McFarland School Board Meeting 11/1/2021

001one found at the bottom of your zoom window in the q a we would ask that you type your name address subject of interest and whether you have discussed this item prior to the meeting with either a district administrator or president howery after submitting that information i would then transfer you over to speak to the board i do not have anyone registering to vote or to excuse me for registering to speak to the board thank you angie uh so we will move on to the school board reports the district administrators report well you see the you see obviously the meetings coming up on december 15 december november 15th december 6 and december 20th and january 17th and today you should have also gotten if a notification about there's registration open for the school board convention

002which is the third week in january so i know that i have already registered i know that craig is registered if any of you would like to go for an event if you let angie know she will what day is it january what well i think it's like the 17th yes yeah typically it's wednesday thursday and friday yeah yeah with friday being kind of a winding down day but that but but the delegates convention this wednesday morning is wednesday morning now i've always attended that so if you there's there's probably no reason for both of us to go to that i've always been the delegate so yeah i can't believe it anyway it has to be a board member that's 19th through the 21st okay and we just let you we'll discuss the strategic planning

003process then all right the one thing i want to bring up tonight that i'd actually it's for discussion is that we're be working on two things throughout this year one of course is the superintendent search process we're going to talk about a little bit later and the second is our five-year strategic planning process we're already getting some information on that from the surveys and all that and then with strategic planning i think the thought was is that we would get the information then we'd put it on hold and tell the superintendent was hired so that that individual could be part of the process which would start later on what i am asking if there is a consensus among the board is that if we can all agree that one of the major pillars is what

004i'll call it for like a better term is equity then what i'd like to do is start working on the equity portion now rather than waiting until potentially february one is we have a lot of things that deal with equity that are going on you have your equity resolution which you passed you know during the last school year we also have our grant with natural circles of support we also have [Music] the we are many united against hate which we're actually having a presentation that we are hosting in january we also have our culture responsive teaching that we're doing for our professional development and i just think rather than trying to wait until february to really start writing this that we have so many pieces going on that it might be advantageous if we can

005start writing that section earlier instead of waiting and then it can serve as a template for the other things that we determine are going to be the major pillars just with so many things and i just don't want to end up waiting until february to start creating the things because my fear is that we have so many good things going on but if we don't find a way to unite them that we may pull in opposite directions and i would just assume taking all of the initiatives we have to make sure we're pulling in one direction so they're all working towards a common purpose rather than working a bad cross purposes so if everyone felt that this yes will probably be one of the pillars then what i'll do is i'll start working with the

006administrative team and yourselves to start creating what you know what this one pillar would should look like in a strategic plan christine could i ask how do you ever have any any feel as to that kind of strategy moving forward you're you're you're blessed with a an equity background that maybe none of us have um i think well my first reaction is i love the idea of using a model or template to keep building on i think that's a wonderful idea because we can get all of the aspects of it that we want when we're thinking about strategic planning including outcomes and any other things that might go into it so i really like that idea i think the question that dr anderson is asking all of us is whether or not equity has appeared

007in a number of different ways in an and in enough ways that we feel like it will be um part of our strategic plan so speaking for myself i definitely feel that way i heard it in the three meetings that i was able to attend unfortunately i could not attend the high school when i was out of town but i i feel like it has emerged and it will emerge so when i look at it that way certainly i would agree with that from my equity lens as being part of a couple of those i also agree with dr anderson's um thought that if we don't get more aligned we're going to be working at cross purposes so generally i i like i like the idea but of course i'm one of five so no

008that's that's exactly what i asked for thank you very much christine anybody else want to add on here well i think we are you know active in it we're all in the growing stage of it but i think it's all it's all coming down and then you know it could be very well a good thing to tackle right now as we get her up front and it's it's going to be a solid issue to go forward on i mean in in reading the comments that come across it's just you know it comes across frequently enough and it's been our discussions frequently enough that i can't see any five-year plan that you'd create in which it does not exist exactly yeah no that i i think that doesn't certainly doesn't need to be said if i

009would approach it this way i guess unless someone has a reason not to do it i would say that's a sound strategy and and i think we probably all agree that equity is going to be one of our pillars whether it be three of them or five of them or whatever it's going to be so i have no issue with it then what i will do since there seems to be consensus is that i'll try to draft how we're going to approach working on this pillar and presented at the november 15th board meeting and if you think that the process that i'm describing makes sense then we'll go forward and if you'd like to tweak the process we'll tweak it and then you know we'll start and obviously i'm sure there'll be modifications along the

010way but at least you'll have an idea of here's how we're going to approach this one aspect and then we should learn from that as we get to the other ones later on in the school year i agree i think it's an obvious choice yep agreed okay moving on uh superintendent search all right time is moving a lot you know you always think you have a lot more time than you do and in this case it's probably not true is that there's already superintendents vacancies being posted right now so two of the things that i'd like to deal with tonight are one is we create the application to put online is that i think it's important to have some essay questions so what i did is i put out a series bruce added a couple

011i sent the revised sheet to you later on and my belief is that five is probably a reasonable number to ask an applicant to fill out but i wanted to make sure that we put in the questions that are going to help you make the decision on how we can basically you know reduce the number of applicants down to a number that you think are worthy for an interview and the essay questions do that so if you know the type the questions that really you would like responses to you can give those to me if you don't i'm not looking that you have to give them to me tonight but i would ask that over the next week that you look at the sample questions and if you have other questions that you think would

012be better or if you want to combine some that you get those to me so that at the end of the week or beginning of next week i can send those out so that when we get to the 15th at our next board meeting there's some common agreement about the ones that you would like and then i can put those into an application so that we can post that portion after a meeting on the 15th and like i said i think five is a reasonable number to ask and the whole reason to put these down are so when you look at the various applicants they can help you determine which ones you think you may deserve an interview [Applause] well i certainly agree dr anderson that time does fly and time is getting short um

013i do believe that we're in a good place in the process though oh yeah i think we're going to be all right in terms of the only the only you know bothersome thing is that you're absolutely correct also in that there are superintendents positions being filled as we speak you know i i think we're all aware that after after uh kovid that there were going to be a lot of vacancies and there was going to be a lot of activity i still trust in the reputation of the mcfarland district to get top flight applicants right and you're in the prime period i mean the prime period will be between chris christine head out had a comment go ahead christine okay i'm sorry i didn't mean to cut you off no no no no okay and

014i can't see if other hands are raised so thank you i'm happy to share or give you i did write down the ones that i liked um dr anderson do you give them guidance though on on not in the applications you say something like please respond to these questions and give maybe a word count or something the reason why i ask is i could see us generating questions that would be really hard to answer in a short count at the same time if they go on for pages and pages we're not going to be able to do any application do justice so do you normally say you know answer this in two paragraphs or something like that just so that we can we can kind of fine tune our questions to meet that and make

015sure we're not reading tomes of paper here yes i've done it both ways depending on you know the type of question sometimes i put a character count but in other cases basically put the descriptors that it has to be one page or less and then you know like 12 font you know with margin so it has to be within one page for question because that should give enough to give a complete answer and yet it's not overwhelming now you will see the applicants as they once we get to the posting process they will as a person applies and their documents come online you'll be able to see them so you'll be able to keep up with you know you don't have to wait till the end to read them i never wait till the end

016i read them as they come in and make little notes to myself so you'll be able to do that because if you do wait to the end and you have my belief is you'll probably get about 25 applicants and then you try to read all of it it can be a little you know if you eat them as they come in it's much more manageable if you want you can either give me the ones now or you can you can send them to me electronically whichever is going to be easiest for you okay so do you i guess if we all just individually send you the ones if we're shooting for five we should probably talk about any that we see right now that are really important to us because otherwise we're all just emailing

017him and we might have a different five that are important so um you know i think to me when i was reading over some of these um i think the morale question is an important one personally right now and i spelt that wrong i'm sure they had an e at the end so so the how do you gauge morale of a district and what methods have you used to improve morale for your past positions i know that that's a problem here right now and so i think that when we're interviewing these candidates you want somebody who has experience with that who can give examples of what they've done to help other districts so to me that's an important one um you know the equity question i think is an important one because that's a it's

018something that comes up very frequently so my personal opinion is that should be on there is there you guys want me to keep talking or is there anything that you can go ahead the only thing i i don't see the two that i sent you on this list if you go to i think i have to get yeah i mean if you have them they should be uh 17 and 18. um because i have right here in mind okay i don't have them either um he sent it out today oh yeah at 1 45. okay and i looked at that i didn't see it there either so let me minimize this i actually like six as well there's a whole bunch of them i like because that's a piece that now remember is that if

019they're you can use other you can use some of these other questions as part of your interview so it's you know it's it's not that if you don't pick it it goes to you know the question can't be used what it simply means is that these are some that they're going to give a written answer to and then later on when you have your in-person interviews some of these questions can be in person i i like the idea of a word count but i also think that that we should at least be wary when we're choosing these questions and i i think i'm probably repeating exactly what kate said but bear with me i just think that we can't set them up for failure in that by giving them questions that can become very involved

020complex detailed maybe those are things that we should ask during the interview but you know if it's i don't even know is a thousand words a lot you know for people christine oh yeah two pages yeah well it would seem to me you want if if you want long detailed that should be an essay they have chance to do some research on it true i don't know if you want someone to be sitting down and you're trying to you know have them and how do they do that yeah that's true as well so i think you know i i would put some limits i think there's nothing wrong with that that makes that shows their can they become concise can they you know that's the skills that they they need to demonstrate yeah and at

021the same time i think you know almost kind of going through this attitude this idea that let's let's water ones would be really good for an interview and which ones would be better for christine right and what i'm hearing dr anderson say though is that this is part of our application so these are actually screening questions right we need to pick five and i i was kate you and i were really very similar in what we chose already but we need to think about these as ones that if they answered them in a way in which they it was not aligned with what we're looking for that we would not move them forward so i think we need to look at it that way and and and then you know as both bruce and after

022anderson said we can ask we can ask all 16 or 18 or whatever we have at some point in the in the in the interview but these are screen like these are ones that would cut somebody from moving on in the in the process is my understanding of this is that that's an excellent taste and that's the way that i use them is because they do help in the sorting process so like number eight for example what do you know about the mcfarland school district and what drew you to apply to our school district yep that's one i feel like we could use as an interview i agree sure totally agree um there was another one yeah oh what do you guys think about the curriculum development one do you think that's more of an

023interview question or an application question which number is that kate that's number one number three oh your expertise and experience with the area of creation to me and like if they don't really have any experience in that is that like christine said that somebody who's either going to come through to an interview or not yeah i don't know how important i mean i i want you guys to tell me what you think well melissa fortunately has a large skill and you know as i've mentioned in the past is that you are not going to find a person who is an expert in all in fact if i was going to tell you of the areas of my own strength and weakness curriculum would not be my strengths i mean i understand it i've led curriculum

024processes but if i had to rate on the things that i'm you know the most skilled at that would not be it but that's why i usually have surrounded myself with people who are confident in that exactly one question i think you should strongly consider because i do think it's important is number 13 and that's the board district administrator relationship because that truly is what you will deal with all the time and i think it's it's useful to find out yeah how do the applicants i mean how do they view if they're already a superintendent or administrator what is their current relationship what are the current things that they do so you have an idea and attending national and state conventions it's never more apparent than there are almost as many board community administration you

025know there are almost as many different kinds of relationship as there are boards and communities and administrators you find that in many school districts throughout the country what i found was that the relationship between the board and whether it be a teachers union or a bargaining group or whatever they may be called is very adversarial you know and they go into it assuming it's going to be an adversarial negotiation or whatever they're going into and we've never in this district that i'm aware of i know arlen's been here 30 years bruce you were here 35 or involved in the union and i don't know that we've ever gone into any sort of discussion or negotiation assuming it was going to be adversarial which makes us very different from a lot of districts around the country

026angie christine i'll lower my hands it's clear um this is why i think i'll go back to my thought from our last meeting which is to start thinking about how we're going to evaluate the candidates because if we know kind of the minimum standards or not the standards the minimum of what they should be able to do or what they've done we were going to be more able to make these types of decisions so if we say you know like take the equity one that we we really need somebody who's strong and equity who's coming in with uh background and equity we know that should be one of our questions then so part of my struggle is figuring out what you know what are we really looking for um you know right now i just

027feel like we're casting a net and taking any any any fish if i can use that um when i feel like we're you know what what what are we looking for um in a person so i just want to go back to the idea that we might think about creating some kind of a rubric or something that we can use to evaluate you know the responses and the candidates to know that they are going to match what we're looking for and i have reached out to all my colleagues if anyone has used a rubric in the past and at this point i will admit i'm striking out because none of my colleagues have used a rubric for either their boards for hiring a superintendent or hiring administrators it doesn't mean we can't create one it's

028just that it's something i didn't have experience with and none of my colleagues yeah and maybe that you know maybe the languages we're getting caught up in the word rubric i think what i'm looking for is you know what are the essential qualities and so on that we're looking for in this person and then how can we ask questions and get responses and look at their resumes in a way that i can point i can pull out what we're looking for um more more able more easily and the first word that came to mind was rubric because it because it is an evaluation or assessment tool so i just would like to us to continue to have that conversation about what you know what are the things that we're going to be looking for um

029that and i and i do feel like part of that is what we're hearing from staff and we just haven't heard it from everybody yet so anyway there's just a little bit of attention there for me thinking because i really want to tell you the questions i want to ask but then i'm also thinking but do i really want to know these answers if we're not looking for some you know so i'm really kind of struggling with that but i'll i'll send you the uh my my numbers um electronic christine christine this is bruce hi i just i the question i was going to ask are you and i'm not quite sure i'm understanding exactly what you're saying are you looking at in some ways kind of some of the strategic plan pillars is that

030what you're you're thinking about i mean i agree with with what kate said i think it's it's definitely going to be one of our main pillars so you want to have something about that but are there other is that what you're thinking of i'm asking you that question well yeah i definitely think that that's a part of it and the questions that we've been asking about what the staff and and the community are looking for um so right now those are a little bit blended in my mind only because we're gathering data with both in mind um but yes that would be a little bit of a part of it but they're also for me i i you know i don't know like things like is do we have a minimum degree that we're going

031to look be looking for or you know do do people have to have at least a master's with a phd preferred or are we expecting a phd or you know any of those kinds of things which really are the point at which we start then selecting people to move on or not that's an easy one to think about because it's concrete but i do think we often we should talk about whether or not there are other areas like equity curriculum development even financial i noticed was on here and you know we have such a you know we have a we we have such a strong person in jeff but jeff might not be here forever because jeff mahoney now talking because he might retire um not you know so anyway i need to get a

032little bit clearer on that and i think one of the things that so far i think at the last check you had 40 some staff members that have commented and i think we were at like 120 to 130 parents and community members so actually this week's vlog i tried to make some real big generalizations you know from what i've read so i mean i think you know from those generalizations i mean one of the the qualities that came up quite frequently were you know a good communicator you know someone who's a good communicator someone who's visible i mean my end goal will be to create you know much more concrete document but if you want to take a look those are things that you know people want you to take a look at when you're

033doing your selection writing essays is one type of communication when they speak in front of groups will be another type but but these questions are to help you sort down i like to add you're absolutely right communicator good communicator ends up being a good leader because you're you're you're if you can get dialogue you get people working with you going forward so the the good coach coaches the team with structure to to go ahead and win you know what i mean that's really the truth and i think in all of our pillars i think we're we are nailing them down and i think curriculum is also they got to have a good read on curriculum because curriculum changes times change and you know you don't do the same thing forever and you have to and

034there's and there's developments that come up and you need somebody that unders we have a good a great curriculum instructor right now very happy you know what i mean but you the superintendent's got to run with that curriculum because that's the game plan that's that's what we are going to be tested on in the state testing you know that's what something that our kids are going to have to have you know the best ability to be successful in life is a is a good curriculum we have to you know be real that's you know so i think all that we've been talking about tonight is it's just kind of fallen into place but it's it's actual because you know everybody has their challenges everybody has their strengths and you want to line your strengths up

035as much as you can and if wherever you're weak on maybe if you're not a number five or a number four you know you're you're running very close to that you know you need you we're going to try to ask for a lot out of a person but that person is going to rely on his team around him and if he's got a good re or she not he or she i say the wrong term all the time but if they're you know if their team around them is strong and and they can walk with them that whole movement of the administration will go forward and our kids will be the result of it and i i think that's you're very true i think i'm very comfortable with that because if you don't then you'll

036end up playing catch-up ball someplace and then then we're behind and in all honesty curriculum is a hot button topic right now it always is well i it's it's to such a degree with the with the you know critical race theory for sure objections and and even the legislature getting involved in that sort of thing now so um yeah i i think equity is a is a no-brainer in terms of you know we need somebody who's strong along those lines and i in curriculum i think it might not be your forte but you certainly have to be versed enough in it to keep us out of trouble um nice slouch it's just not my strength okay oh what do we what do we have next here well just taking a look is it what's important

037i think kate you know that if you have some of the discussion now it makes it easier to come up with the five you know in mine i kind of like open-ended questions because if they're open-ended you get a more of a opportunity to see what they're really thinking if they're too um limited you know then you may not get a chance to fully understand them so i always i like questions are more open-ended myself um i like the last one too about teacher shortages well then i clicked off of it because obviously it's one that's been talked about with yeah and especially staff surveys and that are what are we going to do to keep our staff and retain hire and retain so i think that that's one i would like to see answered

038personally on the application because i want to know what their ideas are and how relevant they think teacher retention is because that's a problem so well you just noticed that so many of them i was just going through in my mind just kind of like which one of these are about morale that's really about morale as well i mean they're all addressing in some way it's about morale but it's also about the teacher shortage so it's a little different i mean morale is for the people that are already here but not if they leave and that's that's that's what i was thinking about um i i tend to feel the future at some point because as you said well i guess that was at that the village meeting we were having you know eighty percent

039of the people don't have children right so that's why i started thinking of number 17 this idea that you know what can we do or what we how can we show in some ways the the community that we're providing something that benefits them and uh i thought it would just they'd have to be very creative and start thinking of ways but again i to me i look at it and there's a couple that to me are kind of similar how are you involved in your community um that was number six um there was another one that i thought so it just depends i do like them like like dr anderson saying to be someone open-ended so they really have to be creative and we'll see how creative they are actually i mean like i'm not

040telling you to pick this one but like number 11 what's education's greatest challenge yes i mean there isn't a right or wrong answer that gives you a it gives you an opening into what do they think you know is you know is it teacher retention is is that the biggest challenge you know is it being able to pass a referendum is that it gives you an opportunity from at least from their perspective and where they've been what are they thinking and the thing i like about say number 11 is that i'm hoping that this individual whoever she or he is will start thinking in terms of well maybe i better do some research on mcfarland and what's going on there sure and that's what i guess i'm really hoping they'll do that they'll really start

041looking at our community last time we did this the ones the ones that kind of floated up to the top they all did that yeah they were they they they had studied some mcfarland school district history yeah they they were at least able to talk about it is there any others that stand out to anybody i mean i know they're all great but we can use some of them for interview questions right yeah so when would you like these as soon as possible really well i would like to be able to put a draft one together by the 15th so okay if you could tell me by the end of this week or next monday okay that would be great yeah in fact if you what you can do is you can share them then

042i can share them out and say yes all right here's how close we are now we just need a little bit more and then my guess is when you hear what others say you know i guess that would be a good one i could take that and we can come to some type of you know a consensus yes so we already have a couple that kate's mentioned that seemed to get some good head nods the number two yep number five even though i spelt it wrong in number 18 just a couple you know a couple more so if you like those three good then we'll find two more and if you let me know i'll just communicate back and forth until we get to the five but the goal is that for me to bring

043a draft application on the 15th so you can see here's what it will look like here's what we're asking people to do when they're applying and then you can determine if there's some change now that you see that a week in advance so i'm not going to wait until the 15th next week on monday i'll probably send it here's what it looks like tell me if there's something else that you want to see i mean there's part of it and this is the posting so i'll go right into the posting part is that you know you're going to want at least three letters of recommendation i look for recent letters because to be real honest a letter that was written five years ago you know doesn't help hold much value for me because we we

044can change quite a bit and if you're really looking you're going to find something more recent circumstances have certainly changed in the last five years so i usually look for things that you know some recent writers letters of recommendation uh you always look at transcripts you want to see you know what kind of student were they and you don't have to be an a student to be you know a good superintendent but you want to see you know what kind of a student were they from the transcripts what kind of courses did they take because there are sorts there are all sorts of different educational programs it wasn't like when i was doing this that you know basically madison and milwaukee were your two major players now there's lots of players and so you i

045think you want to see what type of courses people took to be prepared know and there's i'm just having just drawing a blank but you know transcripts letters of resume completed application the essays these are types of things and if there's some other thing that you would like to have them provide then we'll have them provide that a list of you know a list of contacts but i'll be real honest i very rarely use the people that they put down as a reference because you're going to give me somebody who's going to tell me something good about you i mean if you don't we get a real problem what i want to find out is the people that worked with you that you may not have used as a reference so i think references are

046important but i think you need to go farther than that if you really want to get a true picture of the individual coming in for how the person has worked with the co-workers i just have one thought i i just so i'm curious what you you guys and and christine as well what you feel i think that it gets back in some ways kate to the morale issue i just think it's really important for whoever this person is to understand the impact that act 10 had on education and i don't that's as the one thing that i i don't think people realize what an impact it has and it's given it's there but i think you need to be aware of that and i'm just kind of curious how you feel that's interesting i i

047honestly had not thought about that yeah but that's an interesting take it just changed so much i mean again it's a given there's not much you can do about it but you have to be at least aware of it well it still affects us in a lot of ways oh it definitely does in fact i keep looking for are there you know out of every problem there's always you know something good that can come out of it and so i keep looking for those opportunities but i'm even curious how you feel about that is that important is it not important i don't know well i think the important thing to remember now is that there's a large segment of superintendents that never they all started after act 10 was over yeah they can't they don't

048know what it was beforehand because they didn't deal with it beforehand there's a fair group fair number of educators teachers that are in the profession after act 10. i think the majority here yeah so it's harder now to say maybe what that is because there's been a significant period of time that it's it's not like well those first couple years when the change was how dramatic it was now there's a sizable pop percent of both teachers and ministers who never went through it so for them to say well like well like you know they'd have to be honest and say we weren't in it we don't really know and i don't know that you can count that against them it's just you know it's just the way that it is yeah but i think that

049you know the questions on how you're gonna deal with morale how you're gonna deal with decision making i mean there's lots of decision making styles how do people make decisions and i keep going back i think somehow you want to come up with questions on how the individual is going to relate to you as a board you know because in your own mind there must be certain things that you're going to have of expectations and as christine has stated is that when you're taking a look is that you know if you know how that person answered may determine well yes that's what we're looking for no if that's the way they're going to interact with us that's what we don't want i'm and i'm just i'm confident that we will have uh number of the

050number of applicants that we have will be adequate for us to to be a little choosy it's always kind of been that way here and i i think our district has earned the reputation that we've got but we can't assume i'm going to guess that you're probably going to get about 25 applicants you're going to be able to throw up 10 because for one reason or another they're just not going to be what you're looking for so you're probably going to have 15 solid ones that you're going to have to determine how many of these solid ones do we want to do we think we should invite in for an interview and that's going to be as you really look at each one of them and make a determination and i hope it's a tough

051call and i always remind you only need one yep can i ask a question um one of the things that i think is extremely important and and it's ties to the ties to a lot of different things but when a student is going through our school system and they leave um we need to know if we had them ready or prepared to go on and if she if they if they are you know uh they could tell us where our strength and weaknesses are also but that in heaven um this that's our end result we we do everything we can until the senior year then we're we our hands are off but at least we know we've moved people to be successful and they had a you know they're happy with their life they're happy

052with their exposure they're happy with what their job is and they're successful and that that so they can compete with any district around in any area around and there and that's that's something i don't know how you would ask that but you that's that's the main that's the main thing that we're trying to get to on on our all of our curriculum on all of our programs that student leaves here prepared and they hopefully have a vision to what they like good a good chance of it and and they have a successful life and we track that and we survey yeah you survey two years after you got out of school maybe five or six years again and you follow up on those and and you'd be surprised how those results will come in and

053they will tell you they'll make where you're really at and what what we're accomplishing now we have a lot cooking in this school that that this is really uh it's probably the best i've ever seen how much activity we have in this school happening in our in our building in our curriculum really i mean we've got we got a shop class got half the school in it you know we've got a lot of things happening here all over things are happening but that is what we got to be reading it and that's what the superintendent's got to have an eye on and that's what our board's going to have an eye on and and we got we have to have a question for that and then see what that answer is out of the individual

054because that'll tell you where is where his heart or his head's at you know because that's really basically what we're here for is those kids is success i mean i think that there are definitely ways that you can find out from your students where they what they think with the parts of their education that were the most useful for them and which are the things that they would have liked to have that weren't offered i think trying to construct a question for an applicant to answer that would be pretty difficult because um well i would like to see how they would attack that how would they go after they basically should have the same goal should be i mean i'll take it i'll take a stab at creating some type of question and send it

055out tomorrow i just don't have one now but no i i just i think the important part is i'll take a look at the questions the goal is to get it down to the five yeah and then like i said five's not imaginary i think and i could i can kind of tell you in ireland i think you'll agree with this that this kind of came came to become an issue i don't remember exactly how many years back it was but at one point in time the board found out how many of our graduates have to take remedial courses in order to qualify for some of the college courses that they're interested in yeah we were kind of floating along finishing you know third in the county and all the forward testing and all of

056the composite gpas and things like that i think we just thought we were we were just chugging these kids out and they were going out and succeeding immediately and all of a sudden we find out that half of them are taking remedial classes when they enroll in the university in order to get in some of the others so that was kind of a wake up and at that point arlen kind of made a push for well why aren't why aren't we following up with these kids you know two years after they're out and then maybe five years after they're out i don't think ever anything really came of it well i'll do my hand at trying to create something christine um i'm sorry i mean it cut off dr anderson again um it also sounds

057like um you know besides thinking about the the ways that we might evaluate them for the first go-round or the first um you know moving people into the next round it sounds like we might want to think about listing other questions and um you know what are the other questions that are going to be asked also i'm assuming that people are taught or we're doing there's some training about what people can't ask um and we haven't talked about this process yet but i'm assuming that in the future when we start thinking about interviewing we also will get that type of information because they're legal for example right when we get to the interview who's going to be on the initial interview teams we'll look at all the questions that will be asked and i'll be

058there to make sure that so that we know that here are the questions that we would like asked and here are the questions you can't ask and i'll be you know basically um a silent participant to make sure everybody's doing it yeah the way it should be done so for posting i'll come up we'll come up we'll reach the five i'll send you a lot of draft the the platform that is the most common is we can we use it for all of ours that's the most common for administrators to we the career leadership center is a part of the state superintendent association that directs people to that so i'll bring you in the cost for that but what that does is it basically lets individuals throughout the state know that there's an opening and

059keeps it so then directs them to weekend to fill out the application so by next week or the end of this week i'll send you a draft application to look at and you know basically is your job is to tell me things you'd like to see changed until we get to the 15th and you say yep i think it looks good we're ready to go and then we'll post and we can decide how long the posting should be okay anything else anyone anyone at all okay next on the agenda is discussion on calendar options i think this is an interesting one is that we did put out the survey today and before i walked into the meeting we already had 120 some responses at this point 92 of the responses want a calendar that is

060either the traditional calendar or the traditional calendar with a couple additional vacation days built in so by far the largest group would like that type of calendar like i said as i came in tonight we i think we had applicants or 124 people respondents from our staff so i was in fact when we first put it out i was surprised how fast people were answering because when i asked angie at one point and she said we had 80. i said did you say we have 80. i said yep oh my goodness people are responding this one in a hurry we didn't have 80 responses for what they learned in the superintendent but i think in i'm meeting with angie was on tomorrow and we'll go over it and i will make a you know i'll

061give you all the information um you know by when i do mcfarland minutes and i'll print out all of the comments so you can see but i think right now it's it seems fairly clear that the calendar will probably look if we based on those type of responses it'll be similar to things we've had in the past but i'll send you all of that towards the end of the week but we already had a very good response rate yeah it seems to me that we're that my fear of survey fatigue at least hasn't grabbed hold quite yet we're getting great responses to the last couple that have gone out i think it depends on the topic you may very well be right there mrs green the only thing i'm concerned about is you do have

062a pretty big split there's a really two groups and uh you know i'm concerned in some ways it's kind of the tyranny or tyranny of the majority in a sense where you have some people who i feel in some ways they're at a point in their career they're going like i don't know if i can continue going the way it is right now and i just you know i'm hoping colleagues will be cognizant of the fact that you know you got members out there that at this point are really kind of crying out and uh you know i'm i'm thinking to myself my father-in-law told me that you know i should get a job you know bagging groceries in the summer because i was only a teacher and i remember at the end of the

063year talking to my wife and saying you know i'm completely just wiped out when that school year is over and i need that that summer to recover as i got older i started realizing in some ways if we could have done it in a more humane way with taking breaks here and there you'd lengthen it out but i don't know if that would not be a better idea and i i guess i wish we could at least look at some options i know when i was talking with you know darren riggins between the two of us we had 60 years of experience about and we both got really excited with this i know that at this point it is far from being the most you know the most popular but i'm just wondering if some

064ways maybe in the summer or something we could actually have a group of teachers who would study and i mentioned this because when mr hickey was principal um he came to us with the idea that we might look at the the four-period day the block and i remember at the time being very much saying oh i don't want to do this this sounds ridiculous you know i mean if i'm having a hard enough time with 47 minutes or whatever it was our schedule was what we'll be like in an hour and a half and uh it's really going to be tough but jim organized a group of us and he got people from the high school from different uh of the disciplines and we drove up the blaine high school and it was really an

065eye-opener for me to actually talk person who was against it to listen to this guy tell me you you're going to love this you've got to try this and you know i've seen how the state is just it's kind of gone that way um interestingly her cabin in minnesota wadena minnesota was one of the first to go the block and i remember you know what what what is this thing all about and so there is a part of me i wish we could we're near the university i'd love to have again the the school of ed have some experts come in tell us what are they think theoretically the best educational practices i hope you don't mind but you know dr anderson said he was studying about some of these ideas of of a longer

066school year in the 1980s and i've talked with enough former colleagues and enough administrators in this building say you know there's something out here i just would like to give some of these people who might be in that 30 percent who are outnumbered by the 70 or 80 percent at least some hope that you know maybe we're looking towards some some new ideas we kind of went through that with standards-based grading yeah you know it was kind of the same thing yeah so i just thought you know maybe it's something we can consider doing i would not do it during the school year it's it's a crazy time but maybe in the summer and i think it would it would give some of those people who are kind of down right now some hope that

067you know we're least looking at that so i have no issue with it yeah i mean it's something we can consider yeah i mean you know it when it's a when it's just an overwhelming response when you get you know 80 plus percent or 90 plus percent it's it it is it's just a touch on the difficult side to back up and continue to work through some options that have been determined not to be popular amongst the majority of the staff totally agree that having been said i don't think there's anything wrong with doing what you can't do to i don't know if appease is the right word but those folks that are questioning or undecided or just getting burned out i think there's give them some hope i do think there are ways to

068even take the traditional calendar and make some modifications that might might address some of the issues a little bit i mean you know there i mean there are some things you can do and i'll start creating a you know a draft calendar to send out to the board to take a look at based on this and berserk to take a look at early you know so we can start looking there are some things but i do think it at least at this point it seems pretty clear on what at least the majority of staff would like to see and we're talking about they said this was 92 so it's not like it's like kind of 50 50. it's like there's a it's amazing and i will say you know to play devil's advocate to kind

069of what you're saying i think there's also a lot of teachers that think they want this and then like i've talked to teachers in other districts who have it who don't like it so they think it's what they want and then they realize that that time that's built in for them to do professional development and things like that during their day it doesn't happen because they're so overwhelmed with the other daily tasks so there is that as well is that you know sometimes people think they want something and then they talk to other groups who are doing it and it's not what they thought it was going to be too and you know dr anderson has talked about schools that have gone to the early release slash teacher collaboration for a period of time and

070going back to the way it was previous to that so it's uh these are all tough tough decisions but but 92 is a mandate in my book well doesn't it though depend on 92 out of how many um if we don't have an overall you know good response rate it's 92 out of you know 50 people then we really need to look at it we need to make sure that it is there was 124 124 respondents that had that when we in to the meeting right how many is that out of dr anderson about half so it's about 50 percent of our staff so far and that's in a few hours yeah that's only within less than a day yeah yeah typically you get about 80 of your first responses with electronic surveys in the

071first 24 hours and then over that beyond that it just significantly decreases that's kind of a standard surprise like i said i'll send all of it out to you this week but i thought that was a lot of respondents in a short period of time and it seemed to be yeah well but i will also say that this is a very important topic and if you choose not to respond to this survey then don't yeah well we can send you know friendly reminders but at some point if you don't respond then you really lose the right to complain about it i think most i think most of staff is catching that part of my personality is that i'll give you the opportunity but if you don't take it don't complain later yeah all right moving

072on can i just say one more thing yes sorry christine i i think dr anderson alluded to this earlier but i hope we could look at i mean the calendar was intended to be a solution to a problem can we look at what the underlying problems are if we're not going to solve you know maybe some some staffs um you know why why this idea all came up um can we look at the root cause and the issues i guess i'm afraid that we will say well um we're going to go with this calendar and i don't know which one it'll be and then if it doesn't meet the needs of the other group that we could maybe look at what those needs were and try to address it in a different way that's all

073i'm saying and like i said i think there are some ways we can do some tweaks that will do something well let's see what happens okay uh education effectiveness waiver one of the things that i am asking you to consider and this is not an action item if the if you're in agreement or at least have consensus next board meeting i would have it as first you have to have a public hearing on it you may have done this already in the past and then you can have your vote but one of the things in fact i just got a notification from the state superintendent association today about the waiver process because it's been used quite quite a bit the last two years because of coven and it looks like it's going to be used

074by quite a few districts this year one of the things that i would like the board to consider is waving is applying for to the department of public instruction the waiver on the educator effectiveness specifically the slo which is a specific learning objective we do what's called ppgs which are your personal goals and your slos which are your specific learning objectives and the slo seems for whatever reason to put a lot of stress on staff that is basically where you you design a goal for your classroom and then you basically try to measure throughout the year how successful that goal is you know how successful you are at that goal if it's meeting what you had thought it would be looking at the stress level of our staff i think that we could ask for

075a waiver for that particular portion i'm pretty certain that if we applied the department of construction would grant it and i think it would provide some um stress relief for our staff it doesn't stop the evaluation process that was going to be my question it doesn't stop the process the educator effectiveness process is a three year process so you basically have two years of information gathering in the third year of summative we're not going to stop that because it would be too many people to do try to do a summative in one year but you can let this one section go and you can still have your ppgs and you can still carry on so that during your summative year you still have information available to make a decision based on the rubric that the

076state gives us but but i do think would be greatly appreciated by the staff you know it would be hard for me to tell you why that causes so much strife i don't know that i have an answer for that but i can tell you that it does and when we're trying to look at some ways that we could be cognizant of the stress that the staff is under or it feels under and how we might make some minor changes to help alleviate part of that i think this would be a good option that i think would send a very positive signal to the staff and would maybe give them a sense of breathing space any discussion so go ahead i've done a little bit of research because when you sent this out i didn't

077honestly even really know what slos were not being in the education field so i've talked to a few teachers in the district i've talked to some teachers out of the district and i mean i get roughly the same response from all of them that it's it's a lot of work i do know that two other districts in dane county are not at the current time and of course that could change waiving slos this year and that's waunakee and sun prairie so they're not waving slos i it's not the specific slo that i think is important i'm glad we're doing ppgs but my question would be how are we measuring this because there's a couple items here that i think we need to address right we need to make sure that new teachers are you know

078having goals and having the help that they need we don't want to lose that right so setting objectives and working towards goals in the classroom i think is really important and i also think based on what you've said they didn't really complete their slos with the school year 2019 wait what year are we in so the year that we went into the pandemic they didn't finish their slo is correct then last year we had no slos and if we waive them this year then that's a third year and i'm not saying that that's a terrible thing i just want to point that out um you know there's a lot of things that have happened since teachers probably fully completed their last slo and one of those things that i think needs to be addressed and

079it's not necessarily something to talk about tonight is whatever you want to call it the learning loss learning gap that's come with our kids in this pandemic and if waving this takes away their stress and gives them time to invest in the classroom but we still have a measurement for how the teachers are doing in the class classroom and how they're helping these kids because clearly i'm seeing it with my own children i think everyone in the community who has kids in this district is seeing it we need to make sure that we're addressing that if we're waiving something else to give them more time and and limit their stress level and i don't know how much you know about the educator effectiveness and all that i'm sure bruce was under it one before he

080retired but there are still you know even with the waiver where you do the many observations and the larger ones so there's a certain amount of observations that administrators will go in and do on staff throughout the process even without even if the slo is waived so it's not that you won't have both small you know i'll call it short and longer observations where you meet with the teacher to determine what it is that you've seen what it is you're looking for and all that so there's a discussion on you know basically what things will look like in the classroom but it does take care of this one what i'll call it a paper component that they wouldn't have to do and then i guess i learned i'm just gonna share everything i learned because

081i wasn't aware of some of it so your professional development hours are they're all set by the district now the state doesn't require those for licensure correct like that right there used to mean long ago this was they used to have where you could get um what did they call them ceus i'm trying to think yeah i mean like my license for healthcare i have continuing education that i have to do every year for that right there's no requirement so then you guys kind of pick the professional development that you want the teachers to do so okay and then how is all of this i guess monitored within the district so for example if we waived slos with these ppgs who's who's working with the teachers the principal right the building administrators work with those

082i mean um melissa obviously has you know an overarching role that she plays lauren would have a role that she would play with like special ed but primarily it falls into the building level administrators working in fact most of them now are working with theirs they're having like a building wide personal goal you know that they all will work on together so they spend time at their staffings discussing it the part of things i think you were discussing is that for the like licensure there used to be certain things you had to keep up licensure and that was wiped out a number of years ago so all the training we do is based on you know what we think they need to do within our own district but there isn't i mean once you get

083your your license now unless you do something that would make it go away you don't have to have it used to be six cards every five years then it went to different systems you don't have that anymore so this is the only thing though that dpi requires is this dpi requires that you do educator effectiveness is the evaluation system that is the legislature adopted throughout the state there are two different models to that but you know they are essentially the same in which the way that it works is that basically all administrators end up it's it's like taking an exam so that if i walk into watch your classroom or bruce walks and watches your classroom we've already you know went through a process that we would look for the same types of things so

084that if we both were to grade you our grading should be pretty consistent so it doesn't waver that's what educator effect was and said okay these are things and here are things to look for here are things you can choose to look for so it's just a more scripted way of evaluating htf throughout the state it used to be everybody had their own system it's a statewide system okay so at some point we have to do these slos though right yes if not this year we we have to do them next year yes we are we are working on ppgs and and to this point are you satisfied that the ppg is adequate to set forth goals in the same way that maybe an slo would i i mean i'm not saying the ppg replaces

085it but does it kind of meet the same end is it is it a an evaluation piece that's big enough adequate enough so that we don't have to do these slos and evaluate the staff well first what i believe is that irregardless of the slo there will still be the evaluation staff i'm not asking you to say we're not going to evaluate staff okay we will there'll still be many observations there'll still be times when you have the larger summative evaluations what i'm asking you not to basically waive is this is a paperwork component of the process i think we can take we can ask for waiver this this paperwork portion and i don't think that it will i don't think it's going to diminish the evaluation that the administrators will do in their buildings

086with their teachers giving the ones help and direction they need it you know and encouraging those that are doing a good job but it will take care of a paperwork component that i think will eliminate some stress okay we have all those building administrators are sitting in the background who do this on a daily basis who can easily fill in any blanks that i've missed should they choose to bruce have you got any any discussion on this yeah it's hard i i just come from a a feeling a lot of this stuff that you're going to try to put metrics on you can't measure i i i don't know i i mean i i talk with former educators i talk with people who weren't educators and they say you know it is what i remember

087the the content specifically about this teacher i just remember the quality of the person and i don't know how you measure some of those things and i do know that i was very stressed over these things these stressed me out tremendously because my concern was my kids and and and and being creative and caring and and getting them through there i really cared a lot about my my content but i felt like this was just something that was distracting me from what i wanted to do which was really teach and i found it really hard and again dr anderson alluded it changed it changed for me i was very fortunate mr hickey was he i think he kind of took pity on me because i went down and talked to him i just said this

088really stresses me out i don't i don't understand it i don't know how you can do it i have a hard time in some ways i'm very conservative i have a hard time thinking that you can have some bureaucratic apparatus that's going to tell one size fits all for all teachers and we're going to be lockstep we're dealing with human beings we're dealing with kids we're not turning out widgets that you can count them see that they're all the same it just doesn't work that way and part of the the mental health aspect to me is you know if teachers are stressed kids are going to feel it had you have you ever thought of alternatives to you you know because because there has to be an evaluation process yeah i i'll put it another

089way as a coach i sure as heck wanted to know what the rules of the game were and i want to know what i was going to be graded on as it were i wouldn't want to be out there and all of a sudden they say okay now we're changing it in the middle when i'm you know we're doing standardized tests and stuff like that i have no idea what's on that test so how can i be graded as a teacher on what i i didn't even know was going to be out there i mean i knew kind of generally what was going to be on there in a u.s history test but you know to sit there and say we we've we've we can measure that we've lost you know some some learning i

090think it's just really hard to measure some of this stuff right i just think it's teacher performance rated in a significant way based on student achievement i mean is that a big piece of evaluating how their students do on standardized tests no no but you have to figure out how you're going to measure it that's the thing that took and i just sit there and i just found that was distracting me from what i really wanted to do i don't know i kind of taught by my gut i don't know how to say that i don't know what made you the teacher you were well yeah and the relationships that you had with your students but it's different for everyone yes it is and i also understand that you know i wasn't successful with everyone

091either i mean that's just the fact i mean and just you know just to repeat is that i'm not asking that we don't evaluate staff but i'm asking we apply for a waiver so that this portion the slo the writing and all that that we can get a waiver from that it doesn't stop evaluations it doesn't stop working with teachers it just takes one component of this program and says that the teachers don't have to do that portion this year okay christine do you have a feel one way or another um i'm i think at this point i appreciate the discussion um and i'm really just considering everything so i don't i don't this is just a discussion at this point correct right yep no i'm i'm still learning and i do i think i'll

092second what dr anderson said for any administrators if they wanted to say anything about it it would be helpful because i believe these evaluations fall to you so any input or just more description would be helpful um all right i'm happy to share you know my thoughts about it yes i beat melissa to it i think it's really important to understand that the slo is just one small component of the process but the one component of the process that is most stressful for teachers and part of it is i think this is a unique time and i don't want us to to overlook that i think you know kate made some good points about acknowledging we haven't been doing slos and i think the reason is because of the pandemic so our teachers are having

093to do a lot of things they've never had to do and the transition back into the school year has not been a typical transition and so we're we're doing things to try to meet kids where they're at and try to acclimate them to being in school where usually we'd be months ahead of where we are the this transition back has gone slower and teachers are having to spend much more time preparing and working with students in ways they weren't before so the idea was let's take something that requires a lot of time the slo development our teachers take it very seriously and put a ton of time into it let's take that set that aside so that they can focus on the kids that are in front of them and the more day-to-day things that

094are that are really pressing right now for our staff excellent thank you very much erin melissa yeah i would say to clarify the educator effectiveness system there are really three big parts to it one is the evaluations and the observations that principals do in the classrooms those are going to remain and those are a lot of work for the principles they need to coordinate that collect evidence you know if there's a lot of paperwork for principles in that and that part is staying the second part the professional practice goal also staying is where the teachers select an area of their practice they want to improve on they learn they try things out they collaborate that part is staying as a part of this the part that we're asking for a waiver for just one year

095now it's one more year but one year would be this student learning objective where it is where we're measuring student outcomes and as chris um kate mentioned we really need to be mindful of what our student outcomes look like at this point and we are doing some more refined data analysis at the administrative level and with teachers who are teacher leaders but what we're asking for the waiver of is the paperwork that each individual teacher would need to do on those individualized goals we're not saying that we're not going to measure student outcomes and measure student progress and attend to it and meet students where they're at we're just saying we'd like to do that in more of a collective way at a school level at a grade level team level lots of levels but

096at that amount as opposed to having each individual teacher complete the paperwork at this time which is a recognition of like mr tarnitzer said the amount of things teachers are being asked to do at this time and to learn to do differently we're trying to recognize that and pull one of the pieces back off of their plate and handle it in a way that is outside of the normal system for us melissa then are you confident that if granted uh a waiver for this year we will be in position next year to not have to go back and ask for another waiver that that will be in position that we're back close enough to normalcy that we can do these slos again the idea of being back close enough to normalcy is very appealing and

097i certainly hope that we are i've learned i guess over the last 18 months not to take anything for granted but when the administrative team kind of thought of this idea and discussed it our intention was not for this to be an every year sort of waiver it was really an extraordinary circumstances waiver and that yes we would be back to slos next year but i don't want to go on the record as promising that just in case another set of extraordinary circumstances comes up i'm not asking for any promises okay okay anything else ireland you got anything and what would happen is that you know if there was consensus to go forward there'd be a public hearing my guess is it'll be like five minutes because that's how they go you know people don't

098usually come to talk about those things and then you can you make a motion and i would write a recommendation all right anybody got anything else if they'd like to i didn't i'm sorry i'm i'm reacting to dr anderson's comment about a public hearing um which is great i understand why that would happen but can we can somebody try to describe what what how this decision does affect this idea of and i'm going to quote it learning loss because my fear is that this term the learning loss has been thrown around kate you know i know i've heard it and i've read about it but the our learning is not lost it's delayed it doesn't mean that kids aren't going to learn what they might have learned last year had the year been normal so

099how does the idea of learning delay play a role in looking at student learning outcomes collectively instead of individually does that make sense that was a really wordy question i don't understand what you said exactly so do repeat that again i think i can i i think what you're asking is instead of looking at it on an individual level how are we going to look at it as like in a hole if they're not doing this individually is that what you mean right and so what i what i heard melissa say and that's i'm trying to interpret this what i heard melissa say was what or what what what we're asking teachers to not do this year is look very individually at their individual classroom and say what can i do either for my class

100or my subject area classes rather we're looking at this learning delay collectively for maybe whole grade level like what did the whole grade level kind of miss through the pandemic that they would have gotten had we had a normal year so what i'm hearing melissa say and this is what i think i'm checking out is really what we're asking and what what we're saying to these sites the schools is what they're doing is looking at this learning delay for say whole whole grade level versus at a classroom level is that accurate well i would i would say no i would say what we're really asking is that there's a certain amount of paperwork that is associated with slos and what we're looking at is the not to have to do the paperwork the actual teaching

101the actual looking at what we need to do within the classroom we're going to do that irregardless because that's just we need to do to make progress but the bureaucratic paperwork that's associated we're saying they don't need to worry about that that's really what we're looking at the bureaucratic paperwork associated with an slo we're asking to be waived and melissa's nodding so i must have got it right got it thank you anything else okay moving on discussion and action on cobit 19 protocols this is on our regular monthly agenda what we were notified today is that the mass mandate is going to be continued until november 27th after that they do not expect to extend it after that they expect that when it ends on november 27th they're not going to do any more extensions

102the reason it's being extended is one of the the case count but i but i think because there there's strong anticipation that a vaccine is going to be available for students five to eleven for those parents who would like to have their children vaccinated and that they're going to give the time so individuals who want to have their students their children vaccinated can get the two doses of vaccine and then after that each individual district depending on where they're at can make the decision of you know making it optional right should be mass management ask optional what do they look like so right now i don't see that there's any change i think when we meet in december we can take a look at you know did a significant portion of our population are they

103vaccinated and if so do we want to make different protocols from that point on i mean i have a whole bunch of hopes inside yeah but we all do but you know i want to wait to find out what the you know what are the actual numbers turn out to be okay anybody christine you got anything bruce no i'm good carla no okay i think we just need to maybe start talking about things once the vaccine's available a little sooner i don't know that you're going to get a great idea by the time december rolls around kind of of what vaccination rates are i think just something to put in everybody's head is just starting to think about well is it is it okay to go to like a mass optional um school day so

104just write a whole discussion for later but it's also something to start thinking about now once the vaccine is available i know that we have been lauren has already been talking with forward pharmacy to hold when they once it's officially you know approved so that shots can go in the individual's arms working they get whatever vaccine doses they're going to get for us to set up something within our school building on a weekend to allow that to happen yeah i'm sure as you know i'm i'm anxious to see what sort of vaccination rates we have with a 5 to 11 crowd uh it'll it'll be interesting for sure but i i guess you know there's no reason to make any changes to the current protocol today especially the mass mandate stays in place so anybody

105disagree all right we'll move on discussion and possible action regarding calendar modification for november 24 uh which is fyi the day before the wednesday for thanksgiving thanksgiving as we are with the like the waiver for the slo we are trying to take a look at what are some steps that we could take to let the staff members and i say staff not teachers staff because we're all in this together what is it that we can do to let them know that we are listening we are hearing we understand that there's you know a certain amount of stress level and that the most valuable thing we can give them is time what are the options we have that can show that we're doing that so we had a discussion is that one of the things that

106people have said in least my construction for the 2223 is that you know could they have the wednesday before thanksgiving off most districts have that off this district doesn't but it's pretty common it's coming up so it's not something that's a long ways away you know it's basically three weeks three and a half weeks away so it's something you can set your sights to it wouldn't influence our school year depending on how many inclement weather's day we have built in several days so now if we get bombarded you know i mean we have a couple options one for incline whether we can do virtual learning days which means the dpi says you can kind of his regular school days that'll be a different discussion or you know we built in enough time so that we

107could take that day off and still meet the number of minutes we had and still have some inclement weather days left but if we did have a lot of inclement weather days we would have to add something but at least for the near term looking at the possibility that you know nobody knows what the winter is going to hold i think this is something that we could do that would let staff members know that you know we are finding a way to give you some additional time and it's something they can see in the foreseeable future i just see just something that that's a positive i don't really see too many downsides to it but you know will it be universally accepted the answer is no i've already had one parent who has asked you

108not to do this i do think the number of pros will outweigh the number of cons just from anecdotal uh information is that the wednesday before thanksgiving isn't a very high attendance day here anyway because if you find other there are reasons that people have taken their kids out of school yeah well you know there's there have been a few uh communications from some parents that they would prefer that you know they're okay with having the wednesday off before thanksgiving let's just not start it next month or this month i guess but it hasn't been a lot it hasn't been a whole bunch you know and and i guess as much as we'd like to please everyone it's we just just can't do it and this makes this makes sense to me so that's what

109i'm recommending and hoping is that you will you know make a motion to modify the calendar to let this year in the calendar the wednesday the 24th be a um just to do it but i do think that going forward it'd be something i really would like to do i'm not sure i can right now i'm supported christine you have any feelings one way or another um yeah i you know i see i see all sides and and certainly appreciate the comments that were just said um being a working mom pretty much my whole life here um my only thought and and i'm this comes from the listening sessions is that i am hearing you know the staff burn out which is really the feelings that they're having now they're they're saying teachers are telling

110me that these are the feelings that we have you know in december and we're only you know like a few weeks ago in october so i my support of it is more about the health of the staff and how that affects uh you know our students it's all connected if our staff are burnt out they're not at their best selves teaching and and students aren't then also feeling you know great as well so the reason why we're doing it which is not as symbolic i mean it is symbolic but it's really a it's a really a reason to give staff time to you know recover earlier than they normally need it due to circumstances so my feeling is in support of it also recognizing that it is you know for families perhaps a short timeline

111so i can see both sides okay um anybody care to make a motion wait can i ask one more question yes you can so if is there another day i mean i think that in the future this is a great idea so meaning setting you know the next calendar year if we would they be opposed to maybe just moving it back to attach to another long break so that parents had more time well the next break is going to be crisp winter break that's already pretty i mean that's already a pretty decent place so i don't know that you'd want to add on to that and i think if you go my personal belief is if you go beyond that [Music] i think they need the day now they don't need you know it's not

112that they may not need it they probably need the day in february or march too i mean i'm not saying it's a long break or that's a long length of time with no breaks in school how did how did the administrators did they support this yes they did okay and i think they have a pulse okay i will make the motion to [Music] make the date of november 24th 2021 um [Music] make the motion of having it be i don't even know what to call it can somebody help me here a non-school non-staff day or a paid day off for all staff okay i mean what i what i have written as a potential motion is i move to change the current 2122 school calendar to make wednesday november 24th a non-school non-staff day that

113good christine that sounds perfect i'm sorry i only have one screen here and not it's hard for me to see different things no that's fine do i have a second i will second it bruce is the second any further discussion i'm very concerned i think it's a great idea and i understand the staff i just don't know what the people do if they don't have daycare to go to and they gotta go to work it puts that family in a lot of stress and i think it's it's an honest thing to say that that isn't uh like it used to be you could find someone maybe they can i don't know how we could handle that if we could assist in that any find out where you know what was out there but some people

114may have a hard time they have a job to go to and they're designated to be there and it's holiday time brings in a lot of people have a lot of different jobs at holiday time too so you know i don't i don't know what to say but that that i think is a uh and you that'll be mostly with the kids that are smaller too you know what i mean so it's it's it is quite a ordeal if we could figure out a way to help that well my only thought is you know we it is three and a half weeks away yet and you know a snow day i mean that we don't consider things like that we'll we'll do it um so i think there is some planning time to be able

115to do it and as we were talking earlier it's needed now it'd be great to add it on at a different time but we're hearing that teachers are burned out now so i i i feel like we although it would be great to have had it on the calendar and perhaps we'll have it on next year's depending on what calendar is chosen what i'm hearing is a real need for it to happen okay anybody else okay i've got a motion and a second uh to move the to change the current 2122 school calendar to make wednesday november 24th and not school non-staff day all those in favor please signify by saying i i i opposed signify by saying no no no the eyes have it three to two so the motion carries uh action on

116mcfarland high school spring early college credit and start college now program requests now this is an easy one because really though you have to make a motion you really don't have any choice because this is one of the things that's required by state law is to give students the opportunity to go and get additional credits at institutions of higher education unless we're providing the same class here so in these classes you can already see in the list the ones that were approved are not approved if it's not approved means we already offer a similar class here because i got a question because i've been tracking this i think this is a wonderful thing i got no complaints about that i only know that through matc and to get those credits the teacher had to have

117like 2 000 hours of whatever to in the subject to be qualified to be at a at that level of a teacher for college in the and for the high school kids the gift there and i think what you're talking about is a little different than this okay we have there are certain courses yes that you can teach at the high school level in which you get a transcripted credit but to get transcripted credit then there has to be a certain amount of expertise i don't remember how many hours here this is they're actually going to the institution to take the class they are going there then that's i didn't know if we're doing it in-house no these are actually they're going yeah at least that's my belief because i'm either the best in college

118or the uw yeah i'm not aware that any of these will be taught in-house because if it is you'd have to be an instructor yeah for the university yeah and then most of these are where you lead i didn't know how we were doing that i was just trying to because i've been after that this is my dream this is the best thing that could ever happen to anybody i think this is wonderful but my my concern was just that yeah thank you so this was an easy one for you absolutely i'll move to approve the three early college credit and 15 start new college now applicants for the spring of 2022 high second any further discussion hearing none all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries 5-0 moving on

119action on second reading and adoption of policies these are ones we didn't have time at our last meeting in between the regular meeting and the annual meeting so these were all of the changes that were recommended by neola to make with our current policies that are naval policies so the vast majority are what i'll call smaller changes there are several that were legally changed by their attorneys to meet situations within the state but my recommendation would be to you know accept the recommendations of the neola policies here's something you wanted to pull you you obviously have the right to pull any pulse you'd like discussion christine you have anything um no except that are we i'm sorry i'm confused about the first reading and the second reading and i want to make sure that we

120have time to do the second reading so if we make a motion that we um the first reading is to you know is to give everybody the opportunity to take a look and determine if there's any changes the second reading is where if you approve it then the changes are made and it goes into the policy handbook but you can pull any policy to have additional readings but if it were approved then these changes will be made and updated and put into the policies that are on our website correct did that and does that address your concern christine um slightly well if someone wants to go ahead and make a motion i'm anyone else have any discussion before we make motion otherwise i would move to approve the policy changes as presented a second okay

121any other discussion hearing none all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed motion passes five zero action on uh second reading and adoption of policies zero one four one point one student representation at board meetings all right this is one that we have worked on for the last couple and we made some modifications at the end of our last meeting and basically the modification that we made since the last meeting was the last sentence that reads the school board shall annually approve the selection process established by the high school administration and the student council so part of this you had that you know there was going to be a process selected in which the student representative to the board would come and now what you've added is that in this case jeff

122finstad would come to you on an annual basis and would say here is how we are selecting the representatives that will come to the board of student representatives and then the board would say yes we like that that's approved and then he would follow through or you would say no we don't like that and you'd want him to come back with an alternative plan in which then he would come back with an alternative plan until the plan that he presented and the plan that you approved were the same and then he would use that and this is an annual basis so that you know it could be the same one every year but it could be a process that changed but in the end you approve the process that the high school principal will use

123in selecting the representatives and the student council has always been you know the student arm so it's basically the principal in the student council come up with a process select student representatives and you will decide whether or not that meets your needs and if you do they'll select it and you'll have student representatives at the meeting all right anybody else need further clarification i think this is a great idea this is i think we're really following christine's suggestion and i think it's a great idea yeah i really like this yep so i'll make the motion i move to approve policy 0141.1 student representation at board meetings as presented and modified thank you bruce i'll second any other discussion hearing none all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries five zero

124uh next is discussion and possible action on first reading of policy one two three zero responsibilities of the district administrator okay so what i have done is christine it went through several of the various job descriptions had written some language to consider i have taken what she has put in what i put in and tried to put that into a single document which is policy one two three zero responsibilities the district administrator starts out with the job goal the qualifications the purpose of the job and then breaks the physician responsibilities into policy and contract administration educational program activities fiscal management operation community relations school board relations professional growth and then my favorite is other indie duties is assigned so the catch-all that's a beauty so what it is is what my goal is is that

125at least by the if not this meeting um i tried to capture the changes so if it does and you approve it that would be great if you want some additional changes fine but if we could have it approved by the 15th so that that way when we post the job there's a up-to-date job description the candidates can look at any discussion well i personally would like a little bit more time with it not a ton of time so i i was wondering if maybe we could table approving this until we i don't know if anyone else feels this way but has just one more chance to go through this i've got no problem with that anybody else i think christine you and and dr anderson have done a great job of this myself yep

126i really like what you've written and as long as we can get something you know uh before the 15th i don't i don't see the downside i think he needs this though to so what we'll do is we'll put it on for the the second reading and approval at the 15th so if there's anything additional that you would like changed if you can get it to me then i will make those modifications so then the 15th you can vote to approve whatever it is at the time and then what we'll do is i can then use that to using the in posting are you are you sure that's adequate yep you don't need it it's only once you approve it it's simply you know basically it cut and paste and to the form so that

127won't take me if we have it approved it doesn't take anything now let's let's put it on the next agenda then as a second reading and approval isn't that what we do yep okay um we've got some angie i'm sorry first reading adoption do we need to make a motion to the table until the next meeting or do we just not act on it i don't think you need action on the first reading because simply is when you're being presented so you have the uh the time to take a look at it you are going to need action for approval okay all right um well that brings us down to board events and district events i thought the approach was true on german otherwise i think that's it isn't it i would look for a

128motion to adjourn in that case arlen all in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed pass is 5-0 we are adjourned and thank you one and all thank you christine for joining in and we'll see you when you get back you