Seattle Schools Board Special Meeting April 18, 2025

001Heat. Heat. [Music] test test. [Music] few minutes. [Music] All right. Uh, this is President Topp. I am now calling the uh board special meeting to order at 4:31 p.m. Uh please note that this meeting is being recorded. Um hang on just a second. Sorry everyone. Um, I'd like to acknowledge that uh we we are on ancestral lands and the traditional territories of the Puet Sound Coast Salish people. For the record, I will call the role. Vice President Briggs, Director Clark, present. Director Hersy here. Director Ms. here. Uh, Director Ranken is out of town and will not be joining this meeting. Director Sarju, don't see Director Sarju. Um, and this is President Top. Okay, before we get started, um I want to quickly note that there are three board engagement sessions coming up. Um April 24th

002at Aki Carroso Middle School, April 30th at Denny uh International Middle School, and May 7th at Daniel Begley Elementary. Uh please see our website for more information. Um this special meeting tonight though is to conduct interviews of three executive search firms. Uh these three firms were selected at our April 9th special meeting based on their proposals to conduct uh something that is very um important to us. Our superintendent search uh tonight's meeting should last roughly 3 hours. So I want to thank directors staff and the search firms for being here on a Friday night. Um each firm will have 40 minutes for their interview. Uh the firms were provided with the questions in advance that directors had and have prepared presentations in response to our questions. Uh director will have an opportunity to ask follow-up

003questions of the firms following their presentation. There's roughly a 10-minute break between each interview to allow for sort of the shuffle between the firms. Um and uh and we will just kind of systematically go through it. We will hear from Ray and Associates followed by McFerson and Jacobson and we will close with HYA. I will provide a time check roughly when there's 10 minutes left in each interview. Uh directors should have in their inboxes scoring sheets for each interview. Um procurement staff are here online as well. If directors have any questions um allow uh want questions um please raise your hand um before we start the presentations but also we can take some questions after um your Brandon has a quick question. Brandon just wanted to see uh what is going to be the utilization

004for the spreadsheets after? Do we need to make sure that we send those in? Are they just for our personal use? Perfect question. So, we're going to submit scores to the board office by April 22nd for tabulation. So, fill fill it out, send it into uh the board office at our April 23rd meeting. We will review the the tabulation and the scores and select a firm uh for board action during our regular board meeting on the 23rd. Does that make sense? Just Yeah, absolutely. I would just say if it's possible to, you know, flash the um like the scoring curricula just for the public so they can see what we're um uh judging this on. That might be helpful. But other than that, I'm ready to go. Thank you. I agree. I'm wondering if we

005can get that. Looking to board staff here, seeing if we can get that on on the screen. We will we will work We'll work on pulling that up. Thank you so much. Um, any other questions? Okay, so we will work on getting the Oh, Director Clark. Um, yeah, I might be a little ahead, but um, are we going to go around Rob like in any particular order for asking questions or uh, we will just raise our hands um, post interview. So interview once the presentation is done by each firm um our follow-up questions instructors should just use the raise the hand function and we will just go in order of those who hands um there is a little bit of wiggle room in our in our schedule if we go over um but going to

006try to keep us on time tonight. All right. Thanks President Topp. Thank you Director Clark. Others All right. Um, so again, I will provide a time check when there's 10 minutes left in the in the interview. Um, but I will now hand it over to Ray and Associates for our first uh interview. Uh, can you hear me now? We can hear you now. Yes. Oh, good. Okay. Well, it's a pleasure to be here this evening. Good evening, President Top, members of the board. Our team is very pleased to be able to present to you our plan for finding the next superintendent for Seattle public schools. We understand how important superintendent leadership is and we are very passionate about assisting school boards to find that to fill that crucial leadership role. Uh you sent us about

00715 questions and we will attempt to answer all all of them in the next 40 minutes. So we have our work cut out for us and I would like to share my screen but it looks like somebody else is sharing right now. Can I share my screen? Going to press the share button here. See what happens. And we will during our 10-minute breaks and transitions, we will go back to that rubric for the public. Very good. Can you see my screen? Yes, we can. Okay, that's good. Technology is working and that's a relief. So, I'm going to keep rolling along here. Uh, my name is Steve Chestnut. I was an educator in Washington state for 35 years, including 21 years as a superintendent. Next, I was a superintendent in Arizona for six years and my

008last two years of full-time work was as an executive director and associate superintendent in the Scottsdale Unified School District. And we continue to live in Scottsdale. Uh for the past 5 years, I've been working part-time for Rain Associates. It's work that I greatly enjoy and uh just pleased to be here tonight. And I'll let uh Dr. Rich McBride introduce himself. Not sure if Rich is muted or what? Appears that Richard is unmuted but maybe frozen. Well, and in that case, I will just keep rolling along. If Rich can join us, that would be great. Uh Dr. Rich McBride uh has extensive experience in Washington state. Uh he's been a uh superintendent in state of Washington for over 30 years and was a superintendent of the North North Central Educational Service District, I believe, for uh

00915 years. Uh he's currently an assistant professor at Washington State University uh in the superintendent preparation program and it's a pleasure to have Dr. Rich McBride with us. I know he's there and hopefully we'll get to hear from him soon. Uh my next colleague is uh Miss Libra Ford and Libra is traveling. She uh told me that she would be in the hotel lobby uh where she's checking in on time and I think she hopefully will join us any moment. Uh but in the meantime, I will continue. So Libra Ford has been an educational advocate for over 25 years, which included the founding of our charter school in Hawaii. She's the former board president of the North Placus School Board and currently serves on the Oregon State Board of Education. She is currently the executive

010director of the Women's Foundation of Oregon and she lives in Damascus, Oregon. Next member of our team is unable to be here tonight, Mr. Richard Lasso. Uh he is the assistant superintendent of equity and instructional leadership for the Pialup School District. He's also a native Spanish speaker and he lives in Puleup. And the final member of our team, Dr. David Falties, is also not able to be with us this evening. He is our managing director. He served as a superintendent in Texas for 18 years and retired from the Carol Independent School District in South Lake, Texas in 2020. So that is our team. We'd like to start with uh your highlights and uh we are very aware of your mission, your vision and your belief that your students come first. We very much enjoyed uh

011I very much enjoyed reacquainting myself with Seattle school district uh having been a longtime Washington state educator and uh getting up to speed on your current initiatives and uh the different issues you are facing this year. not an easy uh list of things that you're facing, but no school district has an easy task ahead of them. So, we're very impressed with your district and very much looking forward to working with you and is that microphone back? Yes, it is. Go ahead, Rich. Yeah, very good. Yeah, I apolog why why look on looked okay on the screen there, but Steve, if you want to move to the next slide real quick. Thanks of the board. The pleasure being with you tonight and apologize for the for the technical technical issues there. You know, I think it's

012fair on this slide to just share with you when you look at share a little bit and I'll I'll run through these these five boxes on the top of the screen. I'll do them counter. As you can see, you'd be hiring a firm that actually has been at this work of executive 1975. Uh, our associate team and our consultants, we value and in fact our our leadership team and our consultant team uh is leadership team is comprised of women and and people of color. As you can see, we pride ourselves on recruiting from some of the largest national pools of candidates. Uh, a perfect fit for the Seattle School District. We of course have a highly trained full-time staff behind us helping to do a lot of the important support work as we go forward.

013The lock box, I think, is truly probably the most important. At the end of the day, uh, this is your sir. We call alongside weertities. We we try to bring important tools and processes to help you. But it's really important for a search firm just simply be reminded that this is your search and our job really at the end of the day is to not bring you necessarily the most number of candidates. Sometimes it's easy to get focused on that. Steve and I are working on it with a with another currently and the f one of the early questions was how many candidates can you bring? And our response back was probably the real question that we want to ask is we want to bring you the best at the end of the day. And

014so when we think about the executive search process, this is about bringing to Seattle school district, not just the superintendent that you hire, but more importantly to bring you the superintendent that you deserve. The Seattle students of Seattle School District, your staff, your community. We want to bring you the super we possibly can. Steve, next slide, please. And then lastly, when you look at bringing Ray and Associates alongside to assist you, it's clear we are we are deeply committed to an inclusive process to bringing you a diverse and high candidate pool. Uh work together with you. We'll ask questions. One of the things I think that you will appreciate the most is that we listen deeply. We listen deeply to your stakeholders which includes staff and students and members of the community and in the

015you know I would just say this in short I think a huge difference for us is that at the end of the day we don't do this for you but with you and I think that as a search firm we want to make sure that not be reminded this is your search and we're here to assist and to help you. See, we want to start with our suggested timeline and uh Libra for has sent me a text message. She is logged on and she says that her microphone is muted and I'm not sure if uh that's something you can fix on your end or not. Libra, are you on? Can you hear me? She she's getting a message that her microphone is disabled and I don't know exactly what that means. I'm not an expert

016on Microsoft Teams. We are moving her from a I'm good now. Thank you for moving me over from the um visual. Thank you. Okay, Libra, it's yours. Excellent. Hello everyone. I apologize for my tardiness. I actually drove to California today, so came just on time. Excited to be here with you guys. My name is Libra Ford and I know that I was introduced earlier, but as you also may or may not know, I've been in your seat in your shoes. I was a schoolboard member who had to select a firm and we selected Ray and Associates and we got a wonderful superintendent out of it. And not only am I in your shoes as a former board member, I currently sit on the state board, but I'm also in your shoes, Joe, because I'm a

017Brandeise graduate. So, hello to my alma mater. Um suggested timeline for this is based on five stages and for us we want to start somewhere in May and make sure you have someone in mid July which would give some time for them to settle in if they're moving move and also get acclimated into the system and some key things is of course makes making sure we plan with the board and discuss the in with individual boards the interviews that's the first step of each stage we don't do anything without consulting with you. U midway through, of course, we're building that profile with you to make sure that you're clear on what we're looking for and the public is clear on what we look for. Everybody has input in that. And then our top candidates we

018hope to choose um in June and then of course the final meeting and selecting a last person uh in that last interview process for mid July. Next slide. So, in stage one, the main thing that we focus on is board input. And I know that one of your questions really focuses on how do you get input? How do you figure out um what people in your community want? Um it begins with us first talking with each board member. And part of that is our 31 quality assessment where we go through an online and an in-person process. In our interviews with you as a board member individually, we're going to be asking who are the stakeholders that you want us to talk to? And then we're going to meet with them individually and make sure that

019we listen to them and we will transcribe what they say into a anonymous and neutral wording because we don't want to elevate any particular sound bite. But we want you to hear voices and what they're looking for. And so it starts off with the board input. And in that board input in the one-on- ones, we also will ask you things like, do you have anyone that you want to recommend? And if you do suggest someone, we'll keep those names. And later on the process, I'll share how we use that. The focus here is to really get down and dirty with you, understand where your heart is at, and combine all of those heartset comments into a mindset piece of paper. transactional list that will go into stage two. Next slide. This the second slide which

020basically is our community engagement and profile development. So here's where we take the stakeholder list that you suggested and we meet with those stakeholders. to community engagement. And that can include your uh um your staff, your teachers, families, uh community, um municipalities, um everybody that you feel will be um good to hear from. We will listen to them in person. And then we also have an online survey which they then can go through the 31 quality assessment and basically rank them and we will develop that data for you and prepare for our stage three. Next slide. And in stage three we begin recruitment while also collecting that data and being prepared to share with you what we see. So recruitment includes where we're posting it, which we will go into detail based on your questions

021in a second. um where we're posting it and all of the u folks that have been suggested to us whether whether it's through the individual board meetings or the stakeholder meetings. We also ask them if they have anybody that they like to include and we begin to aggressively recruit top top candidates nationally to make sure that we get a good list in front of you. Stage three uh next uh slide for stage four. This is where we will develop the candidate pool. So once we go through that stakeholder list and the 31 um qualities and we develop um a process with you where we will come up with 10 to 12 qualities that we agree with um that you agree with through your board interviews and also the stakeholders comments. will guide you through that

022and that becomes a profile and then from there and as people will apply they will see that they'll see what you're looking for see who you're looking for and how they should you know have expertise and then that candidate pool will be put in front of you where we will um do a semib background check before we get to that finalist list when we get to the finals we do a deep background check and make sure that that is done on everyone and that is of no charge but in the candidate pool what's really really important and One of your questions is about the tools that we use. We use a matrix to make sure that you're you're judging people against each other in a way that's really objective. Um, and then we get to

023that finalist list from there. Next slide. Last but not least is the candidate selection. This is the fun part as a board member. Your key objective is picking the candidates. So um once we go through the matrix and get to your top candidates and we use a different tools in there which again as I want to go through your questions and make sure we answer them. But as we use our tools to identify the candidates and then help you with our matrix tools to then get to the finalist. We then will help you select that final three or four. It's really up to you. We try to aim for what is best for you. It's a cont consensus building matrix and then you get to pick them. The finalists will then come to your district

024and meet everyone that similar stakeholder list that we start with. They will come in and meet them in person and kind of do the dog and pony show and so everyone will have an input um opportunity there too. Next slide. So additional things I just want to go through quickly um your questions to make sure that we don't miss anything. So how do we ensure we're hearing from diverse groups? I talked about our 31 quality assessment. This is done in person and also online. We know that some people are more comfortable online whether it's just the environment or time. Um people have both options. Even the folks that come in person for community engagement meetings with us, we have a set a set of questions that they will see. we are taking those notes, but

025we also remind them that they can still go home and take that online survey because sometimes you're processing questions in front of us and you don't always get all the answers out that you really want. Another thing that's important to us to make sure it's a diverse pool is listening to you as a board as representatives of your constituents like who do you want us to talk to? We will find those people. We will reach out to them. maybe they don't come to the advertise virtual or the advertise um inerson engagement. We'll call them directly and make sure their voices in that data that we're collecting. Your next question was how do you approach community and stakeholder forums and listening sessions going back to that we we approach them with standard questions. Um we are

026facilitators in those meetings making sure that everyone is heard making sure the environment feels comfortable and welcome and we also make sure that we do not uh translate or transcribe anyone's um feedback verbatim. We want everyone to feel comfortable that what they're saying will not come back to them. Um and so we make sure that that's really important to and at the end of it we make sure we describe to them the interview process and what we've been working with you on in terms of the timeline. So everyone walks away from those very clear on what's next. Uh if you use a tool, how is it advertised? We use the district regular communication tools. We work with your district, whether it's your board secretary or communications department. We don't want to deviate from how people

027are using communication or used to get communication. So we make sure that we use that um the same structure. We're also open to new ways if you're looking to do that. Um our survey process has been excellent. Uh recently we just did Northshore school surveys. So in person and online we had over 2,000 responses and this included over,00 um responses from families um in the community. We're super proud of that. And so our process works in terms of how we communicate and it's really relation focused. Um how we process and analyze the reports. uh in the second meeting with the board after we've done the 101 ones um and and some of the engagement group stuff, we we basically take all that information and we have that 31 assessment tool. People are able to rank

028them including the board, including staff and everyone gets to rank them and we tell you the top 10 and 12. We give you the raw data of how people ranked all 31 and then we also give you um data how we feel that information can dubtail into a really succinct 10 to 12 list of what you're looking for in terms of the top characteristics of the best candidate. So candidate profile uh can you give us details about how the final profile is developed uh after we interview you and we take the survey data raw and uh disagregated. Um we disagregate it based on communities and we make sure you see all of that and we take that and we have a board meeting with you and we have just pure discussion with you. It is

029up to you what characteristics you want to put in that profile but we will always come with recommendations. You're never in this process by yourself. You're always in this process with us. We're here to make sure you feel comfortable and clear on what is next. Uh so what is the process for board members, staff, and uh proposing candidates to uh get us board recruits? Like we said earlier, like I said earlier, every meeting we have with you or stakeholders, the question that we always ask is, is there someone in the community that you would like to recommend that we should recruit? But in addition to that, we have other methods to make sure that we're doing so that's kind of like the internal um direct intentional approach of finding recruits. But then we also have

030an external direct intentional way of doing recruits. And I'm going to pass it to Steve to talk about the methods that we use, the methods that we use for finding diverse candidates with some of the um advertising boards that we use. Um Steve, you want to talk about that? Certainly. We work with you to select national advertisers, the American Association of School Administrators, for example, Education Week, and others. But we also encourage and recommend that you advertise with the National Alliance of Black School Educators, with the Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendent. Um, and you know, the the question was, what kind of results do we get from that? Uh, we get good results. We have, uh, as Rich mentioned, 40% of our national consultants are women andor are people of color, and they do

031an excellent job of reaching out to good candidates. Uh and then of course as she mentioned the five consultants on this team will also reach out uh to diverse candidates and encourage them to apply. Yeah. And part of that too is we are really intentional about saying to you this is what your pool looks like and is that diverse. We're not going to tell you who to pick. We're not going to tell you how to pick them, but we will elevate things like is this the diversity that you're looking to have even from just the pool. Um, so we'll make sure we put them in front of you, but we'll also make sure as you're going through the process that you're aware of what you're picking and how you're picking it. Uh, next question is,

032what methods do we use to engage candidates who historically have been under represented? Um, in our last few searches, we've definitely had um a lot of under reppresented um groups. Uh for me personally and I know with my team they know we are intentional about making sure that those don't normally um are that aren't normally seen in these leadership roles are elevated to these pools and then it's up to you to decide if they are who will represent the school district. Well, we all know that um the more diversity you have it it it influence everyone. It's not just one group. Diversity helps everyone. When one diverse r when one diverse group rises, we all rise. And so we want to make sure that we help you with that equity look, but it is still

033up to you. What is best for you and what is best for this district beyond all of our existence in this role. Uh Seattle public schools experienced significant challenges including structural budget challenges. Um how do you plan to address these issues? Um, so we're well aware of your hundred um plus um million dollar deficit that's coming. It is definitely a national issue. As a state board member in Oregon, we are constantly dealing with this. Also, it is terrifying and very unclear what is next. There's two things I want to say on how we will approach that. one, we want to make sure that in our questions, so when the candidate um fills out the information, there's also a spark hire video that you will get. We want to make sure that in those questions that

034we're asking them that they are being asked about how they will approach these things. The beautiful thing about the Spark Higher uh video is that it's a oneandone, right? So, they really they're going to be asked a question and then they have to answer it. And you're going to see those responses and see if it's what you're looking for because we all know with these types of deficits, they're going to be in the front of media. They're going to be in front of parents. They're going to be in front of families, m leaders in your u municipalities that you serve. And they need to be able to be clear and effective on what these deficits will do and what is the plan. So our approach to this will be making sure you see it from

035the very beginning in that spark video. How do they how will they approach this because it is very important that they're walking into this role ready to tackle this issue and not afraid. Um candidate placement um what would you uh what what what would your approach and recommendation be if you don't find a suitable one? I love this question because of course there's always fear that with all of our skills and all the years that Ray and Associates have been doing this, there is a possibility that you don't get a candidate pool that you're happy with, right? So there's there's there's kind of three steps that we would uh recommend to you. The first would be if we go through this process through July and we don't find someone that's satisfactory to you, which is

036not our goal. Our goal is to bring you enough people to make the decision hard. But if we get to that point and it isn't working out for you, we would then recommend an interim that you should appoint an interim and then we reset for the fall to make sure in the fall you have a nice candidate pool ready to apply and then we would do um the same assessment process, the five stage process with you at no additional cost. So you are not going to be left alone. This process will definitely be we will walk through it with you from the beginning to the end. and if it's not successful, we will make sure that we restart it with you and get to the end. Um, what is the average rate of retention? So,

037before the pandemic, retention for superintendence was over 7 years, 7 and 1/2 years. After the pandemic, we're about 3 3.5 3.6 years that superintendent will remain in a position. Please know that our goal is to have enough questions for you to know what kind of stake um this candidate has in your community. Are they are they interested in building roots in your community? We will make sure that we elevate those questions so you can hear that in the process and and really see what people are thinking. In addition to that, remember that we have a 2-year guarantee. So any any superintendent that we place for two years, we will not poach them. So if they're in your school district and we place them, we're not going to come after them because there's a bigger or

038better job somewhere. Instead, we're going to support them staying where they are. Have you worked with a board torn between two highly qualified candidates? This is a great question because Steve just experienced that. So, I'll pass it back to you, Steve. Yes. And just to clarify uh Labor's last comment, we we don't do any recruiting of superintendent that we place for 5 years. Uh we also have a 2-year guarantee that we will come back and do the search again for free if the superintendent leaves. Uh Rich, I think, is going to talk more about that. So, we have a couple guarantees that we like to make. Uh but yes, I did have a situation in a recent search in Arizona uh where the board was really torn. We had two really great candidates and we

039uh had a difficult decision. And so uh what we did during the deliberate deliberation phase is that we just encouraged the board to go back to the ideal candidate profile based on the survey, based on the stakeholder feedback and to reflect on what were the characteristics they were looking for in the new superintendent. There were 12 characteristics on that list and we had to talk about most of them to really get down to the bottom of which person was best qualified uh to meet the criteria that we had set. In the end uh we selected uh the in-state candidate really was an in-state out of state candidate discussion and I think the board made the right decision in that case. Thank you Steve. Um the next question you have is a search tools. Can you

040provide details on the specified tools? I spoke a little bit about the first one, but I'll speak about three different tools and be very specific about each one. So, in the first part of the candidate recruitment, when candidates are um when we get them down to like your top kind of 10, seven to 10 candidates, um they're going to have what we call the spark hire video. And this Spark Hire video is a one-way communication tool where they're going to have the one and done like I talked about earlier questions that will be prompted to them and they must answer them in addition to their paperwork and all those things. And we do soft kind of background checks at that time. But you get to watch those. And those tools are really important because they're

041about 10 minutes of really seeing how people react to certain subjects, how they make comments about certain subjects because part of the major thing that a superintendent should be able to do is communicate well. And so this will give you that opportunity to not just see what's on paper, but see the human and how they react to questions that will require other humans to have experiences that are hopefully elevating them. And that's mostly the youth. Um, the second tool that we're really proud of is our matrix, which is a consensus tool. And we use this to do to get down to like the top seven to 10 candidates when we first present a big pool to you. And then we also use it to get down to the finalist. And this matrix is very interesting.

042It's it's based on you basically um uh judging each candidate against another so that each candidate is then seen against another. and in your mind which ones stand out the most. So at the end using numerical um numbers we easily can kind of pinpoint with uh those numbers where your board sits on which candidates and then after that kind of list elevates into like rankings. Then we have discussions about how those rankings are and is is are those numbers really speaking to what your heart and mind is feeling. Um, and so we go through that process with you, make sure you're really clear, and it's a great way to have consensus without a lot of emotion beginning in the conversation. We go through it kind of transactionally, and then we get to the kind of

043hearts set of it. And the last thing, of course, is our third party background checks, which we do at no additional cost. And that is when you get to the finalist, we want to make sure that we do a deep dive on who they are and what they have done or haven't done. Um, and we will make sure that you get that information so that you when you make a decision, you're clear on who you made a decision on and what they represent and what they bring to your school district. Um, next slide, Steve, or did I leave anything out that you like to add? I'm sorry. Yeah, let's go back to that second one. Search experience. The question was, uh, share with us your most recent superintendent search you conducted for a district of

044similar size and with similar challenges as Seattle public schools. What went well? What surprised you? And what did you learn from that experience? Uh for me that was the uh uh search that we did in the Anchorage School District. Uh the search in that was in 2022. Anchorage is a district of 44,000 students and a very complex place. Very proud district that's doing a lot of really great work. Uh but that was a very interesting search and uh the board was pleased with the Canada pool that included both instate and out of state applicants. They were very interested in it being a national search. Uh but there are also some certainly some good uh qualified candidates in the state. Uh in the end, an outofstate applicant was hired and Dr. Jared Bryant is still on

045the job and doing really good work. But during that process, I learned the importance of having a weekly conversation with a board member who's designated as the contact person throughout the process. In the case of Anchorage, it was the board president. This is something that we always recommend and uh do on every search and that is to make sure that we have good communication between our team and one member of the board that's designated to make sure that when minor issues come up, things that need to be discussed are are are resolved and taken care of. And that I found that that communication uh loop worked really very well. Uh uh David Falty's also a member of our team. I asked him that same question. Uh he did the Round Rock Texas search in 2021.

046That's a district of 48,000 students. He did the Witchah, Kansas search in 2023, uh district of 48,000 students. And he said in both cases, he was surprised by the number and scope of stakeholder meetings uh that were necessary in a larger district. And uh he was reminded of how important it is to get feedback from this from that those diverse groups of stakeholders. And in both cases, that feedback from stakeholders in both the survey and the stakeholder meetings was a very important part in developing the profile and helping the board determine what kind of superintendent uh that they were looking for. I've also been involved some other uh complex searches. The uh Alaska Commissioner of Education search uh very interesting complex search uh ESD23 in Pasco, they serve 70,000 students. is another uh complex search

047that we completed in 2022. Uh but uh they're all unique, they're all different. Uh and they all have their own challenges and it takes a lot of good communication between the team and the board. Uh as you saw on that first slide that Libra started with, uh those yellow uh lines, those were the five times that we need to meet with the board. And that's a crucial part of the process is board involvement in the search. And those meetings can be in person, they can be virtual. We're flexible and we can do either either way, but that communication uh with the entire board uh at those milestone steps is very important in this process and uh uh important part of of the way we work. So I think that's all I have. Rich, did we

048leave you out? Are you going to cover anything? I can't remember. No, I think we're okay to honor the board's time. If there are additional questions, maybe we move to that. Okay. Do you have any questions? Perfect. I just want to quickly make note that we've been joined also by director Sarju. I appreciate the presentation from Rain Associates team looking at for board director seeing if there are questions. I'm not seeing any questions. Just going to give it one for technology purposes. Giving it one more second here. I I don't have any questions. I'm listening. Perfect. Thank All right. I appreciate it. Thank you again to uh Ray and Associates team for being here on a Friday evening. I really appreciate it. Appreciate the presentation, you being so thoughtful and going through and addressing our

049our questions. Um, our next interview at board direct stores doesn't start till 5:35. So, I'm going to do a quick uh we will now be in recess for uh let's see that is uh what time did I say? I'm sorry. 15. We're going to be in recess for a 20 minute break. We will reconvene at 5:30. Um, so we will be back here at 5:30 for directors. Thank you all for your time. Thank you. Thank you all. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Oh [Music] yeah. Hey [Music] Heat. Heat. N. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] N. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. N. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Hey, heat. Hey, heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. N. [Music] Heat. Heat.

050[Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] I'm Heat. Heat. N. [Music] Hey, hey, hey. Heat. Heat. [Music] N. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] All right. The special meeting of the board is now reconvened at 5:30 p.m. Give folks a second here. So, we are going to move on to our second inter of the evening. This will be with McFersonson and Jacobson. Uh for the public watching, the interview evaluation criteria is currently up on the screen. For board directors, you should have the uh scoring rubric in your inbox to fill out uh just a reminder to submit your scores to the board office uh by April 22nd

051for tabulation. At our April 23rd uh board special meeting, we will review the interview scores, discuss, and select a firm uh for board action during our regular board meeting on April 23rd. Um we do have our um uh procurement specialists online. If folks have any questions this evening, um please or if board directors have any questions, please raise your hand. Um they are here to help to support us this evening. Um, wait, waiting just for one more second here for one more board director to get back on and then we will continue on. All right, we are all here. Um, any board directors have questions? All right, seeing no questions, then we're going to go on to the presentation from our next firm. Well, we will hear now from McFersonson and Jacobson. I will pass

052it over to them now. Let's try that again. Do we have anyone here? Do we have Mick Ferson and Jacobson here yet? So I I am here. Um I believe my colleagues apologies for my laryngitis. Um I see from the text that they are on. I'm so sorry. It said it said we were muted and I I didn't have the ability. So now I see I can unmute. Gustavo, you should be there as well. You have to go up and unmute and turn your camera on. I apologize for that. Dr. Hersel, thank you so much. I know your voice is very bad tonight. So, thank you. I have a couple couple uh questions. Uh as far as process, we have approximately 40 minutes. How much time did the board uh request for questions and answers,

053please? So, I believe we we submitted all our questions beforehand. Um and as long as they are answered in the presentation, the board directors have an opportunity for follow-up questions. Um, but really that I I leave that up to you to decide to determine how much time you want to leave. Okay, that's fine. The second question is our presentation is that up on the screen and do we um just ask for the next slide to move forward? I'm looking to the board office here. They just got off mute. Um, you will be able to share your presentation. You should have um sharing privileges now. Um, but let us know if that is not working and we can pull up your presentation on our end as well. Yeah, that's what we had prepared for. We thought

054it was going to be on your screen. That might be the quickest way. Tell me when the presentation's up, please. Great. Thank you. Um, obviously McFersonson Jacobson. Next slide, please. And next slide. So, my name is Dr. Steven Lauder. We'll introduce ourselves, our team members in just a couple slides, but I wanted to say that some very important things. We believe that it's critical to the success of your students in your community that you have strong highquality leadership and that's our mission to provide you with the very best leadership possible and to our search process has successfully brought highquality leadership to many urban school districts to name a few Albuquerque, Wo County, Charlotte, Meckllinburgg, Las Vegas, Fresno. I was recently on the Fresno search, Louisville, Sarasota, and I did the Kent presentation or this search

055as well. We have deep urban experience. We're a national firm. Next slide, please. This is reiterating what I was saying earlier. We're established a leading national search firm. We have a network of over 120 consultants like the people that are on the team tonight. We're a national recruiter, not just local, we're a national recruiter. The most important thing for us is transparency with our clients and their constituents and the authenticity of engagement with the stakeholders which include parents and students and staff uh classified staff, certificated staff, elected officials, all those constituents that are part of the process and millu of an important urban school district. And we have a strong record of successful placements. Next, please. Thank you. Um, so I'd like to just introduce myself and also another member of the team, Dr. Joel,

056who is actually on a flight back from Europe now. He wasn't able to be here with us. But my name is Steve Lauder. My last place, I've been a superintendent for more than 30 years. My last placement uh was in Stockton Unified, highly diverse and high poverty school district of nearly 40,000 students. For the last 10 years, I've been a search consultant for McFersonen Jacobson and done multiple multiple uh searches for them as I said, including most recently Fresno uh California school district over 70,000 students. Um Dr. Joel is the retired superintendent from Lincoln School District, Nebraska, 42,000 students, and he has had many of the urban school searches. He's kind of our urban specialist. Um, Albuquerque, Charlotte, Las Vegas, Louisville, Sarasota are his current searches. Um, Dr. Hershel, would you like to introduce yourself?

057I know your voice is so bad. Certainly, with apologies. Um, I just got a very bad case of laryngitis. Um, so I'm Mary Alice. Uh, I am familiar with a number of the board members. Um, I was previously superintendent in the Reton School District. Um, you have my resume. I won't go through all of those things. I'm a lifetime educator and uh since the superintendency has done um quite a bit of work in education philanthropy with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, served as chief of staff for Governor Eninsley to launch his administration and most recently started my own consulting firm that I am working both with search firms um that I'm honored to be part of the McFersonson team and I do excuse individual um mentoring support for new superintendent and working with school

058boards. So I do a lot of that work in Washington state um and a couple outside the state. So um I think I'll turn it to Thank you Dr. Thank you. So thank you. Thank you. I'm Gustavo Badas, superintendent in Oregon uh in a midsize district about 40,000 and also the current AASA president which is the National Association for School Superintendent about 14,000 uh folks across the across the US and immediate past president of ALAS, the Association for Latino Administrators and Superintendent. been a superintendent for 14 years and an educator for 35 on the west coast on three western states, California, Washington State, and Oregon. Thank you. Dr. Hersel, we plan to have you do the next slide. Uh next slide, please. Just tell us when you can or cannot continue. Next slide, please. So

059part of um our presentation today starts with your decision you've already made as a board with engaging a search firm um the structured transparent process um from the beginning to the end ensuring that um we follow the detailed timelines of the search. I mean, make sure it locks in with your schedule and your process. And then a deep commitment to engaging stakeholders uh locally in the development with the search criteria that you already have set some and then engaging stakeholders to add to what is needed in the next uh superintendent for Seattle. Um there's template um applications and forms and advertisements but all customizable to make it unique to Seattle. Go ahead to the next slide. Thank you. So one of the many things that McFersonson prides itself on is the recruiting the vetting of

060candidates. really digging deep into the candidate pool and who's out there that could be a best fit. Um, a lot of background work, verifying everything and resumeumés. Um, conducting deeper than normal reference checks and background um, communicating with all the candidates throughout the process so everyone's informed um, of where they are in the process. And then um also just navigating all of the state and legal requirements for um the open meetings, what uh has to be um taken care of and then confidentiality of course with different candidates and the particular situations they may be in. Um investigating and evaluating appropriate salaries and benefits. That's a an opportunity for the board to go deeper with information that McFersonson can put together for you. Um, and I do normally do the next two slides with why I

061choose McFersonson and it validates my um, reason for joining McFersonson and being part of this team to hopefully serve Seattle. Um, but my colleague has agreed with my voice to do my next two slides for me. So that way you don't have to listen to this. Oh, thank you. And again, uh, so we've conducted searches all across the United States, over a thousand searches. And really, we we we pride ourselves in being flexible in terms of how we customize our searches based on the board's desires, the board's needs, timelines, etc. And we really pride ourselves in terms of the retention of candidates. This is something I really want to highlight where 80% of our candidates remain in the same position over 5 years. 60% remain the same position over 10 and 40% of the candidates

062hired remain over 15 years. That's a that's a pride point for McFerson Jacobson. It's something that we we strive to have people that are the right fit for the right district so that there's longevity in the position and there's strong board superintendent relationships to be able to allow to do that. Next slide, please. Again, be fierce and Jacobson, we don't hire the the superintendents. You do as a board. Again, we're consultants. We're the recruiters of talent. We have we have a lot of people across the US and we broadcast broadly to get the best talent pool we possibly can and that meet your criteria and bring that those those candidates to you in terms of the best fit, what we feel it's going to be the best fit for Seattle public. Again, we represent what

063you want and work directly for you. Next slide, please. Turn over to Steve. So, the timeline search process is is established by the board. Um, and unfortunately you may or may not have seen our draft uh calendar that just got sent to the district this afternoon, but we have a draft proposed calendar that would come uh within with a superintendent selection in the last week of June 2025. So hopefully that's there. If not, you may be able to look at it later. Um, usually takes 8 to 12 weeks. We can do it faster. Uh it can be also much quicker if it's a completely confidential search if that's the desire of the board. Um if we go cuss did you want to go to slide the next slide about five phases please. So thank you.

064So we're going to spend some time here in the five phases in terms of how we process you know we first we're going to meet with the school board to to identify your your characteristics. What are you looking for in the next superintendent in Seattle? And then which groups of folks do you want us to connect with? Which stakeholder groups? Which affinity spaces do you want us to connect with? Students, parents, specific languages, examples. Uh and then we establish a timeline as Steve just mentioned and the and the critical dates that you want to hit to make sure we meet those benchmarks. And we advertise. We we ask you where do you want us to advertise? We will give you some some examples of where we typically advertise, but maybe again you want some more

065specific and we can work with you on those. And of course the salary range because that's something that's asked often by uh candidates that that we do contact in terms of what is the salary range. And then craft the job posting and vacancy announcement based on the desired characteristics that we have for folks in terms of uh what the board's looking for, what the community is looking for. That's phase one. In phase two, we will then meet with those stakeholders that you have identified and also distribute our surveys that are co-created with the school board in terms of what you want to look for and develop promotional materials and get them to advertise the vacancy that's and spread those again across the United States. And then we start to again get our application materials and

066actively recruit. This is where we really uh utilize our network of superintendents from across the country to really get the word out there and make sure that people uh again understand the positions open and everything that the board is looking for the characteristics and trying to identify the best fit and the broadest range of candidates we can. phase three, you know, we would then read the read and evaluate the application files and really trim down to a certain select group of candidates that uh that don't meet the criteria to those who do meet their criteria. And that's where we also start reference checking. And with reference checking, we go more than just what's on the candidates um applications. We go three deep. So we go we go deeper. We we make sure that we we

067hit as many people as we can. Even those again that are not on the reference sheet sheet, we make sure that we we hit references that are past employers, other people that are on there. And again, we we have a white network, so we go pretty deep in terms of where where we want uh to make sure we have contact to ensure that we have the right references so there's no surprises. Phase four, again, we go back to meet with the board and we review the short list of candidates with you to see this is the group that we have and and and work with the board to make sure that it's the candidate pool is acceptable and then then we work with you on choosing which candidates to interview and prepare the board prepare

068work with you in terms of the process and coordinate interviews with you and your staff with your staff uh typically board secretary or others HR department and We all during that time we keep the candidates informed of their of the status of their application. Then phase five again once the board does select a candidate we work with you to establish performance objectives and measures. And this is also something that we want to highlight. We provide a 2-year McFersonson Jacobson guarantee saying that we would guarantee that the superintendent stays in Seattle for 2 years and if not and Steve can speak to this if and if not we'll come back and conduct the search again minus because we would have expenses but the core search would be done again. And Steve can you weigh in a

069little bit on more on that? Yeah. Um I think you you've done a very good job of describing it. If the person that you select leaves for any purpose or reason within the first two years, we come back and and do the search for just any expenses that we have. The only exception to that if there's a major political change in the board and that's the reason for the moving on to the board, we'll I think discuss that with the board before we automatically go into a a full guarantee mode. But normally that doesn't happen. And if the person leaves because of family issues or some other things, then we'll come back and honor that guarantee. Gus, I I would like Dr. Hershel to talk about the phase five and beyond. I know your throat

070is bad, but if you could say just a few things about that program. Sure, happy to. So um phase five and beyond is an optional um support for ensuring the success in the first year or two um of the superintendent's um experience. Again, working with the superintendent and with the board, the five-year plan, the strategic plan, all of the things that need to happen. And in a large district like Seattle, what's the current plan? where are you in your um strategic plan years? And then um just being a a mentor, a help to a new superintendent um and even an experienced superintendent but new to Seattle. And so the experiences with um providing that kind of phase five support um has really helped with ensuring the longevity of a superintendent especially in those first couple

071of years. So it's um a high support uh option and um direct involvement with both the board and the superintendent. Thank you Dr. Michelle. We also provide as an option a psychological profile of your selected superintendent candidate um that will give you insights into their thinking patterns, how they work with other people. Uh boards around the country have found it to be very insightful to help them understand each other and how uh people and the new superintendent works. So that's also another option. Uh let's see. I think we're gonna I'm gonna have to say next slide a couple times because this slide was animated. So try next slide, please. Oh, no. It's fine. It wasn't. That's fine. So, the investment, the search for your district is not to exceed 45,500. That's all inclusive of the

072things that are listed. That's phases one through five, uh, not the optional beyond phase 5. 30 days on the American Association of School Administrators, 30 days on top jobs, 30 days in NASBY, uh, six weeks in ALAS, one posting in Washington State, a posting uh, sorry, the school directors association website, one posting on the Washington Association of School Administrators, up to uh, three consecutive days of in-person stakeholder meetings. And I think an important thing to say here is that our team will meet with each board member individually to discuss their hopes and desires about the search. Uh that helps us also in the vetting process so we have a deeper understanding of the needs and criteria of all the board members collectively and individually. Um online stakeholder surveys we use K K12 insight. Uh some

073districts prefer to use their own um mechanism, but we that's the one we use. What we'll do is we'll post the same questions that we use or we can modify it at the board's desire to ask specific questions that they have deep interest in. But all of those questions, all those responses, albeit any individual's name or any profanity will be a bulk download data dump to the board. So, it'll be useful to their um uh decision-m process. We will at the end of an extensive community stakeholder um meeting process, be it Zoom, telephone calls, personal calls to certain individuals, personal meetings in in-person meetings. Uh all of that information will be developed into an executive profile summary report and that information will be given to the board again for their deliberation process. We also provide

074an opportunity for all those finalist candidates to uh create a video that the board will be able to see before they select those that they wish to interview. We have standard questions, but if the board and some boards choose to modify and ask specific questions, we're able to do that as well. We're able to put these questions that we ask the community up in multiple languages and get their translations and get them back to you as well. Uh we we will do a criminal financial and degree verification background check for those uh chosen by the board for interviews. Travel expenses for consultants and scheduled trips that's included in office expenses are all included in the 45,500. Um let's see I think that's it uh on the investment side of the coin. Um next slide please.

075I think some key takeaways are transparency. We believe in transparency. We will do the search that the board wishes. They wish a confident confidential search. We will do that. But we believe in as much transparency with the community and your stakeholder group, your staff, your teachers, your students as possible. We have high sustainability of leadership. Once you've selected the person that we find the best fit, um, they come and stay. In fact, if if the board can't see supporting their finalists for five years, I'm not sure that we're the right company for you because you can have no longer have sustainable change and sustain positive strong leadership if you don't give that individual whoever it is five years of strong support from the board. We also believe in high very high involvement of stakeholder your

076stakeholders. Um, next slide. We'll go to questions, but I have a couple things I need to say again. We're extremely experienced in urban scal searches. I'll say again, Albuquerque 83,000. Wo county 64,000. Charlotte Meckllinburgg 147,000. Las Vegas very large 300,000. Fresno 70,000. Louisville almost 100,000. Sarasota 45,000 students. I wanted to speak to one of the questions and I know we probably haven't answered them all but we think we have time to to answer the questions the board may have. Over the past five years, this is about diversity of of applicants. Over the past five years, approximately one-third of our applications our applicants have been female and a quarter of our applicants have been ethnically diverse. And over the past 10 years, onethird of the organizations we've represented have placed women or ethnically diverse candidates. Um

077while it's not our um our job to select candidates, we do provide highly uh diverse field of candidates for the board's review. Um let's see. I'm not sure that you've had a chance to look at the the timelines, but hopefully you'll get a chance to do that. Uh anything else from Dr. Hersel or Dr. Alberas? No, no. So, just with our uh with our range of network again, we're very closely associated with the Association for Latino Ministers and Superintendent as well as NAPSI or African-American group and uh they're um their their members and we try just to make sure that we have an incredibly diverse group of candidates brought forward forward toward you as well as a lot of West Coast connections with uh specific state affinity groups such as WASA and Washington State, OALA

078here, Oregon Association for Latino Ministry ators or CALSA, the California Association, but we do go nationwide to make sure we have the the most diverse qualified pool we possibly can to present to our school board. So, I there's also a couple other things I I've taken notes here and the board I'm sure will have some other questions, followup questions for us, but you know, how do we ensure that we provide you with the skill set, the applicants with the skill set you need? Clearly, you need somebody who's going to be able to handle controversy. you've got budget problems, uh, significant serious budget issues. So, we're going to provide you with individuals who have successful experience going through these budgeting school closing issues, if you will, reducing their budgets, people who know how to handle these

079very controversial and very hot topics. Um, they're out there. We have access to them and we will provide them for you. So we will use those kinds of criteria and the criteria that you have developed to screen and sort the applicants that um apply for your position. Uh let's see what else do we have here that just key things we talked about um being able to modify our search tools and our tools to get information back from uh your constituents, your stakeholders. Um, again, let me just reiterate, we're a national organization with deep urban experience. And I guess at that, I would turn it over to the board for follow-up questions that we haven't covered. Thank you, directors. Any follow-up questions? None for me. Dctor from Yeah, sorry. None from me. All right, Director Sarju

080checking in. She's on mute. Um, all right. Well, I appreciate you all making time on a Friday evening. We appreciate hearing from you. Thank you so much. And uh uh we appreciate the presentation and trying to answer some of our questions we sent beforehand. Thank you. No, no questions. My mic was disabled, but somebody just uh enabled me. Okay. Thank you, Director Sarju. I would just like to say in closing that we appreciate the opportunity and we would love to uh to serve your community and your school district and we will provide whatever services are necessary to ensure that you receive the most important highest qualified candidate for your next superintendent. Thank you. Thank you so much. Um board directors, we uh do not have our next presentation till 6:30. So we will take a

081recess now um until 6:27 roughly. So we will reconvene at 6:27 uh for our next presentation. Thank you. Thank you. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Oh yeah. Hey [Music] Heat. Heat. N. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] N. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. N. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. N. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Hey. Hey. Hey. [Music] Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. [Music] Heat. [Music] Congratulations. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] N. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. N. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] back. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] N. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music]

082Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. N. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Grand [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] All right, it is 6:26. The special board meeting is now conven reconvened at 6 uh p.m. Our final interview for the evening will be with HYA. Um it's going to start here at 6:30. So we've got three minutes, but just a few quick reminders. Again, the uh the firm will have 40 minutes to present uh followed by uh uh director questions or if there are any follow-up director questions, we submitted our questions to them up front um to use in their in their uh interview this evening. The score sheet, which uh board staff will put up here on the screen again, is in

083your inbox. Please review and fill out um and send to the board office by April 22nd for tabulation. At our April 23rd special meeting, we will review the interview scores, discuss, select a firm, and then at our board regular board meeting on that same day, um we will take board action um on the firm selection. It looks like um or I will say we also have procurement staff available if any board directors have questions for them um through this process. Otherwise, it looks like we do have HYA here present now. And so we will uh pass it over to them for their for their interview and presentation now. This is will be the last presentation uh this evening. So handing it over to Hway staff, do we have uh HYA on the line? Yes, we

084have one member of the HYA team here. Nancy, are you able to hear us? You should be able to unmute. Is she aware that her micro We can't hear her. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. We can hear you, not her. Yeah. Yeah. Nancy, are you able to hear us in the meeting? Julia, do you have a number to reach out to her or uh send her a message maybe in the chat? Yes, we will try to get a hold of her. Just to give a quick update, folks, we are working to try to get HYA online here. Our board staff is working on that now. Um, it would just hopefully be a few minutes. Nancy or Micah, are you able to hear us? Uh, we're unable to hear you. I can

085you hear me now? I'm Yeah, I was just waiting for it to start. I was because I I saw nobody else's pictures up so I thought we were waiting to start but yeah I'll unmute now. Okay here and will you be sharing your own slides or would you like us to share them? Uh either way you can share them that's fine or we have we have a slide deck in front of us but if you have it that'd be fine for you to share it. Welcome HYA. will get your screens or your slides on the screen here and you have the floor. Can you guys all still hear me? Yes, we can hear you. I cannot hear you guys. Are you speaking? Can you hear us now? Test test test. Can other board directors hear?

086Can any other board directors or anyone else hear me? I can hear you. D I can hear you. I can hear everybody. Yep. I can hear you. Yep. Yep. Great. Awesome. Mai, are you ready to go? I am ready to go. So, are you all right? Uh, good evening. Good folks there in beautiful Seattle. My name is Mai Ali and I'd like to introduce my co-pilot here. Hi, my name is Hi, my name is Nancy Perez and I'm thrilled to be here tonight on behalf of HYA and as one of the team members that would be working with your um school system. Thank you so much. Okay. And who do we have from the Seattle team? Uh this evening we have our board directors. We have uh director Miserah, director Clark, director Hersy, director Sarju,

087and myself, Director Top. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very kindly. So, I will not belabor. I'm will most certainly jump right into it. I'd like to talk about the board's leadership responsibility. The next slide underscores the significance to understand diverse communities and the importance of finding the next leader in your district. That's the board's most significant role as we all are keenly aware. It's not just about undertaking a headhunting expedition, but the work of the board throughout this process is to understand what the stakeholders want and the next leader and match the wishes of the community. Which is why we're going to focus heavy on community engagement. Ensure that we capture all of the diverse voices within your exceptional school community. selecting a leader who meets the leadership profile but who also understands what it

088takes in order to drive a very diverse school district. Next slide. So slide number three underscores HYA as a trusted partner. Uh superintendent searches garner a tremendous amount of interest from the community as well as the media. And it takes a search firm with a tremendous amount of extensive expertise in large urban very complex politically charged environments. And so when a district undergoes a superintendent search process, the board will be in a in the spotlight on the local and sometimes even the national level. And whether you like it or not, even with the most pristine processes, they're going to be individuals who like and individuals who do not like the decisions of be a tremendous amount of public scrutiny. And so tonight, what I I want you guys to walk away knowing, we understand the

089challenges because we've been in many of your very highprofile searches throughout the country. And so picking the right partner to stand with you and to defend the process again to defend the process is extremely important and moving through this very delicate and nuanced activity. Slide four. So when you're looking at at the trusted relationship between the board and HYA, it's extremely important and significant to underscore our relationship with each and every board member. It's very important to understand your visions, your aspirations for your community. It helps us to work very collaboratively and to work very well with the board by having a relationship with each and every board member. We don't want any surprises. We don't want you to have any surprises. And we want to make certain that we bring our proven techniques to

090help move the process along, but also understand that you know the community very well. Again, the emphasis on working cons with consensus as well as building a very collective uh force multiplier to help the board move forward with respect to obtaining and exceeding the objective which is to hire superintendent. I go back to the need to work with the board intricately around community engagement as well as ensuring that the diverse folk within your community are very well represented. And so let's look at slide five. This is our team. Our team is consist consist of myself serving as executive lead, the chief operating officer, Dr. PDZ and then we of course we have support staff Miss Vincent, Miss Martell, Miss Melon, project manager, associate support, client support and so the five of us will work very

091collaboratively and collegially to ensure that we meet each and every need of your community. It's very important to understand we we've put together an allstar cast of folk who represent the diversity of our country. These individuals live east, west, as well as in the Midwest. And so they have a tremendous amount of amount of expertise managing very complex searches utilizing research as well as partnering with the board to understand and utilize all of the search processes that we can bring or that we shall bring to bear. Again, this team has been responsible for helping boards place superintendent throughout the country. Our job is simply to vet and collect to make certain that we provide comprehensive background checks to make certain that we ensure that the community profile is representative of that which your community feels

092is the most important element of the uh search process which is ensuring that pedagogical needs are met, operational needs are met and someone who is physically a steer. Slide six. So, this is a little bit about the firm. 35 years conducting executive searches, over 2,000 searches done, 80 plus searches per year, 130 plus nationwide associates. That's our network, ensuring that we can touch each and every corner of this country. If you look at our client satisfaction rating, 9.4 out of 10. Not too bad. We pride ourselves on research and analytics. We have a full-time back office as well as IT support staff which is referenced to slide number five. Those individuals will be there to help you. 24 hours a day. If there's an email, rest assure our response time will be within 5 to

0938 hours. You will hear right back from us. We partner with national as well as state universities, meaning local universities, some of your leading national state universities. But that partnership helps us to work with superintendents to develop superintendents as well as school boards. We have a phenomenal partnership with Howard University and the National School Board Association around a cohort helping school boards understand best practices in order to govern their local LEA. The next slide. So slide number seven simply underscores HYA's experience and this is just a sampling of clients over the past 5 years. We did a phenomenal job managing the superintendent search in Atlanta Phoenix. We're currently working in Jefferson County which is Louisville. doing the search in Montgomery, Clark County, a very large, the fourth largest school system in the country, a very

094complex search. Clark County was Los Angeles Unified, Lowden County, and the list goes on and on. And so again, we have a tremendous depth and breadth of experience working in school districts that are similar in size as well as complexity as Seattle and bringing to bear candidates who representative of not just that community but also this country. Let's drop down to slide number eight. Slide number eight simply highlights the why. And when you're looking at an Apollo root cause analysis, it always talks about the five W. And so when you when you look at at HYA, the question would be why? Well, it's important for students and staff within your system to understand and to know that we've been around long enough. We see continually how others use our work and document it as their

095own work. We see our work out there from other firms. Can you believe it? And so people shamelessly borrow or or or lift because they understand that we perfected working with boards, working with stakeholders, working with communities, candidates, students, working in districts. We've been trusted for over 35 years. validated client testimonials and we're aggressive with respect to our recruitment efforts. Sure, there's a little passive recruitment where individuals might apply off the street based upon reviewing our websites, but again, our objective is to touch each and every single community within this country where there's a superintendent who match your leadership profile report. I continue to go back to that which we'll talk about in subsequent slides. But the significance and the importance of ensuring that we utilize this leadership profile report as the fulcrum of the

096search and that fulcrum will help us to bring to bear an exceptional leader. Slide number nine simply talks about the recruitment. First and foremost, recruiting locally the Northwest, the West Coast, throughout the country, seeking great candidates to ensure that we bring forth a phenomenal slate again that is diverse, but also a slate that has demonstrated an ability, not just pedagogically, but also a slate that has demonstrated their ability in order to drive systemic change within uh school systems, raising student achievement. addressing operational issues, school bus, construction, facilities, etc. Slide number 10, the HYA signature search process. We do understand that your superintendent's last day is September 1st and so we would curate an experience that would involve community engagement for a minimum of two months on the ground engaging your community for two months in

097addition to surveys as well as online engagement. We don't want anyone to feel that we've not availed ourselves to them irrespective of work schedule and or language barrier. We want to make sure we hear from your community. That will be done in May as well as June. Then the recruitment phase that's looking far and wide for talented candidates. Those candidates must meet the leadership profile that will be derived from the engagement activities that'll be ongoing. Then we'll move to the selection phase in August, transition in August. We'll facilitate a process after we've arrived to the best match and then of course support the board as well as superintendent in August to ensure there's a mid- August start where there's a a little overlap between the arrival of the new superintendent and the departure of the

098outgoing superintendent to ensure that there's just a good handoff and there's continuity therein. And so in looking at the engage phase, let's talk about the difference. Slide number 12. Successful and deep intrinsic community engagement. Developing a a strat plan for the board. We're interviewing the board. Next slide, please. Your slide number 12. Thank you. successful and deep community engagement as I articulated intrinsic. We're looking at the board's uh strap plan. We're providing board interviews. We're doing individual interviews, focus groups, community forum, stakeholder survey. You as board members and the district will provide us with a list of the various communities and individuals you you'd want us to engage. So for example, immigrant rights groups, student groups, individuals who may be a part of your black parent unions, Latino, Asian, etc. We want to engage everyone.

099Leave no stone unturned. If you look at that little arrow that says Hya, that arrow then points to all of that work and the collection of that data qualitative and quantitative then leads and informs the development of the leadership profile report summary surveys selection criteria characteristics which will help to determine the best match for your next superintendent. So again, we would need all of the data points in order to develop the profile report to be able to share that profile report with aspirants as well as your community as a whole and then we'll be in a phenomenal position to move forward and ensure that there's a a match. Again, we're not hiring your superintendent. We're facilitating a process so that what your community states is in the profile report. That profile report is then shared

100among the nation. If individuals do not meet elements of the leadership profile report, then it'll be hard for them to manage this system if their vision is not congruent with that of your community. Slide 13. So, as stated, we're your partner. We're your ambassadors. We're there to listen and validate constituent voices. So, how do we facilitate focus groups? And I've spent a tremendous amount of time talking about community engagement, focus groups, and the diversity that we bring to bear versatile meetings, face to face, zoom, we'll meet in various locations, it does not matter. Churches, synagogues, it matters not. Email feedback. We're meeting flexible times. Morning, afternoon, evening, weekends, weekdays. Again, it does not matter. Our objective is to be where the community is. We're not making the community drive downtown and fight traffic. We're going

101to come out into the streets and engage focus groups like your high school students, your parents, your various union organizations, whether they be certificated or classified administrators, your business community, the ecumenical community, the civic community, the mayor, the city council, the county leadership, etc. The folks over at Silent Transit. We want to hear from every single individual. We want to make sure that we seek and reach all community members and we want to coordinate working with your staff to ensure that we meet the linguistic needs of your very diverse and voluminous community. And so looking at the research base, I'm going to turn this over to my good friend Dr. PZ and she's going to really talk about what we've been able to manage by way of researchbased stakeholder surveys and statistical analysis in case

102they're in. So, thank you very much. So the biggest broadest net that you immediately get feedback on is the survey and we work with the board to make sure that that is um really disseminated through all of the channels that you already have of course through social media through list serves etc. And the survey is developed um with a corresponding white paper that shows you how um leaders perform in different areas. And the great thing about the survey is not only do you get responses back that aggregate information but also show you like the upper leftand corner based on different constituent group and where they're clustering together or not. Um we also have information on different programming to kind of valid validate where some of the focus group information is coming back and where those

103are able to be synthesized into what is the leadership profile. I know one of the questions that you posed and that many of our clients pose is about survey research, right? And like how many responses do we need to get? What's typical? And I will tell you that there really isn't a specific answer that one can provide in terms of um you know what different communities will how they will respond to the survey. I'll tell you in Clark County for example, we had over 15,000 responses and they were happening simultaneously on the same day where we were able to handle that and it never crashed. Our servers um were up and running. Our IT staff was working all weekend to make sure that that didn't happen. But really the question of margin of error depends

104on numerous um factors. And our experience about surveys shows that we can achieve a margin of error of plus or minus 4% with roughly about 500 responses. And when you think about all the surveys that we hear about nationally, right? Oh, there's there's about 2,000 respondents and those are making inferences on 300 million Americans. And so we help you understand the complexity of survey. We have survey researchers in our firm and we really understand that if we can get to that 500 response level and particularly um knowing that it isn't necessarily just about the response rate but about the total number of responses and the representative nature of those responses. We feel really really good about making inferences. And I'll tell you one last thing about community engagement that I have learned over all of

105my experiences working with really every one of those school districts that was on that first slide. When you provide the community with a voice both within the survey and through focus groups and opportunities and then they see their voice reflected in this official document called the leadership profile, the board has provided and has taken advantage of. what an awesome opportunity is to hear from their diverse constituent base. And I have found in my experience that when that happens and when people see their voice reflected in that report, they are engaged and they feel that they can trust the process and trust the board. And so that is really at the focus of that engage phase. Back to you Mai in the next slide. I can go on with this one too. You want to take

106this one? No. Just as another example of some of the some of the ways that we get feedback, whether it be from community forums during the select phase, whether it be from feedback as a result of participating in a focus group, whether it is about giving feedback and how the different candidates align to the leadership profile. We've provided QR codes. If you're going to have it live streamed on cable, the QR code is in the corner. We can provide um little um cards when they walk in. All to get this kind of real time feedback and make sure that people understand that we absolutely want to capture their voice. Next slide. So before we jump to the recruit, I just want to I want to go back and I want to underscore Whether folks are

107in Beacon Hill, University District, downtown Seattle, whether they're in uh Queen Anne, doesn't matter. Doesn't matter what part of Seattle they're in. We want to make certain that they understand and they know we're going to be there. And we're going to count on you as board members to ensure that you provide us with all of the community-based organizations so that we can tie into those focal those those focal points or those points of contact as it were to be able to move very quickly to establish meetings on the ground. So I just want to make sure that that's clear and we are all on one accord. Next slide. So slide 16, the recruitment phase. And so the advantage within the recruitment phase. Let's just talk about our national recruiting infrastructure apparatus as it were. We've

108excelled at navigating the needs of confidentiality as well as attracting top candidates. Again, these searches are very complex. They're very dynamic. They're very politically charged. You're working through board dynamics. You're working through the potential of elections, whether they be local or national. And so, it's very important that that the search firm has a a level of expertise as well as understand the nature of diplomacy. Next slide, which is slide 18. So when you look at slide 18, back to the the Y factor associated with HYA, 95% of excuse me, 94% of our superintendent stay the full term for the first contract. 75% of superintendent recruited by HYA Associates. Again, that's active recruitment, not just passive. Our relationships exist far beyond a search given our active work with respect to the development of strategic planning, executive

109coaching, and general engagement around literacy, numeracy, and the community impact work done throughout school districts. Our reach is vast as well as uh wide. And so if you look at the recruiting advantage, you'll see that we promagate a 30,000 plus email subscriber database goes out each and every month. 30,000 plus 46,000 unique users on our website. So we're we're showcasing every superintendency search irrespective of the fact we're doing it or not because our objective is to help school systems. And so we want to make sure that we showcase all opportunities that then helps to drive traffic to our websites. And so again we work with superintendents as a part of our coaching and and collaborative efforts. our associates lead these superintendenties. Thosemies partner with universities like the University of Southern California as well as Howard

110University. And so again, superintendents know us, executive cabinet officials know us. And if you look to that slide, excuse me, the the little small graph as it were that's embedded in the slide, it it underscores a number of superintendent searches. And look at the year hya far andwide has outpaced the competitors each and every single competitor and urban superintendent search work because of that which I've just articulated which is our recruiting advantage and the fact that we're in every single state providing a measure of work whether it be superintendent search work around equity strategic planning exe executive coaching or other aspects within an LEA. And in fact, one of the questions that was proposed um to us was about how do you seek a diverse pool of candidates? What methods do you use to recruit

111um candidates that have historically been um not represented in positions like the superintendent? It's the network. We know all the sitting superintendent. We know the cabinet level superintendent. They trust us. they pick up our phone calls. We're able to explain what the challenges are in the district and how their skill set may be a match to those challenges providing an awesome opportunity to get on the ground in a district and move a system for the sake of students. And so when that question was asked, it is about that fourth bullet point as much as it is any of the other ones. You have to actually know the people and that's how you bring diverse recruitment to the table. So let's look at at slide 19. I want to highlight exactly what Dr. Perez was articulating.

112So if you look at this slide, it talks about a candidate recruitment tool. It is a candidate profile system that we use. leaders from across the country log on and they develop a profile during a given year. They upload different types of queries. They they can look for searches. They can match their experience with the size of a district, a particular state. We have access to applicants from every search. We conduct behavioral assessments and all of this information is within a candidate's profile. Perhaps you might not be interested in seeking a superintendency, but you'll build that profile as a candidate and then you'll work on that profile as years progress. So again, we're providing candidates with an opportunity to develop profiles within a database, but we also are able to access any applicant throughout the

113country. And what's great about that too is that we can query. So let's say you decide in your leadership profile that you want an experienced superintendent that has a doctorate that's been in a system of at least 30,000 students. We can put all those variables in. All of those individuals that match that leadership profile will be brought to us and we literally start by emailing every single one of them. Do you know about Seattle? The leadership profile has been posted. We would like to talk to you. And so that's just another way that we're able to really make sure that the net is out and that everybody knows about this position. So look at slide 20. So I've talked about the leadership profile being the fulcrum of the search. I'll give you an example and

114it's articulated here. So secret that Seattle has had challenges with respect to your budget and kudos to you as board members for passing that historic levy several weeks past. Hats off to you for that. The leadership profile will underscore that perhaps if it emerges, you may want somebody whose physical acumen might emerge as a desired characteristic and then we'll recruit to match that individual with the profile. Any calendars that are suggested to Hway from any stakeholder they'll be evaluated through the leadership profile again that serves as the fulcrums and we always can point back to well I didn't get an interview because you do not match the leadership profile. This is what the community that they wanted and this is exactly what we use as the recruitment tool. As a firm, we're confident that we'll

115recruit candidates that match exactly what your community articulated. We'll bring forth an excellent pool for you to interview and to select from and make certain that we're able to capture all voices in that process. And I would tell you this, if in fact there's an issue or a challenge with the timeline, we can deal with a strategy therein. But if we follow the prescriptive plan that we're laying out tonight, if this is the plan that we're going to follow, we will have your superintendent in seat mid August. Let's look at recruitment consideration slide 21 for Washington. This process will be fully confidential. It's very important for us to balance the confidentiality as well as the public's right to know. We must also align accordingly with respect to the law. Candidates will remain confidential. Only those

116candidates that the board has selected to be interviewed should be made public for the best applicant pool. Recruitment will be active. What does that mean? We're not just going to float a job and sit back and watch people passively apply. This is a very active recruitment effort, which means we will be on the phone utilizing that national network to recruit for your superintendent. Again, passive recruitment will indeed occur as always, but our objective here is to curate an experience for you as the board as well as the community and for the aspirant. We want to make sure that we are passively recruiting via website and social media, but we're actively and aggressively recruiting in order to align with our schedule. And most certainly we certainly shall drop down to slide 22 focusing on transition. So

117what does this look like? This is the superintendent developing the 100 day transition plan which focuses on development of the board as well as the superintendent. Now, we do understand that you guys are doing some work with the council of the greatest city schools. And so, of course, we will make certain that we are very conscious and we're very sensitive to ensure that we envelop elements of your soft G student outcome focused governance training as well as that which you've already employed within this overall transition plan. making certain that that is part and parcel to a superintendent's executive coaching journey. Documenting what was learned through the process. Mapping out activities for the transition phase. Communicating accountably with the community as well as the board. Looking at the priorities of the board as well as the

118community stakeholders. Much of that will be captured in the leadership profile report. an individual be able to walk in, utilize the leadership profile report to connect and communicate with respect to the school community as well as utilizing the HYA dashboard for which we will present to you during a subsequent uh moment in time. The dashboard will provide transparent and ongoing monitoring to ensure that the board can see exactly what's going on again real time. And it's this is a PDF that we provided you. We do have examples to the 100 day plan. That one links in the live version to the Atlanta superintendent's 100 day plan that we worked on with that. Um that can just be found via the Atlanta um public schools web page 100 day plan or you can um Google any

119of those from HYA and see the kind of work that we do in the transition phase. Perfect. To say we have about three more minutes for the presentation and then we have to move. Well, we'll see if any directors have any follow-up questions. Okay, so Dr. Perfect. We're right on schedule. Go ahead and close it on out with the analytics, if you will. Okay, great. So, um, we're just closing this out here. We just put some additional slides in here about some of the other technology and analytics that we do provide. Next slide. Slide 25, please. Thank you. Um, as part of the PDF, I'm sorry, when we printed the PDF, it doesn't look exactly like mine does. This is an example of the kind of advertising analytics that we provide. We're able to show

120the board how many people from what states have clicked on the official posting. Have they read the leadership profile? How much time have they spent on the website? Where do they come from? And that really helps us and the board to understand the amount of interest in the position officially. Is more outreach needed? Is the salary and benefits competitive? Gives us a lot of great information. Next slide. Should the board wish an online delivery system, we utilize a board portal. It's like a confidential website that is password protected where we are able to put all the information from a search on the board portal. That way all the board members have access to the right version. It's not floating around through emails to all the information to the candidates bios and backgrounds to meeting dates.

121Everything um can be delivered through the online HYA portal system. If the board doesn't want that, we're happy to also do it a more traditional route. But many of our clients love the website and love that it's password protected and that they know everything that they need to know is in one place accessible to them 24/7. Next page, we've gone through the timeline, but again working on May and June in the engage phase working. We all know as educators, we know as search firm that July is a bad month. It's bad for families, it's bad for the board, it's bad for administrators. And so trying to stay away from that July month, working it to August into that select phase and then mid August to where the superintendent begins allowing for that overlap with the

122current superintendent. Final slide is the pricing structure that was also in your uh proposal which is 30% of the superintendent's compensation and then the reimburseables for any other services that are selected such as thirdparty advertising, third party investigative background checks, etc. And so I think we're right on target. The last slide is just the question slide. um wanted to be mindful of the time that we were allotted and we really look forward now to answering any other specific questions. Well, thank you so much to the HYA team for being here on a Friday evening. Um board directors, do you have any questions? None for me. No questions from me. None for me. from Sarju. That is perfect. We might hear from Brandon. Brandon going once, twice, three times. All right. Thank you so much, Hya,

123for being here. No questions from us. I appreciate it. Um I appreciate you uh giving up a little bit of your time on Friday night. Thank you. You guys have a phenomenal evening. Thanks so much. Thank you for the time. Perfect. I also want to thank staff for being here Friday evening as well as board directors. Thank you. I know this was a long Oh, and we get a treat at the end. Hi, little one. Hi. Um, a long threehour meeting, but as there's no further uh business on the agenda, the meeting stand stands adjourned at 711 p.m. Thank you everyone. Good night.