yeah. >> Like it it doesn't have to be hostile and nasty. It it does have to be direct. It does have to be clear. It does it won't be it won't involve sugar coating. uh like and whatever the data is, the data is and you're going to have to have a conversation about it, good, bad, or ugly. But even you know, if the data says things that just break your heart and it's not yet what you want, that doesn't mean you have to be, you know, nasty about the conversation, >> uh just because you are going to have a very direct conversation about accountability because you are going to then have to ask superintendent, got it. This data is absolutely not at all uh what we've expected. U what is your plan? uh how

069did we get here? What's not working? What did you try that hasn't worked? What did you learn from that? And then what is your plan to do next? And we'll have this we'll pick this conversation up again in a few months when we have this exact same monitoring report all over again. But you can do that without uh that is very direct and very accountability oriented uh without it being hostile and nasty. You can create a a a space of accountability and psychological safety at the same time. It's a big difference between I got you feeling and I got you. >> And so I I share that with my chair and board so often. I can lead because of their leadership. So it's they hold me accountable. Please note, but it's not a I got

070you Jamie. It's hey, we got you. Let me see your leadership and so be it. So I I get when you say Lori, it's not I got you. It's not. I feel they have me in regards of to ensure I'm taking care of students. Um and so thank you all for that. >> And from a legal standpoint, I mean, the superintendent is an employee of the district and there are employment rights. And so, you know, true like, you know, if you're having a conversation about employment, that has to happen in executive session. There's privacy stuff. If it's a conversation about goals, it's not about whether I liked Jaime's jacket today. It's about goals. If I wanted to wear a different jacket, we got to talk about personnel stuff and personnel stuff. But I'm just saying

071like that's I think that really needs to be clear because that is where you could start a a superintendent churn and you really then you become it's adult centered at that point. The media picks it up. Board and superintendent are fighting again. Of course they are. And it leaves away from what we're trying to focus on which is student outcomes. And so to me that's what I took from it is it's not about liking it. It's really about is the information being presented in the way that we've all agreed it would be presented and is it directly related to the goal. >> Yeah. >> The interim goal. >> Yeah. You are evaluating the system performance. This is and it because the superintendent's evaluation each year is also based on the exact same data set. You

072are in fact simultaneously doing a formative assessment of the superintendent and it is happening in public. But the distinction you make is an important one is that the nature of this conversation is going to be explicit to and limited to discussions about system performance. If folks want to have a conversation that is specific to uh uh opinions about superintendent performance, that would be appropriate for a closed session, not an open session. Um but the superintendent's evaluation is explicitly based on this data. And so you are effectively having a formative evaluation of the superintendent in public because you're talking about the data that she'll be evaluated on. But there's a difference between talking about system performance and making uh statements that describe your attempt to assess the superintendent and performance and things of that nature. uh

073as a board chair, you should simply call those things out of order um and decide whether or not you're going to put them on a closed closed session agenda at a future meeting. >> Yeah. And we can move further down that even if it's that reading is that we're not we're in red red on reading fourth grade reading. It's not a time to be like we told you not to hire so and so. That's not the time for that either because that's well outside our purview as well. >> And so I I just want to say that out loud because I think sometimes that it if you don't really monitor how the conversation is and what the boundaries of the conversation are, we can go down some really slippery slopes of just >> not being

074a professional board. Quite honestly, >> the one other thing that I'd point out about effective board member participation u is under the do your homework section, it does contemplate the board members are submitting questions in advance, uh particularly technical and tactical questions, which we'll talk about a little bit more here in a few moments. And so if you are not submitting questions in advance, there's a good chance that you are not actually if you're not submitting technical and tactical questions particularly in advance, if those are showing up in the board meeting, then there's a good chance you are absolutely not doing your job as a board member. U and so the more that you can provide the superintendent with heads up on the technical and tactical questions by submitting them advance, the more you set

075your superintendent up for success. Other questions or reflections on effective board member participation before we move on? >> Yeah, >> I've got some uh Yeah, and um and I did want to just say also congratulations to the district on uh that shift in terms of being prepared for board meetings. I mean, getting that agenda out there. I mean, I noticed it and I noticed it because I started preparing a week in advance before a meeting as opposed to like the weekend before. Um, and when I felt that, I really was like, "Wait, the board meeting is in two weeks now. What's going on?" That was really good. So, that that was good. That was good. Um, the tactical questions. Um, yeah, I'm very intrigued about that. Um, and being able to just what what you

076said, love on children and do your homework. oftentimes as my uh in my role right now um I often have thought about man like why why are we dealing with just so much uh so so many adult problems you know and and um but I am willing and I and I've realized this I am willing to deal with these adult problems if it means that our kids are getting the best education they could possibly get and they can continue to be kids. Um and then the last one uh don't offer advice. Um, I think this uh training has been very clear on what a board member's role versus what a superintendent's role is. Um, because I mean I've heard of heads clashing on school boards because superintendents or um board members might have differing opinions

077about what should be happening or not um in terms of the strategies for the system. And um I think it's it's pretty important to point out that I mean we are actively trying to define these roles and um staying in our lane. >> Other reflections on effective board member participation before we transition. >> So there's been a couple of times that questions have been asked over several years of that. Well, I I I sent the question or asked the question, I got the answer, but I want to ask the question again at the horseshoe and I want to get the answer again so that my public can see that I asked the question and got the answer. And that that's feels like for lack of a better maybe a little grandstanding, but it I don't

078know if it's really does that count towards minutes if you've already got the answer for student outcomes. What's your thought on that? >> Yeah, so we generally So, first an important point to make. Pretty much any question the board members ask is probably in bounds. If board members are curious about it, that they probably uh need to receive an answer to it. Um, pretty much any question is in bounds. So, the main things that we're talking about in this training today is recognizing that everything has its appropriate time, place, and season. And that for some things the board meeting is that and for some things the board meeting is not. So if I'm curious about are we using 8 oz bottles of water or 10 oz bottles of water that doesn't feel like a very

079strategic conversation to me. But if I care about that as a board member then I have every right to ask it and expect a response. And so there's so the the message here because I want to I want to dive into exactly what you just asked, but the message here is not that there are some questions that board members get to ask and others they don't. Board members can ask whatever questions they want, but there is a time and place. There's a season for these things. The board meeting room, board meeting time generally needs to be reserved for strategic conversations. If I want to know if we're using 8 oz bottles of water, 10 oz bottles of water, that doesn't feel like a very strategic conversation to me. U and frankly, if I was the

080board chair, I would say, "Excellent. That sounds like a really interesting tactical question. Uh madam superintendent, could you uh put something in a Friday update and send that out to all board members? Who has the next question?" And I'd keep it moving. And the reason I'd handle it that way is cuz I wouldn't want to send the message that the question that the board members don't get to ask whatever questions they want. But I would want to send the message that there's just a time, place, and a season for them. Um, in the board meeting, you really want to preserve the very limited time you have with board members in the room and around the table. You really want to preserve that for strategic conversations, not diving into minutia type situations. It's for this reason

081that we distinguish between technical, tactical, and strategic questions. and we'll provide this document to you. We probably sent it out before, but we'll send it out again. Um, but we want to distinguish between technical questions, tactical questions, and strategic questions. So, when we talk about technical questions, what we're really talking about is trying to understand how something is measured. Uh, if somebody says, I want to know, you know, what are the psychometric properties of this particular assessment? That's a very technical question. And if board members are curious about that, they deserve an answer. But I wouldn't encourage board members to spend their time in the board meeting on that only because it's not a very strategic question. It's technical and if board members need to know it. Our coaching is send that in um and

082somewhere offline, however that's handled, it'll be handled, but it's not something I'd spend time at a board meeting on. Those are technical questions. They're about trying to understand how something is measured. Then there are tactical questions. Those are trying to understand how something is done. uh you know you know which staff have done A and C and which buildings have gone through X Y and Z. These really feel more like tactical questions. They're really trying to understand, you know, who implemented what, when, where, and why. And again, if a board member wants to know those things, I'd say the board member has a right to know those things. But I wouldn't indulge tactical conversations in a board meeting only because you want to preserve the time of the board meeting for strategic conversations. Strategic conversations

083are really about trying to understand what is the alignment between this strategy and our likelihood of accomplishing our priorities. That that's what strategic conversations about. It's really getting at the heart of here's what we're doing. Uh what is the alignment that exists between what we're doing and the likelihood of accomplishing the priorities that our community has given us. Those are strategic conversations and you want to spend as much of your time in the board meeting in strate in in strategy mode and as little amount of time in technical and tactical mode as possible. Let me pause for a second and ask why is that our coaching? Why is it our coaching that boards really want to spend as much of their time when they're together uh in strategic mode and having strategic dialogue um rather

084than spending their time together in technical or tactical dialogue? Why do you think that's our coaching? Anybody? Why does it matter? Is it just word soup that we're making up or is does this actually matter for a reason? >> Hey, what you thinking over there? >> Yeah, me. >> I don't know how to verbalize it, but it feels like we're just trying to stay in our lane and our oversight. So, like I'm not an educator by trade. I can't speak to whether one set of curriculum or another is appropriate for a certain demographic. Um, or if that was a good investment for us. Um, but what I can do is I can look at the data and the goals in comparison and have these conversations and be curious about are we heading in the right

085direction? Are we doing the best we can do by our students? And so it feels more like yes, it's fine if we're curious about these technical and tactical topics, but we're kind of out here spinning our wheels because what does the answer mean? Like am I going to be able to change anything for it? No, I can't because that's not my role as a board member. Yeah, your strategic conversations to exactly to your point are going to lend themselves to the oversight function that is in fact your job where the technical and tactical will often tend to if if you're going to spend half an hour in technical tactical questions, you're almost certainly engaging in management work. Certainly. Anybody else? Why why do we why is it our coaching that the board focus its time

086when it's together in the body on strategic matters rather than technical and tactical matters? I started thinking back to a couple of questions I've asked during board meetings and they've been technical or t tactical and it's good I didn't know >> you know I I ask about uh why do we have touchscreen computers instead of just regular old whatevers and >> feels very tactical. >> Yeah. So I now I see the difference and and what we should be focusing on is the understanding. >> Yeah. Did the investment in onetoone devices actually move literacy rates? That that's a question that makes sense that you might want to know are should we be using you know Android or iPhone? uh this is this is tactical stuff like I don't know that that's going to help you understand

087your oversight function of are we moving the needle on student performance >> just to add one thing about that our coaching is if you have the technical or technical tactical questions ask them and get them answered in writing ahead of time and those answers go to the entire board. So, say to be um using examples in a monitoring report, you get the data on third grade reading and you're wondering what the participation rate, how many students actually participated in this assessment. Technical question >> worth asking. >> Yeah. >> You ask it ahead of time. The superintendent responds in writing and >> Everybody gets it. So, everybody knows, oh, it was a 90% participation rate or it was a 60% participation rate. then you expect to understand, have a conversation about that because that's probably something

088that's going to raise a red flag and it's worth knowing. So, um it's the ask the question, get it answered in writing because you've got this window now and then everybody is operating from the same knowledge base in terms of having the answer. And I think um to your question, Chair Lewis, um about the asking and answering again, part of what getting it asking it and getting it in writing allows um a particular board member to be able to share with their constituency. I did ask that question. I got it answered. The participation rate was 95%. So we don't have to worry about or whatever, you know, if it comes up in the context of their constituency. For myself, I I respect the technical and tactical, but I am always looking for the strategic aspect

089because each board member brings uh their constituents voices and and if I'm to um honor the values and the vision of the community in which the the board has set for um not only myself but the entire district, I want to use that time for what's next, not what went on. So for me, as I'm listening in in the board, please note we have after action of the board meetings themselves because we're continuously trying to get better. So when I can have a a strategic uh viewpoint, it helps the organization, it helps staff, and 100% it helps students. I get we need the technical, I get we need uh the tactical, but when it's more strategic, that puts us into action. Um not just to be hearing something difference for me. One more thing I'd

090say to you as board members u as you know the board collectively being the employer of the superintendent. What is the cost? And so I want you to think board members as as the employer in this role. What is the cost if your superintendent knows every technical and tactical answer to every question you ask? What is the cost? Why would that actually probably be a very bad thing? Why don't you want your superintendent to know the answer to every technical and tactical question? >> We are wasting our money if our superintendent is in the weeds with all of these little minutia because she is not trusting her cabinet to do their jobs. Um and so we lose sight of the bigger goals. >> Yeah. So step one, it's a real waste of resources to be

091paying her what you're paying her to be kneede into like why does she have a team at all? Anybody else? Boy bibers, why don't you want your superintendent to know every technical and tactical detail? >> You actually don't want her to. Why >> she her the superintendent's job is to be the chief executive officer. So to lead the into the the vision that is set by the board and there's no way to operate at that level and be in the community as much as she would need to be make the relationships she needs to have and be able to move bigger needles and create bigger partnerships that are good for student outcomes if she's worrying about whether it's an eight or a 10 oz bottle. There's just no way. Every moment she spends being a

092technician and tactician is a moment she does not spend being a strategist. You are hiring her to be your educational strategist for your school system. And every moment she spends digging deeper into the technical details of what's happening in every single classroom, what's happening with every single assessment is time that she's not spending. There's opportunity cost in that. And so the cost is you just have less strategic leadership. For that reason, you actually undermine your desire for strategic leadership when you ask her technical and tactical questions during the board meeting because then she feels like she has to spend time preparing for technical and tactical questions because she doesn't want to look like she's not doing her job. She doesn't want to look like she's not on top of things. And so she will instead

093of spending her time being your chief strategist, you will encourage her by asking those questions in board meetings to divert her energy away from being your chief strategist to be fluent in every technical and tactical area that you keep asking about. Whereas if you submit those questions via email and say, "Hey, could you could you give me a sense for this?" What's she more likely to do? She's going to send it to her technicians and tacticians and say, "Hey, get this answer. Get it back to me because I'm going to send it to the board on Friday." Uh, this is what we mean when we say board members can ask whatever questions they want. Our our coaching is not to try to squash board member inquiry, but it is to say that there is a

094time, a place, and a season uh for each. And the and the season for strategic questions is really right here in this room. And the season for technical and tactical questions is generally everywhere else other than this room. >> For strategy to be driven by the board or to be directed by the board, the board has to be in quorum because the board can only speak >> with the majority of the members voting in the boardroom. >> Yep. >> And so if we spend the time, we don't take actions on technical and tactical items other than to improve the incumbrance. And that's only over if it's over a set amount of money. >> Yep. >> So we have no actionable item to take on that. >> But strategy we do because that's policy and oversight.

095>> Uh as this comes up more uh particularly board members but also staff as these issues comes up. This is what we're here for. Never hesitate if if you've got a curiosity. You're welcome to send us 10 questions. Hey AJ Carroll, is this is this a technical question or tactical? just I I think it's strategic, but I don't know. And we will we love that email. We love love love that email. So when when board members send that um send it as often as you feel like you need to to be set up for success >> and you know I might even clarify that a little bit in ter uh chair Lewis really the board's role is governing for outcomes is monitoring outcomes but in order to and supervising the superintendent. So the the the

096reason the strategy is important is because you need to have confidence that she's got the right strategies in place. So really it's almost like kicking the tires on the superintendent. Does she really have a handle on this? Does she have a strategy to close the gap or does she have the um a strategy for um amplifying that which is working? Um, so it that's kind of the the the the purpose of limiting it to strategic questions is because that's why you're doing it. >> Other questions or reflections on technical versus tactical versus strategic questions on reflections on that before we transition. >> Yeah. >> Yes. I'm thinking about the Yeah. Just the efficiency of our board meetings and how we are considering we're counting every single minute. Um, and so the technical and tactical questions

097I'm, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm kind of thinking that those are more homework questions. And, uh, the strategy or the strategic questions, um, those questions are allowing our superintendent to perform her higher order functions. Um, and thinking about your question, I mean, what are what are the dangers of of asking those technical or or having her know all of the techn technicalities and tactical things about our district? Well, we're not giving her time to do the things that we hired her to do and to serve children in the best way we can. >> Yeah. The the preserving of superintendent time, by the way, is an important topic because of that poster right behind her head is one of the things that the board has said is we want to focus our time

098on student outcomes. And we challenge our superintendent to do the same thing. And so the superintendent has said, "I got you. I'm going to focus my time on creating systems around student outcomes and I'm going to challenge my team to do the same thing." And so then you see throughout the organization as she pushes that challenge deeper and deeper into the organization. But what it also means is that protecting the board's time for focus on student outcomes suddenly matters much more. But to your point, it also means now that protecting the superintendent's time so she could be focused on student outcomes now matters even more as well. Absolutely. So all of this is the conversation about kind of what would effective goal monitoring look like, but really goal monitoring is a conversation and it's a

099conversation between the board and the superintendent. And so you're going to be asking questions to the board and she's going to be answering questions. What that means is that the quality of those questions matters. And so what we're going to do, board members, you're going to want something to write on and some to write with. Uh you've got a document in front of you. You can just flip it over and write on the back. You can write on your notepad, whatever you want to do. We're going to actually practice writing some uh smart questions. Uh questions that are strategy focused, measure focused, askoriented, results focused, and time bound. We're going to practice writing some smart questions. Um, and then, uh, we'll also practice writing some, uh, I guess I'd say unsmart questions. Uh, we we'll

100figure it out. Um, but first, I'm going to describe what we mean by smart questions. When we talk about smart questions, we talk about questions first and foremost that are strategy focused. So, I think we've already kind of leaned into why this matters because we've talked about the technical versus the tactical versus uh, the strategic. And so when board members are asking questions during the monitoring reports, you want to ask questions that are strategy focused. The effective ineffective thing to do then would be to ask questions during the monitoring that are technical or tactical focused. Any questions about strategy focused questions rather than technical or tactical questions? We've kind of dug into that, but any other questions about that? So then the next thing is you want the questions to be measure focused. Are the

101questions actually referencing specific data that's in the monitoring report or the comments or questions focused on stuff that's not in the monitor? Why does why does it matter that your questions be measure focused? Why does that matter? Why does it matter that your questions actually focus on data that's in the report as opposed to data that's not in the report? Okay. I was I was I was like I don't understand that >> because it's relevant to our goals. I mean what and whatever is in the report. Um I mean that's that's what we got to ask questions about. >> If we're having a conversation about third grade literacy and somebody comes out of left field talk about, hey, I want to talk about are we using number two pencils or number three pencils? Like is

102that did I miss that? Is that in the report somewhere? No, that's not in the report. As a board chair, our coaching is you need to shut that down. That the season for asking questions that are not related to the monitoring report that are not measure focused is not during the monitoring conversation. That that there is a season for that, but it's not during the monitoring conversation. And so I say actually that doesn't sound measure focused. That that's that doesn't is there data about number two pencils in the monitoring? I didn't think so. All right. Uh madam superintendent, could you please answer that question in Friday update? Uh board members, let's move on. Who has a next question? And so you want them to be measure focused, actually focused on the data that's in the

103monitoring report as opposed to pulling stuff out of thin air. Board members, this sounds like it's nothing you would ever do. I guarantee you're all going to commit this sin at least once. So what the thing to be looking for is there are there's additional sources of information that I might have as a board member and that often I will want to pull those into the monitoring conversations. the superintendent talk about third grade literacy but I heard from my cousin Ray Ray you know XYZ about uh you know the the literacy curriculum so I want to pull that in the question is is that in the monitoring report if not then we say that's not measure focused uh leave that out ask that question feel free to ask that question this is just not the

104season for that question uh feel free to email it to the superintendent and you know ask her to respond in a Friday update or something any other questions about it being measure focused that's actually referencing data and metrics that's provided in the report. The next thing we want is to be askoriented. Is the question open or uh open-ended or is it yes no? Why do why do we want you to be asking open-ended questions as part of monitoring rather than yes no questions as part of monitoring? >> Promotes conversation. This actually gets back to the whole I got you versus gotcha situation. The gotcha questions sound like, "Hey, Mr. Superintendent, are are you going to do this? Yes or no?" It sounds like, you know, more of a deposition than a monitoring conversation. Um, and

105so we're we're looking for folks to ask to provide askoriented questions rather than uh closedended questions. We want questions that are results focused. This means questions that are really focused on understanding the data rather than providing your opinions about the data. If the conversation is all about blaming and shaming, this is not results focused. If it's about really understanding what the data is telling us and what the response to the data is, then we'd say this is results focused. Why does this matter? Carol, why does that matter? Why does it matter that you're asking questions that are focused on understanding the data rather than questions that are focused on blaming and shaming? Well, you really don't want to blame. I mean, that's that's obvious, but you want to understand what you're what you're seeing, what

106you're what you've been given. You want to you want to know that everyone else is understanding it also. So, that that would be and not an opinion. Why would you want an opinion? You want data. You want facts. You don't want an opinion. I also think what back to the like if we're trying to model the behavior, you know, if teachers and school leaders are watching our board meetings and they're watching how we the you know, again, we're being direct, we're holding the superintendent accountable, but we're asking open-ended dataf focused questions that are not blaming or shaming, then that's our expectation. I I hope that we're as a part of our effort to change the culture that that's showing modeling the kind of behavior that we hope the principal supervisors are modeling that we're hoping

107the school leaders are modeling with the teachers all the way down to the the classroom level. So that because you know once you blame and shame you just are shutting down. You're not there. You cannot move through this moment and figure out what's working, what's not and let's make a plan for the future. Yeah. And then the final step is when it time bound. This is an often misunderstood expectation is that questions be time bound. So what we actually recommend is that the large majority usually in the range of 80% of your questions during monitoring be focused on current and past performance rather than future performance. Why do we want the board during monitoring to have most of your questions talking about how we got here and only a small, you know, 10 some odd

108percentage of your questions, 15 20% of your questions focused on where are we going next? Why we recommend that questions be time bound? >> What are you thinking? >> I think it sets us up for failure because I'm not a fortune teller. I can't predict. But once you speak something from that day as uh and people will hold you accountable and I I want you to hold me accountable to the work not what I don't have control over. So now I can share and it it looks or it appears we're going in this direction but let me tell you how we got here and how I can repeat this for the next step. But I I've watched others and it it almost sets you up for failure because I can't predict the future. Pandemic could

109hit. Anything could actually throw you off of that trajectory. Let me tell you how I got here and what I anticipate to happen next. That's why I would keep that very narrow in regards of >> Well, isn't that about understanding still? You're you're you need to understand what we just what we did and why we did it. We can't like Superintendent um Pulk. Yeah. Let me look. Let me look. Let me look over here. Well, you know, I wanted to say Jamie, but I I wanted to be professional. >> Said we don't we're not fortune tellers, so we are truly trying to understand what we're seeing. the data. >> So >> if the question has to be based on data, the only data we have is what's current or in the past. >> You do

110not have data about the future. That is accurate. >> Yes. The plan for the future of how to move forward. That is in the monitoring port, but there would be no way to ask a data-driven question for the future, >> right? Yeah. You really want to use monitoring. And when you think about just the word monitoring, are you monitoring the past or monitoring the future? >> Past. >> Yeah. You're monitoring the past. So most of your questions are going to be where are we and and what led us here? What got us here? What worked? What didn't work? What have we learned about that? Like you want to have this really rich question. And only in the context of that can you then have a meaningful insight into okay now the superintendent based on all

111that is saying here's what she's going to do. And either it's clear that that matches up with all that we learned about what got us here or it's clear that that doesn't match up. It's like, wait a minute, but you said all this was what got us here and your next steps don't speak to that at all. Like, help me help me connect the dots. You want to spend the preponderance of your time, we say upward to 80 90% of your time really understanding the reality for children today and and what caused that reality as an access to having any meaningful intuition about okay, what should we do next and why? What there is for you to do next is you're going to create uh some uh smart questions. I'm going to have you practice

112creating one that is smart and one that is unsmart. Uh we provide you with this quick little reminder. We'll put it up here. And I give you one example of an effective uh question that meets all of our smart criteria. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And one example of a ineffective question that meets none of our criteria. What's the difference between these questions and why does that matter? As you read these two sample questions, what are you noticing? >> You're not going to get a headline with the first one. >> Say what? >> You won't get a headline with the first question for sure. >> Yeah. Yeah. The first one's kind of boring. You You're probably not going to get a whole lot of media attention. The second one's spicy. People love that second question.

113>> What are you noticing about the difference between these questions? Effective monitoring questions and ineffective questions. What are you noticing? >> Well, again, you know, just to the point where you're talking about the ineffective example is for is future focus like are you going to do that next semester? Whereas the effective one is trying to help understand the data that was provided and where the impact It's not an open-ended question. It It's either yes or no. If >> Yeah. It's >> basically saying, "Superintendent, what's wrong with you? Why didn't you do this? Are you going Are you going to do it now?" Yes or no? Like the these are just fundamentally not the questions that help you perform your oversight function. >> And some presentations lend more to a smart data driven question. It's open-ended.

114And I keep thinking about Jason's NWA presentation that there was no way not to ask a question that was driven by data because that's all we were looking at. But trying to make sense of what was up there led you to I don't understand what the purple and red is. Could you please tell me why the difference is there? Yeah. >> Like what does that mean for growth in fifth grade? You kind of led you that way. So sometimes I think a presentation can lead you to smart questions too. Yeah. >> Unless you just come in mad. What I want you to do, board members and superintendent and staff, you know, feel free to dive in on this one. Uh, what I want you to do is I want you to write one example of

115a uh effective question uh that's that meets all of our smart indicators and write one example of an ineffective question that meets none of our smart indicators. Have fun. >> Write one example of an effective question, a question that meets all five of our indicators. Write one example of an ineffective question, the fun part of the activity, that meets none of our five indicators. Staff, feel free to play along. Exactly. All right. Uh who will be the first to share? Let's start with effective examples. So I'm going to give an effective example of a uh monitoring convers of a monitoring question. Who will give the first example? >> I have one, but I'm kind of scared. >> Okay. >> Um am I okay? I noticed that schools A have higher completion rates in post-secary opportunities

116in school B. Are there any policies in place that could cause this difference? All right. So what there is to do is for us to reflect on uh is this uh whi which criteria uh does this meet and careful there. Okay, there we go. So we got all our criteria. We got the question. We're good to go. So I noticed that schools A, you know, the set of schools A have higher completion rates than the sets of schools B. Are there any policies in place that could cause this difference? So, the first question is, uh, is it strategy focused? Is the question about strategic issues rather than technical or tactical issues? Uh, what what do y'all think? Uh, does this feel like a strategic issue rather than technical or tactical? >> The word policies. I

117was just >> drives it towards board action versus what the superintendent would. >> So that doesn't necessarily feel like a monitoring question of what the superintendent change it with regulations maybe but then it and you did say the word postsecary, right? So that's the goal we're talking about. Okay. >> Yes. Have higher completion rates and postsecary opportunities. that the word policy was also throwing me off. If it had said, can you explain or can you tell us more about why that is the case? Would that have been more I'm just >> strategic. Anybody else thoughts >> covering um strategic focus? Yes. Uh because it did align to priorities. So I was just kind of going down um the row there. So I would say because of the alignment for us with postsecary it is strategic.

118>> Uh let's ask the second question. Okay. um and then come back to the first one. So the question second question is a measure focus. Does the question reference specific uh metrics or data that's in the monitoring report? >> Um and so this is this will actually help you answer the first question more clearly. >> Okay. >> So if in the monitoring report, what might be in the monitoring report that would cause the sup that that would make this strategic? Why might the superintendent reference policy in the monitoring report? Can you imagine any situation where you might reference policy as it relates to student performance? >> If there was a policy that was preventing the superintendent from implementing a particular strategy. >> Yeah. Can she do anything about that policy? >> No. Who would have

119to do something about that? >> Board. Board. And so in that scenario, if in the monitoring report she says, "Hey, look, this particular strategy is actually preventing us from implementing this initiative that we believe is crucial to accomplishing the interim goal that's crucial to accomplishing the goal. If that's in the monitoring report, I'd say this question then elevates uh to the level of being strategic that uh it's also measure focus. It's referencing data that's in the monitoring report. in the absence of that um this falls off of meeting that threshold. So it kind of depends on what's actually in the monitoring report. So when you read the monitoring report and it references uh policy as like a critical lever that needs to move in order to for the superintendent to have the uh leeway she

120needs, then I would say yes. Um if that is not in the monitoring report, then I'd say this probably doesn't meet the threshold of strategy focus. So it kind of depends. Uh, I can see how it could, I can see how it could not. How about ask oriented? Is this question askoriented? >> Yes or no? And why >> to ask a specific question? >> But it's more of a yes, no, though, like are there any policies in place that could cause this difference? She could simply say yes. >> So, is this question askoriented? Yes or no? And why? >> I'd say no. This question is clearly not askoriented. Why is it clearly not askoriented? Because >> you could answer it with yes or no. >> Because it's a yes no question. How would you how

121would you transition this into being an askoriented question? Let's imagine that this is strategy focused. Let's imagine that there is something about this in the monitoring report and so then it's measure focused because you're referencing it. How would you make this ask oriented? You mentioned a pol that a policy was blocking the strategy you needed. Could you expand on what that policy is stopping or just expand on that from your monitoring report? Please expand on the policy believe is preventing progress toward this interim goal. Now we have something that's open-ended. It's no longer a yes no. It's uh now superintendent you know answer it you know this is no longer multiple choice. This is now askoriented. Is this a results focused question? Is it focused on understanding data rather than sharing opinions? Yes. >> Yes.

122>> Yeah. To me, this easily meets the threshold for results focus. Is this time bound? >> Yes. >> Yeah. She's talking about how we got here. Now, talk about what happens next. >> With that slight tweak, I'd say uh and making some assumptions about what's in the monitoring report. I'd say this could meet all the criteria uh for being one of the effective questions. Uh, not only bravo on your question asking, but also thank you for going first. Again, I always love it when people step into the gap first. >> Uh, let's let's get one more example of effective question before we transition. What's one more example of an effective question? Who's got one? Somebody else. Be brave. It could be anybody in the room, staff, uh, board members. Who's got it? You have one.

123Go for it. Meg, you got one over there? >> Sure. >> Well, over here hiding they candle under a bushel. Come on, folks. >> Let your life >> I've talked a lot today. The data on graph one shows an increase in our target target population but a plateau in others. What if anything could be accounting for the plateau? It's good. >> It's like maybe you write smart goals or something in your job. I don't >> I have a really good bad one too. So [Laughter] >> data on graph one shows an increase with our target population but a plateau in others. What could be accounting for it? Did I c generally catch that? All right. Is it strategy focused? >> Yes. Is it measure focused? >> Yes. >> The data on graph one shows I

124absolutely love this nomclature. It's very clearly pointing to data that's in the monitoring report. Is it ask oriented? >> Yeah. >> Yes. >> And what could be accounting for? This is not a yes no question. Is it results focused? Is it trying to understand what's in the report? >> Yes. >> It's very clearly trying to understand. Is it time bound? >> Yes. >> All right. This meets all five indicators. Now, let's have the fun part of the activity. Somebody give me a question that fails all five indicators. Come on, Meg. We got a fun one. >> Okay. Uh, why won't Sorry, I'm trying to read my handwriting. Why won't we spend more money on reading coaches since we're not going to hit our target? >> All right. Is it strategy focused? No. >> Why yes,

125why no? >> Isn't it tactical? >> I mean, I guess it could depend what was in the monitoring report. >> So, so this takes us to question number two as well. Uh, is it measure focus? I could see a scenario where this is directly referenced in the monitoring report and then it starts to feel like, you know, a strategy the superintendent's lifting up. If this is not something that is anywhere in the bottom trick report that this is definitely not a strategic question. So it definitely definitely is going to have some dependence on did she pull this out of the monitoring report or not. If not then I would say nope. This fails strategy focused and it feels fails measure focused. Is this a ask oriented question? >> Yes it is. You failed to fail.

126>> I'm sorry. >> He said I'm sorry. Do you get your life right? U how about uh so instead we might u you know we're not spitting more buddy or really coaches is uh um and so we're not going to hit our target or you're going to fix this aren't you? You care about kids don't you? Then that would make it askoriented. Uh is it results focused? Is it focused on understanding or is it focused on sharing an opinion? an opinion because then it's also talking about like the future like >> if this is not present if nothing about this is present in the monitoring report this is 100% sharing opinions. If this is actually present in the monitoring report I'd say you know this this could be but assuming this is not actually in

127the monitoring report she just pulled this out herself. This is definitely not results focused. It is definitely sharing an opinion. uh anytime there's there is a strategy that is not in the monitoring report and you decide to bring it up. Hey superintendent, I I think we should buy, you know, uh we should buy number two pencils, you know, for my cousin Pooky and them. Uh what do you think about that? That is automatically not askoriented, you know, uh that is not automatically not results focused. It is me offering an opinion about what we should do, trying to pretend that it's a monitoring question. Is this question time bound? Why don't we spend more money on reading coaches since we're not going to hit our goal? Is this question time bound? No, >> no, it's future.

128>> It's future. >> Yeah, this is definitely pointing at future action, not uh past or uh present action. Um and so it comes close to being fully ineffective, but uh not quite. Get more ineffective. Let's hear one more before we close this out. One more example of an ineffective question. Somebody, anybody and anybody. >> Okay, I'll go. >> All right, Carol, thanks for stepping up. >> Hope you're not very smart right now. Are you going to get >> It appears that the third grade students from region X are using hands-on tactile concepts for science fair projects. Were they given the same criteria as region uh Z? Do we have a goal? >> All right. Uh, is it strategy focused >> and then hit? >> No, there's not a goal for science. >> There is not

129a goal for science. There's no way this was in the monitoring report. So, it can't possibly be strategy focused. Is it measure focused? >> It's almost certainly not going to be measure focused. There's not something about science. Is it ask oriented? >> No. Not really. >> No. No. >> But it's not. This is a yes no question. This is absolutely not askoriented. Is it results focused? Is it trying to understand the monitoring report or trying to share an opinion? >> It's no. It's a no. >> No. >> An opinion. >> It's not results. >> It was talking about the past. So, I'll give it a time bound, but it's not on a goal. So, it can't be really time bound. >> If this was in the monitoring report, I'd actually say this is uh could

130meet this criteria for being results focused. uh because it feels like it's trying to understand something about science projects but that's only if science projects are in the monitoring report. If they are not in the monitoring report this is clearly an opinion uh and is and that point is not results focused. Is it time bound? [Music] >> I mean it is talking about the past but it would have to be >> absolutely time bound. You have failed to fail madam. >> Got to almost >> so close. So close. U and so what are you taking away from uh we've talked about monitoring reports why they matter uh we've talked about effective monitoring we've talked about effective monitoring reports uh we've talked about uh the types of questions that make a difference and when and how

131they might be asked uh as we begin to close out our time what are you taking away from this training on effective goal monitoring what are you taking away from our time together today and this conversation about effective goal monitoring who'll be the first to share Um and board and please staff also feel free to uh chime in. Ken, what are you taking away from this conversation about effective goal monitoring? Who'll be the first to share? It's done correctly. It can change outcomes for kids. If we are willing to do the work to know what is strategy and to listen to understand versus listen to ask a gotcha question. >> If goal if the board does goal monitoring correctly, you can actually speed up the rate of continuous improvement in your organization which will be

132a net benefit to children. >> The converse is unfortunately also accurate. >> This isn't just academic. This will have real life impacts on your organization's ability to achieve the goals that you've set. If the board is effective in goal monitoring, you can absolutely speed up the continuous improvement process. If the goal is ineffective, you can absolutely slow it down. >> Uh who else? What will you take away from our time together today as we wrap up? >> I'll share. >> Yeah. as staff. Um I think it's very helpful to know what the process will look like or should look like. Um because this is new for us and uh it does take away some anxiety about you know uh having this focus. So I just appreciate uh having the opportunity to take a a deep

133look at the process. >> Yeah, if you're looking for something analogist to kind of anchor this to in your mind, we often think of uh the board's goal monitoring is is kind of the governance version of a PLC. Um and and so all the things that you would want to be true of a quality PLC, begin to notice that a lot of that is embedded in the conversation we've had here today. Um, and so if you're trying to think like it's not too completely dissimilar from things that hopefully are already kind of within your wheelhouse uh within your realm of past experiences. Uh, who else? What will we take away from our time together? >> I'm going to share not um and thank you all um for this journey that we're on collectively. I'm not

134I'm taking away not only the importance of our time. Uh but you've also given us strategies to be effective with the time we do have. Uh because I share so often we all are given the exact same amount of time. It's just how we spend it. And this is giving us an opportunity to be intentional and focus on um our students. But it has to start with me being mindful of how I calculate my time and how I spend it uh in regards of so thank you not only for talking about time but giving us the strategies in regards of how I can uh be the genesis of change in myself because I get to say no. >> Yeah. >> And and I appreciate this um opportunity. Thank you. >> Other reflections, what was what

135did you learn? What will you take away from our time together today? Anyone else before we close out? >> I wanted just to share that I think I'm really excited about what the public is going to get to see us do in our meetings. Like I think, you know, as I learn more and more about this process and what it's going to look like when we, you know, are talking about it up there, it's going to be completely different. I mean, I think we're going to look back on our current meetings and think of them as kind of like a check the box. >> Like you said, we, you know, we met the other day for 25 minutes and, you know, like we didn't talk about student outcomes for even one minute of that time

136together. And I just think that it's it's so exciting. our public, our school community, our school leaders, the people who, you know, are are gonna be able to see us really doing the work that we've been put in this place to do. >> Yeah. as it relates to what the meetings might actually look like. I I should mention um that and I'm thinking about, you know, my most recent district and a lot of other districts we watch when a board really does a deep dive into the goal monitoring conversation. So, you've got one particular goal that you're looking at and one usually just one maybe two interim goals that you're looking at. So, you're taking a really narrow slice and instead of doing a really high level, you're really doing a deep dive into that

137slice. I find it is hard for a board to have a really thorough deep dive conversation in less than 60 to 90 minutes. So imagine that you know for each monitoring report it probably take you 60 to 90 minutes to really have a fullthroated deep dive conversation in that area. Then add on top of that, one of the other things that we strongly recommend is that you pair uh celebration of your students who've been demonstrating the most growth relative to that particular uh interim goal for the most recent period that you pair celebration and recognition of them with the monitoring. So maybe the meeting opens up, you know, we're talking about third grade literacy. We've got the 10 20 students in the district who've grown the most in third grade. So this isn't even necessarily

138your high flyers. These are students who started from the bottom. Now they're here. Like bring the these are kids we never celebrate but they are growing and we want to celebrate. There's a cultural power to celebrating the growth of our children. So let's bring those 10 20 third graders in second graders whoever uh is mentioned in the interim uh goal. Let's celebrate them. Celebrate the teachers who helped them grow. Celebrate their families. All right. Then they step out. Then we step into the monitoring report. So we spend half an hour plus on recognizing the children directly related to the monitoring report. Then we dive into the monitoring report for another hour, hour and a half. We could easily have burned through two hours of just really doing a deep dive and then you know whatever

139other business you got to attend to, knock that out. Hopefully it takes significantly less than two hours uh and then go home. But you spent the majority of your time deeply focused on are we actually making the moves necessary to improve student outcomes. That's what a future meeting could look like. >> And and bear in mind that part of the reason it could take as long as 60 to 90 minutes is because we didn't get to a part of the rubric where it says every board member needs to have a question. The questions have to be asked ahead of time. There's a automatic 0% if you look through that document. So part of the um the key to successful monitoring is entire board engagement. >> Can I clarify that? it. So if we have an

140eight person board, if only seven are available for the monitoring report meeting, is there still a dock on that? >> It's a matter of who's present. >> Okay, just clarify. So we're going to shake some shake some trees. >> And the second thing is that it can be tricky and so we'll be um prepared to provide feedback as you we will we recommend scheduling a practice session if we can figure out when to do that um before we actually start the monitoring. But also um we will be providing feedback shortly after every session so that um you can get the feedback in real time and you know commit to the continuous improvement. >> Uh I just want to close out just saying thank you. We love we've been up here nerding out this whole time.

141We love love love this particular workshop and being with boards as they make this progress into just becoming more intensely focused on improving student outcomes. Madam Chair, back to you. Well, I mean, I'm happy to know that even trying, we didn't ask an unsmart question, so I feel positive moving forward. Good job, you guys. >> First choice, right? First choice. All right. >> One voice. >> That's right. All right. Dr. P, do you have anything else? >> No. Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you guys for your time, staff, and thank you for your time being here and all the work you're putting into us. I appreciate it. I'll make a motion to adjurnn. Is there a second? Second. >> Call for the vote. >> All in favor say I. >> I. I. >> Any oppose

142say nay. Hearing none. The motion carries. The board is adjourned.