001huh so i think you're good you don't worry [Music] yeah yeah that's okay we'll talk later but pretty much mission kind of pretty short now um yeah uh i think i'm on the screen so okay okay well yeah well we'll just do the best we can i yeah i didn't know yet yes you think it'll be okay for me to practice could they be okay for me to leave parker's fully brand new yeah foreign this chair how do you make it go up oh yeah i was figuring it out because i look like a thank you man just kidding all right everyone good afternoon um if we could get everybody seated and we will begin our afternoon um i want to begin uh by welcoming um gloria davis from gr recruiting this is of welcome
002gloria um they are our search firm for our superintendent search this year we are of course um excited and and ready for this opportunity um to embark on this search uh for the division's new superintendent and of course this is a monumentally important decision probably the most important decision i think this board will be making during our term we will be going over the timeline that glorious miss davis is bringing us today um we will be talking about the stakeholder engagement and the process and many other details that i know our community has been reaching out um to ask about and interested in how they will be participating in this um search for thank you for the divisions and our communities um superintendent uh and i will just say that of course this board is
003extremely uh dedicated to ensuring that we have a very robust stakeholder engagement process and anyone and everyone who wants to participate and have their voices heard will be part of doing that i would also like to welcome mr gary ray who is with us via zoom for gr recruiting welcome and i will go ahead and turn it right over to you gloria to begin thank you i did i did i did i said i this brings back memories of sitting at the head of the table with the board but thank you very much and we are so happy to be working with fairfax county uh on your superintendent search and our goal as well as yours we know is to find you the next best great leader and we are definitely going to do that
004i would like to introduce the president of the firm of gr recruiting gary ray gary you want to introduce yourself to the group is he there he's muted i don't know if he can hear us can you hear us all my wonderful tech team guys i'm sure they are can hear you oh excellent can you hear me uh i was just saying uh introducing to saying who i am and i'll come back and introduce myself more fully in a minute but as the president of the firm wanted you to start and introduce yourself again this is gary ray the president of gr recruiting uh good afternoon um we're happy to be here on behalf of uh gr recruiting and looking forward to assisting the fairfax county uh public schools and its search uh gloria will
005be the the lead associate there uh she's on the ground and um i certainly will be there later on with some other uh stakeholder groups uh you know down the road so it's a pleasure to be here and um we'll certainly uh try to give you a overview of the entire search process and answer any questions that may arise so thank you for having us okay thank you gary and as gary said i am the lead associate so you are going to have me for the rest of this week and in the days and months to come as well as gary and our other associates one of the things that gr recruiter would price itself on we have multiple associates across the nation and we will have many of them working with us here as
006we go through the wonderful process of talking to your constituents in terms of your staff and your staff community as well as your parent and public community i myself am a retired superintendent yay for retirement and superintendent of 16 years and i have worked with urban and inner city districts across the country and so i am happy to be here as an educator as a former teacher principal and central office administrator so with that we're going to dive right into the presentation uh next slide please and thank you to my wonderful uh now teammates bev and laura over there they're going to help me go through the presentation in terms of the powerpoint what you should see on the screen is just want to check and make sure the first half of the timeline timeline
007and what i'm going to do is just kind of go through some of the dates in general and then take a deeper dive into the various dates and give more explanation of what we're going to be doing during the entire process but this timeline will also be a part of what will be displayed on the district's website for everyone to be have access to and become familiar with we have started as you see on november the 15th 11 15 with a planning meeting with the board and then we began preparing promotional materials after which on the 17th and basically as a part of gr recruiting we as i said we are a national firm and we have already began to notify associates and other professional contacts that we have across the country that this search
008is in in existence and with the fairfax county uh superintendent board of educate board of education rather is looking for a new superintendent and we're going to start their individual board interviews starting this week we wanted to wait until even though it says we started would start on the 7th we wanted to wait until after this public meeting on the 13th and we'll begin contacting all of you on the board to set up individual interviews uh either before the holidays or after based on your schedule and what would work best for you then following that you see indicated uh on december the eighth we have already begun to notify all staff stakeholders that we will have a series of meetings starting tomorrow the 14th through the 16th i will be meeting individually with members of
009the leadership team and such and i'll get into that in a little more detail but just to let everyone know the 14th through the 16th of this week we will have stakeholder interviews with the staff and not only will i be holding individual interviews but members of our team will do the same and the 13th then we will uh have as we did this morning we had a closed session with the board and now we're into the public session and then we will starting tomorrow post online the survey link and then we will continue with the staff interviews as i said the meetings and then move into january the 10th through the 12th and again as i said i'll talk more about all this in a minute but i just want you to know what's
010here 10th through the 12th will be the parent and community stakeholders 10th and 12th of january through the 12th of january 2022. and then starting on the ending rather on the 13th will be the ending for the survey uh so we have starting tomorrow from the 14th all the way through january 13 2022 for the survey that will be out there that i'll give more detail about in just a minute then on the 20th we will have another closed session with the board following the survey and the stakeholder meetings and that closed session as well as the public session will be to give the results of all of the stakeholder meetings that have been held staff parent and community as well as survey results and that will take place again on the 20th for the
011public from one to three and with the board also having some conversation in the morning from 10 to 12. our our applications will start immediately after we develop the profile which will uh as soon as we complete all of the stakeholder meetings and give a summary on the 20th and the board decides on what that profile will be based on all of the feedback and information they have gleaned from the community from parents from the staff then we will then begin the advertisement on the starting the 21st of january going all the way through till the 4th of march march 4 2022 is a deadline and that's on the next slide bev and laura is a deadline for all the application materials and we will have ongoing screening after that through the 16th of march
012and do know as applications come in we continue to review we continue to discuss and we continue to really screen who is applying again making sure that they meet the criteria that has been set and and then we will have interviews starting of the uh in closed session the board and the search firm will meet on the 17th of march where we bring a slate and then the 21st and 22nd you see the first round of interviews and then the 28th through the 29th is the finalist round of interviews with the goal of having a decision made by the end of march around march 29 and the board then making some type of announcement the first part of april that's quickly going through the timeline again that i said is uh will be available if
013not already on the district's website for everyone to see now i'd like to go into the process in more detail so that we clearly understand and then as we go through making sure that if there are any questions that we can then dialogue about those questions so next slide please beven laura this next slide gives you an idea of the entire process in one fell swoop in terms of a diagram this whole process is about the input from not only the board it starts with conversation with the board of education but it totally includes totally includes the entire community entire staff because after all everyone involved in the district makes up the process of who the next district leader should be so i want to clearly understand that but we start with the input from
014the board of education we then then develop a profile based on all of that input based on all of that information we continually recruit from a candidate pool understanding that it's not only about who applies but it's about recruiting people i just said to the board every superintendent's job i've had i was recruited a couple of times i asked you want me to go where but the point is sitting in a job people call you contact you and ask you would you like to apply so we recruit we review application the next part of that is the board selects candidates we collaborate and finalize the search again with the input of the board and we always always are looking at those strategic supports that superintendents need after they get the job one creative thing about
015gr recruiting is we don't stop with the hire we then continue to work with the board and the superintendent once they are in place to make sure they're successful because after all that's what you want you want the superintendent to be successful and whether they're a seasoned superintendent first-time superintendent doesn't matter we all need support and that's one of the things that gr recruiting does next slide please so step one in the process of the board involved the board's involvement i talked about the planning meeting that was held on november the 15th this is where we began to talk about the timeline we began to look at all aspects of the search gr recruiting heard from the board about all of the board goals and values that have been set in place for fairfax county
016because that's extremely important we want to make sure that the person that we're recruiting talking to and looking at is someone that meets the standards goals and values set by the fairfax county board of education and the fairfax county community and so we began to have that discussion and were guided by those core values and strategic priorities we talked about a timeline and we also talked about all aspects of marketing and recruiting for example we discuss looking at all types of candidates we were looking for the k-12 educator we're looking for a non-traditional candidate if that person deems to have the type of background and experience that meets those core values and strategic priorities and so as we market and recruit we're keeping all of those things in mind because that's critically important it's critically
017important to understand that everyone that sometimes applies won't meet the standards that are set and won't meet those priorities so that's where having a national firm comes in to help with that screening process and to look at their experience and background and make sure that they meet the standards that have already been set we will also as i said have individual interviews with each board member around the table and that individual interview will consist of the same thing that we'll be doing when we meet with stakeholders uh this week as well as in january asking questions that are already set around what do you believe are the characteristics and the personality traits that you would like to see in the next superintendent what is it that you value about fairfax county school district what do
018you think is important what do you want to see happen moving forward in terms of priorities around student achievement parent engagement community engagement infrastructure projects the whole gamut what do you feel is important what have the successes been thus far and what are the challenges that you see that will be in place moving forward those are the kind of questions that we will ask of everyone we want to get everyone's input and opinion and trust me they will be very but one of the things we say is we want open and honest conversation because all of that feeds into developing that profile that i mentioned earlier so those individual interviews will start to be held with each board member and that can either be zoom or only time it really can't be in person because
019we're again we're out of town but we will set that schedule up with each individual based on their schedule as well as ours so that's a part of step one any questions around what i have said thus far miss davis i think we're going to go ahead and go through the presentation if that's okay with you and i'm keeping a list and we can come back at the end thank you okay uh next slide please with step two on the state staff stakeholder meetings uh again the purpose is there desired traits personality traits and characteristics that you would like to see and those meetings will be held starting tomorrow i will be here to meet with each member of the leadership team individually those appointments have already been set and i understand many have rsvp
020i will be meeting individually with them to ask them the type of questions that i just mentioned a minute ago again getting their thoughts opinions honest answers to very particular questions so 17 of those individual leadership team interviews have already been set up all of the directors and executive principals have also been invited to meet as a group and those dates and times have already been established i will also be meeting with all the teacher and support staff leaders the leaders of all of the teacher organizations and associations as well as the support staff associations and leaderships i will be interviewing them this week as well as all of the principals and assistant principals in all five regions every last principal and assistant principal has been invited to a meeting in each of the five
021regions and that those groups have been set up we try to do it in a little more detail than what you had before in your last superintendent process rather than say meeting with all the principals in the cafeteria we have divided the groups up so the groups are smaller so that they are more intimate so we can get more dialogue and conversation so as you see indicated we set them up in 15 to 20 attendees sometimes it's a little over depending on the size in each region but my point is we should have at least two principal groups elementary principles groups to middle and high school principal groups to assistant elementary groups and to assist the middle and high principal groups in every region so that gives us the input from all of those who
022will attend and be on zoom those meetings will be on zoom to give their feedback and their input into the process next slide please in terms of the parent and community stakeholder meetings as i said those will be held on january 10 through 12 2022 some of those will be in person i'll probably be the one back here on the ground during that time frame and the majority of those will be on zoom as well we will have uh right now we have about a hundred plus groups that we are scheduling uh and really looking at making sure groups are from each of the five regions again and one of the things that um we're playing playing pretty much attention to is making sure the groups also are all of those that are established in
023terms of parents and community leaders and i'll talk more about that in just a minute but making sure that groups that maybe you don't normally hear from and i know in fairfax county you pretty much hear from everybody but but there might be a group or two that doesn't always show up or is not always physically involved my point is we want to make sure you hear from the voice the voice of the voiceless we want to make sure you hear from people that you maybe not have not always heard from who have an opinion who are also very important but we want to make sure that the reach out is broad extremely broad so that's my point i want to make then the next point is we will have town hall meetings in each
024of the five regions even though we will be inviting particular groups of people particular parent groups we will still also have a town hall meeting that is open to any and everybody so that way every single person can have an opportunity to participate if they so choose and if it fits their schedule and when i say at various times that means maybe one early in the morning sometimes people can meet on their way to work seven o'clock excuse me 7 30. during the day lunchtime some people can come during their lunch hour depending on the type of job they have or depending on their schedule and then some in the evening so my point is to make the uh the schedule varied enough to accommodate everyone and i will also say even though the town
025hall meeting will be in each region if you're in region 2 and you want to come to region 1's meeting that is perfectly fine you will see the entire everyone will see the entire schedule so that way they can come again and at the time the best meets their needs so i wanted to put that caveat out there and we're going to try very hard to have all those invitations and schedules sent out on thursday december the 16th don't fall out of your chair bed uh and lord because they have been terrific and and helping over that means over 250 groups and individuals will be represented in terms of invitations sent to either individuals or small or large groups and including the town hall meetings again a much broader net than before wanting to make
026sure that we meet the needs of the entire fairfax county community next slide please as we talk about uh and i think i have two of the same step step three in the parent community uh stakeholder meetings wanting to just give you an idea of some of the groups that we will be talking to student groups you have many student groups so we're going to definitely make sure we represent those minority groups we're going to make sure that in all aspects of the community that we are talking to all the groups indicated as minority groups as well as civic groups religious organizations business leadership higher education general community-based groups parent leadership community advocacy groups and all other groups in addition to this this just gives an idea of the categories if you will and there
027are many groups under each one of these categories but again wanting the public to see that we're trying to leave no stone unturned in terms of who we invite who we include who we ask to participate next slide please as we continue then to talk about the stakeholder groups that and again those some of those meetings as i said will be in person as well as virtual and on the screen we want to then make sure that everyone understands that the online survey that is going to be online on the district's website starting tomorrow december 14 is a survey that asks everyone in the fairfax county community to give their input we are partnering with k-12 insight which is a company that has had a lot of experience in survey development and there they have
028partnered with gr recruiting to develop the survey as well as they will then be the company responsible for compiling the results and sharing information with the board and the public after we have completed the survey as well as the stakeholder meetings it it not only contains questions related around 28 value traits of great leaders with instructions to select the top eight and you might ask well gloria why do they have 28 traits there and ask you to only select the top eight because we want people to think about what is it they truly value yes you value of all 28 but if you had to when you look at a person and you want to know those top skills that they have and those top traits that they possess what what is your thought around
029narrowing that down to the top eight and because it takes a minute to think about that and we want people to think about their answers so that's how we have set it up there will also be 15 open-ended questions where people will write down their thoughts and ideas and the last question and that open-ended question is just tell us anything that we forgot that you want to share trust me people respond to that and all of those results will be shared uh in terms of the responses the open-ended questions with the board of education and as i said we'll give a summary when we have the meeting on january 20. the survey will be offered in the languages you see indicated naturally english and naturally spanish and chinese japanese korean and russian and those languages
030will be able to be accessed by all of the constituents when they click on the superintendent search shall we say box on the website and then they click on the survey as i mentioned the survey is research-based and the survey and all focus groups will be tallied together in terms of a summary and based on all of this information the board will then in discussion uh develop personality traits profile traits that then that profile is used to share on in the advertisement the point being that after we have gathered all this feedback and input we want to then utilize that to develop the profile that we will utilize in looking for the best candidate that fits that profile to be the next superintendent and that's a key component of the uh survey gary i'm going
031to stop there and see if there's anything you want to add that i have mentioned thus far no i think you uh are covering things our key objective is to reach out to as many stakeholder groups as possible so that we can get their input and uh this is an extremely important part of the process is identifying the character characteristics and the traits and as well as people answering those 15 open-ended questions because it gives us an opportunity to get a good grasp as we go out and recruit candidates and we were able to answer questions uh from candidates based upon the various staff meetings we've had various community meetings so there's a comfort level when we're recruiting so that we can identify the best fit for candidates because somebody can be an outstanding candidate
032in a certain part of the country but are they going to fit the profile for fairfax county public schools and be able to meet the expectations of the community as well as the board so this whole profile building building is extremely important for us and it's an ongoing thing not only for us to once we come up with the profile but it also helps us to assist in developing interview questions for the firm gr recruiting to develop interview questions as we move along with candidates so that we can customize and tailor those interview questions as we recruit and screen candidates and we also will use that same information goes beyond just the profile piece at the end that we will develop interview questions with the board based upon a lot of the discussions and information
033gathering that we do throughout the search process so it's not just a matter of us getting a profile and the information is gone it's information we use throughout the process of developing our firm questions as we work with candidates as well as developing interview questions for the video as well as the interview questions for the board so this is a very important process okay thank you gary as we look at the next slide that addresses recruitment uh we want to again emphasize wholeheartedly that we are going to and have been aggressively recruiting top candidates for the position and that word personally is very important one of the things that gr recruiting prides itself on is we have a lot of contacts across the country uh in essence we know people and we have been talking
034to individuals again that just based on our initial conversation and our initial involvement that we feel would be uh very good candidates to apply but as we move forward with getting more feedback from the stakeholder meetings and from the surveys we will continue to aggressively recruit and that person-to-person conversation is extremely important because people value uh i know myself and gary and the other associates they value who we are and if i say to someone you know i really think you would be a good candidate for fairfax county they believe me they know i wouldn't even ask them if i didn't think that that was true so my point is reputation matters and reputation is important and that's how you can pick up the phone and call their personal cell phone and ask them about
035the job so i want you to know and i want the public to know that that's a critical part of what we do and will be doing we will reach out to diverse candidates from all backgrounds but especially those who have the experience and expertise of working in large school districts with diverse populations and diverse communities they have to understand that they have to understand how to amass achievement in a high performing district and how to make sure that the achievement gap gets lessened and how to make sure that as they want to be the next leader that they're able to work with various communities of different backgrounds and different concerns and be able to do it in such a way that everybody feels whole everybody feels that they're important and everybody knows that they
036have been listened to as i have reviewed a lot of your board meetings and and just watch what's going you need a good listener uh and you need someone that is able to understand the concerns and address them in such a way to make everyone feel that they have been heard and that their issues have been addressed but do it in a way that you can also make tough decisions and make valid decisions so that highly qualified diverse pool of candidates is something that we will continually make sure that we're looking at and bring back to the board for their consideration the we have a professional website that we will utilize and we have numerous associates all over the country that are also looking to help recruit and help bring names forward of interested individuals
037and we will also advertise to other professional uh websites and professional organizations such as double a essay the american association of school administrators napsee the national alliance of black school educators alas the latino association of school superintendents the virginia association of administrators local state and national so we're going to make sure that the advertisement is across the board as well as using social media to also do the same thing in terms of linkedin and various other uh facebook and twitter that we also have all the social media platforms so we will make sure that the advertisement is broad and is thorough next slide please as we then get to the point of selecting candidates we our screening process is very in-depth we first as i said we do pre-screening of candidates to to determine if
038they just meet the prerequisite traits and qualities and experience as i've talked about this afternoon and then once we pre-screen we will then bring a slate of candidates to the board for that meeting on march 17 i believe it is and on at that meeting we will then make sure that that slate of candidates is usually anywhere from about eight to 12 candidates and the board will look at those 8 to 12 candidates and review all of their paperwork all of their information including resume application letters of reference any other additional materials they wanted to share the board of education will have had time to review all of that plus we will have videos on each one of those individuals and those videos will consist of three questions that they have to answer we will
039work with the board on those three questions but the questions usually center around first and foremost what have you done to a mass student achievement not what you talk about you're going to do but what we're looking for is people who have had success in improving student achievement and we want them to talk about that so it's not uh um i wish i could or i might have it's no what have you actually produced and in the in the realm of student achievement so one question around that we will another question around parent staff and community engagement how have you done that in your current position how have you done that in your previous positions we don't just look at the job they're doing now we look at the job that they have done over
040the course of their career because it means a lot that as you look at where they are now and look at how they have amassed their career all of that is important so how have they engaged parents and community and again with board input we will make sure that we talk have them to talk about on the video how they have done that and then the last question is around uh just giving a general overview of their career and experience that makes them the best candidate they believe for fairfax county so it's allowing them to talk about their background talk about the job that they have done over the course of their career and as i said we will craft the questions with input from the board but that's generally the type of questions that
041we want to make sure they get answered and those videos along with all of their paperwork will be shared with the board uh at that meeting on uh the 17th of march and after that and this is just all internal in terms of a closed session because from all of that information the board will then select the candidates they wish to have for that first round of interviews so that's a pretty lengthy session but it's a very important session because once the board then decides who they want to interview during that first round of interviews on march 21st through 22nd it will be based on that slate that we brought to them up to you on the 17th of march and as we bring that slate we want to make sure as you see in
042the second bullet that you understand that an extensive background search has been done not only looking at all the social media sources and platforms but a verification of all their credentials references work experience education experience yes we check if they say they have all three degrees we want to make sure they've had all three degrees so my point is we talk to the university we not only just take what they have at face value as we talk about the references that they will bring we not only talk to the people that they list on the job application because let's face it everyone no one's going to pull an application anyone that's not going to speak well of them so we have the experience and background to call and talk to people that they don't put
043on their application the reference checks is very it is very thorough because of that we know who to call we call the union leader association in the district they're in because usually you won't find that on the application we talked to individuals in the civic uh realm in terms of a mayor or the city council we will call a lot of times real estate agents in the city where they are my point to you is we reach out to others that they have not mentioned in the town of the city that they live in now just in terms of that extensive background check that we mentioned and next slide please and as we talk about bringing that slate of candidates and talk about the video uh interviews and then as we then go into the
044final selection of those interviews and that background the point we want to make with this slide is we want to make sure there are no surprises for the board there are no surprises for the community so extensive background checks extensive reference checks and extensive look at where they are in their career at this time plus career means current and previous positions okay gary anything you want to add there before we go on to the final portions well i think i think you you've got it we um you're already on the the first and second round and if there is a second round but uh we're going to be pretty aggressive as we recruit and screen candidates and that's important for everyone to understand okay and then as we not only look at the board in
045selecting that slate and bringing the first round of interviews we want to uh let everyone know that because you might ask well how's the board going to do that well one of the things that we recommend and there's a lot of flexibility here but we have an objective scoring instrument that we will bring to the board for review and for the board to look at to utilize during the interview process as well as the screening process trying to have some objectivity to how the process gets concluded naturally there will be lots of conversation and discussion but the point i want to make here is that there is a plan and a way to objectively try to finalize what each board member feels or the mess the most important points of each candidate and making that
046final decision because after all it's the one of the biggest jobs and the most important job that the board of education has is selecting their leader and we want to make sure there's objective process to that and as we look at both rounds not only that first round of interviews on march 21st and 22nd and as i said when the board will interview from that slate usually anywhere from five to eight individuals depending on what they feel is best then we will from there select the finals the final interview individuals and those interviews again would be held on march 28 and 29 but as you deliberate and reach consensus and look at all of the various components of the interview process that 28th 29th and 21st and 22nd will have a real important part to
047coming to the final decision and that is selecting the final candidate how that will be done the board will still continue to have that conversation about how they want to hold those final interviews of usually two individuals some very rarely is it three but those finalists on the 28th and 29th of march but after the individual is selected and as we go to the next slide and which is the final slide when we when the board makes a decision on the 28th and 29th then the new superintendent is then selected and the board will then decide how they want to make that announcement as i said at the very beginning of the presentation sometime probably around the first part of april 2022. now gloria i might add is that on those the first and second
048round of the interview process as the board goes again i want to reiterate it goes back to the profile the information gathering from the various stakeholder groups as we developed those interview questions so uh it's it's a method of being able to continue to engage the community and staff as we develop those interview questions as the board designs those interview questions for the first and second round so everyone is still part of the process as we moved to uh conclusion of hiring the next superintendent okay thank you gary and with that i will engage questions that you have thought about or jotted down along the way excellent thank you for that presentation we did get some communication about our slides being ada compliant we will be working on that and posting them for those watching
049we apologize for that inconvenience and with that miss karen corbett thank you chair picarsky that was one of the first things i was going to mention was the ada accessibility and i want to ensure that when we are doing our surveys that they are also ada accessible um as somebody was asking am i oh okay uh and so we want to just to ensure that as we proceed that we have everything that is ada accessible including our surveys including if we are having zoom meetings that we have somebody who is available to provide sign language and able to ensure that everybody who wants to be engaged is able to fully participate in this process similarly i noted that you did not have any of the arabic languages listed for our survey and i would urge
050that we have those languages included as well you noted in your presentation that there were some promotional materials that you were already working on if you could share those with us i think that would be very helpful and i just want to assure the community there's another piece which is in the past we've always had a community panel as part of our interview process and i would urge that we add that community panel into the interviews process what they have typically done is they have met with individuals prior to the board actually meeting with them or concurrently with the boards but the board meets separately so if we can build that in i think it's critical and then we would i would appreciate working with you as a board to determine who we would want
051on that community panel additionally if we can just assure the public that this we are committed to a very transparent process that ensures full uh and robust community engagement uh not only those that have traditionally been engaged but some of our new organizations and those that have been less have not been as engaged in the past and i know we're looking at all of our advisory committees to be part of that and i welcome that the last thing is and i was glad you captured it which is that this school system um the most important role of this board is the hiring of a superintendent and retaining a superintendent that ensures that we have um every child by name and need and that we do not leave children out of the success story of fairfax
052county public schools for sure and as far as thank you for that karen and as far as the interview panel uh clearly that's a decision for the board and we'll be happy to accommodate in whatever way you feel is appropriate well then i will urge my colleagues to go ahead and make that adjustment to make sure that we do have it and if you could add to your slides the expected hiring date so that or that the expected start date so that everybody knows that our objective is to have a smooth transition between uh dr brabrand's leadership role and our new superintendent right thank you okay very good and um the start date is july 1. i want to mention that 2022 and one of the things too i wanted to mention is i know
053uh people might feel well this is a very robust timeline and a very uh we're we're moving very quickly and one of the reasons we're doing that is because of the current uh climate that exists across the country in terms of the political climate with covet and all of the critical issues around the pandemic that superintendents and district leaders have had to address over time that the climate is just different now and and so we know that as we look at that and look at other school districts across the country as well as those up and down the east coast that other districts are looking especially like science districts are looking for district leaders district superintendents and so we want to make sure that fairfax county is in front of all of those other districts
054in terms of their selection and their search process so i wanted to also mention that but thank you for those questions great thank you miss corbett sanders next up ms mclaughlin thank you um i'm going to go more procedurally i've got three areas of concern that you've presented to the board first of all i very much agree with you about wanting to have a an aggressive timeline so that we can compete at a national level with other schools districts that are searching for superintendents in that same window however when i look at the dates and the timeline you've laid out you've got one business day between when the board is going to meet with you to get this the slate of candidates on a thursday and then turn around and on a monday tuesday we
055would be having candidates come meet with us yes so i i i mean i have concerns about that kind of tight timeline um and then the second thing is then you go to the second round of interviews where i think there would be like a four four day turnaround so i would suggest to my colleagues that we may want to look at shifting it just ever so slightly because we have a real lag time of when the board will meet with stakeholder input on january 20th by the way dr gloria said then you'd post it on the 21st i don't know how that happens when the board will have just seen the information you're giving us so if we really are able to take input that i hope will be from tens of thousands of
056people um then you know we're gonna we're gonna have that issue there um running quickly through my thing so i think we might have to shift it and say something like application opens january 24th and we close on february 21st that would give us another 10 days to move up the timeline because when we're talking about the most important thing this board does it's actually interviewing the candidates and that leads to my second question um either you or gary please answer why is it that you guys are saying optional for a second round of interviews when in the history that i know of fairfax county we always have two rounds of interviews for our superintendent search okay i can answer but yeah let me answer a couple of questions i'll try to answer your questions
057first is because there are a lot of districts are looking for various candidates and when we bring into you on the 17th where we you know meet with the board let's say we bring in those i don't know eight nine or whatever those uh top candidates might be we've already told those uh candidates if you are selected to be ready to interview you know on the 21st and 22nd we've already prepared them so that they're they're ready because if we we don't want to stretch it out and so they are ready to interview that first round so they know what the timeline and it's important for us to put that timeline to turn it around quickly so that we're not having a gap of a week or two and lose people so when we take
058the take the candidates in uh the candidates know the board knows that we're ready ready ready to move the reason why we have a second round option is because sometimes even though the history and quite then that's reason why we put the word optional is because once in a while there could be a runaway candidate and there's no and and the board boards excited about that candidate but that candidate may be being wooed so to speak by another district and so we want the option of fairfax county public schools to have that option if they need to move and i understand that maybe your history has been that way but we're in a different kind of a market now of the application so that that's about six weeks when uh people are able to apply
059and fill in and and submit their information the date of the first interview and the second round of interview i can tell you from 46 years in education people will respond to those dates the short turnaround they want a short turnaround the type of top quality people that we are talking to i'm going to be honest that a lot of them will have applied and are being interviewed by other districts so you you can't wait too long in between your first round and your second round to invite them back because if you do they get picked up by somebody else so as gary just said they will know these dates they know that it's no problem it's just a matter if they need to they jump on an airplane and they come back but they
060would rather this than stretched out and that's just the superintendent's search experience and the business that we're in it it will work it i trust me it will work well in my final 37 seconds what i would ask is um if you can please provide the board with um the draft survey we've had his um issues in the past um where surveys went out to the public it wasn't run by the board we didn't see the questions so you mentioned posting it tomorrow i i have a huge problem chair prakarsky that any survey on the superintendent would go out and the board never saw it so um we did send it last week but it wasn't presented to us tonight today in front of the public and it wasn't presented and closed so we need
061it presented we need to have it posted um and then in in terms of this i will just say to my colleagues i absolutely think that yes we want to be competitive but we're talking about a long-term relationship for the school system so i absolutely think we will want a second round to fully vet from the first round of candidates to the second round and that's my advocacy and again that's and and we totally hear that the option is your option it's totally your call great thank you next up miss keys camaro thank you and i'm happy to follow my colleague um i i do understand the concern about making sure we have an opportunity i think if i'm um understanding miss mclaughlin's comments her concern seems to be just to make sure the board
062has an opportunity to really give input and thoroughly review um and so i it sounds as though this is an ongoing process certainly you've done it and you've done it more so in this particular climate which i do think is different uh perhaps than some previous years so um i you know i i i know that we will have ongoing communication to make sure that those things are happening and i certainly support the board having a full opportunity to review you know to talk about what we're doing and also have an opportunity to look at that survey i did want to talk a little bit about you know how what questions you might be receiving which i don't want you to necessarily tell me right now but i do think it i'm wondering if in
063the documents presented to our applicants who may have questions about what we're dealing with or how this decision was made um our previous chair shared with us the letter that was public was a statement of what we said during publicly during the meeting and i'm wondering if that might be helpful to you as you're dealing with applicants who kind of want to know how we got where we are so um you know if my colleagues want to weigh in on that being available it is a public statement that i'm referring to and then that way um it is what has already been out there and that can be reinforced if if that is at all helpful with respect to the community selection panel i too read those emails we are getting a few i certainly
064support uh utilizing a community selection panel as we have done in the past it is one of the ways that we do get community input with respect to languages i i you know because i work across this region i know i've had to use a number of interpreters and so i'd like to ask orsi what languages per our population are most needed so that i see a head shaking oh okay just to make sure that we're covering the languages that are most relevant in fairfax county um the target dates again i'm seeing those as target dates meaning that if there is a need to change a date or hey we didn't get this done or we need more input i think that's a matter of communication between um this company your company and us and
065so i trust that that will be done and just you know as a public comment i know a few months ago we had somebody testify that um they wanted to participate in pec so that they could be a part of the superintendent's search and so hopefully this clarifies any confusion um as that committee has nothing to do with the process so i'm hoping that we are communicating clearly um people know how to text us and email us oh i'm done so at any rate yeah i'm just trying i just want the community to understand so thank you so much for being here okay miss davis i'll let you respond then i'll ask calendar to respond to your question about the um languages okay thanks ms davis uh and we do have the languages i know
066in i think it's euro and and i probably won't pronounce this correctly farsi uh i know and that should have made it on the the slide because i know uh the staff and the communication department has done that so i do know we have those two and as i said uh apologize for those not being on the screen but if we could just get commute uh yeah input from them to make sure we're covering folks that we tried to do in general allow us to respond thank you so just to confirm we've been working with gr recruitment to make sure that the languages are correct and the other languages that we work with our communities on and those are as well as english obviously spanish chinese korean farsi urdu arabic and vietnamese and the survey
067has been translated into all of those not via machine translate by professional translation by our translation team to make sure that we're using it in the right dialect and the right way that we not would normally translate for our communities just a quick follow-up to that in my work i've had to use amharic interpreters quite a bit and have we looked at the need for that we we do we have looked at that we have we know we have a need for it we do not have an american interpreter on staff so we have worked yes right absolutely we're well aware of it and we are working potentially with the team to um see if we can get that sent to an external company but there is um obviously there are some question marks around
068that and the timeline as well thank you are we going to go back ms keys camaro uh i think she addressed unless she wanted did you miss davis would you do you have anything else to add to ms keith kamara's statement uh in terms of the uh information and the uh letter that you mentioned i mean as soon as it would help to have us have a copy of that so we'll be happy to to have that as we get questions moving forward from uh potential superintendent candidates i appreciate it thank you thank you very much um next miss dr anderson thank you just kind of picking up on this because it was also one of my questions i'd like to get a sense of when you have the zoom calls with the community or
069the community groups how do you anticipate for the translation to take place and i know i'm i'm being very specific in the weeds here because i want to be sure that folks who need that translation are not having to read it that it is a simultaneous um translation so they could really have full participation so who can speak to that well i know we will be working with helen ann and her department on on having i guess i would say the normal translators that you use utilize or the normal individuals that you you have working with you when you have community groups would be my immediate answer but we need to probably talk further about that yes we will have uh we'll have simultaneous translation uh interpretation in uh the languages that uh for which
070people sign up for we always ask for a sign up so we make sure we're not um pulling in interpreters that who are not needed for that evening or that that session but we will make sure that for everyone that requests it there is coverage and they are supported simultaneously and also so they can ask questions and those questions can then be answered simultaneously as well so it's a full service that would be important so i would love to get those details when you have an opportunity miss lloyd and i also have to echo that the languages that have been um stated here on slide 10 are insufficient for my community because we do need urdu um and we need we need farsi we need arabic so we need to be sure those communities are
071represented um just kind of going to slide nine a little bit you have a huge list of individuals who are going to be part of the input and we all know that the profile is an important development because it really speaks to who we're going to attract and so i'm taking this part to be very i'm taking this part of me seriously i also know that there's a lot of input from all of these individuals but how are we prioritizing what i consider and could be me our priority groups our employees our parents our students okay because a lot of these folks are not don't necessarily fall into those categories and i'm really concerned about an over-representation of voices that are not our key demographics i would say i'm right now utilizing the list of
072groups and individuals that was provided to me based on our first meeting with the board and i know both stella and rajna are going to we talked about having an additional meeting while i'm here on the ground to take a look at that list but the priority of which groups to include and and how to just develop that i would need and seek input from the board because again you know i would not know that i'm just taking the list that was provided to me and beginning to develop a schedule but i know that we'll have additional they both have offered to assist with that and i think it's really important for us to prioritize that feedback um nothing against the business leadership but my eyes just fell on that group i don't want for
073their themes and their voices to be the highly represented voice it has to be our parents our students and our staff so whatever it is whatever formula has to be enacted for us to make sure that those rise to the top we have to do something otherwise those voices will be lost and that would be a huge problem okay um you also talked earlier about the support that is provided to superintendents whether they are new or experienced can you entail can you give a little bit more in terms of what that entails uh very very much so one of the things we know is when a superintendent starts a job they there are lots of moving parts shall we say and so one of the things we can help a new superintendent do based on
074our experience in working with fairfax county is give them an idea of where to start along with input from the board of which groups to reach out to i call them in my own experience kitchen cabinet groups there are groups that as you just mentioned that the board feels are a priority and knows that a priority and as we continue to work with the community we'll also know that so we would be able to just give them direction on where to begin with engaging with people meeting with parents meeting with students meeting with community leaders and so on also one of the unique things about gr recruiting is we have a whole equity program and so we can also help them and we provided that in our proposal but we have modules on all pieces
075of equity as it relates to parents as it relates to students as it relates to a superintendent as an equity leader as it relates to equity around students with disabilities and we can talk more about that with the board but we can help in that area we can also provide uh coaching and and mentoring of just having someone that they can call i can tell you as a former superintendent it helps to be able to have someone that you can call and say this just happened and and be able to talk talk it through so we can provide that support as well so i'm saying that we can provide support in helping them engage all aspects of the community and staff we can provide support with helping them to be able to address issues and
076concerns as they arise and give them an objective voice if you will to talk to and talk through we can help them to reach out to and i keep going back to the voiceless knowing those key areas of the community that they need to make sure that they bring into the fold if you will if they're not already there and we can help them with other parts of the program as it relates to equity and in issues around uh equity versus equality i mean you know there's a whole uh conversation that can be had around that the two are not the same uh to make sure that we help them with that so all all various levels of support depending on what the superintendent needs the board desires uh we even for example with some
077new superintendents uh the board might say well we want them to have a mentoring or a coaching contract along with their their current contract it just depends it depends on what the 12 of you feel or is very important and what are those areas that you want that person to focus on so it's that glorious i might add is that part of our open-ended questions we have in the survey that one of the reasons we partner with k-12 is that they have expertise in the area of communication and customer service and so we'll ask a number of questions on our survey uh that that will provide additional information that we will you know put together and summarize and we will provide that information to the new superintendent so he or she can have that part
078of their entry plan and so it's just not the characteristics 28 characteristics traits you'd like to see is some of those open-ended questions that we have regarding the school district and how people feel about their school districts and issues that may arise so we we provide that information not only to the board the board gets it as well but we provide that information on customer service to uh to the new superintendent so that superintendent can actually put it in their entry plan so it means something a lot of superintendents will maybe might have a listening tour but this information will help them regarding the um the um information that they get on the front end so i i think this will be extremely helpful for the new superintendent board to be successful uh on on
079day one on day one thank you uh you kind of talked about this a little bit we do have a little bit of a tale of two fairfax we have a robust community who are not going to have any issues engaging in this process and we have another part of our community that will have to do significant pulling in for them to engage how many people are we deploying to the community engagement process right now we have five associates assigned for example this week we're utilizing myself and two others for the staff component but we have a total of five that we have in place that we will utilize for the parent community component and depending on how much time we we need and and how many we need if we need more than five
080we can accommodate that as well but one of the things that's unique again about our firm is all three days you will have three people meeting with groups all day long tuesday wednesday and thursday so at ten o'clock i will be meeting with someone another associate will be meeting with another group and another associate will be meeting another group at the same time uh so it's it's the advantage of having more people available allows us to engage more individuals and groups okay yeah we got over 250 groups and individuals much more than the reach out that has been in the past because that's important to us and we know it's important to you and and i would add uh i know for myself uh i will be here because one of the things we also
081know is that some groups depending on where you hold the uh the session uh you need to have these schedules sometimes somewhere where people have easy access to come it's it's important given the the size of the community that we take a look at that i just i i feel that sometimes going back to the the voiceless group it's it's where the meeting is held believe it or not you know is it at the local community center or church or is it over at the school district office i'm not coming to the school district office i want to go over here and so having someone that can come to them and give them the sense that you you're engaging them in their area is very important thank you just a couple more i just really
082want to reiterate that we develop a process for the community engagement as part of the interview piece as well as how we are going to prioritize the community input because again i want i cannot reiterate this enough i want for our employees our parents and our students voices to be the ones that drive this process and the others are going to be considered of course but i want that to have priority and just a last quick thing on slides five to nine oops time's up okay i will stop there all right thank you dr anderson next we have miss thank you uh and thank you miss davis and mr ray for your collaboration and partnership in this work um i you know i think i'd be remiss not to say that this is an exciting
083project as we walk out of this pandemic that hopefully will unify the community as we begin to come together to share our thoughts and select our leader so i'm glad that you guys are joining us to do that um i also you know i know that part of uh your strengths is actually community outreach i think that's very obvious just from you sharing you know the prioritization of the voices that we don't hear from meeting people where they're at i had you know two points on language and location that you already addressed and preempted so i appreciate that i did want to build off of one of the things dr anderson mentioned perhaps in sorry this is kind of loud perhaps in painting that picture of what the county looks like so that when you
084do end up meeting with groups or identifying and prioritizing uh who's met with that it reflects that right so in a county that's nearly you know a third lower income a third uh english language speaker learners uh you know 15 percent kids with disabilities right and in a school system where i'll just elevate 27 hispanic right just thinking about what that map looks like and and i say this for two reasons one in how we prioritize outreach right so that's for you guys to think about and then two how we advertise the county and its needs and its assets to candidates so that we're making sure we're looking for folks who have the skill set um you know to address all of those needs so i just want to make sure that that's something we're
085constantly thinking about and familiarizing ourselves with i know y'all are newer to our county and in helping us out and i and i wanted to suggest you know i really am glad to see the collaboration going on with occr with ms lloyd um perhaps also when you meet with leadership to have conversations with some of the equity staff or folks who specifically focus on that to see maybe how we can engage with liaisons parent and community or now we call them family liaisons um that you know have that ear to the ground and really are in touch with those families who otherwise would not have an access point to our school community as a potential source of of you know outreach or even best practices that they've utilized to reach our families and meet them
086where they're at i did want to ask since you did mention kind of meeting people where they're at are all of the uh listening sessions going to be on zoom uh only the ones all except the ones that will be in person and again that's where we'll get input from the board as to which ones should be in zoom and which one should be in person and i say that because going back to what you just reiterated uh some groups will do better engaging with somebody in person and some group absolutely and so you again you know better who those group you as a board no matter who those groups are and so that's where we will need input from you but absolutely uh and again i just know from my superintendent experience there are
087times when you have to just go to the neighborhood you that's what you have to do to make people feel heard and you can tell i'm real passionate about that yeah no absolutely and i think our staff will have some great ideas for you as you discuss you know what they want to see in a superintendent you could also think of you know what ways they'd encourage you to continue here finding it yeah um the other piece i wanted to ask about was what process you are all thinking about utilizing to synthesize the feedback so i can imagine we're going out there you know wide wide net um but yeah how are you all planning to do that what we do after we complete all of the stakeholder meetings what we look at is common
088themes common threads common things that we've heard from multiple groups because that says this is important we heard it from a staff group we heard it from a student group we heard it from a parent group so that's what we look at first those common themes and those common threads and and that's what we share and then uh second to that we look at things that are just what we call red flags or red herrings sometimes people say things and you go what uh and and so we make sure that we make the board aware of what those are uh so it just really depends on what's said but most of the time on all its i mean you'll hear common themes and common threads throughout all of the groups they might say it a
089little different but the meaning will be the same and those are the primary things that we will summarize naturally we can't give every word for word of what is said but that summary that's how we will synthesize and bring that to you and again uh i mentioned the comments that people write on the surveys you will get all of those it could be about this thing yeah no i appreciate that and uh hopefully when we develop those common themes we don't lose maybe the minority voices or the underrepresented voices right who may not be as much as many in number my final thing i know i'm at time uh is just in terms of student voice to make sure we're looking beyond just organized student government groups that are always the ones we solicit feedback
090from but a broader a broader net thank you exactly thank you mr meish ms davis any further comments to ms lamey she'll as i'll go on to miss laura jane khan okay no i i think i i responded perfect miss cohen um yes definitely wide net with student groups abroad that was on my on my list too um i just the town halls that you mentioned in this slide the five regions um i just want to make sure that we really have time to advertise those advertise them in our newsletters call our ptas ptos our principals just so we really get robust and so many of us cover different regions i know somebody who elaine you have three or four some doesn't some three so a bunch of us traverse over different regions and i
091know we'll want to be at all of those to get you know get pockets of all of our communities so i know i i i'm afraid when i look at bev and laura that's going to be nightmare scheduling scenario so as soon as we can get that out there i think the community will really appreciate the a lot of notice the community panel for final candidates i just want to touch him again i know several of my colleagues have um are you do you have thoughts already of how is that something you've normally done before or no we have uh we've done it in many different ways depending again on the conversation with the board one of the things i would just add here in this public meeting one we do emphasize though with those
092panels the final decision of who to hire rest with the board so we want to make sure that as we bring community involved that they understand that they're giving input and they're giving thoughts and ideas but the final decision rests with the board and i would say to the 12 of you we have to make sure that as we formulate that panel that we truly emphasize that because sometimes let's just say people get confused on that thought thank you i appreciate it gloria i might also add that when we have worked with the panels um and it's not that often but when we have it's it's when we get down to the last couple you know candidates uh that the board and that folks get involved in that part of the process of course nobody
093really cares about all the others they're only interested in the top ones that might might get the job but that's that's why we've really kind of worked with the panel because one of the things uh that we're not really addressing here but it's a concern from a candid standpoint is the area of confidentiality because all these uh top people that we're going to be trying to recruit the first question they ask what about the confidentiality part of the process and when's my name going to get exposed and i know i have a great job right now um you know why do i want to cause unrest in my my community and and and possibly jeopardize my own employment so um that that's something we we need to keep in mind and and have some discussion
094as if we're moving into that panel part of it yeah i think our um staff and our parents are very used to that they all participate in the principal panel and do the same thing they all just all signed non-disclosure agreements and um i i've i've not heard um whispers in the community before the names are actually announced i think our our community is used to that level of of privacy the last thing just in in piggybacking on what ms omega said about student groups casting a wide net i just want to make sure that our staff stakeholders that we have actual teachers and espits and people who are on the ground in schools giving you feedback not just groups not just representatives from those you know that we make sure when we're doing staff
095panels that it is gate house folks but it's also folks who are in each of our schools and in our our pyramids and um you know of course i i think especially we have certain categories of teachers who really really have very different needs from others and i you know i i just want to make sure that their voices are heard especially as we go through the different conversations we've had about how we change literacy how we change sped you know the teachers who are involved in implementing all of that i just want to make sure that their voices are heard and as the person that's meeting with those groups i can tell you they are representing the teacher leader association the fairfax county leaders association of fairfax education association the business education leader association
096the support staff professional development association the library the psychologist the social worker the speech and language yeah i just want to say i mean that's my only concern is i just want to make sure that an association leader is not the same thing right if i'm head of a teacher's organization then i'm supposed to be talking about teachers generally whereas and i'm not in the classroom right now and so i just want to make sure that we're talking to you know boots on the ground um employees who are actually in our buildings and if we need to be a part of that going to speak at staff meetings and collecting information to come back like however we need to be involved in the process i just want to make sure that we're hearing not just
097a small subset of teachers or people who represent teachers and the same with principles just like we're doing with principles if we were just hearing from the principal's association that would make me concerned because that is a small subset very important subset but small subset so how do we just make sure we're getting all voices of our employees okay thank you for that and we took the list that was provided to us and we can certainly uh add as we move forward uh even in january if we're you know missing some areas i mean we still have time to do that i would also add i go back to the town halls too remember the town halls are also for everyone it's it's it's open to any who want to attend and participate for the
098very reason you just mentioned thank you ms cohen next week ms tolland followed by mr fresh thank you thank you for being here today to discuss this important topic with us i appreciate a number of the comments of my colleagues i really appreciated karen pisgamara calling the the scheduled target dates uh because especially as the conversation has transpired here today you know as we're talking about you know really making some decisions as to what means need to be in person versus zoom meetings and you know getting down to the nitty-gritty of some of our employees i would suspect that we might need to add a day here or there or move things out by a day or something like that and so you know i hope that um you know people will understand that you
099know bit of flexibility that we may need um i also appreciated the comments on the community selection panel and the languages and appreciate the work that we'll need to do to keep that moving forward a couple of questions that i had i wondered if you had particular recommendations for the stakeholder meetings that you have set up which of those do you think it's important for board members to attend honestly none okay that's my question because remember what we want these to be is honest open conversation and so we want people to feel free to share whatever they feel appropriate to share without a board member sitting in the room so i i have to be honest none okay thank you can you talk a little bit um especially for the public about using k-12 insights
100i have a feeling that some of the analysis that you're talking about around the large amount of data that we'll be collecting both verbally and through the survey process is k-12 helping you with that analysis and how does that work and how does that facilitate things like the very quick turnaround you know that miss mclaughlin pointed out toward the end of january okay first of all k-12 has they have experience working with fairfax county uh in with previous survey information and development but they also have experience working with large school districts again across the country they they have a really robust research team who is able and naturally we check with them on this timeline even before finalizing it and they have assured us that they have capable staff that can uh provide the results
101needed in the time frame that we've indicated because they've done it before so they they have the experience of putting together the data as it comes in and and when i say as it comes in it's an ongoing process so as surveys are being completed and then the the data is being rolled into whatever needs to be presented at the end so it's not something that they have to do all of it at once it's ongoing process but they have a very capable team and there's and just years of experience doing what is needed and in talking to the president of the company he's assured us that the time frame is not a problem at all so they'll be doing the bulk of that analysis between this january 13th date where this is the survey
102deadline date and then the 20th meeting uh yes in terms of the results yes the results and the surveys goes out this week and then it ends right after we finish with the community and parent engagement stakeholder meetings and that's on the 14th and so between the 14th and the time that we meet with you on the 20th they'll then be developing the results that we will then share with you on the 20th of january okay thank you and i would um also it would be great to see that survey i think before it goes out this week so i like to second that and make sure that we get because we have it yeah yeah this toilet it was just emailed oh thank you perfect perfect perfect and again just to say you know
103the stakeholder input and this uh you know very careful analysis of the input that we get is so important to us so um you know if it takes an extra day or two here or there um you know we can appreciate that we can we can definitely keep that in mind thank you are you yielding back your 28 seconds thank you miss totally mr frisch follow miss marin thank you um and thank you miss davis and mr ray for joining us um yeah it was news to me too that peck was apparently picking the next superintendent so i'm glad that was cleared up and that we actually have a very robust process for doing that has nothing to do with public engagement committee but it does rely heavily on public engagement which is the first
104thing i want to talk about we go to slide nine okay nine uh laura all right i'm gonna keep talking since my timer is going um there was some talk about um prioritizing the feedback and how that would be done i think it's in in my opinion probably of equal importance about how we weight the feedback and its analysis so all of these things are going to be important to know and if we are and i do want an aggregate feeling of what the entire community is feeling but we're going to probably want at least i will some breakdowns by subcategory that gives me analysis based on what different pockets of the community are thinking that will help me weigh what i'm seeing um i appreciate ms omash's comment about family liaisons and one thing
105that it raised for me as we thought through all the other groups was how do we get from people and this is something i'm interested to hear from you all on how do we get from people their expertise focused feedback versus their personal focused feedback and how do we differentiate those two kinds of feedback that we want from these different categories of people i'm smiling because first and foremost you know everyone's an expert [Laughter] but in saying that it comes from first of all as you ask the question and then you ask follow-up questions i mean uh all of us as associates are very skilled in [Music] understanding and hearing the answers that we get back that come from well this is my area of expertise so i'm going to share with you what i
106think it should be even if it's a concern or whatever the case may be versus then uh just following up with well tell me why you think uh that challenge is important and and i'm thinking about the question that will we ask you know what what do you see as the three major challenges of the school district moving forward uh i don't want to necessarily hear as much about their job and and their child or whatever and let me just say we make sure that we stick with answers to the questions and not get into personalities not get into uh concerns about a particular issue as much as more important using the example of the challenges what do you see as a challenge and and why do you feel that way so it's not only
107their initial response but then asking follow-up questions to that response to make sure we clearly understand what they're trying to say or to get them to even understand sometimes what they're trying to bring forth so it's just having the experience of knowing how to get to what is critically important for you as a board to know okay um switching gears here to the question of transition supports for superintendent and the types of things that can be offered in my opinion i think probably the most important thing that could be of help to a new superintendent in our division is assisting them with integrating with the new or with their new leadership team and with the board so that they can hit the ground running um in their job questions about equity and other things i
108think are extremely important but they're going to be encountering that from day one as they take on the work with their team so if we can put any kind of push on anything that's where i think we should push along the lines of what mclaughlin shared i think it is a monumental choice that we're making and we should just assume that we're going to have a second interview so in terms of planning i think count me as one that probably will want a second interview just to make sure even if we have the runaway candidate i want to be darn sure that we're making the right choice and i would not feel right making it if we didn't bring them back in one last time [Music] um uh also on the community selection panel uh
109that miss uh corbett sanders brought up uh agreed as well i think most of us are probably on that page as well um and also agree with miss lord miss cohen's comment about making sure that within these different groups of people that we're identifying people are speaking in their own uh role as an educator or whatever category they're speaking for not just as a representative of a group of any kind so that's it for me thank you great thank you mr fresh ms davis do you want to respond or others i'll move on to miss no i think in terms of the breakdown by categories and from the summaries that we will provide we can definitely do that and make sure that you have a full breadth of understanding of where the responses are coming
110from because i know that helps you in terms of your thoughts and a better understanding of what has been uh said and we definitely take uh notes while we are talking to the stakeholder group so we have that as uh let's just say background or evidence to refer to and and be able to show the notes that we took down during those various groups great thank you very much miss marin followed by miss darren at colfax thank you thanks for all this information okay so i do want to also just chime in that i um i am concerned about the time that our community and staff get to give input so i'm glad to hear that that will be expanded it's still pretty tight to me but i also did send a long additional suggestions
111for our staff so thank you for for looking into those and um i think we have to be really clear about the process for any time we're going to distribute any information publicly to make sure it reflects you know the vision that we're seeking so especially for the survey you know just to get clear though in the future going forward who is you know what's the process going to be who's the point person is it our executive director of communications helen lloyd even for this week's survey can we just get really clear about that please just for this initial survey and then going fur going further if you mean who is the point person for us to work with uh to get the survey out no i'm saying to finalize the content so who's going
112to be who from your end is going to liaise with someone on our end on our board is going to finalize the language working with occr and making sure that it reflects you know the board just real clear because it it can't go out until the board has seen it okay well i think it might be more of a question for this lawyer that's probably uh for the board to decide whoever you choose for us to work with i mean right now we have been working with the staff in the communication department as well as the board uh clerks and uh and then the board committee uh that's who we when we send information we make sure that's who we send it to so it's whatever the group of you desire okay so ms lloyd
113can you speak to that yes so we provided um extensive input to the fit to the survey that was provided to us and also the letters that were drafted to when we get the content we definitely review we make sure it is ada compliant we make sure it fits our language and we make sure it reads um right we've um we've adjusted that and sent the survey language back i believe that probably now needs to go to the chair to be shared with the rest of the board um but yes we have we're going to make sure that going forwards we get the content so that we do get to review it because i do understand there was a um something that went out this week that we didn't get a chance to review and
114who is pressing send is that on our end or is it on the contractors it's on our end so we are using our database and we're using the blades we've already built and got we will add the community um partners and the community that we don't have yet in our in our database to send out when we send that survey so yes we will make sure we're sending out on our end so chair mccarthy just if we could loop back later please i'd love that clarification further thank you ms lloyd um the other thing i wanted to mention is just in preparing for tomorrow's work session on our boundary policy um discussion the contractors had given i thought a good example of how to compile the pages and pages of input so i'm happy to
115share that link with you just to because it's fresh in my mind and and uh so although maybe wait till tomorrow to see what everyone else thinks but i thought it was a good compilation a way to gather you know thousands and thousands of pieces of input which i know you've done before but just again fresh in my mind i think too just you know my biggest thing with the community piece is getting the student the family and the taxpayer input um it's it's nice that we have some leadership groups but the student voice and the parent and family voice has got to be our biggest demographic that we capture on this survey because there are the main um you know recipients of the public school services and then addition with the taxpayers who make
116that investment and then finally i'm just wondering miss lloyd if you could speak to you or do we have or are we going to have a one-stop shop website for all things superintendent search this when people get a question they can go there and there's some nice general email address perhaps they can email yeah so there is definitely a place on the website that we've started to build out already since july so we've been adding to it um all the engagement opportunities all the dates the link to the fact the date the survey goes out and the fact you should be looking out for it all of that content this work session all the presentations all of that content will be up there so um it'll it'll switch in and out between the home page
117as we get key moments that are really important like obviously this week is really a really important week with the survey going out so that people can access it from the from the home page maybe as that engagement sort of switches out towards the end of january it might start to take a back seat a little bit and then as we start to get some some decision points then that will come back up to the front again okay well thank you for keeping us posted on it i'm sure you have sent it but i appreciate continuous updates like remember this is where the stuff is and please share it because we want to make blast that out as much as possible yes and just to add to that as well we'll be sharing whenever there's
118any kind of update at all that is going into our our employee news and also into fcps this week on a regular in a regular slot and just especially again the opportunity for people to comment and be involved with the process that is for me most key at this point especially okay thank you yeah and i would add as i have developed the letters and of the communication the written communication and then sent it to again the board clerk which then i know has shared it uh with the committee and others as appropriate as well as any others i know that there was one communication that we put with the invitation that went out that we had a little question about one of the words that was on there but other than that everything that
119i know i've written and have developed including all the groups and the schedules for all of the associates which then as i said i share with the clerk as well as with the communication staff thank you miss marin do you have anything else no thank you great thank you mr nachofax thank you and thank you so much i'm just going to drill down a little further on some things my colleagues have already talked about so i'm just looking at the survey now and i was hoping maybe you can explain to me why you decided to do this sorry i'm just trying to get into it um the categories you have here for respondents you just have staff member could we further disaggregate that into maybe a minimum like teachers administrators and other employees i think
120that's important for us to understand that rather than just staff because this is this this speaks to my colleagues desire to make sure the net is wide and we um you know have have representation from many different um parts of the community and including there and staff and then also if i would like a question again this talks about the net and i'm not certain maybe helen you can help us with this one i would like to know what region they live in and i don't know if that's a magisterial district i don't know what the best way to ask that if we have a link if we have a link to a map if they don't know but i think that's extremely important that the magisterial district or and or we could do it
121by high school if it's a parent but magisterial magisterial district encompasses the other stakeholders in this survey community and um so we could do it both ways um i'd like somebody to comment on that their thoughts so this is one i think that dr would probably need to work with k um k-12 insight on to develop this would not be potentially for us to ask it might be their ask i mean i'm sure it's doable you can you can definitely but that means it can it wouldn't go out tomorrow i i see a lot of head nods around the table i think that's extremely important to know whose answer i mean so to disaggregate in the staff member category to make sure we know what what position they hold right okay yes and and we
122could talk about what that breakdown could be you know my minimum was teachers administrators and other employees i mean we could go further you know we could we could talk yeah i mean we could offer right counselors excuse me gloria that's uh and i apologize don't mean to interrupt sometimes there's a delay where what i'm hearing you say and so forth so i apologize for that um wait that's a question we'll have to ask k-12 i mean we might be able to generalize it not only generalize it so much as as administrators teachers and so forth i think it'd be kind of difficult for this type of survey to go you know break it down any more than that so i think it's a question for k-12 and we we certainly can get in contact
123with them as as well as the region that she mentioned to see what you know what region they're from it could be as simple as if if you were a parent what school does your child attend and then then the k-12 would somehow be able to i'm assuming figure out what region that's in or our staff can't well and they're not going to commit our staff to any more right now um and um and then the other one if you're a community member what magisterial district do you live in yeah well yeah that's something that you know that that will certainly has been said here a couple times that we'll have to talk k12 about we'll certainly take a look at it and i also want as helen and i both have said now it's
124already been advertised that the survey is kind of going to be out on the 14th so i'm just we'll have to change that communication as well i just want to make the board aware of that i mean it looks like there's a comfort level i mean do you want do you want to take a quick vote we can save it to the end if that's okay yes that's fine so those those are two suggestions with staffing and and regional representation or school representation um my second one is i i respect what you're saying about the expediency in the interview process however i really have to say i think um you know i strongly believe we'll need a second round of interviews so i feel the timeline and that i'm saying what a couple of my
125colleagues have said so i think that timeline will have to be adjusted and what we didn't talk about is here and i think i started thinking about this as we were talking about the community panel and we have had great success with our community panels in the past also with the great deal of confidentiality they have have shown during this process and we have talked about this as a board and i'm not sure where we have landed but in the past um when we've held the superintendent searches we've held a what we what we called and i don't know if this is the right hr term but we held a closed process um with respect to respect the confidentiality of candidates and not put their current jobs in jeopardy so that's your understanding what we're
126going forward to do i mean i think that's what the board the consensus of the board but we haven't spoken about that publicly yet and that's my consensus from hearing from several of you and hearing from us that the candidate is going to want to know uh how much is public and and so on and then when it comes to the community panel is this something that's going to be confidential or you know share it with any and everybody so that's good to know yes and i and i think like i said putting that the the process up front the reasons why we're doing it is for respect for the candidates and um and then the public at least here in fairfax we have not had uh you know problems with that in the in
127the past all right thank you mr and i go fast um it is just myself and chair picarsky left so i'll take a brief turn and then um ask sherpa carsey to take her turn then she can take over the meeting from here um and we'll see if we need to continue our conversations at that point so um many of my comments and thoughts have been shared by my colleagues i will not repeat them but i will say that i think it's important what i'm kind of hearing from everybody and in some of our conversations is a need for really a community engagement plan right you know whether it's a community engagement plan around our survey and making sure that our survey is going out to people whether it's a community engagement plan on making
128sure not just the information is going out around our town halls and other stakeholder engagement but how are we engaging the community in responding and and participating right i think that i think mr mitch made some good comments in ms cohen too but how are we engaging those communities that don't tend to already be engaged right so it's more than just sort of a one-way here's the information about a town hall but how do we engage them go to where they are i think dr anderson brought this up to make sure we're hearing from a robust set of voices and they know to engage and what this means and i think that's to me what a community engagement plan is it's more than an information sharing plan it's an engagement plan so i think that's
129you know there's two pieces there's on this side of it which is helping develop and develop the superintendent profile and then there is if we do a community panel as many of my colleagues have discussed the confidential panel sort of on the other side of what does this process look like in terms of our picking the superintendent and then there's the post once we have a superintendent how do we help that person engage with the community as they're coming on board and making that transition but for purposes of this conversation i think the key is what's the engagement plan to getting the community engaged in this part of the process because i think this is right now the biggest piece that involves a robust community engagement so that would be my question what's the engagement
130plan well basically it's the plan is to develop the schedule based on the information that has been initially shared about what groups and individuals the board would like us to engage with and then from that step one and then from there and utilizing the uh list that has been developed with priorities based again on the feedback or the desire and interest that you the board have for making sure we're not missing anything not missing any groups we're not not including anyone that you feel is important so that's the again that's the first step second to that then is sending the schedule out of the various times and dates that the meetings will be held and in that informing those that have been invited that the purpose of these meetings is to hear their feedback thoughts
131and ideas on the characteristics and personality traits that they would like to see in the next superintendent their thoughts and views on how the district needs to move forward in terms of the successes that have already been established as well as the challenges that need to be addressed and so giving them a sense of this is what the focus of the meeting will be and then thirdly uh your feedback meaning your feedback as a stakeholder or a community group or individual will then be summarized and shared with the board of education as well as the public in a public meeting as well as written information shared with the board so we will make sure that the the engagement plan that everyone knows that it's not only your input based on the stakeholder meetings and the
132information that has been shared either via zoom or in person but also from the survey and to mention that that gives you another opportunity because we want to make sure that everyone understands that just because you you participate in the stakeholder meetings we want everyone to complete the survey including the board of education everyone complete the survey so that that plan includes your input again thoughts and ideas via the survey as well as the stakeholder meetings and then a summary of all of that information will be shared with the board at the january 20th meeting and thus be utilized to develop that profile that then will be used to advertise the position and to seek those candidates that the board will interview along with now what i'm hearing a community panel and and then describing
133what that panel will look like and then that all of that will help to establish the context if you will for the interviews that will be held on january excuse me march 21st and 22nd as well as the finalists on march 28th and 29th so everything that is in the timeline as well as what we've discussed this afternoon can help people understand that's the process that's that's the engagement plan for all your constituents staff and parents and community i appreciate that and i understand how the timeline has places in there where the community input is solicited and compiled including board input i guess my question is how do we make sure especially given the timeline between now and when we're doing our community stakeholder focus groups in january that we do that robust outreach right
134and that robust engagement to ensure people are responding um especially given the time frame over the winter break so that's just someone one thing i want to put out there is that you know even though we're sending out a survey even though we're sending out you know emails how do we get to the people that we need to get to to make sure those voices are being heard so i don't necessarily you know you may not have an answer today but something that is really near and dear to me and to many of my colleagues and things that they've said is to make sure that we um know our communities have that robust engagement opportunity and know why and and we're going to where they are to to sort of encourage them to come so
135that's my biggest my biggest comment if i could add because i mean and that's a very important component it's not only sending out the initial invite but it's also sending out two reminders to continually remind and ask i've already discussed that with um laura and and beverly in terms of the board clerks because right now like with the staff the rsvps are coming uh to that office and and they are keeping track and letting me know you know who has said yes who has said they can't and and so on uh but uh reminders uh this is the day we sent you the invite that kind of thing uh will help to do what you've just asked i will yield back my 21 seconds so thank you miss picarski okay excellent um i agree with
136most of the things that have been said i don't want to shortchange in any way our stakeholder outreach and engagement [Music] you know because we we want to go quickly which we do but we have to strike right that balance um so i want to make sure that um that that is a a top priority and i i know you share that but that is a priority i think that i've heard from this whole board to that effect when will the public expect to be notified of their participation in in these groups uh well we right now our schedule includes doing that this thursday okay that would be uh the 16th okay and and you you still think we're going to be on schedule for this i mean i just ask because i know people
137watching i mean that that's the question that we're all getting is when will that happen so um it depends based on our meetings today what feedback you give me about the groups we all have the same list that i have been utilizing and then i received some additional information this morning about others to add and so on so for me to in terms of being the one that's going to set up the schedule i just need to know who to schedule and i need to be able to respond to the question that or the statement rather that has been generated by several of you uh in terms of priorities based on that list that you have in front of you as well should we be looking at certain priorities of groups uh or let's say
138subgroups within groups and to just to make sure that we are covering what you desire for us to cover uh so i think we i mean right now the date is thursday the 14th if we need to look at moving that that's a conversation we need to have just based on our conversation and discussion today okay um and i did hear some comments about the survey everybody i know does want to have some input and be able to see that so if we can take a quick consensus of the board if people are comfortable with um ensuring that we've all had an opportunity to take a look and offer our feedback before that goes out to the public and we can notify uh people as needed as to when that will be so all those
139in favor of information yes that's okay i just want to ask when that would be when our deadline would be if it's not tomorrow yeah thank you because i'm going to ask the same thing yeah okay well i think i needed so that's what i'm asking we do but but i want to be talking to k-12 i want to be able to give them a date that has been determined by you and then if they can't meet that then i can come back and say but i i would like a date to give to k-12 to say we need this buy okay this friday go ahead it's not that long of a survey i would suggest that we put a priority on this and ask my colleagues to have it back ideally by tomorrow but
140if that is too short of a time frame then i would suggest by wednesday but we want to be able to have um k12 work on this and get it out to begin the process hopefully before christmas and and then to be able to continue to have that engagement um along the schedule that's been provided if i could just intercept as well that we do need to build in the time for the re-translation of anything that we adjust or change in that survey so that can take three to four days depending on the language and the other requirements that the language services have you don't oversee that okay i'm sorry i meant friday um to get it back from k-12 um but i guess we don't know until we talk to them we don't know
141okay so for you before the day is out sure so for us can we agree to have all our comments in by tomorrow close of business is there consensus around that okay to me and to bev please and then we will work with gloria okay i think um we will go ahead and do that go ahead yeah i just want to capture what helen said i i think what we all this is not where i wish we were on the survey which there had been far more direction that we would have been told to come today and share with all of you guys what the input was so here's where we are knowing the translation impact and all that i think tammy raised two really important changes so i'm gonna try and make sure i
142don't come at this with the perfection mindset but we need to know where these people reside when they res when they respond and we do need to disaggregate our employees better i think we do those two things that shouldn't cause too much impact on the translation challenges to everything that's already been done like i don't want to undo all the translation right for all the existing work it's just if we need to add these two things in right right very good okay go ahead melanie you know i i was surprised that the survey that we received is in kind of the post occ our review because it didn't have those formatted things that our surveys traditionally have including you know region elementary school secondary you know isn't there like a boilerplate of what our surveys
143generally have because that what i saw and i do have concerns about the content as well i didn't realize that had already gone through translation but i have a lot of concerns about the survey having having written surveys and also conducted a lot of this kind of focus group work myself but i i will say this is a survey that we have utilized developed by k-12 with uh with districts all over the country but i i hear and appreciate what you're saying and again when we sent it uh last week i believe it was uh last monday a week we then sent it to where we were sending everything else that we have developed and okay we are here that's the path forward right now i think it's important because i think there have been
144some um important points raised that we do need to take care of uh i will go ahead and do go backs i can go down the list if people are interested karen corbett so is this the period in which we're going to unpack the um list of potential people being consulted or what is this today's the day yes okay um so i want to echo some of the comments that my colleague dr anderson made about proportionality in our representation i think that's really important i also want to ensure that all of our advisory committees are identified and they have been i believe as well as the employee advisory councils but i do want to offer that when we go out to the employee community that we um ask them the heads of each of these
145organizations to ensure that they are reaching out beyond just themselves the parent leadership community advocacy groups um i'm a little concerned about the broad brush in which we are doing some of this um when we say booster clubs which booster clubs and then when we say we've got a number of different organizations what i would urge is that we do send out a request to every pta and pto in the county because those are our traditional areas as well as the newer organizations of parent groups the other area that i would urge is that when we say our parent leaders in the different languages i don't know what that means i thought that a lot of that was done through our title one committee or other organizations and it seems to me that we want
146to be really careful with that real food for kids i believe mary porter is no longer the head of it so we do want to make sure that we have the right person there um and then with the board of supervisors i appreciate that i also think that in addition to our our staff and our we should look at some of our senior staff that may have left recently and get their input because i think that that's important especially given how how recently some of our staff have left and i would under the offices of the fairfax county government level i do not see the health department and given the experiences of the past couple of years i would urge that the health department be added to that and then let me see what other
147uh let's see i don't see grand involved as community-based organizations and they are in i think 13 of our schools so i would urge that grand involve is added to the list and the edu tutorial also i don't see in here a list of the fairfax delegation to um richmond and i would suggest that at a minimum they are asked to provide input to the survey [Music] given that they are our primary funders and along those same lines perhaps the federal delegation as well i would ask as we have this conversation that that there's a place where all your suggestions are sent to and then i receive one composite list of anything that needs to be added because that way that will be very helpful excellent thank you okay we have megan so i just
148want to make sure we're all on the same page so there isn't any confusion here um and i'm not sure i'm clear on this so based on the november 15th meeting that the board had with you all to kind of set the stage and this list that we have here in red is identified the groups that in the prior superintendent search we consulted with um but is this in terms of just inviting them to participate in a survey or this is you're going to sit down and talk with them this was inviting them to a meeting a focus group meeting a stakeholder meeting so the ones in red as you just indicated were the ones that were invited last time the others are additions to that and they would be invited as a group i'm
149just going to start for example at the top of the list on the first page now so it's okay because i know we're short on time um i wanted that clarity thank you so much dr davis um so my concerns are when the county executive was hired this school board none of us were called in for a focus group we didn't we weren't involved in that in any way so i i would have no problem with you all you know interviewing and talking with the county chairman of war supervisors i think that's totally appropriate i think inviting our our county school our board of supervisors to respond to a survey would be great but you guys i mean this list is is immensely large in the prior conversation i thought we all agreed there was
150no way we would have the time and ability to to decide among the 12 of us okay they're going to be singled out for focus group work they're not going to be they'll just get invited to a survey so i thought we envisioned that other than you know key stakeholders within the fairfax county school system family including you know parents and stuff everything else that was community and business related would be we really want to encourage you to participate in the survey we want to invite you know send them reminders things like that but the focus group part um i'm just really worried how this is being distilled down and we can be inviting everybody to go to town halls and things and i know mr fisher's signaling maybe you can help me here so
151can we say like put them in buckets like we didn't want them individually focused but like some will be combined but well like the borah supervisors can't because that'd be a violation of but i was led to believe we wanted to expand the involvement so that's why i took this list to heart i mean that's what i was that's what that was shared with me we want to expand the community and parent environment yeah i totally understand i think my what i struggle with and you know with 12 of us i know we're all different but i do better when i see a structure in a framework and i'm good looking at my beloved partner melanie maron who's also often like this is hard for me because i'm just looking at a list i don't
152know what that means to you and mr ray and maybe my colleagues you can understand this is what's making me a little uncomfortable here is it's all about the implementation execution and this doesn't tell me how our search firm plans to execute which we then run the risk that if this falls into a problem the public's going to come back to us and we're going to hold the bag of blame so i think there needs to be a little more clarity on what dr davis you and mr ray think we're signaling here um and i i need it to be listed i not not just a verbal sort of well we'll have focus groups because i don't know what that looks like i don't know how you guys have decided to actually do that in
153terms of how many who are they so can i can i just jump in on that um i think that's part of this discussion because we haven't given them that direction we've provided the stakeholder list from the prior superintendent searches and that our division uses to engage in other matters so looking at that i think your comments are important and a topic of discussion for the rest of us yeah i'm just mindful of the time i think is it's 3 20 and i'm trying to figure out this is another big piece of the work and i don't we didn't plan for it in our timing so i guess that's what's again why i'm i'm nervous because i'm looking at going were we getting ready to walk out of here and if we're not i think
154trying to tackle this part b is going to be big well that's why i mentioned right now uh we are scheduling five associates i mean we can handle this we can we could we could meet with and send an invitation to those uh the various school board citizen advisory committee as an example that could be a group and we could either combine that with the advisory council depending on the number but what i'm saying to you is i took this list to mean that uh it had been reviewed and looked at and moving forward with the scheduling of five or so so you take five associates and at ten o'clock that's five groups that could be held five different groups i think what you have to keep remembering we have more people to engage and
155we uh were operating under the idea that you wanted to engage more people so consequently we took this list to heart and basically you you see the broad categories there in bold print and my plan has already started to just then schedule them with the individuals that we have that's why we said you have over 250 on the slide okay thank you dr davis my my 15th second of advocacy is please put the county executive as a one-on-one interview um he works extremely close with the superintendent and i think he will have a lot of helpful insight being the county executive over the last six years what whatever and however four and a half is what we will do thank you and no i don't think you've misunderstood we have made it very clear that
156we want robust uh stakeholder engagement miss kisgamara is actually next and i think she does have some suggestions to help move us along a bit too because i thank you so much for being here and listening to us as we think out loud actually which is very valuable but um you know in terms of some of the things that i've heard today i don't think that there was a way for you to know how to do that and that comes from board direction and so i'm going to suggest that i don't know whether we want to use the committee that helps you know do the selection of this group or we want to have another time for input through a google document or something to be able to give board input as quickly as possible
157to organize the information that we are discussing today because quite frankly i feel bad i know that we have um i know that we have these are important comments but sometimes you're getting information and it's it's very difficult for a person in your position to be able to kind of figure out how to organize all of that i think that's our responsibility so we have to come up with a structure on how to do that and then give you that information i think that's um the fairest thing to do um so with respect to those groupings i agree with ms mclaughlin with respect to there may be certain people you need to have one-on-one conversations with so we need to put that in a document um perhaps we want to use the committee if not
158um i can take direction from our chair and vice chair but certainly we need to have that um with respect to survey i think we need to do the same thing we need to bring the these are the comments what you if there's something you need from us please uh put it in um in writing to our chair and vice chair and vice versa so that we can make sure that we have a meeting of the minds of what those expectations are so i just thank you because we are a group of folks who we like to dig down and make sure and this issue of um uh community engagement is near and dear to our hearts and so that's what i understand that right so hopefully some of those organizing tools will help and
159i will use yield my 45 seconds to any questions or anybody else that might want to feed into how we might organize this information so we can move forward as quickly as possible and let me just add community engagement is something we do extremely well so all we need for you to tell us is who and how why not why but just who and prioritize it and we can take it from there that's all we need so i appreciate that thank you um and and i i did think the way we had um communicated this in the past was that after everybody takes a look at this list if there are major omissions and i would say major because it's not realistic for 12 people to sit and pick through a list it just isn't
160the way to best utilize our time major missions or issues um can be sent um to to me or to i think last time we said helen to me is fine and i can forward to the appropriate people however and maybe at this point in time is probably the best way i think to go forward if um people are comfortable with that and with that um miss omesh i'm okay okay thank you very good just going down the list um miss tolan mr frisch thank you and i appreciate the requests that we send major omissions to you all um i do want to elevate that it doesn't appear any of the lgbtq stakeholder groups are included on the list um and so i will be emailing you to include fcps pride glsen nova transgender education
161association and i will hope that the pride liberation project is involved in the student component of our of our outreach so i hope they will be included i do note that throughout this document um many of the other groups that were mentioned in previous organ in previous discussions have been included so it's good to see that those have been added in terms of the way forward here and i can appreciate with what miss kiss gamora is saying about making sure that we're arming uh everybody with the tools they need to do the work um i think what makes the most sense to me is for this board to indicate its consensus on the groups that we're identifying and then we can expect a plan around how that outreach is going to take place i can
162appreciate that gr recruiting has many associates to deploy in that effort [Music] but we also want to make sure that that's done the most efficient way possible so that nothing's falling through the cracks for example if there are 250 groups it may mean that for example the equity group has a very extensive list as does the religious organizations group has a very large list of groups it may mean that we break those in half so that no one voice is being crowded out in a way that another group that might only have five groups represented would have uh more of an opportunity to speak to their priorities so uh i think it's good and wise for us to put these into buckets like we discussed when we met previously but we just need to make
163sure that those buckets are as equitable as possible to all the groups being asked to participate so that we can actually get what we're hoping to get out of them to that end i would also indicate that we should probably take the standing committees off of the list because we're already going to be having our one-on-one sessions with uh geo recruiting about our own personal feedback and we're the members of the committees so it probably makes sense to remove those other than that that's it for me and i'll wait for the opportunity to provide more structured feedback thank you thank you mr frisch and i can appreciate that too in terms of and and for example uh bev especially has been very good at this um in terms of i just asked are there people
164that should not be in the room together i mean again that's that's you know my own background i know there are people that should not be in the room together because you really want the conversation to be focused on the task at hand and not at the back and forth between thank you potential parties so i just share that i'm very cognizant of things like that okay um we have miss marin are you i know you had a the beginning are you okay okay uh miss darren at cofax okay are there any other questions or concerns that have not already been raised address comments go ahead mrs mclaughlin so i'm just trying to make sure again on the timeline um because again i am still very concerned and i think we are losing some valuable
165time on the front end with how long we're going with the the survey to the survey input and then to when you envisioned posting the application to when we would bring it back to the board and so i'd like to see if you know there can be some consideration for tightening up that window from when the application deadline closes and even then my colleagues based on prior experience i think we might want to see um you know applications open till filled but initial you know review of applicants or something because i mean we never know what what could end up happening um based on that and in fairfax county we often will say open till filled because it's going to remain open until filled because you could have someone all of a sudden decide after
166february you know first or whatever deadline you decide is your deadline for the applications are you saying have not have a march 4th deadline which appears on the uh timeline now yes yes and and and squeeze that up a little bit so you you indicated that that on the 21st of january you'd go ahead and post the application in the profile and if you go from january 21st to march 4th that's giving almost a six-week window i'm saying back that up about two weeks more as you've you've talked about people are already aware that we're looking to shorten them yeah shortening i'm trying to shorten up that so don't give six weeks to when we go to march 4th go a little bit earlier to into you know late february that you guys would start
167screening and preparing the applicants to us so that you're coming to our board with that first round of presentations not on march 17th but maybe like march 7th i when i was doing the math you could tighten up the application deadline the closing deadline and then as a result we we could have a better window in the month of march for doing that first and second round of interviews especially since as you heard i think there's consensus on the board we want to make sure we have a second round with finalists is your desire with the first and second round to have more days or just more time in between the two two interviews in other words um i mean we definitely we could look at moving the timeline up because we wanted it earlier
168in the first place but but we did so we were accommodating well i'm being mindful that because of when the national school board association conference hits we talked about that right and and then we lose all those super we can't be interviewing the various superintendents who are at the national school board conference too so everything's kind of compressing us to the end of march that's why i'm trying to back that up because i do think two rounds of interviews and maybe we're going to end up having some candidates who come from the west coast and even though they can come it's still a travel time to book flights and get out from the western half of the u.s is not easy so i'm just saying i don't know that we need six weeks of a
169window before you start to prepare a slate for us and there's and i hear that uh i mean again i think that's a very serious conversation that the 12 of you have because we talked about this initially and i'm going to be very honest here and we wanted to move it up and we're told you wanted to move it back well to be fair what we really wanted to make sure we did was not start serving our community over the right before the winter break so it has and we actually said based on prior superintendent searches we were able to do this in a window between january and the end of february to then do the rounds of interviewing but you're not bringing us the slate until march 17th it's too late so that's all
170i'm saying is go four weeks with the application portion we gain back at 10 days at least to then have that more robust window of our act the interviewing part is the most important thing we do so and i want to make sure we have time with you guys to to get there i i can express hear frustration but honestly tammy and i are the only two have done this twice and and so but i i don't want you to overly worry about people getting here for the interviews i i i i know but i just i want to put that out and as far as the the four weeks uh we can look at that you you want to make sure again that you know people have time to kind of look think about
171it but in terms of the timeline if you want to do what you're suggesting fine i'm just waiting gloria can i add this up we the second interview it was never our intention to not have a second interview we just put it was optional so that that that was never gone away but i will tell you in today's climate and you and i will be speaking at at the administrators national conference in february where we're going to be talking to people and and we'll probably be making some appointments and people may fly in and visit with with us we are associates in this climate half you know and and i can appreciate that you've had other searches but i've had hundreds and hundreds of searches and i can tell you we need a little time
172to recruit and we will and we will be we made that adjustment uh already on the uh you know uh front end and we will be talking to candidates and we will be uh uh looking at their investigating and and so forth but um if you want to move the timeline up i think you're gonna miss a few candidates now um uh i was okay to move it up but we had to move a bunch of other gates around but we're trying to maximize the very best opportunity for you to get uh you know your candidates so if you want to cut it down to four weeks and we can do that i i'm not sure that's a that's a good move at this point in time but that's my professional opinion i i yep
173i guess maybe i'm confused at your end of the process because i thought people apply and and then you guys start your interviewing and vetting yes so in terms of the rules we're interviewing them and embedding them throughout throughout the process i mean when they send one application in or they sent a letter we start looking at them as soon as we get the first communication but mr ray i thought that you can't start recruiting and identifying candidates until we've developed a profile which would be right not before january 20th school board meeting yes so i i understand that so starting january 20th you can officially start identifying candidates and i'm just doing the math that we might be able to at least gain seven to ten days that i think will be valuable on
174the board's end for two rounds of interviews plus i'm trying to have that yeah so my understanding just to clarify i think we are going to have that we had put that on there for two rounds um yeah and unless i guess i'm hearing as the experts you are recommending to us that we keep those six weeks open so unless there are um others on the board that would really like to move on that and condense it even more um i think we've given you a lot of feedback today um as you can tell we are a very passionate group and we um must and want to get this right so we appreciate you working with us on that um do you have another question miss case come on go ahead um i i i
175think and my colleague mr fritz mentioned part of this i think you've gotten a lot of feedback what i do not want to do which is why i am not chiming into some of these comments is there are things that you're going to see because you're in a position to see them that we're not going to know about and i don't want to foreclose things that you may need to respond to to protect our best interests so i would recommend that we and this is somewhat of a summary of what you said but i wanted to clarify i want you to have the flexibility you need to do the best job for us it may be that you could get in there and you go you know what this is much shorter than we anticipated
176and we can wrap this up and we can publish some different dates and move on but if that doesn't happen i don't want you to feel that oh my goodness the board said we have to fit here but that's not in our best interest so i would encourage that you know we do this process of you know communicating with stella in our our chairs as necessary so that we can communicate with you and any recommended changes based on this comment these comments that you would communicate that with our board leadership but i want to make sure we're respecting your expertise so that we can move forward and not cut off our nose despite our face i know that's not what the intent is but i just want to be real respectful because you know there
177are people who do things that i'm not good at and i'm so glad that other people are here to do it so just a very quick comment i so appreciate what you said that's what i was gonna say too but the other piece of it is you know um our communication staff has already said we've got that website so for the public listening you know changes to the timeline changes to things will be posted as soon as we know them um but we need this flexibility you know this is a huge recruiting process it doesn't go always you know hour by hour the way you might expect it so appreciate everything that you said and we will let keep the public appraised stella if you could summarize what you have heard and what we need
178to do moving forward so that we're clear that we're helpful for me absolutely and i i appreciate miss tollen and miss keys gemara um with your with your feedback and i know we have you know we're keeping close um communication so the most important thing is that we will be transparent with any changes or anything that necessitates us being flexible in order to recruit the best candidate during a time where we are still in a worldwide pandemic i just want to put that out there so you know this may not be um the same process as as in a quote unquote average normal year um so i think where we are right now is we are going to be awaiting board feedback on the survey if there are any glaring omissions i know we had
179a couple comments um that will be due by tomorrow at five to myself and bev um then we you know we'll communicate with you two of course um and then you will talk to k12 to see how soon we could kind of turn that around and put that out we will be awaiting some details around the engagement uh plan and how we will be uh communicating with our stakeholder groups that will be uh meeting with you in the meantime we will be awaiting comments from um board members if they have any additions to that stakeholder list that has been provided or any um you know changes that they feel uh must happen and of course when is the board going to send that to you i would like that to be like tomorrow at five
180if everything um can happen we've have had access to this for a while now so i think that is um a fair deadline and um am i forgetting anything vice chair what else do you have no really those are the two main points the survey comments and the stakeholder feedback comments and then the flexibility on the timeline yep um and then just don't we will not um post the timeline until we finish getting the feedback correct i think we can post it i mean i think the dates are you know pretty on target i would say and maybe this is um miss lloyd's shop we just maybe want to make sure that we make it very clear on the website that this is a flexible process subject to change but this is a goal and
181a framework that we are working yeah estimated yes that we're working very hard to meet um what i will do uh based on the feedback that you will receive tomorrow that we will get to and like i said i'll be here and then we'll look at a different date to roll these uh invitations out to the parent community that's i that's something that i want to make sure that we can get out before the holiday yeah agreed absolutely i think that's key right now for us to get that notification out miss mclaughlin yes just process wise um you know i i so appreciate as chair and vice chair you guys do a herculean job leading our board and i i'm so grateful and this is kind of new obviously for us to do something at
182this scale i would just say that i think it's going to be so imperative that anything like even survey input like we have to have really clear clarity around that because in talking to a number of board members we didn't know that the draft survey was there that you guys needed our input from it and so you know i i want to i want to be helpful to everybody in the process so i'm just thinking going forward so we need to have like like a clear checklist and our our staff aides i think need to play a really big role in this too between the clerk of the board being the point of contact going out in this way because you were you made the comment earlier we've all had it for a while and
183like that the stakeholder list today's the first time i saw the survey so that was a stakeholder list oh it's in the portal so everything so you want the stakeholder input but again and the survey input by tomorrow at five and again going back to the fact we are pushing this so we are you know having to work just quickly to get this uh kind of turned around um and with that thank you um it's a big process and um we appreciate all the work and you being here and um wish you good luck in the engagement of this week thank you thank you so much hi gary thank you appreciate it is the work sessions adjourned we will be meeting for closed session back in our i don't need to read anything no i
184didn't certify you