Special Board of Education Meeting - District 5 Candidates - March 3, 2021

001this special meeting of the wichita board of education is called to order i'd like to welcome everyone the wichita public schools will be the district of choice in our region where all students and staff are empowered to dream believe and achieve this is a business meeting of the board of education we request that you observe the board's ex expectations of civility i ask you to restrain from applauding except during good news items also please refrain from talking with others in the lecture hall and and please mute electronic devices if and then i'm like to just welcome you again and thank you for coming and if you would now join me in a moment of silence thank you uh would you please rise for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance of america and to the

002republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you dr mike first item the statement about the covet 19 meeting format my name is mike willamey clerk of the board this special boe meeting at the of the wichita public schools is taking place at the north high lecture hall 1437 rochester in wichita due to governor laura kelly's state of disaster emergency declarations concerning the covet 19 pandemic and pursuant to authority granted under kansas administrative regulation 16-20-01 as well as the board of education's concern for the health and safety of the public except as described in the boe agenda under public communications the public will not attend this meeting this meeting is available to be viewed live by the public in the following ways wps tv on cox

003cable channel 20 the district's website at www.usd259.org forward slash wps tv online and live stream apps for phone roku and apple tv by searching wps hyphen tv after today's meeting a recording of the meeting will be available on cox cable channel 20 and the wps youtube channel the agenda for this meeting was published on march 1st 2021 at www.usd259.org forward slash boe under boe meetings agendas in minutes the news media also received the main agenda and a portfolio containing the appendices at this meeting all board members district staff and presenters will identify themselves by name and position before they speak to assist the public in following the meeting at special boe meetings public comment is allowed only during public communications on topics that pertain to agenda items if any person is registered the speaker will

004be called into the lecture hall to address the board at the podium after addressing the board the speaker will be allowed to leave the will be required to leave the north high lecture hall and the school board meetings have been reopened for public communications thus the practice of accepting email public comment has been discontinued email emails may still be sent to the board members at their email addresses which are available at www.usd259.org forward slash boe under boe contact information and profiles thank you thank you dr mike we're slowly moving back to normal and we appreciate that so it's good to have the public comment section back and i'm sure soon we'll you'll see uh these meetings conducted in a more normal way here in the very near future next item please under reports service employees

005international next item reports united teachers of wichita welcome kim hello um kimberly howard president of united teachers of wichita um since this is a special meeting i'm going to keep it really brief tonight and just wanted to bring a couple positives to share with you tonight so first i want to thank and recognize kimber cassettes and our school nurses for their time and planning to get our staff vaccinated i myself went through that process and it was very quick very efficient and i know that took a lot of planning and from her and her team so i just want to recognize their hard work tonight um the other thing is i just wanted to welcome our applicants for the district five position being a boe member especially during a pandemic is not for the faint

006of heart as you all know so we hope that the the new boe member you know will ask questions in meetings for clarification on issues and seek input from staff when making decisions so thank you thank you kim next item please under public communications no one registered to speak tonight next item please consent i will start with uh julie julie do you have any consent items to pull no consent items to paul this is julie hedrick district two cheryl cheryl logan at large i have nothing to pull tonight ron robertson's district six i have nothing stan reeser district four no consent items to pool bin ben blankly district one no consent items to pull and earn a statement district three no consent items to pull thank you i'll entertain a motion to accept a consent

007agenda julie hedrick district two so moved to accept the consent agenda cheryl logan second it's been moved and seconded and mike did you get the persons that yes okay uh we are going we're trying to keep it simple tonight so we're going to vote by hand um or would you prefer us to just go around the table and say our say our name and district and then say or nay probably to say your name and your vote please okay we will start with ernestine then ernest in crable district three yes ben blankly district one yes stan research district four yes marsalis district six yes cheryl logan at large yes julie hedrick district two yes consent agenda passes 6-0 dr mike next item please under operations board of education interviews boe district 5 vacancy at the

008regular board of education meeting on february 8 2021 board member mike roady resigned his position on the board of education at that meeting the board approved the publication of a legal notice in the wichita eagle regarding the vacancy the board also approved an application and interview process the legal notice was published on february 11 and it provided interested persons until noon on february 24th to submit completed applications and letters of reference an application form boe district 5 map and other information were available on the boe section of the district website from february 9th until noon on february 24th tonight the board will interview all qualified applicants the interview process applicants will be interviewed in the order applications were received the board will interview one applicant at a time the other applicants will wait in the

009north high library applicant interview topics will include diversity superintendent relations community relations board relations the district's mission statement and strategic plan and the district's budget each board member will ask one question from the interview topics above the applicant will have up to two minutes to respond to each question a timer on the lecture hall's projection screens will show the time remaining there will be no follow-up questions at the end of each interview the applicant will have the opportunity to ask one question to the board president and to make a closing statement that lasts no longer than 60 seconds applicants who have completed their interviews may remain in the room if they so desire president reeser at this time we'll ask the all the applicants to proceed to the library except for mia turner and mia

010will go first and i have to echo what i think everyone has said tonight and what kim just said in her statement we really appreciate you taking the time to do this process thank you sean and while me is moving down i'll just tell the board members that uh what we'll do is we'll mix this up a little bit um we'll i'll just rotate who goes first on the first questions and then the next applicant will go the opposite direction that's okay and uh dr mike um where is the timer very easy for uh mia to see i forget exactly where it's going to be at yes it is it's right up there okay do you see it mia i do okay excellent i won't need it [Laughter] well we appreciate you coming tonight and

011we look forward to this interview and we'll go straight to it with the questions and i'm going to start with julie hedrick on her question about superintendent relations go ahead julie good evening mia hello thank you for coming we're glad to have you here my question is one of the most important roles of the board of education is to evaluate our district's superintendent what do you look for and a great superintendent i think that a great superintendent needs to be aware of their role the role needs to be clarified the expectations for the district and for the superintendent needs to be clarified as well there has to be open honest and regular communication and ideas need to be shared and i think that it takes someone with an innovative mind a progressive way of thinking

012to move the district or move the children our children ahead of the game make them ready for life to give them the appropriate education and the skills that they need to be productive in our society thank you and cheryl go ahead i'm asking the question on mission statement and strategic plan how do you envision your role as in assuring that the district's strategic plan goals are used to extend extensively guide and us to accomplish the district's mission i think my role would be to make sure that we have a policy in place that gives the students our children every opportunity to learn everything that they need to know in order to to do well in life not just learn a skill a job training skill but also emotional well-being how to handle their emotions how

013to deal with their money properly how to interact just in the world that they're going to be thrust into when they become adults and i think it's important that for me if i were to get this position it would be important for me to understand what tools i can use and what partnerships i can create in order to help our students thank you very much ron ron rosano's district six hello mia how you doing i'm good good good uh my question will be over community relations i am big on community relationships i'm sorry okay i'm getting ready yeah that's good that's good you're ready uh would you please provide an example of how you have impacted community relations through your past or present employer and how that experience would be relevant to the school district

014and your potential role as boe member well with the with my job i i am an administrative assistant for a great um employer uh she's very um loving and caring and she's always thinking of others and so what we always try to do with this covid we try to find ways that we can help those who may not have the resources that they need that they need as far as ppe and mass and sanitizing lotions things like that even offering creating food baskets for um the community that we live in and the communities that we serve and so i think um being able to get to the people that need the help the most not wait for anyone to ask to see a need and to serve it proactively i think that that's important to

015stay aware of what is needed who's in need and how to get those resources to them in a timely fashion all right thank you stan research district 4. mia the next question is about budget setting budget priorities is one of our primary responsibilities how would you work with all stakeholders to determine budget priorities well i would think that you would have to first know what stakeholders expectations are and then you'd have to understand what we what resources that we have to work with then we'd have to prioritize what's at stake and and try to fulfill what's needed and then what we'd also like to have our our wants it's a it's going to be a tough balance to to get everything everyone wants but i think understanding what's wanted understanding what we have and then

016prioritizing prioritizing the needs would be the proper course thank you very much good evening mia my name is ben blankley district one um my question is about diversity what local initiatives or activities have you been involved in for diversity equity and inclusion explain your personal involvement um well i um again i work for the i'm not sure if i can say who i work for i work for the police department and our our goal is to make our police department look like our community so we had to find out the numbers how many african-americans we have how many females we have in the city how many other minorities and then we try to target our recruiting towards the groups that are often overlooked that are not usually targeted explain to them why it would be

017great to be a police officer to be on the police force to help our community i think you have to be mindful and purposeful intentional in what it is that you're trying to do and recognize that we're not just one group we're diverse we all have different ideals we all have different perspectives and then if we can tap into that that'll open up different ways of bringing in creativity bringing in different tools that we need different ways of handling situations and so and i also do that in our church um i think it's important that you can't just have a black church or a white church or i think it's all about bringing in those who are in need those who are needed and we have to do that with our community as well bring

018in those who are overlooked get their ideas get their perspectives use their their uh their ideas and and integrate it all so we can be a better community go ahead ernstein i'm ernestine kravel from district three and my questions is about relationship with others on this board or the board as a whole individuals um how would you go about establishing and maintaining good relationships with the board and your fellow members and if you could give an example of when you've worked with a group such as a board um well i was recently asked to sit on an interview panel for the bomb squad i have no idea what it is exactly that they do so what i had to do was learn from the people who are sitting on the panel what their expectations are

019explain to them what i expect and what and ask questions what is it that i needed to do what is what am i looking for what skills do i need to properly make sound decisions and and just be open to construction constructive criticism ideas uh advice suggestions and then be honest and open if i'm not understanding something to ask questions and get clarification i think communication and and all that we do is the most important key communication and honesty if i don't understand something i have no problem saying can i asking for help thank you thank you miss turner uh you have a minute to either make a closing statement or you can ask us a question or a comment or combination of those okay well i just um i just want to say i

020have absolutely no idea exactly how this worked but i had children to attend i had put six children through wps and so i know how great it can be i know where there could be some improvements and so i look forward to hearing one way or the other even if i don't get the position i will still work with wps in some way and the only question that i have is if i do is there some type of training available so that i can understand what it is that's needed or required of me yes and i think i'll ask the superintendent if she would be willing to stand fairly close to the podium to help answer these questions but there definitely is some training that we provide and there's also we are part of the

021kansas association of school boards and they also have a lot of good training programs and if dr thompson wants to expand on that answer yes absolutely good afternoon hello one of the things that we do when we first on board superintendents in the wichita public schools is we actually have an onboarding session um where we have all the members of the cabinet that represent all of the divisions within the organization and they come and they share kind of some of what their role is how this department sits and where it fits and what it does for the children in the in the wichita public schools so that's one opportunity for you to learn and kind of what happens within our school district but then there are other opportunities we are members of many different organizations

022that help support the school districts where we get ideas and network with one is the council of great city schools and then there is another group called the national alliance of school board association so there's another group that you all are part of that you go out every year and you can get training from there and then there's one at the state level as well the kansas association of school boards and they have opportunities all year long so you can pick all kinds of different things all these topics they're asking you all about there's a workshop somewhere about those things anywhere you want to go and so those are there's tons of opportunities to learn about your role and really the main thing is just are you willing to serve kids because that's the main

023thing and if you have that at heart all the other things you can be able to learn okay great thank you thank you mrs mia turner we really appreciate your taking the time to apply and we will vote monday great thank you all so much for your time and look forward to hearing from you one way or the other thank you welcome thank you thank you and we will take about a one minute um just i think we we're gonna stay live aren't we dr mike we just need a minute to transition the speakers so hello hello this is christina nooch yes and did i say your last name correctly you did excellent we're going to jump right into the questions if that's okay with you yeah let's go and uh each board member will

024identify themselves and ask you a question and you have a one minute time and it'll be up in the corner of that screen and i thought it was two minutes yeah oh two thank you [Laughter] thank you we don't want to rush it see that you pay attention to detail better than i do so you're great i'm detail oriented ernest ernestine if you want to start okay i'm ernest dean crabill from district three how will you go about establishing and maintaining good relationship with the board the other board members and and your fellow board members individually and as a group and can you tell an example of how that you've worked well within others in a board or other kind of group type leadership sure um okay so experience um i am i used to

025work for 259 i'm a former teacher i was asked to be on a leadership team for one of my elementary schools and so i have experience working with the leadership team i also was asked to be a part of the marzano training team for the district and for my building and so again i have experience with being trusted with leadership and trusted with working with groups of people of course respect is always very very important we're obviously not always going to agree on everything on every topic and i highly i find it very important that everyone gets you know gets their voice gets to ask their questions and is respected in that and we're always i think it's okay to agree to disagree once we have our vote we're all going to have to agree

026on that you know majority rules so yeah and of course with creating that community within each other i don't know what you guys already do if you guys plan like lunch and well probably not luncheons with covid but if you guys talk personally already you know i i hope to just jump right in and be a part of the group darts at most i enjoy darts christina i'm ben blankly district one my topic is diversity yes what local initiatives or activities have you been involved in for diversity equity and inclusion explain your personal involvement okay my personal involvement um mentally i'm very involved i i have not gone to any local events or anything i would say but um i how do i say this i am i highly value diversity i come from i

027didn't grow up in wichita i grew up in omaha nebraska which is also another very large school district and i went through all of my schools thinking it was normal to have a very diverse school i was used to not always being in the majority i highly valued that and i remember writing my senior paper in high school about that was like the number one thing i was thankful for from my school experience and it was actually a pretty big culture shock when i went to school at k-state that it wasn't like that when my husband and i moved here to to wichita um it was vital for me to for my kids even though i didn't even have kids yet to be in the school district because i wanted them to have the same

028experience i wanted them to be in a school district that was diverse and so when we were house hunting i told the realtor that i had to have a house that was in 259 boundaries just because i feel very strongly about that i may not be a person out there holding a poster you know at rallies but i'm involved i pay attention i know what's going on in the news and i try to uphold some good values for my own children and you know be yeah and be a good leader for the community as much as i can by being respectful for everybody so does that answer your question i think so yeah thank you yeah christina i'm stan reeser i represent district four and my question is on the area of budgets as you

029know uh setting our our budget is one of our primary responsibilities how would you work with all stakeholders to determine our budget priorities so budget priorities personally i think that the school district should be excuse me excuse me oh that didn't work when i pressed the button i think that that the school district should be financially responsible with their budget on a personal level i learned at a very young age to be personally responsible for my own to hold a budget my dad taught me at the age of 16 how to do all of those things and taught me to never carry debt and so i can say at my age you know nearly 40 i have never carried debt or paid interest other than my house and my car and so i i see

030those ideals and i would think that that's how even though i don't have professional experience with a large budget like this you know i i understand the importance of balancing a budget and i do that with my family and my household so and if i don't know about because this is not something i have professional experience with so when i don't know something i am i am a true researcher at heart i i'm an educator so i look that stuff up i research if i don't know something i want to become the expert on it so i will try to you know be the best that i can be to help with that to be a part of those decisions and and actually be educated on it thank you very much ron hi christina my

031question is on community relations yes would you please provide an example of how you have impacted community relations through your past or present employer and how that experience would be relevant to the school district as a potential board member sure well i i'm a former 259 teacher i worked for the district for 10 years and i i taught kindergarten at mueller elementary and i taught first grade at kelly elementary it's i of course i completely understand the importance of involving your community and having that impact i mean i i helped with family engagement nights and and making sure that it's okay sorry about that that's okay um [Music] what was i saying oh um when i was okay so when i was previously working for the district you know i always had good relationships with

032the parents of the students in my class and i felt like it was very common that if a parent had something that they wanted to share with me they felt comfortable sharing that with me and i was always good about advocating for parents and students at the building level even at the staff level people would come to me and ask me you know to help advocate for things i i just feel like i have a true heart for that um yeah all right thank you very much yeah okay you're almost done you're doing okay yeah we haven't been yet have we i'm cheryl logan i'm the at-large position and i'm going to be asking you about the mission and the strategic plan sure uh how do you envision your role in assuming that the dis

033and assuring that the district's strategic plan goals are used extensively to guide us to accomplish the district's mission could you repeat the first part yeah how do you envision your role in assuring the district's strategic plan goals are used extensively to guide us to accomplish the district's mission um okay when i was reviewing the the strategic plan i thought it makes complete sense i agreed with everything that was on there i think about why have a strategic plan will the community um when they're looking at the at the district what is the number one thing that they are hoping coming is coming from our district is that obviously that the kids are learning and being successful and i think the number one thing on your strategic plan or one of the goals was to increase

034graduation rate and i mean of course that makes absolute sense so i would always be advocating for things that lead towards that i also was really happy to see that one of the themes on there was appreciating or keeping in mind the whole child i am a huge proponent for mental health and um i i feel i know that there's a lot that the district has already done to include mental health awareness for staff and kids but i feel like there's always more room for that and so i feel like i would always have a special eye and a heart for that to continue to advocate for putting you know helping that in with policies or whatnot if i was on the board thank you hi my name is julie hedrick i'm with district two

035and my question is regarding superintendent relations and one of the most important roles of the board of education is to evaluate our district superintendent so what do you look for in a great superintendent i look for transparency i look for communication with my previous administrators that i've worked with you know i've seen buildings run amazingly when the person who is the head administrator you know trusts their staff and has open communication and so i think that that is the most important i i'm hoping that you guys already have you know the availability to have that open communication with dr thompson and um and that she shares you know updates with you guys on a regular basis i i think that would be really important you know to hear what's going on in the district all

036the time weekly or whatever she does for updates i also believe that there should be a mutual respect and the okay to be able to ask the challenging questions i think sometimes there is a perception [Music] from the community that the district or or dr thompson will come with a plan and the perception is is maybe you know it's already been decided upon before you guys even are presented that and i know that there's actually a couple leaks that happened previously this year with that and so there was a little bit of a lack of trust with that and so i think i would i i personally would just want to make sure that we are being careful and you know going in the order that we're supposed to that you know they they find

037the problem they come up with the plan they present it to us we discuss it openly you know and make a decision um but i i hope it's okay to to have that challenging banter or not really banter but just have those being it's okay to have those discussions and um agree to disagree sometimes respectfully yeah thank you very much now you have a minute i think okay you have a minute to uh either make a statement uh give us more information about yourself if you want or you can ask us a question or you can do a combo okay i'll share i'll share a little bit about myself um so i am a current stay-at-home mom to three boys i have a 10 year old an eight-year-old and a three-year-old they are all involved

038with wichita public schools my oldest is a fifth grader so about to be middle school my middle is second grade and my youngest while he's not in school he receives services from parents as teachers which i absolutely love that program and i cannot sing more than more great things about it and i like i said before i'm a former teacher of the district i left because i wanted to stay home with my youngest baby boy and um he's still not in school so i'm still home but my heart is still always paying attention to education i found that i left the building but i still watch the board meetings you know i find board meetings fun and interesting and you know i'm one of those people and that's my time darn it well you did

039wonderful thank you yeah miss christina neuch we will decide and vote on monday and we appreciate you taking the time to go through this process and and we look forward to uh working with you and in the future thank you thank you all thank you thank you very much thank you good luck thanks your decision thank you thank you hi kelly is everyone set okay our next applicant is kathleena bond welcome thank you and we're going to jump straight into questions right and this time we will start with ron hello kathleen hello my name is ron rosales i'm the representative for sixth district and my question is dealing with community relations would you please provide an example of how you have impacted the community or community relations through your past or present employer and how

040that experience would be relevant to the school district and your potential board membership i'm glad you asked me that thank you i'm a substitute school teacher in the district and there was a time that i substituted at colvin in no in a november being an honorary commander at mcconnell air force base i have a passion for our military so i asked the kids i said we're going to make thanksgiving day cards for a unit that has been deployed overseas and i get to put those letters on an airplane from mcconnell to fly over there so the kids are really excited about that and we did the letters and the cards and they were sent well i subbed for that same class the following january when that unit had come back i scheduled it with the

041principal and i had the military people come in and talk to the kids where the kids could meet those gentlemen and that one lady that they wrote the letters to and there was hands-on with um with the colonels and the pilots of flying the kc-135 and those students were the quietest and the most attentive so i impacted the community of the school at that time and they went home and told their parents and i also impacted mcconnell as they enjoy coming out into the community whether it be with the schools or whether it be with local neighborhoods or any kind of a fundraiser or a drive i hope that answers your question ron yes thank you very much thank you i'm stan reeser i represent district 4. my question is going to be in the

042area budget as you know one of our biggest jobs is to create the school district budget and my question is how would you work with all stakeholders in setting and determining budget priorities that was actually my question to you at the end of my interview um so since i had the question i don't have an answer for that so may i ask you that or or we can reserve that and uh for your uh closing statement okay if that's okay that's okay that's fine and ben yep um my name is ben blankly i'm the district one representative on the school board um my question is about diversity what local initiatives or activities have you been involved in for diversity equity and inclusion explain your personal involvement wow serving on the board of the metropolitan ballet

043here in wichita as well as the daughters of the american revolution on the executive board i come in contact with a lot of diversity because we're in the community a lot we're serving a lot of different people and i first of all i just want to tell you that people are people and that includes our students our staff and our teachers and i think that it is incredible with the guidelines that you have proposed and you have implemented into the policies for that diversity in our schools it is so important that everyone is treated fairly that everyone is treated with integrity and that they have value and worth and so i mean i just wanted to give you an ad a girl or an atta boy if that's allowed so but yes i think diversity

044is something that we need to continually work on especially in the climate of society today thank you maya yes i'm sorry ernestine ernestine cravel hi ernestine district three i'm asking you a question about board relations how will you go about establishing and maintaining good board relations with your fellow board members and with the board as a whole and can you well it says blue put it closer to me okay got that okay how will you go about establishing and maintaining good relationship with the board as a whole and with fellow board members and can you give an example of when you've worked on a board that shows that you know about how to do that thank you ernestine first of all i love people it is not hard for me to get to know you

045individually as well as collectively as a group of people that is your first part of your question and take you to lunch if that helps too i in the community i am very involved in the community and serving on the dar um we're in in the community a lot and i totally forgot your question i'm totally went blank i'm so sorry could you please repeat that well it's just how do you get along with other board members and how do you see yourself as cooperating or getting along with well the first thing you have to do is listen uh listening is so important and so crucial because everybody has a perspective and that's a big think tank is what the board that's how i see the board of education is the think tank with all

046of your different ideas and perspectives you've got to listen and there's so many times that people just don't listen and you you hit you hit a clog and you can't get anything done i think that you need to respect you need to respect what someone says whether or not you believe or agree with them we're not always going to agree but we don't have to be ugly about it we can agree to disagree come to a medium come to the center and say what can we do to work with it negotiation is so important with your fellow board members and um on the executive board of the dar that i serve with my local chapter there's a lot of times that we don't agree and we laugh about it we don't fight there's if you

047fight there's not going to be any any success at all with what you're wanting to strive for julie hi kathy hi julie um i'm from uh district two and my question is regarding superintendent relations and one of the most important roles of the board of education is to evaluate the district's superintendent so what do you look for in a great superintendent i look for leadership i look for honesty i look for integrity i look for good ideas i don't find that i would look for somebody who is close-minded i would not look for somebody who thinks that they know it all so somebody who is teachable willing to listen to others opinions as well as perspectives that is what i would look for in a superintendent and somebody who's very friendly and approachable thank you

048kathy thank you i'm cheryl logan i'm the at large position and i'm asking about the mission and the strategic plan how do you envision your role in assuring that the district's strategic plan goals are used extensively to guide us to accomplish the district's mission one of the things that i researched a lot was the data that the data and surveys are taken and in the district that i would be serving district five i would actually go visit the schools i would see how things are going i would build relationship with the principals of the school as well as the faculty the staff and the teachers and then i would branch out and i would develop those relationships with the community of district five the parents the stakeholders the donors because we we need that we

049we truly need that and as far as the mission goes um where all students and staff are empowered to dream believe and achieve you've got to help create that dream for those children because sometimes they don't know how to create it when they create it then you've got to teach them how to believe it how to believe in themselves and i have a saying let me believe in you until you can believe in yourself and then how to give them the steps to achieve it and that is what the strategic plan has in those four steps i think i've memorized every i felt like i was studying for a final in the last two weeks so i mean i got my notebook here so i appreciate you letting us use the notes but the strategic

050plan is just awesome i wish they had that when i was in high school so yes i hope that answers your question yes thank you very much yes okay and then we'll just go back to my question and what was your question about the budget well my question about the budget is school districts sometimes suffer from budget cuts how do you as a board prioritize those different choices of what to cut that is the million dollar question which we hope we won't have to uh resolve but i will uh uh yeah and then i will also also also say that that is a question you'll have to ask yourself because uh and that's kind of what the essence of that question was was then how do you prioritize what would uh in the budget would

051need to stay which items do you think could be left that's very difficult because the students need it all and how do you give it all when you don't have those resources so i'm a great fundraiser so i mean i'm going to go out there and raise money for the school district i don't have a problem asking for money all they can do is say no and you just go next yeah so it's like i don't have a problem dr thompson do you want to add anything to that budget process if you would like me to there is a huge process that we use for budgets so we start our budget process sometimes as early as january february of the following year and we bring information to the board in chunks so that we can

052digest it because see we have smart people that can look at that stuff all day and they're just fine but as people like me we have to have it in chunks so what the board does is they look they get they digest all that information about the budget there are times when we would have to decrease the amount of money in our budgets what the board direct usually does is they direct us back to me and say alicia what i need you to do is go work with your people inside the system so then we pull together a variety of people to come in and have an opportunity to say let's look at the overall picture let's look at the things in our district that are working look at the things that what can we

053live without what can we not live without what are essential things then we bring back recommendations to the board the board then says yes we like that no we don't like that go back so what we do is they use us as a as a resource to kind of banter as a word somebody just used earlier back and forth about what's it's really not a banter it's really about having the opportunity to explore what is what is the most important and what do we value and what we usually do is look at that strategic plan the strategic plan drives it all so if there's something on there that's not linked into that strategic plan and really impactful to those end result goals then those are things that the board will ask us to go back

054and look at and bring back to them and then they really then can see what really is reasonable to use as cut items that's kind of how that works and thank you mrs kathleen bond we appreciate you taking the time to come speak to us tonight and you now have a minute to uh tell us uh in a closing statement uh whatever you would like to say or why we should pick you president rieser vice president blankly board members superintendent thompson it has been a privilege to be before you this evening thank you i hope my answers along with my application and letters of reference have satisfied the essential qualities needed to fill this important position it is my desire to be a part of the educational process of our children while preparing all students

055for successful living considering covet 19 our community continues to face many challenges especially with our students and educators it is my wish to be appointed to this vacancy and join the ongoing efforts of overcoming these challenges while striving to offer our students the most effective educational experience granting them a readiness for their future thank you thank you very much thank you thank you that wants me our next applicant is timothy ferris welcome thank you and um it's my turn to start off the questions and you have two minutes to answer and my area of question is in the area of the budget and as you know one of our primary responsibilities is to set the budget and how would you work with all stake stakeholders to determine our budget priorities i think i would respond

056with what i am familiar with in the past the board would and and superintendent thompson would work with the community on uh planning of budgeting and budgeting priorities and typically with budgeting priorities it's a multi-step process you first engage the community and listen to what the community expectations are particularly for that coming year and what improvements that they believe is there and also you have to listen to your own administrators to see what their needs are and usually in in this district we've had multiple community uh meetings on the budget and the uh public where's the clock the public is given an opportunity to comment on that budget i think at the same time as with board you have to have a good listening to what's going on in topeka because the conditions there are

057changing and in my experience with with 259 it may change on a daily basis on on what the per pupil funding will be or what the formula and in in the years that i've been with 259 the formula could change drastically even within a few days and so you've got to have your ears to the ground to know what the the funding formula uh will be so to answer your question and kind of uh put a summary on it the budget department for 259 does a very good job of forecasting they always have um and and number two listen to what the public wants and the expectations of the public and then uh three uh listen to your administrators on what their and teachers what their needs are uh the big item of course is

058what um that your faculty costs will be and then do the community engagement process as we've had in the past thank you my name is ben blankly i'm district 1 representative and my category is diversity what local initiatives or activities have you been involved in for diversity equity and inclusion explain your personal involvement well i used to at the school service center a number of us were called on to do cultural what they called in those days cultural proficiency and then later diversity training um and and so i would i would point to the experience of being a leader advocate for that at the school service center and within the district i also had to train long time ago substitutes in diversity and it was very similar to what we have today but but not

059but not the same i might point and i did not put this in the application but when i was at east high i was uh the coordinator for mid-america consortium for engineering and science achievement and it's a long long title but what i essentially did is worked with young people at east high and um particularly people underrepresented in in sciences and engineering and work with them to get up to speed on college applications so i would literally take students up to k-state and ku and have them visit the campus and answer their questions a lot of them had worries about funding or whether they could do the coursework and so i was their advocate on those campuses [Music] and there was a voluntary uh position there at that time so thank you i'm ernest dean

060kravel and i'm from district three and my question has to do about getting along with this cranky board oh i'm so sorry i didn't say that how would you get a go about establishing and maintaining good relations with the board but with specific members of the board and what examples do you have of where you've worked in such a thing as a board or a volunteer organization such as that okay i think there's like two questions maybe in there um i i'm a pretty social person so i uh i believe that school boards uh should function in a in a in the best of worlds in a seamless way we can agree to disagree and we respect each other when it comes to board relations having been to school board meetings for 25 years i've

061seen where there has been you know contentious uh meetings so um with with that um as far as um working with others i i was a within the school district one of many administrators of a central office team that worked on many things and probably one of the most challenging things in in miss hedrick knows as well was the administration of the the bond the the two bonds and so i was part of that which involved a lot of interaction between uh stakeholders people that needed to have buy-in so you'd have the building principle you'd have the community you would have contractors you would have architects and so quite frankly in my career with 259 i can't honestly think of a time where i had to work with so many entities uh and and get

062people together with some degree of of consensus so i would point to my my one of my bond obligations and and uh it and julie will will understand excuse me miss hedrick will understand that that is quite and challenging of julie she's next okay good evening tim good evening ms patrick um one oh i'm julie hedrick with district two and one of the most important roles of the boe is to evaluate the district superintendent what do you look for in a great superintendent i think you got one and i i mrs thompson's not here um to be honest with you in my years with 259 for 36 years and i have seen many superintendents the superintendents that i have observed that are have really good qualities are those that have consistent leadership that they are

063excellent communicators and they work with their school board and there is a dialogue between the board of education and that superintendent and it is a colleague ship i don't even know if that word even exists but you know that they're colleagues and really the the superintendent is is really there with the board on practically everything so i guess what i would say miss cedric is that the superintendent and the board and i mentioned this earlier needs to be in the best of worlds a seamless relationship and you've got to have excellent communication for example in the great superintendents that we've had they have communicated consistently with the board and the board has shared their vision of what outcomes they want and the superintendent listens the superintendent listens and then he or she works to the

064best their ability to carry out that mission so i i think to to come back good communication consistent leadership and act in the best way with the board to carry out their directives thank you and i would agree 100 with you that we've got a great one she's a keeper oh there she is up there she's hiding it she's she's behind me here okay okay i'm cheryl logan the at-large physician and i'm going to address the strategic plan and the mission statement how do you envision your role in assisting in assuring beg your pardon that the district's strategic plan goals are used extensively to guide us to accomplish the district's mission well i think the number one thing is to understand what you have printed and i have gone through as best to my ability

065to understand what outcomes you are looking for so i think job one is understanding all of that and then to kind of drill down to think about how is that going to actually work how is that going to play out um in the role of board member and and you all have and i i have to admit i was really impressed with the the initiatives that um have been sponsored by this board um i think you really have to be an excellent listener to the public and if if it is the mission of 259 to look at future ready uh initiatives i think you have to be a good listener and then calibrate that against what outcomes that you want to occur in this district and see if there is compliance is not the word

066good agreement with with what is expected to occur i think a good and prudent board member when he or she hears that maybe we're kind of starting to go off into the weeds and you know we're not quite where we need to be i think we need to um i think we need to voice that maybe we need to recalibrate and look at what we need to get accomplished uh so definitely good listening and make sure that we're on target and and i know because miss thompson and her predecessor excuse me dr thompson and her predecessor would uh often give a state of the district um discussions so we know exactly where we are and so if if anything this district has always been very good about giving progress reports thank you okay ron hello

067timothy how are you all right good evening good good uh my question i'm ron rasa from sixth district and my question is community relations i'm sorry say again my question is community relations yes sir all right would you please provide an example of how you have impacted community relations through your past or present employer and how that experience would be relevant to the school district and your potential role as a boe member may i ask a clarification question sure so so what things have i done to improve community relations correct for many years i was a member of homeowners association on the west side and i at this point i don't want to say which one and so there were many many challenges in um uh the homeowners association that i worked in that i

068worked in as uh i i held all the offices within this home large homeowners association and so uh one of the things that i did is uh and it's very similar to what wichita police do is bring everybody together for a meal and work with people on some of those difficult issues that maybe they disagree with on but i have found that if you have frequent meetings you engage the community and i again point to the wichita police department i think does an excellent job with that and engage them in those discussions then some of those difficult details some of those things that give people heartburn they tend to get worked out as you as you sit and eat a hot dog and have a pepsi uh sit down and kind of uh cuss and

069discuss and try to uh find some common ground so one of the things i like to do is bring people together typically have food and drink not that we can do that in 259 but you know bring people together and have those discussions okay thank you thank you sir thank you mr farris uh we appreciate you taking the time to apply uh and we'd like to give you a minute to either make a closing statement or ask us a question or some kind of a combo well i want to very much appreciate this group of you know this board bringing me here and allowing me to to visit with you about my candidacy i have lived within my board area for almost 40 years so i know my constituents very well i worked in 259

070for 36 years i've worked in at butler for 26 years and i have had about every role in the district that you could have teacher classified supervisor administrator central office and i have attended 25 years of board meetings i'm wondering why i'm here yes i was going to avoid that joke but i'm glad you said it no i i i've i've been here for 2 uh two board mem board meetings for 25 years and so i've seen how it has changed over the years and i've used up my time thank you mr ferris ferris uh we will make a vote on monday night and we invite you to come to that meeting for the for that decision thank you and thank you all for guiding me through this process thank you that we won't give

071up was yeah i was gonna okay uh we will take we will take one more uh interview process here uh with our next applicant and then we will take a five minute break after that one for the last four uh if that's okay if that's the board's will yes cheryl's got a question sure that was what i was going to ask about our next applicant is danielle ramirez welcome and thank you and we are going to get straight into questions and uh it is ben's turn to have the first question good evening danielle my name is ben blankly i'm the district 1 representative and my topic is diversity what local initiatives or activities have you been involved in for diversity equity and inclusion explain your personal involvement sure okay can you guys hear me okay

072um tip that yeah there you go there we go wonderful so i'm so excited about this question i work for partners for wichita and safe streets wichita and one of the things that we have been doing is trying to move away from cultural competency and towards cultural humility and so what that really means to to us is that we are doing the hard work of examining our internal bias while also taking it even a step further to ensure that we're backing it up with some action so we we notice inequities and we know that inequities exist not just in education but in health care in other areas as well and i've been really pleased to see the district's initiatives and ensuring that you know because usd 259 is such a diverse place that there are

073measures in place so that all students feel welcome despite you know their ethnicity or lgbt status or i know we have gosh over a hundred different languages spoken here and what was it maybe 7 000 special ed students and 7 000 esol learners so for me personally diversity um is one of usd 259 strongest suits and it's one of the big reasons i chose to send my own daughters there over over private schools and i love private schools but that diversity piece you just can't get everywhere thank you ernestine i'm ernestine kravel from district three and i have a question that to ask you about board relations how will you go about establishing and maintaining good relationships with the board as a whole and with your fellow board members and do you have an example

074of when you've worked on a board or with a group to accomplish something as a joint group yeah great question thank you ernestine i believe that a board is a lot like a team i went to west high school here and i played volleyball and so there were you know tenants of teamwork that i feel lay over right into the board of directors just like any kind of sports team things like communication being able to delegate and and help kind of lean on each other for different tasks that are needed and really cooperation even when there are differences of opinion is super important um i i help run something called safe streets coalition which is all about collaboration and i have just been blessed to work with so many great leaders and people who know

075how to work together as a team to tackle issues that maybe not everybody agrees about and for example i work with somebody named jan chandler and she has been such a strong mentor in my life to show me that we get so much more done and accomplished when we can work together and something that just has really pleased me when watching some of the former boe meetings is that i mean we've been in a pandemic we've had so many challenges and yet i've heard laughter from the superintendent and you all and it just kind of lifted my spirits because it reminds me that you know we are all human and just doing the best we can julie hello danielle good to have you here tonight i'm julie hedrick from district two and my question is

076regarding superintendent relations and in that regard one of the most important roles of the board of education is to evaluate our district's superintendent what do you look for in a great superintendent well i think a great superintendent is a strong leader who cares about students first and foremost but also the staff that she's overseeing i know the district has a goodness over 5000 employees and that's no small task so being able to look at what's in the best interests of students and staff and support workers you know the people who are serving lunches all the way down to the paris and everybody else is a is a really really huge task and i think julie your question makes a lot of sense because in the nonprofit world which i work in and have worked in

077for about 15 years um as staff we we kind of we gain our leadership from the board of directors and we still have an executive director so understanding um kind of the the roles that people play is is really important and it's my understanding that the board of directors or the board of education here the purpose is really to set the sites for the district um to approve and update policy to set budget i'm sorry is that time no okay i thought i heard a ding and you know superintendent alicia thompson she really is in charge of the day-to-day being the implementer so to speak of what happens in the district her and of course the other district leadership thank you danielle yeah cheryl hi i'm cheryl logan i'm the at-large representative thank you for

078coming tonight thanks for having me how do you envision your role in assuring that the district's strategic plan goals are used extensively to guide us to accomplish the district's mission sure i would love to bring my values my passion and my skills to the table and i know that the four areas in the district plan are ambitious but i do believe they are achievable and i've been very pleased to read you know increasing the graduation rates reading proficiency college credit and safety is so important and i really feel like my perspective as a community advocate as a parent as a former student could really enhance that plan one thing i was really thinking about on the drive over here was that we whoever the next boe member is and this whole board is going to

079have a huge job in front of them and that's to assess where our students are coming back into the classroom we know that some students thrived in the remote learning environment and some students really struggled even before the pandemic we know that families are dealing with you know their substance use mental health food insecurity poverty there's these things that are happening in our students life and so we can't overlook that social emotional learning is so important i've been so pleased to see that the district has programs like second step that help get students to a place where they can truly achieve and get to that place and and you know their academic goals and and our goals for them thank you ron uh ron rosales district six um my question to be over community relations

080would you please provide an example of how you have impacted community relations through your past or present employer and how that experience would be relevant to your school district to the school district and your potential role on the boe sure i love this question as well i'll give you two examples one of how community relations has impacted my life and that was as a usd 259 student at west high school i at that time struggled with mental health and substance use issues myself and there was a non-profit group who came to west high and i got involved with their leadership team so they by extending their resources was able to work with me one-on-one and within a group setting so that i could become a leader and believe in myself right so i truly believe

081that community relations saved my life because i wouldn't be in this spot where i am today if there hadn't been a group partnering with the schools so now i work with non-profit organization partners for wichita i mentioned that and it's all about community and when i'm working with different sectors of the community i've been absolutely blessed to work with law enforcement media schools you know congregations all of these different entities in the community to bring them together to help meet the needs and what i'm seeing is that people are hungry to partner with schools and students if there's an avenue for them to do that and i just in watching some of these videos i was really impressed not just by the sheer number of partnerships that usd 259 has with community organizations but the

082quality of them as well so thank you guys all right thank you thank you i'm stan reeser i represent district four and my question is in the area of budget as you know that's one of our biggest responsibilities to set the budget for this district how would you work with all stakeholders to determine what our budget priorities are that's a great question stan i think you said it the the key word here is priorities i'm pro-public education and pro figuring out how to keep public dollars in public schools and i'm not going to sit here and pretend like i know the intricacies of the usd 259 budget because i do not however i am eager to learn and grow and find out how i can communicate with the stakeholders and to learn about what the

083priorities are here in the district i i know that 108 9 million dollars is a lot of money and on a smaller scale through my work i have been successful at well really our coalition's work enabled me to do some grant writing and so i've had some opportunity to oversee a budget up to a million dollars not not much more than that but i think it boils down to priorities and how do we prioritize our students and our staff doing the hard work with them thank you very much we would like to thank you for taking this time to apply and we would love to give you a minute to make a closing statement or ask us a question or some kind of a combo sure i would just say that i very much appreciate

084the opportunity whatever happens moving forward just to learn more about the schools and to meet the lovely people that i have in the last few weeks and i do believe that as a former student a current parent and a community advocate that i could enhance the relations here on the board and in our schools in general i do have one question and that is if you could describe the decision-making process moving forward for the next candidate we will make a decision on monday night you're invited to that meeting we will take ballots and the exact procedure of how that will be announced uh monday night but it'll basically until the we'll go ballot to ballot until somebody gets four votes okay all right thank you thank you and just a general announcement um we're going

085to take a five-minute break we wanna make sure that um we've interviewed five so far but we do we wanna make sure the last four um and i hesitate to even use the word last but the last four are our great much attention as we gave the top first five so if with that we'll take a five minute break and then we'll proceed with our next applicant the board's ready we'll get restarted our next applicant is mr samuel mcconnell and mr mcconnell we're going to start straight with questions on various topics and then at the very end we'll give you a chance to make a closing statement all right and we're going to start with ernestine this time hi i'm ernestine crable from district three and my question is about how you will propose to

086get along with other board members and the board as a whole have you had experience on working with groups to accomplish a common goal absolutely i work with a team of 12 people at my day job i'm a i'm a i.t technician i work as part of a team we solve uh big problems for fortune 500 companies when they're having issues with their computer storage systems sometimes that's something that one person can know the answer get it done but oftentimes it takes collaboration within the team and that's something that i've done a lot of in that job so what i've learned to do with that is to listen to listen to the people that i'm working with and not just talk over them but listen and to try to synthesize what everybody is saying together

087to find the common solution between what everybody is saying julie hello good to have you tonight i'm julie hedrick with district 2. and my question is regarding superintendent relations one of the most important roles of the board of education is to evaluate our district superintendent what do you look for in a great superintendent so with a superintendent you want to have one that is ready and willing to work with board but also to bring things to the board that the board might not be seeing on a day-to-day basis since the board's you know meeting periodically not meeting all the time with the administrators at the individual school level that will be reporting to the superintendent directly the the superintendent can bring together all that information to propose policies and uh initiatives for the boards to

088uh consider and address um so so i think the most important part of the superintendent as far as working with the board is to make sure that they're getting all the information they need to make the decisions they need to make thank you hi i'm cheryl logan i'm the at-large person and i'm going to be talking about our mission statement and the strategic plan yes okay how do you envision your role in assuming that the districts assessing the district's strategic plan goals and how they're used extensively to guide us to accomplish the district's mission so with the long-term strategic plan i have noticed and i've been impressed with how it's already been executed so i think as a board member my role would really be to make sure that we stay on that track by

089speaking with administrators and superintendent and listening to educators and students and families to make sure that we're meeting those goals and kind of sting the course how they've been implemented great already you uh ron all right how's it going samuel right yes all right hi my name is um ron rosales i'm with the sixth district and the representative for the sixth district all right uh my question will be about community relations uh would you please provide an example of how you have impacted community relations through your past or present employer and how that experience would be relevant to the school district and to your potential role as a boe member yes probably um is there something you would like me to repeat um yeah if you could repeat the question okay so provide an example

090of how you have impacted community relations through your past or present employer and how that experience would be relevant to the school district and your potential role as a boe member okay my my current employer netapp gives us a week of paid time off every year to do volunteer work in the community and that's something that i've utilized heavily over the past eight years or so that i've worked there working primarily with kmuw the public radio station here in town volunteering for them i've been helping them with their community commentary series for the past gosh i guess it's been eight years now um to help them with their outreach to the community as far as getting community members in to speak about things that may or may not involve the community but directly but getting

091the community involved in the station okay all right thank you my name is stan reeser i'm on the district four i represent district four and my question is in the area budget and as you know one of our primary responsibilities to set the budget for the district and my question is how would you work with all stakeholders in determining budget priorities well first of all i think i would i would speak i know we've the the board has or the district has managers for the budget you know i would want to meet with them to see you know what priorities have been in the past and how we're spending that money and then go over items a little bit more granularly just to see what have what has been priority in the past if that's

092working if that's meeting the long-term strategy that we're working towards um and if so support that and if not try to speak with more stakeholders as to why you know this item is getting this kind of support where this other item may not be thank you very much ben good evening sam good evening my name is ben blankly i'm the district one representative and my uh topic is diversity yes what local initiatives or activities have you been involved in for diversity equity and inclusion explain your personal involvement or even if you had a general statement about diversity sure sure yeah i would have to say that i haven't um unfortunately i don't i don't have any uh specific experience with any kind of uh initiative like that directly but i have supported like a kmuw

093the korvik coleman and maybe like at work um how how would you uh like in your day-to-day interactions uh improve the uh the climate for inclusion of varying sure we're well definitely um at my job at netapp um since i've been there for a while i am uh part of some of the interview process uh and i do uh try to make sure that we're um interviewing people from across the spectrum it does have a very heavy especially white male presence and thankfully my employer is supportive of diversity initiatives and making sure that we're hiring more women and hiring um people of color and i think we've been successful at that thank you mr mcconnell uh we'll give you a minute to either ask us a question or you could make a closing statement sure

094um i did want to ask um what kind of professional development do board members uh tend to be involved in and that is the second person to ask that question so that's a very common question so that's very good and i will give dr thompson a chance to come down and answer but we will uh we do a lot of in-house training with workshops and with we are a member of many organizations in cooperation with many organizations that provide training and if we do select you i guarantee you you won't be out on a limb we will get you training but i will let dr thompson give you a better answer than that great good evening good evening we first of all we we do have just that a board training specifically for the board

095of education members and even officers so what we do is we have everyone from all of the divisions within the organization department heads they come together and they spend time working with you sharing what the departments do you know just that big because this is a big big conglomerate of an organization and to be able to kind of get a handle on that then we're part of national organizations the council of great city schools the national association of school boards and we have budgets at the board level where we send you to those places so that you can interact with other board members understand the dynamics there we do have workshops that we have here regularly within the district as well on a regular basis so that you know what's happening and that you can

096get development around that we have state organizations kansas association of school boards they have workshops like seems like every week you can just pick from any topic board relations superintendent evaluations all the way from how do you get involved in the community and all those kinds of things they all are available to you from the kansas association of school boards you also have your colleagues that is the best professional development is job embedded professional development and interacting with people who have been on the board you know we've have some people who've been on the board for 12 years all the way to people who've been on the board maybe five years four or five years and so you have a wide variety of colleagues that will also be able to support you so there's tons

097of opportunities that you can take advantage of and of course i'm i'm here to direct any of those places that you'd like to to have that professional development and we'll get you there excellent thank you mr mcconnell we will be voting this coming monday night you're more than welcome to attend and is it is our intention to pick someone that night and we look forward to seeing you again in the future all right great thank you sir thank you thank you bring those guys to my house this is welcome our next applicant is kimberly wilson and welcome and we're going to get straight into the questions and julie has the first one good evening kim thank you for applying and joining us tonight and my name is julie hedrick i'm from district 2. my question

098is regarding superintendent relations and one of the most important roles of the board of education is to evaluate the district superintendent so i'd like to know what do you look for in a great superintendent so i believe that the superintendent serves as the beacon and the leader of the entire district i look for someone who is not afraid to set really audacious goals which is one of the things i love about our strategic mission is that we are in relentless pursuit of some pretty audacious goals i also appreciate a superintendent who can lead by example who has classroom experience who can build positive relationships with teachers staff and with children and with families and i also think that the superintendent needs to be knowledgeable of empirically supported practices and pedagogy so that that can occur

099and she or he can support that in the classroom as well thank you very much thank you i'm next i'm cheryl logan and i'm the at large position welcome thank you i have the mission statement and the strategic plan how do you envision your role in assuring that the district's strategic plan goals are used extensively to guide us to accomplish the district's mission right so as our mission is to prepare students to be college career and life ready through rigorous and innovative learning experiences and i think the four strategic goals that are in the plan align very nicely with those right it's to increase graduation rate to 80 percent it's to improve reading proficiency in third grade it's to promote and increase the number of students who complete cte pathways and and certificate programs and

100then it's to increase the perception of families teachers and children in terms of the safety of our schools and i think that my position on the board would be to continue to do what i already do right i am already in the schools working with children working with teachers i serve as a coach and a mentor a volunteer and a tutor i build relationships and have relationships with several people in schools and i think as a board member it's important to make sure that you're judicious in the decisions that you make and that you are again relying on data making data informed decisions that support and align the strategic plan so that we can graduate more students who are college career and life ready thank you ron hello kimberly hi i'm ron rosales representative for

101the sixth district and my question will be about community relations would you please provide an example of how you have impacted community relations through your past or present employer and how that experience would be relevant to the school district and your potential role as a bob member absolutely so i'm a professor in teacher prep at wichita state so um i we are all about the community in fact one of our guiding principles is collaboration community and applied learning for our students and so weekly in that role i am out in schools working with teachers working with student teachers and i think that benefits and gives me some very relevant and recent experience um so i would say that through that through that role i also with my husband have co-founded a non-profit that serves at-risk

102youth and we provide mentoring services to boys of color in elementary schools and so again in that capacity i'm out in schools weekly too working with with children and teachers and families to better meet the needs of some of our disproportionately identified young men thank you hi miss wilson my name is stan reeser i'm on district 4. my question is in the area budget and my question as you know probably uh one of our main goals is to set the budget for the district and how would you work with all stakeholders to determine the priorities of the budget well i think as the district 5 representative it's my duty and responsibility to make sure that i'm the voice for the individuals in my district also because i'm a teacher and i'm a parent of a

103ch of children in wichita public schools i also bring that voice to the table as well and while i i don't know all of the nuts and bolts of the of the district's budget i am familiar with the kansas school finance formula um i was the department head of our college's department of teacher prep and so have had very recent budget experience myself um and so i think listening right being a good listener being a good steward of the of the district's finances and then making sure that the decisions that we make are directly aligned with the strategic plan so that we can have the financial support and backing to actually accomplish those very audacious goals thank you ben good evening kim hi um my my name is ben blankly and i'm the district one

104representative and my category is diversity what local initiatives or activities have you been involved in for diversity equity and inclusion explain your personal involvement absolutely so i recently read an article that defined diversity as a pleasant mix of ideas culture languages exceptionalities and gender that help work together to promote learning and growth and i thought what a beautiful way to look at diversity right and i think that one of the things that i do best is i honor and celebrate diversity i teach teachers culturally relevant pedagogy and then we work very closely with mr polite mr reynolds office in terms of providing mentoring services and academic support as i mentioned for boys of color and for for girls who are identified by their teachers as being in need of mentoring services and then again as

105my role as a professor at wichita state that's one of our guiding principles in the school of education is diversity and honoring diversity in all of its glorious fashion my area of research is literacy emergent literacy and so when you talk about exceptionalities and learning disabilities if you're following the dyslexia conversation at the state level it's how to work with diverse levels of readers and so i have that experience and then i'm also an early childhood unified educator so working with young children who have exceptionalities and families in order to to help them be able to better access school thank you ernestine thank you kimberly for applying and coming to meet with us this evening i'm ernestine crable of district 3. and my question has to do with how you might get along with board

106members and the board as a whole and could you give some examples of where you've worked with a board and been able to work in a unified cooperative manner absolutely so i think if you ask my students they would tell you that i'm kind i'm approachable i'm accessible and i'm knowledgeable if you ask my colleagues they would say i'm a lot of fun to spend time with that i am a hard worker and that i i set a pretty high standard for myself in terms of the work that i produce because if i'm going to put my name on anything i want it to be equality um and so i think in order to be an effective board member we are each representing different communities different constituents all working together towards the common goal which

107is accomplishing our strategic plan right and supporting our leadership and so in order to be an effective collaborator you have to demonstrate mutual respect trust and you have to align your efforts towards that common goal and i would say that you know i've been in higher ed since 2004 i've served on numerous boards for non-profit agencies and i i know for sure that one of the assets that i bring is my interpersonal skills and my ability to get along with lots of different kinds of people and to really kind of dig down into the work that needs to be done but do it in a way that honors and celebrates all the people at the table and you know there's no pay with this job i do know yes mr wilson we appreciate you taking

108the time to apply and going through this process and we would like to give you a minute to either ask us a question or make a closing statement or some kind of a combo am i allowed to do both a question okay okay so i do have a question in looking at our strategic plan and i will i should probably let you know that i am very growth mindset oriented right i think regardless of how good of a job we're doing we can always do better especially when it comes to kids and families so i know that our strategic plan asks and seeks to raise the graduation rate the state department of ed also releases what they call success data which is data in terms of who goes on after after graduation to some sort

109of post-secondary training or schooling we're at 40 percent so i want to know as a board what have we thought about or how can we champion improving the success rate because we know that post-secondary education and training has significant outcomes for kids in terms of their financial and emotional social well-being so as a board i guess have we tackled that yet is it on the agenda to tackle i know it probably aligns very nicely with the graduation rate but um i guess that would be my question what can we do to to further increase that rate that's a very good question and dr thompson i know we've spent many uh hours talking about the success rate but i would like you to go ahead and attempt to answer that in the way you think would

110be proper yep absolutely there's several things one is we want to there let me go back number number three if you look at number three when kids leave us that don't there are a lot of kids that don't want to go to college but they have to leave us with something that they can go and get a job and do something with so we believe that increasing the amount of credentials that kids leave us with is critical that will be helpful to our effectiveness rate when you then look at the other side of that kids that leave us with more with credit college credit hours prior to going to college as you know the success rate looks a little bit different for those students so we are building an infrastructure as we speak well we

111have some but we're continuing to build each year infrastructure where we're able to increase the amount of students that leave us with the college or credit college credits or either a credential and we actually are bringing forth at some point soon a thing called something similar to diploma plus so when you graduate you're going to have plus something when you leave this school district that will ensure that our effectiveness rate will increase awesome thank you mr wilson we are planning on voting this coming monday night and you're more than welcome to attend for that vote and we will do our best to actually succeed in actually filling the seed as a as opposed to a kind of deadlock i don't think we're not anticipating that we feel like we can come to a decision but

112we really appreciate you taking the time to apply and we look forward to uh this coming monday night and you're more than welcome to join us okay and she said she wanted to perform oh yes yes i won't take long because now go right ahead yes but i will say that um somebody asked me because you're right it's an unpaid position right and i don't need another line on my vita for service you know like i don't need that so i guess i wanted to explain really kind of my why okay um and i know you have my application in front of you so wichita public schools is home to me right i am a product of wichita public schools my children attend wichita public schools i volunteer and serve in wichita public schools so

113it really is home to me and i see these children as my children right they are my community my children these teachers are my teachers it is very personal to me and so i guess i feel it as a calling right i know it's not paid but i am extremely invested and i will continue to do what i do and work with kids and teachers whether i'm awarded the position or not but i do appreciate your consideration thank you very much thank you welcome our next applicant is a seth tiger and we are going to jump right into the questions and it is cheryl logan's turn to start hi seth thanks for coming tonight thank you i'm cheryl logan i'm the at-large physician and i have a question on the mission statement and the strategic

114plan so nothing like starting off on the deep end right how do you envision your role in assuring that the district's strategic plan goals are used extensively to guide us to accomplish the district's mission um i believe that it is important for the students at third grade to have reading proficiency and as a para educator in the elementary school i can see you know when my third graders get to that reading level by fifth grade they're really ready for not only reading but math because with math they have um you have the word problems and if you can't read then you can't really do those word problems so i really am a strong advocate for pushing on that third grade reading proficiency good thank you ron how's gone seth all right um i'm ron rosales

1156th district representative i'm going to ask you a question about community relations would you please provide an example of how you have impacted community relations through your past or present employer and how that experience would be relevant to the school district and your potential role on the boe yes a pleasure when i was 18 years old i started tutoring at west high school where i graduated from and i really made a lot of connections with those students i was an avid tutor and when i did my master's i started working at wsu teaching there and i would see some of my avid students on campus and it was just such a great experience to just be able to see those students and watch them go from freshmen into um college and then now that i'm

116working in elementary i see the whole you know opposite spectrum of everything so i've seen i do interpretations at conferences and i really get to meet the families and see them and i see their brothers and sisters and i've even had some students that are children of students that i tutored in high school so it's just been really a great experience to meet all those people see their accomplishments and their changes all right great thank you i'm stan reeser and my question is in the area of the budget as you know the board of education one of our primary responsibilities to set the budget for the district how would you work with all stakeholders to determine our budget priorities i think first it's always important to listen to everything you want to gain all the

117facts and learn as much as you possibly can because budget i mean that's way over any one person's head or realm of capacity of thinking so i think you just have to listen learn as much as you can and then act accordingly make the best decision based on the research the data and the experiences of the people that you've talked with thank you seth good evening seth my name is ben blankly i'm the district 1 representative and my category is diversity what local initiatives or activities have you been involved in for diversity equity and inclusion explain your personal involvement mainly i i've just been the last four years i've just been working at the school as the para and i have done some of the community engagement parts where i go to interpret for families

118that don't speak english there i interpret spanish and with conferences as well but other than just working my everyday job with the students one-on-one and building relationships with them and their families i haven't done much volunteer work i should say it's okay thank you hi i'm ernestine crable from district three and my question is about working with the board how will you go about establishing and maintaining good relationships with the board and with your fellow board members and can you give an example of a time when you've done group work with the board or other things toward a common goal okay um i first and foremost respect is at the very top you have to respect and that includes like i've already mentioned listening eye contact and really learning about who you're working with what

119they believe in and always trying to find a common ground with the people that you work with i've never been on a board but i do work with the teams of teachers like if it's the the team they get together and or if it's like an iep type situation and i get in there and i i always listen and make my um recommendations to them after i have heard everything that i can and and know as much as i can about it julie hi seth thanks for coming tonight i'm julie hedrick from district two my question is regarding superintendent relations one of the most important roles of the boe is to evaluate the district superintendent what do you look for in a great superintendent someone that's going to be a leader and stand up for

120an advocate for the students but also for the staff and all the staff not just the teachers not just the principals but even down to the perez and the bus drivers and the people that work in the lunchroom because every single staff member that works in the schools plays a role in the development of the children thank you thank you very much um we would like to provide you a opportunity to either ask us a question or make a closing statement or some type of combo on that okay could i do both yes okay so my question was um as a board member what has been the most rewarding part of this experience for you well i think uh you said it i wrote down that you're passionate and so i think you'll find that

121that's one thing that the board members find is that this has been a real labor of love and we are constantly thinking about our students and our teachers and our staff members and you're right i mean it goes from all levels of the staffing not just educators but like you said the bus drivers the janitors i mean we're all in this together so that's how i would answer it if any other board member wants to answer that question they sure can say i'd take that i would say yeah you know it's been a very challenging year unsurprisingly um uh for for every board member across the country um but what has what has focused me um is the fact that we we do make a difference we make we make a very positive difference um

122there were challenging decisions and somebody had to make them and we stood up to make them um and you know dealt with the the political consequences they're in um so it it it makes me proud that that we that we were able to take that heavy burden off of other people and and carry it for them okay thank you ben said it much better than i did is there any last minute thing you wanted to say yeah i just wanted to um let you guys know that i feel that i'm qualified for this because i i come from wichita public schools all the way through even into college i went to wichita state which is public and i just the past this is my ninth year working in the district and i've just seen i

123see the i i see the dream i have the dream for these students and i believe that every student regardless of where they come from what side of town they live on who who they are who their parents are if they even live with them or not they have the potential to be successful in life and that's why i'm here today because i want to be a voice for all of the all of my students and all of my former students and all the students that i i haven't met thank you we appreciate your app we plan on voting monday night you're more welcome to attend all right thank you very much thank you sir thank you my life we'll tell her to tune in so that she knows what skills i was telling julie

124i need to have you guys over at my house you've had good training huh mike one our next applicant is donovan carson and um we have a set of questions and we will just go into the questions and then at the on various topics and at the end we're going to give you a minute to either ask us a question or make a closing statement or some kind of a combo on that and i i may have lost track but i think we start with ron all right how's it going donovan it's going great how are you i'm good good rob marsalis with the sixth district i'm going to ask you a question about community relations would you please provide an example of how you have impacted community relations through your past or present employer

125and how that experience would be relevant to the school district and your potential role as a boe boe member [Music] so i have worked entry-level work oftentimes deals directly with the community now this wasn't with usd 259 in their community i was actually in high school in valley center and one interaction with a customer in particular kind of stands out to me i it was my first job out of high school and i was quite thankful for it um i hadn't had any opportunity to work beforehand i mostly focused on my studies and extracurricular activities but one day while i'm just doing my job as far as i can tell one of the customers pulls me aside and kind of says that i was the talk of the town and i kind of go on

126about that a little bit and they say that i i've been doing a really good job small town i don't know if you've been to valley center there was one gas station at the time off and on there's a second one but pretty much everybody during their morning commute would come through for coffee snacks or of course to get their gas and i took it as a point of pride to be as put forth as much effort to save them from having to meet the difference very minor interactions this isn't this isn't uh you know life-changing having a getting in and out of the gas station and getting to work on time isn't exactly life-changing so that's part of what struck me is this person like took time out of their day to pull me

127aside and talk about how they appreciated how good of a job that i did how welcome i made people feel that i engaged with my customers i met their needs and i allowed them to continue on their day with as little investment as on their end as possible i gave as much as the interaction needed oh sorry no it's okay i'm over time that no that's okay um and i'm sorry the clock is up in the car yeah my i'm stan reeser i'm representing the fourth district and um my question is in the area of the budget as you know one of our primary responsibility is to set the budget for the district and my question is how would you work with all stakeholders to determine budget priorities so that i think is a very

128good question because there are a lot of stakeholders you have the everybody that works in the school district from the janitor all the way up to the superintendent has priorities and concerns with how that money gets spent but it even goes beyond that because the public is of course the community is of course very interested in how that budget gets spent and all of them have different priorities i think that the best way to see that the priorities the most important not even most important i think all these priorities need to have their opportunity to be heard there are stakeholders of course the lobby for different uh budgetary concerns over others and i think that they do a good job and it's incumbent on them to do that lobbying and i think that's part of

129the role of the school board is to know who those stakeholders are and to take their position into consideration not just for the area of their expertise be at a school or a particular program but to put that in context as the whole district um and i think that it's something that would co require constant vigilance to make sure that you're doing a good job that you're seeing out seeking out these stakeholders and hearing them when they seek you out and i think that that is just kind of the primary uh effort if you will while being a school board member thank you sir good evening diamond um my name is ben blankley i'm the district 1 representative and my topic is diversity what local initiatives or activities have you been involved in for diversity

130equity and inclusion explain your personal involvement so i have one of the tricks not tricks but one of the challenges i think that our education system has is targeting underrepresented groups in information technology sorts of fields i think that there's a lot of natural barriers to get students from diverse backgrounds interested into a field like mine so i graduated a computer science from university of kansas and i've used that degree in my field ever since so last year in the semester immediately proceeding or during the start of the covet pandemic i was mentoring one of the wichita north students during their senior project he wanted to create a application to [Music] help people not familiar with a particular city find hospitals or emergency services so there was considerations of gps locations finding a directory of

131the hospitals in the area and stuff like that so i consulted with him as to the nature of his uh of the work that he was doing and what it might entail and what it might uh things to look out for we talked about programming languages i was able to meet with him i think three times uh before things started to before the spring break and that's when things started to shift dramatically uh with regards to covet so i must regret to say that i wasn't there with him i i think three was the required times meeting that the course had with me um but i wasn't able to find out how well he did this is an opportunity i had to reach out to a student in our district to try and help them

132breach the or bridge those gaps in getting interest and involved in information technology awesome thank you ernest hi i'm ernestine krabel and i'm from district three and i have a question that is about board relations and how would how will you go about establishing and maintaining good relationships with the board with your fellow members of the board and the board as a whole and can you give an example of when you've worked in a with a group of people for a common goal on a board or any other kind of group where you had a group of people that work together for a common goal all right so probably some of the best uh examples i have of working together on a common goal is going to be academic of course in college we i

133had a number of projects where the goal was to work together and achieve an output of some sort my most uh probably the most enlightening example i have was a class called computer engineering or software engineering and that's the process of designing just deciding what you're going to do designing it and then working together everybody pulling their weight to try and get it achieved and i think that was a very good example because it taught me the most valuable lesson i've ever had in my pers my professional career and that is to use other people's time well whatever else you do use other people's time well if you're going to ask them a question already have considered possible answers my one of my first managers at my current job i've shifted teams around a few

134times had a good kind of quote that i also like to throw out there is come to me with solutions don't come to me with problems and that's you know don't have everything figured out before you ask a question but instead say i have this question i think this this or this could be possible answers what do you think and i think that those sorts of uh interactions using other people's time well that's just an example of how you might use other people's time well um i would strive to understand the particulars of everybody's district because i understand that sometimes we may come at odds at what about budget concerns and by better understanding their districts and their districts needs i think i could relate much better and much easier to them and have a

135more harmonious cooperation thank you julie hi thank you for joining us tonight i'm julie hedrick from district two and my question is regarding superintendent relations one of the most important roles of the boe is to evaluate the district superintendent what do you look for in a great superintendent so i think that the superintendent is one of those stakeholders that i was talking about when i imagined the how to handle budgetary concerns and my internalization of the role of superintendent or what i would look for in a good superintendent is one who's kind of as as a asset to the entire board as a potential builder of that bridge between board members i think the superintendent probably has a better idea in general what's going on in the school district as a whole and can help

136put one district's needs in in context of the others and i realized i used district in both ways that way where i was talking about the six districts and then the usd 259. um so i think that an expert on the schools in usd 259 is really what i would hope for at least one of the qualities in a good superintendent um i think honesty because sometimes when you're trying to cooperate and collaborate with each other you're going to have different priorities or your priorities are all the same but they have different weights and i think that a good superintendent is willing to tell someone when they're when they're too firm when they're when they're putting their priorities above the above the common welfare they're putting the needs of their constituents either because they've got

137blinders on because something else is going on in their personal life um maybe it's a pet project that they're overly focused on but i think a good superintendent will it also be able to help rein in an individual board member in their overzealousness and their uh perhaps lack of concern for other board members priorities cheryl hi i'm the last question tonight so and i'm going to give you a question i'm cheryl logan i'm the at-large physician and my question is on the mission statement in the strategic plan how do you envision your role in assuring that the district's strategic plan goals are used extensively to guide us to accomplish the district's mission so i think the strategic plan is a good plan i think that it focuses on areas of education and community that are

138important for success for the students my personal role will be to communicate to my constituency how individual actions of the board factors into that strategic plan um i will also be interested in getting feedback from the constituency on the success of those of those plans because what i ex uh expect to generally be communicating with in the community are going to be largely parents concerned citizens people who are invested in the outcomes of the schools and they're going to have a much more personalized perspective on how the things that we're trying to do what sort of impact it's having and how it whether or not it's even accomplishing those goals that being said i find it easy to believe that uh you know increasing graduation rates increasing reading rates uh proficiency is are both going

139to be really successful at helping our students dream achieve without adding a lot of overhead without adding a lot of not fluff but things that people might take exception with i think that it's very important to keep in mind that as a board member we are representing people and if we start to do things what perhaps to the benefit of students we might have to consider that that might be viewed as inappropriate by some of our constituency okay very good thank you thank you mr donovan carson we appreciate you taking the time to apply and and also uh going through this process and um it is our expectation that we will vote on this this monday night march 8th and you are more than welcome to attend that meeting if you would like to but

140thank you again all right thank you he has a chance for comments oh yes i apologize and we do want to give you uh a time to either ask us a question or make a closing statement or both okay i think i will go ahead and do a closing statement yes so i understand that this is kind of a unusual situation the position that i'm looking for is one that's typically elected and i think that that comes with a certain endowment by the constituency to just behave in the manner that you said you would during the election process and while this isn't completely devoid of that you are all elected members choosing this position or the applicant to fill this position i think that it does take special consideration that we're going to have to

141look uh try extra hard to make sure that we are me uh whoever fills those positions meeting the will of the people i also think that i'm a good candidate to do that because my motivation for seeking this position is one of great humility and gratitude um as i mentioned in my application i went to high school with free and reduced lunches i spent some time on food stamps and i went to school on with in part with a pell grant and i have a great sense of gratitude to this community and i want to be able to pay that forward thank you i i apologize for not giving you a chance to do that uh closing statement until i realized it was very nice thank you thank you thank you that that concludes the

142interviews for the night and um as i mentioned earlier it is the intention that this will be on the agenda for uh march uh eighth monday's meeting and um we'll give all the details of exactly how we're going to be voting but it's pretty straightforward we'll vote uh and after one ballot there could be some people eliminated until we get to someone who has four votes uh mr mike next item adjournment do i hear a motion ben blankley district one i move to adjourn it ernest moved by ben and seconded by ernestine to adjourn this special meeting of march 3rd all those in favor say aye aye all opposed motion carries 6-0 we are adjourned you