001of course I'm sorry are you ready you can okay we'll go ahead and call the meeting to order so was it late last night I sent you all sorry about the last-minute email but late last night I sent out an email about process and provided you the attachment of the process schedule and then the tool the interview scoring tool that you both have the interview scoring tool can be completed as we are moving through the interview process anybody have any questions about the interview scoring tool right now okay set that aside so we have two interviews today and then we'll have an interview tomorrow so just to give you an overview again of the how the interviews will go we will have a 10 10 15 minute oral presentation at the max 15 minute oral
002presentation with 35 minutes of Q&A and some of the specifics that we asked that we talked about as a board at the last meeting when we identified the top two or three firms that we wanted to interview we talked about specifics that we wanted the firms to cover during their presentation and one of them was race and equity the question that was sent to the firms was please share your beliefs about equity more expansively individuals with disabilities gender sex immigration status etc on how you are how you leverage equity and what types of work and strategies you are currently implementing in your own organization next one demographics how connected is your firm to Wisconsin and other markets do you have access to diverse markets please include details on the demographics of place candidates communication and
003community engagement process the question was provide some more details on your communication plan and a community engagement process how will transparency even maintain throughout the process and what does that look like how will your firm access diverse views and how will you use this information to make decisions what tools will be used to support the engagement process another question that we came up from all of you was the board and firm relationship what does your working relationship with the boards look like please provide examples of how when you've had to challenge your board members on an issue so each interview will be a maximum of like 15 minutes or so we have barb here who will be our designated thank you for okay and so we'll give will give the firms an opportunity to do
004quick introductions and reiterate the expectations for the interview time and we did send out some specific questions for each board member that you know we talked about at our last board meeting I think that you know we wanted to ensure that we were because we continue to be transparent and fair during this process so we asked the same questions to the firms but that does not mean that we can't ask follow-up questions and individual questions as we see fit during the interview process anybody have any questions concerns about that No all right okay well let's go ahead and get started I'm not sure confused about the time and are these a day tomorrow oh that must have changed okay okay all right well let's go I didn't take him and then barb who do we
005have next then it would be hazard young and then tomorrow we have Macpherson okay great yeah all right well welcome you can sit at the end of the table there and if you could say that we are videotaping this so if you could sit right in the middle there and then there's a mic if you could just push push down on the mic perfect okay so whenever you're ready to keep the time would you like some water anything I'm just fine okay good evening my name is kevin costner I'm a director for DWP and alright looking forward to this interview I think you've been very thoughtful and the things you asked when we prepared our proposal I know you've had a chance to read our proposal normally we would do a powerpoint but it's just
006appropriate with the time the way you've organized it so we do have a PowerPoint that's in your folder and I'd like to tell you what's in the folder because I think some of the information the folder might blend in with some of your questions on the left-hand side of your folder you're gonna see the folder for bwp now normally if people ask who is bwp I would just go black white purple but it's a little different this time and the reason is bwp was formed by three firms in the Midwest over 25 years ago but one of the firms was owned by Harold Webb and the person that was owned it was Ken Underwood who is the father of Julie Underwood and so there's a connection more here in Madison and I asked Julie with
007her permission if I could share that because she actually did do a few searches with bwp and she's a very talented professional as you all know when you look at this brochure we're going to keep coming back as each firm will there's four parts of the process and in four parts the process when you look at our PowerPoint you'll see how that's outlined and how the PowerPoint is going to be very related to what you see in a proposal the one thing that probably I want to call your attention to and that is on the left hand side tasks to be performed by the search firm this is where you know where we're on the ground with site visits and also the amount of time we're spending off-site this document gives you a better feel
008and as I would assume some of you have not been through a superintendent search some of you don't realize that this ends up to be 50 60 days of work and it's the type of work that really takes some insight and I think that brings us to our team our team is former superintendents over 35 years of superintendent experience that is critical not only that we all know University towns I'm from Charlottesville University of Virginia where I've been through that and anything else has been going on in Charlottesville lately you have Paul Mackendrick who's a superintendent Tuscaloosa University of Alabama you got Deb Hill she worked in Evanston so the whole idea of the town and gown and sometimes the uniqueness of the town and gown to the surrounding counties and politics as you go
009from state to state shows an intensity that you have and also an understanding of the haves and the have-nots so the team that you have here and we've worked together we have worked in urban situations we've worked Columbus together we've worked Rochester together I've worked in a few other places beyond that so we get what it's like and we know how to bring out the best in the public so when you see all that information on the left hand side now I'm going to refer you to the right hand side now on the right hand side there are key decisions the school board has to make now the thing is in horton a search firm and sometimes the lead of the search firm this is all about a relationship between us and you you're in
010charge but you have to also understand it's our job to explain to you the pros and cons of your decisions and you make the final decision but we're going to tell you if there's a red flag you have a red flag in your calendar I can tell you that right now it's it's not going to work because it's too short for the time that you need to recruit the candidates there'll be some decisions you'll need to make on how you want to handle the confidentiality some of this we can tell you the pros and cons and we can but this isn't the time for that that's the type of thing and when you get into the firm coming in and then talking about those details once you've hired somebody you're talking about how you're gonna
011do with your salary growth parameters you're talking about community engagement now let me tell you a little bit about what else is in here besides key decisions I do have a sample calendar this sample calendar is a draft and in the end it might change in fact I think I would even make a couple changes in this calendar even after I thought about it today you see an example of the advertising outlets that you would normally use but we're opening up and getting into some additional outlets it just goes beyond the you can get the National Association of the black school administrators but you also want to get into the Latino organizations and see what's connected here in this immediate area and we've seen more of a growth in trying to get into that advertising
012the cost or whether you go 30 days or 60 days you're still going to be between two and four thousand dollars what you're going to do you're a significant school system you're going to be profiling and trying to do similar things that your competitors are doing to go after candidates that they're competing with you you have a sample survey and the survey is a type of thing able to get out into the community and then I've added a couple things just today we normally would give this to the board clerk and this is organizing community activities when you do community engagement just an example our community engagement process we usually would come in the night before interview all the board members then we would go two to two days full-out 8:00 in the morning til
01310:00 at night we would probably meet with over 30 groups we would have open forums for staff anybody internally open formants for the public we would probably in a series of 30 meetings probably meet 150 200 people but all of those meetings are controlled by the school board of saying who do you want us to meet with you're the experts you tell us who you want us to meet with and we'll meet any of those groups and usually we can get a lot done when you do this type of survey and you get it on your website and we could also do it in different languages which we've had done in some other places we've gone anywhere from 500 participants to 3,000 it all depends on how much you want to communicate when you get
014done with all that we're gonna give a community engagement report and the community engagement report is gonna do a complete summary of everything we've heard we ask three questions we're the strengths of your school system what are the challenges you're facing we're the qualities and characteristics you'd like to see in your next superintendent same thing for each group we take the information verbatim we don't put our words in it and we record it and we give you a summary of it meanwhile we have the I guess the quantitative survey which does overlap will provide all that and once we have that we'll do a draft profile of which you have to approve that draft profile of what you're looking for will end up being how we're going to vet the candidates to see if they
015actually match there's a lot of candidates that probably might be good superintendents but they're not gonna match a situation like this then you have to understand there's a eighteen thousand school districts only two percent have more than twenty thousand a superintendent system of five thousand isn't going to understand the complexity here even though that could be a superintendent a year someplace else so how we get into that vetting process and our superintendent experience that's very important the other thing that I think is important and this is and again I you have examples of what this looks like it's going to be different on how this thing is all going to pan out here now the question you're going to want to know well how is bwp doing in recruiting diverse candidates in systems the diversity
016is important whether it's chief Matthias Rochester we have my last five searches for we have done african-american superintendents you have a list now there of over twelve within the last four or five years now I'll tell you what that means in many cases that doesn't mean that the pool has all african-american superintendents it means the board have made choices that that candidate fit the profile and could be the face of the community and sometimes that might not be in a community that necessarily has diversity but when you are out there people now look at us particularly in the last three or four years that we have been involved in some of these searches so we know some people now we don't have a stable at all but we do seem to be getting a lot
017of good candidates that we're attracting sometimes they aren't just the superintendent's sometimes if we go to Fairfax County an area superintendent has 27,000 people reporting to that person's area so a lot of your bigger systems even the ones over a hundred thousand these are other people that have significant experience in quality places and also complexity that all of a sudden might be somebody the board might want to consider talking to now here's the other thing that's very important our job is to take the applicants and vet them and make sure there's no surprises you're counting on us to do that I've never messed up you know I've done over 30 searches you can call any school board chair or than any place we've worked we've been pretty good about vetting the other thing is you
018as a board there's something that you can get up on for us when we get ready we'll give you a report and we've been through the whole process and we're going to present candidates we will go over a hundred percent of whoever applies we will go individually through each candidate will tell you why we didn't do 90 percent Rochester two months ago the board member says well listen this other person I really like to know more about them and we said fine we'll get you all the information let the board decide if they want to bring him in that person had come in on the very last day of the process and we hadn't had much time to vet that person they ended up choosing to interview that person that person end up being a
019finalist very good candidate but that's where you need to know we're not going to not share everything with you and we're open because you're in control of that to make any changes that you might want the other thing we don't do we don't rank order if we give you six people that meet the profile we're gonna give them to you alphabetically you're the ones you're gonna have to decide that now there's other options that you're gonna have to consider just recently it's just we've just been on a run the day in the city seems to work well it worked in Columbus that worked in Rochester it worked in something some places will not have a day in the city and a state total confidentiality which you can get the best pool however in Wisconsin I'm
020under the impression that you have to put names out of your finest we have to say that up front now here's something that could happen would that chill the pool maybe but you're such a significant system for someone want to be a superintendent here even if they're in another system it looks like it's a career type of move so it isn't like they're going to necessarily be stepping down so your reputation as a whole really works well for you and I I'm just gonna be honest with you in Columbus they were getting ready to take over the state in Rochester they were getting ready to talk about that both those systems have more diversity than your system but the issues are still the same in your system I just see a lot of things working
021I love your strategic plan I think I really like the one on supporting Emmett innovation as one of your things there's just a strength here and a solidness about the Midwest that you're going to attract a good pool candidates now our goal isn't to see how many we can get our goal is to get good ones they're going to make your job hard yeah sorry your time is up so I'm gonna close it up or I guess I would tell you that one of our goals are and I'm saying this because you're a new board so we're in Sumter South Carolina we have a divided board Sumter board the vote is unanimous you want to try to go unanimous because that's the sign that you have the total support and that took a while to
022help them do that and let them be in control of it and it took a little bit longer in a few extra meetings but in the end this lady that they've hired is just doing great and our job is to kind of help you do that great thank you I'm done thank you very much thank you all right so we have a questions no so Kate do you want to get us started yeah sure you actually tackled the first question in your kind of opening statement but I guess I'd ask you to expand a little bit I mean you saw in our RFP and certainly it sounds like you've listened to some of our meetings and the achievement gap that that we are incredibly focused on on closing is is a number-one priority for us
023and mm-hmm was one of the areas that I think we'd love to hear you talk a little bit more about in terms of your sourcing of candidates who have experienced with anti-racist leadership your kind of relationships in the in the States really nationwide with candidates of color how you kind of think through and that that whole process so I I was a director for the urban superinten association for many years when I was a superintendent that whole group had a very diverse group of superintendents that we know Paul Mackendrick was on the urban superintendent group at Harvard University the people there are present are preparing urban superintendents Deb hill she was president of ASCD they're not ASCD yes ASCD and again she has more of a I guess a national worldly connection all around because
024that's when she had her role she went to all these different countries we really know the people and the fact that many of the directors of bwp and there's oh not directors for the associates there's over 50 of them in a lot of the states there also have a lot of diversity and have been in some of the worst system percy mac superintendent in dayton he was superintendent in some areas in South Carolina so we know these people and we go to these conferences were part of these organizations the Association for great city schools I imagine you remember that correct every system over 25,000 their saliva we also in Richmond Virginia done the strategic plan and worked there for four years and that's a pretty significant this is a 1990 system so I would just
025tell you we're out there and particularly in the last few years we've been out there even more because when we go to national conferences and we have our booth there we're running into a lot of people now what happens here your timeline doesn't quite work as well because the conference for aasa is in the end of February you'll probably be done with everything there so I would just say that our track record right now if you look at and you'll see it as over 13 superintendents and the last years we've been they've just have been part of our pools now again I would say that we're pretty good as far as where we're at right now and we have the evidence that shows that does that answer your question thank you is it a follow-up
026question to this okay go ahead so there are parts of the question as we have written here that I don't think that it got fully answered and mostly because I think you've notified some parts of it so I'm having a hard time even like boring so if you don't mind just staying like literally reading it yeah and I just found to a teacher I like I think we should just literally read it just okay so people so there's the uniformity on interpretation all right we can develop so it's racial equity strategies that you are using and experience with anti-racist leadership experience how you access this type of talent and what the community and staff engagement process will look like so I think I cut off the last community and staff engagement process I missed it
027not you or something that I did not respond to that you're asking um community and staff engagement process okay that was your sir mostly so the first part of the question was share your beliefs about equity more expensively I think that's and okay you know the evaluation criteria I'm sorry yeah okay yeah so so just so just okay let's just pause here for say if you have a follow-up question just write them down and then at the end we'll go ahead or you can include it in your question that you were signed on here okay so I'm next Nikki yes I have one on geography and one on special education I'm geography you have it I know you've dealt with many cities have we dealt with areas the size and arena of men some stats
028I know you said you dealt with university towns before me personally well first they are of course you look when we did our proposal a number of firms that were over 20,000 that in itself are experienced I've worked in Prince George's County 105,000 I worked in Frederick Maryland were up to 45,000 Paul against larger systems the same thing so not only if we personally had work in larger systems we also have done a lot of work the job we did in Connecticut with students capacity so the answer is yes I don't think you could not have a superintendent that has a track record that has the ability to work with all special needs kids and I but I think right now it's even expanding in the sense that special needs has a whole new definition
029you know just like when we look at Columbine those kids came from big houses I mean we've got mental problems we've got a lot of things so I think what you're finding in a lot of the professional developments occurring in school systems that this whole area is further expanding you're getting more staff into it I might also say I have a different hat I wear executive director and president of cambridge strategic services naidu strategic planning when i work with the school system on strategic planning all of these things about wellness come up for any school system and so in doing that and working with this it just gives me a greater sensitivity and appreciation of what's happening on the ground in other places Thank You Nikki next is Chris you know if you call a
030board president who we've worked with you need to ask them I think you'll find that we do have it work we have a respectful relationship and a trust and I think that has to be earned a lot of that has to do when you've been a superintendent you work with boards the only way you can work well together is by having that that trusting relationship the other thing I think you'll find when we get out in front of your community if we're gonna meet with your groups what we're going to be telling them is this you have a school board that is trusting us to come out here and hearing whatever you want to say and bring it back to the public so the transparency of the board in getting this outreach at a time
031when they're making their most important decisions they're doing it the right way they aren't trying to do it just bore down there trying to get inclusive as much as they can even if there's going to be diverse opinions at least it has to all get on the table see this whole process when you're getting into a search is also a renewal for a school system even if a school system is doing pretty well you're still going to have some energy that's going to occur as you kind of revisited a lot of things if the school system's still reaching that next level it also creates some of that energy hey Chris can I ask a quick follow-up and I think Sabian husband oh can you just say a little more about the actual team that will
032be working with us do it can you say a little bit more about the actual team that will be working with us first you I know I mean y-you have their BIOS and everything Paul Mackendrick first off we were virginia superintendents together and we've did two searches in Columbus and Rochester together Paul went to Tuscaloosa has a Harvard education background also worked in California and just as a wonderful educator and just worked very well with the community Deb hill she is the managing director of bwp and she's she's house in Chicago and there's a whole miss Western market and she knows all these people so she's gonna kind of three and myself and I knew those are kind of small and I on the ground 100% 24/7 okay Deb we want her when it comes
033to the bedding and all of a sudden knowing the people to make sure we're not gonna find any surprises with their candidate and try to work towards the pool I'm so again my second question you felt like you addressed community engagement pretty well in your presentation but I'll ask it just in case you want to say more about it and that is um how you'll do community engagement and win and how you will use the input and maybe more details on when and how you'll specifically use the input we get from the community would be helpful when you see the report you'll see there's certain things that are gonna flush out when you look at what's most important issues you're dealing with in your in your school system there will probably be any surprises but
034sometimes when we get into communication we have places saying that our board is dysfunctional that gets set you know it's not necessarily gonna get said here but it could get said but the fact is then that talks about needing to maybe work together because here's something I think you want to consider the the potential candidates are interviewing you too and that they're trying to see do I want to bring a family here do I want to work here and there's times and we've actually set this to abort if you all don't get it together we're not going to be able to get as strong a pool are you gonna make a commitment in some cases if they do too much micromanaging are you gonna make a commitment that you need to look at that and
035maybe look at your protocols now I'm being hypothetical here but I'm saying a lot of things the community engagement the transparency of that and the oh I guess the culture you're trying to do really sets the right tone for this whole process and the fact that who whatever group you want us to see when we get in front of the group they're gonna feel they've had a voice and in some cases you they might not have had this voice before and the fact that it's going to get reported and we're gonna be making the highlights of what the main themes are they're gonna read that report and say did that really get said did we get it and then here's what happened if it gets missed and they read the report then they should be
036coming to the board meeting or they should talk to a board member they missed something that's important so even though we're there for three days you're still opening up this communication which will tell them you should still talk with the board members they're the ones you're going to be making a decision you should continue their relationships to give the input of what you're looking for in a superintendent and just a quick follow-up to that do you ever encourage board members to participate in or attend to those community forums are absolutely okay we'll have any problem with that and they do particularly the forums we've had a couple times where I don't think the staff is good if we're vetting maybe you've been doing the administrative group or not but I would never say no to
037anyone coming to a meeting I mean it is what it is and then my final boss so let me ask one yeah it is important you know when we're taking notes down we don't attribute to any individual person but we interview each of you if we were doing that we're not going to say she said this he said this right we're we're not we're not honest on that to try to protect that and my final question is about failed searches because we all know sometimes failed searches happen information about candidates can slip through the cracks and you know people just even bwp in general must have had you know what we're wondering is like if we get our last two or three candidates in the room and none of them is gonna work out for
038us what are the next steps what do you guys do okay we will start over at KAUST feet will not change well again we've never had happen and again I hope it never will and I think we've been fortunate to work with system good systems where we're going to get a pool and if a candidate leaves after the first year we're gonna do it over at cost I've had that happen twice won a great superintendent's mother was dying of cancer what had to go back to California we redid the search and that person's been there for seven years didn't charge next one great superintendent been there for two years became the state superintendent of Virginia not a bad thing but it wasn't because they weren't good candidates I'll knock on wood I mean we we
039have a good week my track records pretty good and I can't think of dev having any in the history of bwp is possible but I'm not aware of it follow-up questions that I feel like I'm still not satisfied with the first question and I haven't heard the first the answer to the first question so I'm gonna try to make a connection with this so some of the groups that we were gonna ask for the community engagement process our group are groups that either serve predominantly families and youth of color they will be either groups that either service providers or that they serve algae bt q communities or that these service providers or they are families with students with disabilities and of course none of those things are mutually exclusive what particular strategies do you have
040you applied in the past that have equipped your teen you and your teen to understand the cultural nuances so that's what we're talking when we're talking about like particular racial equity strategies like what like how how have you heard those things I'm also thinking about immigrant communities immigrant youth I'm thinking about English learners so how have you being able to you and your team have been able to bridge some of those cultural pieces and differences frankly that's the work of a superintendent I mean I have not been uncomfortable with any groups that we've worked with because we work with people and we don't just we've worked with diversity I mean that's just part of the role of an active superintendent being out in their community and we are we're we've been good superintendents that if
041you I think if you had talked I think it's a good question and it's got to be done right for Madison or any place we work so I think the value of that we have credibility when we're there we sometimes particularly in Rochester we were we had a group and it was a very very activist group that their whole thing was institutional racism well we had to work with that and we had to figure out how to bring that out and I remember the person who maybe didn't start out so friendly when we started the meeting he says you listen and that's we're not there to preach we're there to listen and I think you start work you understand by listening to people not by telling them certain things and I think those skill sets
042when you are involved in some of these searches if anything they even get better hone i'm better at that now that i might have been as a superintendent because you aren't doing it by position see if you're a superintendent and all of a sudden you got this title you come in as an outsider you have no title at all your title has to be with how you are going to project the empathy or at least the way that understands that you can get people to be comfortable talking with you I hope that is a little better answer sure yes thank you so next and then do you want to do a time check how much more time we have so we have 10 minutes you have 3 questions so my question is around I think
043you started out the interview with the talking about our our timeline or proposed timelines how do you plan to push back when we make decisions when we feel differently then then you and your team and giving us some feedback what is the connection ok sorry there's multiple questions in here and well let's talk about pushback yeah there's no pushback because you make the final decision ok but if this is the most important thing you do as a bullet you might you want to take advantage of our expertise and if we tell you this is the way to get the best possible pool for you to make choices because you need to open it up beyond 30 days you need to go out and consider 45 or 60 days then we're only saying that because you're
044trying to help you get the best candidate mm-hmm but if you have a timeline that's absolute and being dictated to you then we will figure out a way to shorten it up and we've done it but in the ideal way we can tell you what the best window might be but in the end if whoever you end up hiring once they tell you we tell you what we think the plusses and minuses it's your call and we'll make it work thank you so the the second part of the question you spoke pretty lengthy about but I just wanted to read make sure that you have anything else to add so what was your connection it was you or your team connection to the pool of pool of candidates in particularly communites like from diverse backgrounds
045both racially ethnically sex gender IPS free reduced lunch district sizes the demographics so kind of that sort of question around the pool of candidates that have this diverse background what how does the recruitment works in the in Community Engagement that sets you apart from other firms and yeah and then the last part of the question is how do you what was the tools that you assess the candidates and tools or strategies or questionnaires or profiles well I think our recent track record we don't compete against another firm one way or the other that I would say that just most recently the team you have here has been successful in similar systems and we actually have been working with a lot of candidates we do zoom interviews we don't do we don't bring anybody to board
046we haven't at least personally seen one zoom or sometimes we'll bring them in if they're if they're regionally close and do the interview that way the other thing is probably just as important it's the people that we know who know them who they don't necessarily know they know him and when you're getting down into that you're gonna figure out just who really is good we actually have you ever heard the name Louis therapy he was superintendent in Indianapolis we didn't even know who he was and he ended up being one of our candidates and we kept hearing great things and turned out he didn't get the job that he was trying to apply and now he's superintendent in Washington DC so we as as you working with some of these pools we're hearing more and
047more names out there and so I would have to say right now a lot of this is fresh for us not that I can say there's someone right here that I know so you know we got we have five big school systems in Wisconsin right so you don't know who's out there there you might have some talented people here I don't know who they are and here's one thing I need to tell you okay it's very hard for us to bet an internal candidate because of confidentiality initially so sometimes we're gonna have to rely on the board to help us out more there okay thank you so much next Ally how their different take an intersectional approach to inclusion that ensures candidates are members of Tears groups what language will you use so I feel
048that you've spoken that what language will you use to ensure members of the LGBTQ community are encouraged are encouraged to apply how will you represent give districts ability to support leaders with disabilities LGBTQ leadership and the leadership of people another well as you know anything is natural as far who our applicants are and a lot of it is if people have an interest in the pool and they want to be an applicant it has to do with their interest and and also the true how good they are professionally see the issue the bottom line is how how good is their work and they're good at work all that other stuff then just kind of steps away we certainly have seen candidates that are not as traditional as candidates we've seen in the past in some
049cases we didn't even know that when they apply because if there's just a certain protection there and it more has to do with the work the portability just for superintendent this people some colors pretend very specifically to language so I noticed this very consistently from all of the ferns that he or she was used to the frequently which can alienate those who don't identify I would have to say if we need to be if we have to up our game in any of our public language then help us out on some of that things have changed I have seen this come up it has come up in some of our meetings the last thing and we'd like to have everything to go through your public relations office we'd like that type of help as far
050as translating any of that so we have to meet your standard you don't have to meet art we have to meet yours so we're going to have to work with staff to make sure we get that thing right now but I come back to the most important thing that you have that interest whoever it is are they significantly creating that track record of success that they're going to cause you to think that they're going to make the difference in your system so it is it's all about the effectiveness of the work and that's where it stops and to make it that's just the way it works out now why do we these boards didn't hire African American superintendents because they were African American they hired him because they were darn good and what they were
051doing and they also were showing in some cases there's a whole issue of turnaround is a whole concept they've shown success and things like that they separated themselves yeah and you've spoken to this a little bit but um you know we have a community in Madison that wants to see the district fully commit itself to you know anti-racist leadership and practices and principles can you you know share and I think the community wants to have a hands-on experience and wants to be as involved as possible can you just share insights and how your public engagement meetings are conducted and what works what doesn't hasn't worked over the past or you know what you have found works really well and getting the best out of people in terms of how they really feel and really organizing
052their thoughts again I welcome you to call other school board people that have seen our work we do a good job in communicating we present ourselves well and show respect to whoever the groups are we're counting on you to make sure who the groups are now there's one thing that you probably will be able to take advantage of that really is a very positive community engagement piece and that's if you do a day in the city if you do a day in the city and you have a candidate that's going to be out in front of some of the groups and people can come see that person and see them answer questions you are going to show a transparency where they're going to be a lot of people involved and in doing that that's usually
053a positive thing the downside is there's two great candidates and you've got a divided community on something like that it doesn't always come out clean and the other thing you have to consider the board's gonna know more than anybody is going to know during an hour meeting because they're going to know all of the deep references and they're going to know all the other details about these candidates that they can't possibly get that you're going to get when you go through your rounds of interviews but I have seen that on communities that really say they want to be engaged in everything that practice in itself has gone very well now some of these people want more they would like to hire the superintendent that's not their job that's your job but there are some people
054and we're talking about activists that you know want that other involvement and that that's a balancing act that you have it's not unusual and probably in in a university towns you probably see a little bit more of this in other places selecting we are in is one more and really that collection of the beverage school and so we have the districts in the city and economy have really experienced and become what changed was systemically right we have recently and you have your own to show that we are not eliminated so he's curious about that I mean I know you've touched on that a little bit answering my question for me anything yes we can you have done your my record is excellent we're getting diverse pools and they're staying and and the thing is I
055just to be frank with you you are a larger school system you're an urban type system there are a lot of people that even if they're to have all this different diversity do they have the experience of being able to do the job and so the question is we're looking for the quality of the candidate that can provide the leadership for the system now in all of the other urban systems were talking about the 180 systems of bigger they're great candidates in that and we are attracting them and again look at the record that we've had I couldn't say we were as good at this five years ago but recently we were fortunately to get the job in some of these other places and if you would call those board feet if you would call
056a board president or any of our references which I think should speak more than me how did they feel about the diversity of their pool and they had the same goal that you had now if you're talking about now do we want to find a process that goes out of the box I don't have that experience because I haven't had the necessity of doing that because what we've had has been working okay well we have had some we had a great candidate who was from the Pentagon he was in the War College alternative candidate had a lot going for the book he interviewed the board found someone else that was a little stronger instruction wise so we were we were getting those type of candidates so I don't know if I've answered your question I
057have confidence with the what we have been able to deliver that has been a diverse pool so when we get a pool will show you every yeah all that and I see you have a diverse staff well yes right and I and I'm just wondering if that is one of the areas that you touch on or that you look to write to advance their equity if that is a strategy Thanks of course we have to it if everybody looked like me an assistant like this that's not going to reflect well we have to have the diversity mm-hmm I mean and people have been successful in these places great thank you anything else from board members any questions Nikki okay you've touched on Rochester and the application you talked about Columbus Ohio are there any other
058school districts that you think have wouldn't at the point of you working with them I have underwent similar changes that Madison has so you know we're now a what a district that's majority students of color but that's relatively new you know we have some interesting population projections over the next 20 years just two years ago we you know finally established institutional language around systemic racism and any other school districts that you've worked with of that at that moment in time we're undergoing those changes well I spent four years working in Richmond which is in nineteen any system with their strategic plan I was very proud of Richmond I I really like the work you walk into schools I didn't see graffiti I didn't see kids out in the halls I saw a good culture and
059I saw some some work happening I learned a lot from them Madison is doable some of these in Rochester and and some of these other systems the poverty is so overwhelming and the complexity of all the needs that they have you're in a place right here where you are not at the extreme end and all of a sudden I think you're going to see if you have the right type of leadership you're gonna be you're going to be exceptionally strong and so I don't see you're not some of those places and I base this on the fact that they were considering takeovers or more from a deficit you're you're in an additive situation and and therefore I think with good leadership of the board and keeping in front of this and continuing finding the high
060quality programs that you have to have and attracting and keeping good staff you're you're in a good position you as a board are poised many of you still being new now of owning a new superintendent and really taken off that that's my opinion and I think you have a great chance for that great thank you do you have any questions for us I guess the timeline that you have you're gonna have to work out I would have to say that if we were to come back and we got the job we would probably be going through some of this by going through those key decisions mm-hmm and the other thing is this thing is like peeling off layers of an onion you're learning a lot of this stuff tonight you're seeing one person you're gonna
061think about it and you're gonna have some additional questions later so a lot of this if we just if you keep doing due diligence and you end up getting the process and the trust that we can work back and forth you don't you you don't necessarily have final product right away so it's kind of working as a team you're gonna see that one slide that I showed on the left hand side that talks about that whole issue of all the gears coming in together this is that perfect opportunity this is that perfect opportunity is a lot of these things are going to happen and I've just been very fortunate that I've seen it as a positive experience I have not and again I hope this can always be I can say this I'm not how
062to a search that a board hasn't worked well together because of the importance of what you have to do and it all comes back to the kids I mean there's nothing more there's nothing more moral for a ground of what you have to do and I know you all have a great diverse background among yourselves congratulations on your recent appointment mm-hm I guess we left out one thing one of the things that we definitely are going to do if we get into community engagement we'd like to get into schools we would like to be able to hear from the kids and we even when we disaggregate the survey sometimes get it and disaggregate it from what the students say so there's a lot of options that we can have and their voices sometimes are very
063interesting again I want to thank you for the opportunity I hope I've been able to answer your questions and again I I feel more comfortable you asking other people that we work for if everything I've said is what we do and I think we do thank you great thank you thank you that Kate yep okay tomorrow Oh from Monday I'm sorry I'm sorry for Monday yeah yeah we are meeting tonight we have two interviews tomorrow okay but so we will be on Monday then we'll vote we'll have a discussion we'll vote and then we will talk about references that Kate and I have been doing any any other questions so two interviews tomorrow Monday we'll have the discussion and vote and talk about reference checks anything else how do you guys feel that when today
064I know it's specific was my session my it was like just like I didn't know and some other dynamic sense very well so anyway so I apologize for those like how am i scoring this yeah if the questions are different than what we are and then like y'all make sense so yeah that's for like yeah we really want we just took pockets of information that we talked about last time we didn't want it like tweak it or anything it was like just you can ask it however you want it we just kind of put it all in one tap again it made sense that then they're quiet like they were multiple because we were following or different questions oh yeah that question that I wanted to write this surface yeah - yeah alley it would
065have been beneficial to a certain extent to time enhancer and I don't want anything existed people but I think having enough time at the end for the person to ask us questions questions is relevant to this you gotta turn on your light it's behind us I think that there is some tension around asking somebody who do have any questions five minutes after their interview was supposed to end especially if somebody else is waiting to come in or they have somebody else is waiting to come in and so I don't want to stifle anybody's ability to ask us questions or to get to the end of the interview because the questions we have are taking so long so yeah you know thank you for that um even just telling folks to answer within you know yeah
0662 to 3 minutes yeah it could enhance yeah so it works we're all good for tomorrow holding off our follow-up questions until the end unless like what Ali suggested it pertains to your own question and then I think we we should be more efficient tomorrow I think we have to balance it right because I really want the free flowing of conversation that sort of happened here today right so we'll try to balance it but I think what will help is if we leave the follow-up questions to the end that'll give us an opportunity to give some more time to the firm to ask us question you need to know you can take those one thing that I found a Christmas present today but just from doing the reference checks I think for us too tomorrow
067and it'll be hasta today so we'll be okay what's the specific team and making sure we have a really are say the exact individuals will be here on the ground supporting I think Sabian oh all right well then can I get a motion to adjourn so moved second all in favor uh any opposed all right we are adjourned thank you all