001All right. Good evening everybody. Um I'd like to um welcome you all to this work session of the Tiger 12 school district board of directors. We are talking today about board goals and evaluation. So everybody at their place should have our rubric. And we also haven't done our um uh evaluation from last year yet. So, but I don't have those pieces. Do you guys have those? They weren't on the the board um evaluation piece from for evaluating our goals from last year, but maybe we should just >> set that aside for now. >> Yeah, just for the sake of time and we can get that for you. I apologize for not having that, but we can use we could tackle uh the committees and um some goal setting with materials that you have. >> We're
002going to do committees during the actual board meeting. >> Sorry. >> So, it's just we're just doing board goals for today. Um so, everybody got got this handy dandy. So, we last year did the the board goals where we one of our goals was to have um that midyear retreat And I think that that was a really important piece for us last year. Um I feel a little bit awkward with our first goal of learn together as a board because the um the obvious measure that we used last year attending the OSBA conference. I know I won't be able to be there this year. So I know right off the bat that if we make that a measurement I fail. So I'd rather not do that. Um, but um, let me back up. I'm getting
003too too much into the weeds too quickly. So, last year we had learn together as a board, create conditions for success, hold the system accountable, and support strong relationships. Are those all goal areas that we wish to maintain for this year? Does somebody have an idea for something different, an addition, a subtraction, a modification? I think those as goal areas are still pertinent. >> Those are also all um within I know we don't do this but um there's a system called balance governance and these are these are all areas that are shown that are researchbased and are shown to impact student outcomes when the board focuses on these areas. Director Weston, anything to add? >> No, I think it seems seems good. >> Okay. And if it would be helpful um I can co-develop or
004support in any development of uh self assessments for both individuals and the board if that's a a more constructive way of being able to track your progress throughout the throughout the year as a board on how you're doing on the the goals that you all choose to select. >> Okay. Can I add I I would love to see something like that. I don't I wouldn't want to necessarily put that on Did you Did you just offer to do that or did you just suggest that we do that because I don't want to put that on you? >> I've seen I've seen examples of it and I wanted to put that into the room for you all. >> Okay. Put it into I didn't want to attribute of of volunteering. Um, I think that's that is
005a good way to do that because I would like us not to get to just reviewing it one time a year and then either forget what we've done, lose what we've done, or just look at it one time a year. So, I think it would be great to return to it as like a work session throughout the year and um maybe quarterly or just halfyear check and say, "Oh, we've done this, we've done this, we've done this, this is still in progress." I mean, just like just like schools do and looking at maybe strategic abandonment of something that isn't working or we've done this or this is really this is really impactful, let's do more that kind of thing. >> I agree, Cleon. This is our work session about board goals. We don't usually take
006Got it. >> Thank you. >> We'll do. >> Thank you. >> Okay. So, if we look at the the two one of the things I want to make sure we do as a board this year is not have too many goals. One of the things I was a little bit worried about with these goals last year is that we had the four goal areas, but then we started to get a lot of goals within those areas. And so I'm kind of hoping that maybe we can pair those back to just one or two in each area so that we can really focus in on what is most important. And the same as we do with our superintendent goals. Um you know doesn't mean we don't do all of the things but we pick the one
007or two that is most representative of the work to be done. So given that if our goal area is learn together as a board, our board goals are learn together as a board and our board goal is plan a midyear retreat. Did those work well for us last year? Do we want to pair? Do we want to keep? Do we want to I think the midyear retreat was really valuable. I felt like in a good way to come together. I think if we so we can either just have that or we can sort of tie in the evaluation and self-evaluation process. It's not really learning. I guess it is learning together about how we work as a board as a board. Um, so that could potentially be a board goal is somewhere integrating the the
008self-evaluation tools. So we that could take the place of the attending the fall conference if you weren't wanting to add that one or have that one. >> I mean, we could certainly have a midyear retreat that includes a self-evaluation. >> Yeah. >> Okay. So under creating conditions for success, we've got and this is where we start to get, I think, too many goals. We've got using academic return on investment and other in mechanisms to invest dollars in serving students, ensure that all students and staff feel welcome, support strategies that address unfinished learning loss, and advocate for the resources and policy framework necessary for student success. I do have a thought, okay, but I don't want to monopolize space. So, I'll say this quick thought and then I'll be quiet. For I was kind of thinking
009about this looking at it again. And goal number one really is because I was looking at the mechanisms that's really our job anyway. >> So, unless our goal is to successfully do our job, which part of it is, I think we could take out like we have to pass a budget theoretically. um that's part of what we do as a board. So maybe that's I mean it's a different kind of goal. So maybe those are ones that we can kind of pull out because that's not sort of like a new area where you know how are we ensuring all students and staff are feeling safe and welcoming or what are those support strategies? Those are a little more still related to but not directly the buckets of what our board governance responsibilities are. And that
010might just thin out our board goals a little bit. And I was thinking that um the academic return on investment was that was very important and it's something that if it comes you know from us then it kind of trickles down whereas to ensure that all students and staff feel welcome I don't know that we can I don't know that we can successfully do that from this from like from this aspect. Uh so I don't know that we would that we should have that in there. Um but you know that's and then advocating for resources and policies. I think that's definitely something that uh is within our purview for sure. Again supporting strategic or strategies that address unfinished learning business. Yeah we can support but like that's not our purview either. So, >> thank you,
011Director Miles. >> I'm looking at this and I'm thinking if there are ways to combine some things without missing these. And I think that um how we ensure that all staff and students feel welcome included is through our practices, policies, and expectations. and um but when we are advocating for the resources and policy framework we can we can do number two through number four. So I wonder if there's a way to combine those two and then I feel like when we like supporting strategies that address unfinished learning pen like whenever we are doing any of these other things we are supporting those strategies and also anytime we are using the word strategies I get a just a little bit nervous because like whenever we embed strategies in our work I feel like we're getting close
012to details right like we're supporting policies are supporting big work. Um, I know we don't mean that we're getting into details here, but um, but I feel like number three is sort of it could be an umbrella of everything else that we are doing. >> Director Weston, thank you for your patience. >> Yeah, thank you. Um, I wanted to bring up um our ongoing budget constraints in the context of um the academic return on investment part because I think there's somewhat of an assumption that the kind of baseline is getting funded and now we're going to invest in things that are known to have um a a good return. Um, and so, and I know we've struggled to make some of those investments when our budget has created conditions where we've had to cut things.
013Um, and so I still think that's a good thing to include, but I'd like to hedge it um or include maybe maybe have something about um meet our our basic requirements and then use academic return on investment um for additional investments. Like I just I'm just not sure if if we're able to prioritize in that way. Um, I feel like that implies we have money to invest. Um, so I wanted to have a little bit of discussion on that. Circling back from from that, Director Western, to what Director Irvin was saying earlier about the budget is what we're required by law to do. So it doesn't feel like it's a huge goal to say we're going to do the budget. Um, but I think if we put it in terms of we're going to pay
014attention to AROI, you know, is that something we still want to keep lifted or is that something that we're willing to drop by the wayside because not that we're dropping by the wayside that's the wrong way to say it. Is it something that we don't need to elevate to the level of goal because we know we're going to do it anyway? I feel like it's elevating certain things in particular. Um, for example, it includes um professional learning. Um, I'm not sure why that should be called out compared to all the other things we're funding. Um maybe we should talk about more broad goals instead of um kind of to Director Miles's point um the larger goal of um you know using our dollars as best we can um rather than identifying some of these are
015kind of more tactics, right? they're they are a little bit more detailed and um at the end of the day if we have very little money coming out for our schools some of these things might not be the highest priority depending how how lean our budget ends up. So to kind of decide in advance that we're able to support like anything in particular feels like maybe not strategic. I think yes, I hear all of that and I think this first goal was using that mechanism to improve academic achievement for all students and closing the gap for the historically excluded students and that so professional learning for example was part was like the that then the mechanism for that piece of it versus sort of a a side sort of goal. So that's what we would
016be looking for. So maybe another way to look at this kind of thinking what director um Hime said was I mean or we keep this in here because it's like a checklist item that you know you get to check off like we know that we're going to be passing a budget. We will be as we do every year looking at AOI. We will be engaging or reviewing that student engagement data throughout the year. we are going to be looking at these pieces. And so I do also think to director Miles's point, yeah, let's squish some of these together because I think that they can kind of be bigger umbrella goals. Um, but maybe we do keep that budget in one in there just because it sort of becomes a northstar for one of our finance
017goals. Okay, so I'm here. We're going to keep number one, but maybe squish it a little bit. Sort of combine two and four. and uh and keep three. I would suggest to tie it in with our superintendence goals rather than focusing on unfinished learning and pandemic era learning loss. We look at MM MLS and that that could be our our support strategies there. That seems like a really nice way for us as a board to say yes, we support the superintendent's goal. >> Yeah. And having those shared goals. Does that make sense to everybody? Okay, we're halfway through our time and we're halfway through our goals. Woohoo! Look at us. All right. Holding the system accountable. We have thoroughly understand the equity audit form and participate in policy review work and review behavior policy SR
018outcomes and data and input from the behavior committee. I would suggest for number two in this that we would rework. The general idea of policy work is a sound one, but um since we are due for a policy rewrite of our entire policy uh cannon that that might be an appropriate board goal for us in that in that particular sector. What do y'all think? Director is like so thrilled at the press. I mean like >> wait what you mean keep number two or no >> keep keep it but but instead of having the the addressing ACC and EAC especially since those have both changed that our focus as a board should be on our desk rewrite of our policies and that's probably a two-year process could be one year >> depending on how quickly we
019can get through it. >> Okay. Yeah. because the EAC changed to superintendent committee. >> Exactly. So, it's no longer really our >> valuable. >> And then how do you all feel about the other two goals? I feel like the the annual equity audit is is still something we're doing and still something I think we should be keeping our eyeballs on. >> Um, >> and then the review of behavior data. >> I think because we have the student rights and responsibilities handbook in here that can now also encompass monitoring sort of the cell phone policy kind of like what what that's >> going and looking like. >> Sure. >> Sorry. >> Thank you. >> I think similar to the um I think these are too specific. Um so number two, the idea of making that more
020broad um to account for change makes sense. But the same thing with numbers one and three. Maybe um number three could be um monitor policies and number one could be um understand and review any audits because that could be other types of audits or investigations or like there's a financial audit. I think um maybe not calling out very particular ones but saying we're going to look at these generally. Um we don't know what the year holds, right? We might end up with a different policy we're not anticipating. So if we're going to monitor um a particular one, we might just include generally monitoring um that kind of thing. Is that too big or too broad? I mean, if we write, we're gonna generally moderate. >> If we include all of our audits, there's financial audits,
021there's equity audits, there's there's an awful lot of audits. It feels like it's in a lot of different buck buckets. >> Yeah. >> Um, and the idea here is that we were trying to focus in on one. >> So, the these are things that you'll typically hold me accountable for as a superintendent anyways. And so, um, one thing I would just put, um, forth to the board is thinking about what you want to accomplish this year as board members, as individual board members who are growing or trying to focus on something and as a collective. To what extent do these sub goals help you achieve that? And then this also your stewardship to the district. So, we think about your stewardship to the district, your personal growth as a board, and where areas you want
022to focus on. I would just ask you to to look at some of those things because it feels like uh some of these areas are things that you're going to assess me on. And so unless you want to assess yourself on how you assess me, >> when I look at goals, both for superintendents and for boards, everybody's going to do the work anyway. Superintendents are going to do a million things. Boards are going to do everything that comes across their desks anyway. But writing the goals that you're going to assess yourself on or or evaluate. Your superintendent says, "Here are the things that we're going to really say, okay, when it comes to evaluation, here's what we're going to focus on." Right? And so, not that these things are not priorities, but also, right, you
023you can't al you can't also say like we're going to evaluate literally everything because then that spreads attention and time and resources far too broadly, right? And also makes the matrix really hard to create. And so I think you know we are to director Weston's point we are going to look at our financial audit and we are going to look at literally everything else that we that we need to that comes across but when we call out the annual equity audit here and its implications for the district what that tells me is that like that's really important for the board to do and understand as part of the big board work that we do. Not that the financial audit is not but we're calling that out as a message to ourselves the district and the
024community. And my preference would be actually to take number one and number three and combine them. And we are going to focus as a board on our our equity audit and specifically looking at behavior data and um SRH SRR outcomes um specific to how how are we doing with our students of color and and uh and underrepresented groups. And that way we've got only two in this bucket. Does that sound good to folks? I'm seeing a lot of nods. Director Weston, does that seem reasonable to you? >> That seems reasonable. Okay. All right. Our last one then is um supporting strong relationships, maintaining a positive relationship with the community, with staff, and informing on the local option and school bond. No, we don't need to inform on the local option in school bond. >> Um,
025it's now being replaced with, >> as I say, we have the bond oversight committee and kind of transparency around bonds work. >> Exactly. >> Do the work of spending the public's money in the best possible way and being as transparent with with the public as to what we're I think the other the first two are really important goals for us to continue doing and working towards >> any other comments from other board members. Director Weston, nothing. Now, I just keep coming back to our um lean budget situation and maybe um consider I mean, I think these are really important. I think um if there's any adjustments we can make that make um our budget situation less unfortunate, um I think just being open to getting that input. But I think that is captured in number
026two. Number two here of maintain positive relationships with district staff you mean or in goal area number two create conditions for success. >> Maintain positive relationships with district staff because it says demonstrate willingness to listen and learn from classroom facing facing professionals and other staff. So I think um if we're true to that then it should pick up um insights um so that we can kind of um apply le those any things anything we learn from the from those um classroom facing experts. >> Makes sense. >> All right. Well that is our whip it through our board work goals. What I will do is um take a stab at rewriting these and I'll bring these to the board at our next meeting um for first read and further discussion and at that time hopefully we
027can if I haven't been able to come up with anything we can come up with our mechanisms for success put those together as a board. So look for that in the board packet next time and come with your ideas for what those mechanisms might be. Is there anything further for the good of the order? All right, then I will adjourn this workshop uh work session at 5:56 and we'll see you all at 6:30 for our regular session.