##VIDEO ID:5vJUIs8Xl70## e e okay there you I don't even know if I touched it must be super sensitive yeah now it's on so great thank you very very much um first of all on behalf of msba I want to thank the board for selecting us to help you with the upcoming superintendent search we're honored to help select the next leader here for Albert L area so we have a lot to cover at this planning meeting the goal of today is to lay the groundwork um make decisions that you need to make early in the search to get things launched and then there'll be decisions throughout the search process that you'll continue to make one of the things that's unique about msba searches is there's not a prescribed process from the very beginning and you must do it this way and you must do it at this point and do this our process kind of unfolds as we go and we want to make sure that we're responding to what you and your stakeholders need here in this community and in this school district so some decisions will be made throughout the process not everything will be decided today and that's very very intentional that being said there is a lot to do um if you would do me the pleasure of letting me know who you are as board members also and how long you have served on the school board that's also helpful U my name again is Barb Dorne I've been with msba now for almost six years and I work exclusively in superintendent search and superintendent evaluation so it is high search season and we're very busy and very excited to work with you on this one as well so however you'd like to do it in the order of folks Barb Gary Schindler I'm starting my third year in a four-year term elected a couple years ago and then hats off was it Amy that led the round table yes yeah nice job so hats off to her wonderful Amy Jordan correct yeah thank you I'll tell her that Angie Hoffman I'm just starting my fifth year so I was part of the search process in 2022 hi Angie uh Mary Joe German my first year on the board 24 years with the district okay hi Mary Joe Neil score beginning my ninth year in the board and was involved in the previous search as well correct thank you Dave clot just stting my 11th year and I was around last time too okay looking forward absolutely and the other two board members Kim is joining us late how long has she served Kim will be here probably in about 15 minutes Davey's unable to attend today okay and we do have a packet over there for both of my SE so and how long have they been on your board uh approximately Kim Kim will Kim will probably be start well she had two year previous so I think she'll be starting her sixth or seventh year probably total okay and uh maybe starting his third year third year then okay great thank you for that and the reason I ask is I always like to know how much institutional knowledge is on the board in the district uh you have a really nice breadth of experience from folks that have been on the board for a long time as well as some new board members here so I think that bodess really well for your search uh diversity of thought is a very good thing during the search process and I think you have a really nice um makeup of board perspectives life experiences and work that you've committed on the board already so with that if you're all right we're just going to jump right into the planning meeting packet the agenda is something that I'm going to follow pretty closely but I also want this to be comfortable for you and so I'd like you to ask me questions throughout um interrupt me I'm not big on formality so I want to make sure the discussion is what you need it to be in order to move forward with the search confidently as far as review of the process for example there's only two things that I really want to stress uh one is the role of Minnesota State Statute in superintendent search and there are two that are very important the open meeting law and the government data Practices Act so the open meeting law for example does require that every step of this process be done in an open session you will not be able to go into close session for any part of the search process so that means you'll be discussing interview candidates you'll be discussing uh the plan and such as we're doing today you'll be deliberating who to hire or who to bring back for a second interview all of those things are done in an open meeting what you also will discuss in an open meeting is private data which is the second state statute the Minnesota Government data Practices Act we'll get into more specifics when we do the interview training with the board the most important thing to remember however is that you will see all of these applications you will see the applications most often in search firms boards don't have access to them until you've named your finalists we want you to see those however it contains private data so it's very important that those names never go public the only names that will go public are people that you choose to interview and so at that point we'll make sure that we're discussing candidate a candidate B Etc without any identifying information in that public session when you're discussing who you want to bring in for an interview so those two statutes are very important and they're things that we're going to continue to revisit throughout the process board ownership is the second really important facet we're going to make all kinds of recommendations for you and we're going to give you a lot of options it is of course your choice as to make the decisions that are best for the students here in albertly so we'll suggest what we think might be best the only time I'm going to tell you what you have to do is if it's a law if there's something that you must do according to the law otherwise we're going to be here to guide you not to actually tell you what you're going to do and I think that's the best part part of the search is it becomes yours you own the decisions all the way along we've also added quite a few things I should mention for those of you that were on the search before we have added things over the last couple of years that were not a part of your search process originally uh we really believe in continuous Improvement and every year we're continuing to change and bring more things forth a couple of things that we've added we'll talk here in a moment in the timeline um has has increased the transparency of the search process uh specifically Q&A with msba and search preview meeting meetings those are new from the last time that we worked with you so you won't recognize recognize those but they they will be a part of this search are there any questions in terms of those two broad overview pieces of the process Barb just clarify for me so board involvement what I'm hearing you say is that we will see every applicant and we will make the final determination uh perhaps with some msba guidance on the finalist that we would interview I reading that right okay yes you'll have access to all all of the application materials not just résumés and cover letters things like that you'll see everything transcripts licenses Etc most board members choose to look at that up in the cloud we have a secure database we no longer use APPL TR either that's something we used to use for search now we use a proprietary database designed specifically for superintendent search done by School Board associations so you can look at them all up in the cloud 247 uh however if you are a board member who would prefer to look at hard copies we will arrange that with your HR team here in the district and you can come in and look at hard copies in the district but you cannot take them with you you can't take screenshots of them you just take really good notes on your own tablet but uh you can do hard copies if you prefer that kind of access while you're looking at the applications we have a team of service providers that are also reviewing those we have a meeting with those folks to talk about who's strongest who aligns most with what you've chosen as a leadership profile as well as who aligns most with what your stakeholders have said in the survey we're going to vet those people deep and we do pre- inters reference checks social media sweeps Etc and then we'll come to that meeting when we're talking about private data in that public meeting and recommend candidate B DL and N you'll know who those folks are because you're board members so you have the key as to who's LBD and Etc but you do not have to take our recommendations you'll simply know that those are the folks we felt best aligned But ultimately that's your call thank you for asking Gary let's go to the timeline first then this is what sometimes can take the longest because we want every board member involved at each of these meetings this is not a job for a committee uh we don't want some of you having um a louder voice in The Selection process than others you are one entity as a school board so everyone on the board should be involved in this process the yellow meetings or the things in yellow are actually board meetings I'm going to do a quick overview of the timeline just so you might grasp sort of what we're looking for as we go and then I think I'm going to turn it back over to Dave if it's okay to facilitate a conversation around any of these dates if these dates don't work I have my calendar with me and we can sure pull up different dates and look these are also based primarily on late afternoon to evening meetings if however you're a board that has a flexibility to meet during the day like today that does open up more room on my schedule and so these are not necessarily the hard and fast dates but they are ones I've suggested that I'm available in the evening in the afternoon today of course is the planning meeting right here on January anuary 24th we're going to be doing a lot of things to lay the ground workor uh we are suggesting posting the opening on the 28th and leaving that open through March 4th uh this time of year that's a good length of time there is such a thing as having an open too long and losing the momentum and you're also early enough in the process where you're not having to leave it open for two or three weeks you have enough time you have the luxury of time which is really great but that's our suggestion for an opening and closing date we suggest the public survey be opened next week on January 29th and stay open until February 19th again same thing people get survey fatigue so if you have it open too long um you don't capture them but a good deadline is in here I think of February 19th uh we'll talk a little bit more about the option of doing focus groups or listening sessions in concert with that survey um you don't have to do that we've actually found the survey tool has been extremely effective it was a lesson we learned in the pandemic because a traditional search methodology is to do F focus groups and listening sessions while you have the survey open that's just how it's always been done that's how I did it in 2019 when I started the pandemic taught us that it was very difficult to do those um focus groups and listening sessions almost impossible in fact other than having them online so we did and we found that they didn't quite work very well um I had a group once I was so excited about having 34 people on this meeting uh 7 a.m. with staff and I had 45 minutes to find out what they wanted in the superintendent after 45 minutes I'd only heard from four people uh the other 30 were lurking and listening but not wanting to go kind of on the record and so we started um pushing the survey harder because the focus groups online they just they weren't working really great but we we tried and then uh we saw an interesting phenomenon happen with the survey tool being pushed harder the response rate went way up we had more people participating um because I think some people thought yeah fit it in next week I'll go to that listing session at the community center and then they they don't make it and then they don't think about taking the survey um we also saw a significant increase in transparency the service survey is anonymous it levels the playing field you don't have some voices being heard louder than others and you also don't have people participating in multiple ways not everyone has access to an evening for a listening session uh not everyone speaks English fluently um not everyone's able talking in front of others so we would sometimes have people who came to a focus group and they came to a listening session and they took the survey so it kind of created this UNL playing field as far as hearing the voices of folks early in the process because early in the process through the survey and or these other avenues you hear from people early we will also talk about hearing from people later during the interview process if you want interview committies or if you want in audience input or meet and greets or tours or q&as all of that is another opportunity to bring folks into the process beyond the school board so the survey circling back to that we're suggesting January 29 to February 19th the search preview meetings I'll be working with uh District administration to line those up and I've just got some dates here that I'm available those are something that we started doing last year because we realized that misinformation early in the search was really difficult to overcome so the search preview meetings are not focus groups but they're an opportunity to meet with the internal leadership of the district so we might we meet with all the leadership of the bargaining units for example uh we might meet with all of the administrators whatever groups feel like the internal um kind of communication structure but for sure bargaining unit leadership and we meet with them to share information answer their questions and make sure that they are aware of what's Happening why and when and so by doing that we have seen an incredible response rate in the survey also go up because if we Loop in people internally early and say hey here's the timeline here's a vacancy brochure here's the public survey here's how long it's open here's how you access it help us get people involved when you bring people in early so they feel included they'll tell other people to please take that survey please watch that Q&A session and so the search preview meetings have been a really good tool for us last year and this year the uh informational Q&A then I'm suggesting February 6th at 4 it is not a board meeting it is a zoom session that we host and we invite people to watch and send questions in the chat box about the search process however we also recognize that not everybody's available at 4 o'clock on February 6 so we record this and we give it to the district to put on the website you'll have a superintendent search landing page and on that page will be the timeline the brochure all kinds of stuff the survey report when it's done but we also want that Q&A on there and um because not everybody can join us that day we also have a link where people can send me questions ahead of time that I'll answer on that day and then that answer is recorded so they can watch it later as well so we're trying to be as inclusive as possible and that's an opportunity for people to Simply say what's going to happen I heard the board might do this are they really going to do that and I'll answer everything and anything that they want to ask so the Q&A session we've only been doing for two or three years now um those have been really helpful as well we don't get a big crowd at the live sessions and we've tried different times a day it just nobody's available all the time we have very busy lives however if we have maybe 10 or 15 people on the live session we usually end up with like four or 500 that watch it on the website later so it does get viewed but not often on the live session Barb quick question is that scheduled for about an hour or is it just well activi is going on it's usually a half hour to an hour it depends I've had some done in 20 minutes because there's no questions only two people joined us live no one sent any questions in advance uh we do cut it off at one hour though so I had a district once that sent me 45 questions um lots of interest in that search however they were in buckets so I didn't read every single question I just said hey there's a lot of questions about this topic so I'll tell you what's going to happen and in that case we got done in like 59 minutes because we wanted to keep it under under an hour or people aren't going to watch the whole thing but we got through all the questions okay so the board meeting that we're going to eventually come back to and schedule is your interview training that'll be the next time time that I meet with you interview training because we want you to be very comfortable with what you can and cannot do interviewing for this position public job paid with taxpayer dollars we want to make sure you're aware of protected classes the kind of questions you can and cannot ask all of that stuff uh we'll also discuss that uh public input survey report and so this evening on whatever night we pick if it's these or not after you've seen the survey report based upon whatever we've been able to pull together from the folks who took that survey then you're going to make a decision about what's next relative to your stakeholders so that's the night for example we would say okay now we've presented the report this is what we heard from folks this is how it broke out between staff and parents and students Etc what's next for input do you want those folks engaged in the survey or excuse me in the interview process if so in what way here are the opportunities and the pitfalls of involving them at that stage of the process now what would you like to do and so that's a decision that evening that'll fall to the board to make what what's next for stakeholders after you've seen the results of the report uh the application deadline again we're suggesting March 4th we would begin looking at them on March 5th to make sure they're thorough and complete March 6th you'd receive access to them and only the board would receive access to these and uh secure location in the cloud again is the preferred method but we could make hard copies available through your HR team here then on potentially March middle of March that's the night you name finalist where it says you meet to termin finalist that's your ABCD candidate ABCD night we'll bring our recommendations to you you will know in advance who they are we'll be very careful not to identify anybody but once you actually choose who to interview at the end of that meeting I'll read the names out loud of your finalists every other name of anybody who applied stays private data forever so even if someone comes up to you in April and says gosh you know I heard that Jane Doe applied you guys didn't want to interview her you're going to have to say no comment right Gary Barbara I have a question going back to um March 6 with the capacity of the board to start reviewing I'm assuming the cloud prevents us from sharing the document with anyone that we think in the community might we think we decide might be should be privy we can't won't have that capacity I think if you shared your username and password you could okay but it would be extraordinarily illegal to do so sure so you wouldn't but yes you probably could people with technological Savvy can figure out pretty much anything but your username and password would be unique to just you individually and you're the only ones that know it and we wouldn't have the ability to print I'm assuming on our own msba is able to print them and so I'm sure there's a way that we could that someone who knows technology could okay again but we should not be doing that should not do that correct correct and we have all kinds of um ways to remind you of that and then part of the interview training is to say please don't look at these in the coffee shop you know please don't sit at your kitchen table and look at these CU someone's going to peer over your shoulder see your resume and boom you just broke the law so we have a lot of guardrails set up about how to handle the private data but um there's always a way around anything for anybody I suppose but we do trust school board members so I think we're going to be good all right determining finalists uh in the middle of March and then we'll also talk about interview questions we are going to talk about interview questions in a public meeting also we'll base them on your criteria for hiring leadership profile also whatever the stakeholder report tells us we're going to be a little cryptic and be careful to only talk about the questions one two 3 four five because we would prefer they not go public we don't want an unlevel playing field where some candidates know what the questions are and other candidates don't so we'll be a little careful that night that people don't know exactly what you're asking but I will share them with you that night and then collect them back and shred them afterwards but we will Design questions around your profile and your stakeholder summary report and then you choose which ones we'll probably give you 30 to 40 questions and we want you to pick 12 15 maybe uh but that'll be that evening your interviews right now I'm suggesting for the middle middle to end of March and I don't know how big your pool will be you might interview two or three people you might interview six in that first round pools are coming back they were very small immediately following Co we'd have pools anywhere from 1 to 12 people this year we're seeing some good pools um we've had four to 18 I think so there's more people being willing to throw their hat back in the ring for the role of superintendent um and very good people also it's been a trying year and years for everybody in education and I think superintendents were not immune to some of the burnout and things that occurred um with families students staff parents Schoolboard members everyone got exhausted so we're very grateful to see people coming back and being willing to step into the shoes of leadership whether you do interviews on one day or two evenings is up to you and we'll talk more specifically when we pull out your calendars we would then suggest a second round with maybe two or three people uh at the end of March again and that is usually done in the same day on that same day we could also do tours of the district and all of those things can get lined up and then on uh immediately following round two we'd like to see the board begin negotiating because it will be March and we don't want people um potentially getting another offer while you decide how to negotiate so one of the things I had a question for you all is how would you like to do that right now it says a board committee or a design begins negotiations what you could do is in advance of March there should be a group working on kind of a contract and setting up some guard rails as far as compensation package and that sort of thing the full board would need to approve kind of the parameters you could have one person representing the board negotiate with your individual person because they're not going to exceed what you've given them authority to do very often it's the board chair that that means things can go a little more quickly you know the night that you might say hey we'd love to bring you on as our new superintendent the board chair or whomever could send the contract off and say let us know what you think and then the next day you could kind of talk through it so it might only take a day or two to actually solidify a contract if you're more comfortable though having a committee do that negotiate with your loan finalist you can do that but you would need 3 days notice to post that and you can't really schedule it until that candidate knows their schedule so it's a little trickier if a committee is going to negotiate do you have a process in place right now for how you might negotiate with your selected person okay is there a board um negotiations committee or a Personnel committee or is there a board group already working on anything or would you work work on something as a committee or not no okay well and with the size of your District very often the contracts are really born out of the board but also your HR team and your legal councel they have the contracts that they would suggest based upon all the changes in legislation we have the model contract of course msba Masa model contract but what I'd like you to think about today and you don't have to decide is are there a couple board members that could volunteer to take ownership of coming up with a contract for the board to review maybe in February or March and then discuss what those parameters would be because it it happens parallel to the search you're kind of figuring out what contract you're going to hand the successful person and see what they think of it so someone needs to be developing that while we're doing the search so whoever might be on that group or groups or one person could work with your team here internally But ultimately the board does have to take a look and say yeah this is good make sure you don't offer too much here or too much here and have a have a template ready to go as soon as you can hopefully you'll have something approved if not in March early April at the latest um again if you do not find the right person we can extend the deadline we can reopen it we could help you find an interim and do another search next year at no charge so we don't want you to settle we want you to find the right person to lead the district we also if you do find some will do a transition Workshop uh sometime next next fall we want to get off on the right foot as far as expectations of uh the superintendent by the board and expectations of the board by the superintendent so we have a conversation around performance evaluations at that transition Workshop what are your priorities who's going to monitor them what goals are you going to help set and how will we evaluate them to see if they're reaching those goals as you go so that transition Workshop is included at no cost to anyone we would have done something called a post hiring Workshop that's similar it's it's different a little bit now and that it's geared toward helping you transition smoothly and setting expectations about high higher and highest priorities and then evaluating their performance on the highest priorities that's our process and so now I think I'm GNA turn it back over to you Dave if it's all right and talk about some of the board meetings or answer any questions people have on that yeah as we' we've been kind of asking question does anyone have any others as we're thinking about them before we talk some dates I have a couple of questions one I know last time in 2022 we were kind of at the tail end of the hiring cycle and I think we did interviews in May um and I'm just curious how do we compare now are we at an ideal time for hiring are we in the middle of the pro you know of the cycle how did how are we looking that is a great question um I think right now you're situated very very well um we did start some searches earlier in the year and so we were posting and you know recruiting candidates in um November and December and those pools were a little smaller and I think part of it was due to the fact that some administrators hadn't yet decided whether to seek new employment effective July 1 or not I think once the first of the year comes everyone starts looking ahead that that break right it was good to have the the openings we did over the holidays because a lot of people take that break to fill out their application materials update their resumés when they're not quite as busy over the holiday break but I think once January is here people do start looking forward to their next career move and that's when maybe sort of their eyes open up to the landscape and hear who's opening and who's closing and when um doing a search in April or May is very late and we do we do them sometimes did one with you in about I know three or four weeks maybe it was five but generally it's about a three and a half month process we're now saying three months is good because we don't want to take you too far into May or you're going to be losing people who are going to be signing contracts in April so I think you're sitting really well it's kind of a long way of saying that but this seems pretty good it's a busier year than we've seen before though we were doing this time last year we were maybe doing 15 16 searches right now we're on 23 wow it's a very busy year and there's quite a few more coming so you're ahead of at least 10 more that I'm aware of are coming that's good thank you um one other question um I know a frustration I had when we did this before was at the end when we when it was time to select a candidate we had only interacted with the candidates the two finalists you know twice two different interview sessions and had never interacted with them outside of those those meetings and never gone to their school districts or communities anything like that do do you recommend having some more opportunity to do those things and when would that fit into this timeline uh a lot of districts did site visits back in the day um probably in I suppose when Sandy was doing this 201 12 to 19 there were site visits kind of built into the timeline I haven't had a district to a site visit in all six years because time goes too quickly and now technology has sped up access to information also that's not to say you couldn't do them if it's important for you to go to the home District of a candidate for example and walk down Main Street and ask questions of people about them absolutely you would build that in probably between round one and round two so that after round one you've maybe talked to five or six people you want to get it down to two or three and two or three site visits is easier to manage than five or six so two or three site visits you would want to be sure that everyone is treated the same so if you have a candidate from an hour away and a candidate from 14 hours away you really should go to both um occasionally you have candidate from out of state so so it's not feasible to fly to their District to do a site visit so if you do a site visit with a localish candidate Minnesota candidate it is unfair to the candidate who might be from Idaho or something because you don't do a site visit so that variation has sometimes occurred with a finalist from a a location too far away to do it and in that case we'd say please don't do it for the closer ones do it for everybody or nobody but we can certainly build that in Angie if you'd like to there are also times where School boards want to um take the candidate out to dinner to get to know them better and just in an informal setting just visit and learn things about them we recommend against that for two reasons one the open meeting law uh your interactions with a candidate in an informal setting if the whole board is there is you really should post it you know where you're going to be what time so people could Sumit come and watch you have dinner with them so that's that's one reason that gets a little tricky the other thing is sometimes those informal conversations do Veer into protected class categories that you're not supposed to consider whether or not they have children whether or not they go to church whether or not they do this you know so those conversations that um are personal you do get to know them better which is helpful we just sometimes um are concerned that you might hire someone because you have things in person in common with them personally which another candid could say well I don't have kids in baseball so you you didn't like me as much so it's and sometimes people want to invite the spouses Along on those kinds of things and marital status and who they're married to shouldn't have any indication on whether they could do the job or not so it's fraught with opportunities to mess it up so we are really careful that being said it's your search and so if you want to do things like that to get to know them more other than the two interviews we'll find a way to make it work I just want to make sure you're aware of some of the pitfalls of doing those on some occasions I'm assuming that a lack of consistency if we were to go visit a community or whatever if we're not consistently doing that an applicant could say your hiring practices aren't fair is that the risk if we don't treat everyone the same when it comes to this additional information gathering it is and I use the word Level Playing Field a lot you're probably going to get tired of me saying that however um what it really means is the Equal Employment Opportunity Act you must do that you must keep that Level Playing Field because someone could have cause to claim they were discriminated against correct thanks car I guess I was thinking too about the uh site visit thing not being able to happen until you name the finalist or does that actually I guess they're named once we interview them then for first round or is it really the second round when they're actually named they'll be named the night that you choose to interview them and it's a little tricky statute says that um the the names of the finalists will go public you're going to have two rounds of interviews so technically the first round is semi-finals second round is finalists however statute also defines a finalist as someone who the board chooses to interview for a position so your semi-finalists are finalist according to statute so that night where you meet to determine finalists their names go public if you've chosen to interview them and so technically you could probably do a site visit right away but I'd say that's really early plus you might have six people that's a lot of site visits so that's why most people wait until between round one and round two and give themselves a bit of a window um we have had districts that will schedule round one and two only two or three days apart though because they don't want to lose people per se and so that's a pretty tight time frame to visit Three districts and do the kind of um Main Street walking that you want to or going in the buildings we do ask board members to do some reference checking between round one and two anyway um one reason is people will tell board members things they're not telling the search firm we're also limited to calling people that they list as references because we're doing our reference checks before their names go public so we can't pick up the phone and call someone and basically out the fact that they're looking for a new job so we have to call people that are listed as references and they're going to say good things usually not always but usually um but board members you can call anybody once you know who they are we really prefer you wait till after round one though so it's a smaller list of people um and we have some things we'll walk through with reference checks one or two people should ideally do that as a part of your due diligence so then Barb when we talk about maybe having a community interview team and administrative or general staff interview team that would be round two correct you certainly could do it in round one the reason it's usually in round two though is it's a very big time commitment if you interview six people and they're 1 hour interviews and 15 minute breaks between your asking a stakeholder to give up eight or nine hours of their day or two evenings in a row and if they're going to provide input they have to watch all of the interviews they can't just watch two or three or four provide input they have to watch all of them Level Playing Field so that's why round two it's down to people that you're seriously considering you could picture them in the seat of superintendent and then it's a 3 to four hour commitment for people to come in and do that with you so usually round two I don't think I've had a board do it yet in round one but it's your search Okay other questions these are great questions hi Kim sorry that's okay all right so dates nailing down dates is the next challenge I'm going to turn it over to you Dave try and find some dates that work for everyone for these next meetings the basically the highlighted areas where we need to kind of pick dates and all that so I marked down some of the uh the dates from Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Monday Tuesday what you know any of that are there any days uh and and me let me back into this quickly what what do you think about meeting time are we thinking more in the 5:00 special meeting like we do with our regular meetings or are you thinking the 2 o'clock special meeting time which as we see can get into some schedules too I like five uh it's convenient and we're used to it and then we would have more people from the public partake yeah I think I I was thinking the same the 5:00 so we at least does that interfere with anything with yours or okay all right so that's good so we'll be looking at you know five o'clock special meetings um so then the first date comes uh where we sit down we talk about the uh the survey then and um you know talk about some of the interview questions so the first highlighted area 27th 28th of February which is a Thursday Friday or the 5ifth or 6th and I didn't write those down I figured we'd want to do them earlier than later um that's what I was yeah kind of I was I was thinking unless somebody goes wellow hold on a second is anyone is anyone I'm gonna need to do some remote meetings okay okay all righty but then but that you pick I can be the be remote and then after pretty much the first area we should be good to go first set first set of dates we'll make it work back 20 seconds okay we'll we'll make it work so okay all right so THS I'm sorry we talking about uh in that first highlight area we're looking at the 27th or 8th of uh right February um any any dates that don't work for anyone nope they all work well 27 let's let's go for the 27th that sound good 27th at five then okay okay the second uh scheduled um special meeting then we're looking down at March 13 14 17th again a Thursday Friday with with with Barb here what what do you recommend as a time frame for that meeting that um that first highlighted one the interview training and such thanks for asking that's usually about two hours I did one last night and it was 2 hours and 45 minutes cuz they had a lot of questions so about two well let me re ask that question that do we want to go at 5 or do we want to move it just a little earlier I mean I don't mind the consistency of always being five is good Dar you got pizza for us Satur there you go just be fed yeah okay let's we'll stay with five then even though it's a couple hours we'll we'll make it work okay okay uh then sliding down into the March 13th 14th uh then into that next week of the 17th any preferences do we want to keep consistently or consistency with the Thursdays again okay I'm tied up on the 19 20 21st okay Phil okay do you have a certain time that next week Kim that your I can do the 14th or any of the other dates it's just I can't the 1th okay about the 14 what's that I'm sorry about 14 that's what I was thinking the weekend what's I'm sorry you gave me the dates I didn't write them down so I have same question that determining final interview questions a couple hours again on average maybe an hour okay but that's only because we can't talk a whole lot about the candidates and so we're being super vague you've done all your homework in the previous two weeks we've done all our homework so it's it can go pretty quick unless there's disagreement on the board about who to interview where someone really wants candidate L and you got to talk people into candidate that can take a while but there's this one there's usually consensus pretty quickly and it usually aligns with what we're recommending but again it doesn't doesn't always because you recognize some names and you maybe are or are not interested in interviewing people we suggest so maybe an hour hour and a half and Darcy I'm assuming all the meetings we're planning are going to be here yes okay great Neil I I didn't write down that is a 14th work for you yep you just said 17th okay fin yep yep good well let's uh let's go with h for March 14th which is a Friday at 5:00 P PM also keep that consistency and then uh interviews then first round interviews it looks like uh Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday uh that week or starting next Monday the 17th week of the 17th now you said the 17 year go 17th and 20 through 21st Neil 19th 22 okay you're not you know we we definitely are going after the 22nd with Mary Joe 2 so how about the 25th that's a Tuesday yep I to make sure yep so that would be March 25th for first round at 5:00 pm again here so Dave if you are starting at 5:00 pm I suggest you book two nights oh that's right yeah because if you do have six it's going to take about eight or nine hours let alone your deliberations afterwards so you could do two nights in a row at five but even that's going to get kind of late depending on how long the deliberations take well three or one or two two today what do you I mean basically we you call it maybe 45 minutes and a little cooling period for the next person to come straight hour we suggest an hour and 15 minutes in between so we start at uh 3 that goes till 9: again that's fine or if we start at two that's eight I mean any could we do a full day and start at like 9 I would would some people do that you want to go earlier 26 you said it' be better for you then yeah if we do full day yeah so we do it at full day at 9:00 a.m. and 26 works better I think there's sometimes an advantage with interviewing within everyone within the same day because you know our memory L of us are more mature than others our memory might lapse from one day to the next I don't never say older but I'm just saying yeah maybe in one day I think there's an advantage to do it at that everything was fresh yeah and it's consistent that's what we want to be so all right let's go with the 26 then it's a Wednesday could I ask one more question then yeah go ahead so the the one thing I might suggest is you pick your finalist later than the 14th because that is 12 days and if you name your finalists and there's you know 12 days for people to wait for that interview there's going to be a lot of Mischief in that 12 days and candidates um don't want to sit on their hands for 12 days waiting for their interview while people are looking into every single ounce of their background so the closer it can be some some boards name their finalist and the interviews in the next day or two that's pretty quick but I think almost two weeks is too long so could you do something other than the 14th I was going to say should we look at the 20th and that would be as close as we would I won't be here that's right you're gone but the 19th you're around I'll be G oh that's also that day should we interview on we do something we did it the same night as our regular board meeting on the 17th I'm sorry could you ask that again so we we have a regular board meeting on the 17th of March and so could we just extend that BNN item or would you rather do another night I don't doesn't I just just saw that on the calendar so the 18th would would be fine for me but if you named them on the 14th could you interview all day on the 18th and do round two on the 26th that would give you that buffer between round one and round two to possibly do site visits because that would give you long distance between oh you're talking about the moving the 14th determine finalist we could still do the what she's saying is still do the 14th as the determination but then on the 18th conduct an all day interview all day round one and then you could do round two on the 26th in the afternoon or evening Mary Jill won't be here in person before that date that's what I was thinking I would like everyone to be that's why back at that time and we were looking at the 26 I was just thinking we move the well the interview questions like Kim says they not a bad idea on the 17th and we could just expand it as part of the business meeting could we uh could we move the uh deter finalist to the 18th 18th the problem then the 26 would be better days make a difference I was going to ask what do you so I want to make sure for the interviews we're all here I mean in person that we have a regular board meet on 17 touring finalist on the 18th and then an all day meeting on the 26th that sense yeah eight dat Barb what do you think I mean we're not going to beat up the time frame too bad of the 8 day user no that's that's not as long the 18th to the 26th that's not very long it's just the closer because of two weeks that's too long to have people's names floating around out there but this is 18 to 26 is fine did the 24th Network did the 24th network if we want it a couple days for the determination finalist no for the first round of interviews can do the 24th okay I I could do the 25th I would just switch things I originally said not the 25th but if that would help with starting that window it's fine with to so I did I can't sure can't do the 24th but I do the 18th then I thought that was the first round so the 18th would be the first round we were talking correct yeah so the 17th we would talk about okay no I'm sorry that's right determining Finance on the 18th okay first round 26 then so what did we decide the first round would be on the 18th yes okay 500 so on the 17th and we'll talk about the first round would be on the 18th right okay okay first round on the 26min the finals okay okay 26 it's that's that's first round okay yep okay yep gotcha so first round on the 26 okay on the 18th we determine and then the second round we want to come in soon right we'll have to look at some new dates because I only had it through March 26 but that's when you're having round one so let's look at March 26th on a Wednesday all day round one so then round two would you like to do the following week on the 31st or the 1st of April or the 2nd Monday Tuesday Wednesday the 31st 1st or 2nd or do you want it to be further into April so that you have a longer period between round one and round two in case you want to do site visits you'll be doing reference checks in that window as well so okay the 26th to the 31st is a nice window the 26th to the 1st second third fourth those are all good Windows between probably not the first it's not that I'm you know got anything in the background Su superstitious at all I got to make sure this set's a little on just k so yeah does the 31st work yeah yeah what do you get 3 yeah second round yep okay Barb what would you recommend for a time if you have three finalists I'd start at least by 4:00 because you got the 3 1 hour interviews with 50 minute breaks and then your deliberations might take while if you have a good pool of you know strong two or three it's going to take a while to decide so three four something like that would you recommend that we have to make that decision that night after the second R of interviews or do people ever sleep on it and then come back and decide the next day or a little later yep great question um the majority of boards decide that night I have had boards get stuck and not able to decide and usually by 1: or two in the morning they call it a night and come back the next day and then they come come to a conclusion once they've slept on it but the vast majority do decide that evening Poss possibly so if your um round two interviews are on March 31st then the board committee or design would begin negotiating April 1st do you want to um it would help me if you decided now if you're comfortable having one person represent the board in those negotiations of course they have to bring it back to the full board um or if you want a committee to start working on that contract and negotiate um some boards have a negotiations committee that they want to be you know three people meeting with the loan finalist and Hammer out the contract that can slow it down a little bit because that's four people's schedules trying to find a day of meet and then we' like you to post it so it's open also it's not um you can't close a meeting for a superintendent negotiation because they're not a labor un person um so the majority of boards go with a board design begins negotiations well if you've adopted policy 213 though then it has to be open if 213 is in your policy books then that means that every Committee of the board is treated like uh the full board for an open meeting so you do have to post committee meetings if you've adopted 213 and not every board has adopted 213 so we've adopted 213 but at MSB I was talking to the MSB um I think Tiffany and we were talking about right now we don't have open meetings even though so it's three and she said well MSP recommends that all all standing committees are open finance facilities that was my policy and then ad hoc whether there's two not there's 213 yeah but that always open but if we have one board member that worked with our staff that negotiate contracts that correct one person would not require that correct okay yep I will read the my notes to make sure they match with yours and then when I get this updated um tonight I'll send it back to everybody so you can look at it and put one more set of eyes on it and Darcy will prove fre it for me I'm sure so the yellow meeting dates and times uh February 27th at 5:00 pm interview training Etc March 18 determined finalists Etc at 5:00 pm March 26th round 1 9:00 a.m. March 31st 400 p.m. round two interviews and then April 1st board design begins negotiations and I'm going to take out the time to be determine special meeting if it's a committee because you don't need to worry about that then and then do you have a regular meeting scheduled in early April early to mid April yet do you know because we could put that 7th that would be great if you could have a contract ready for the board to approve by April 7th what time are your regular board meetings 5 P PM I should have known that okay so I'm going to put um April 1st board design begins and then April 7th board meets to improve Employment contract at a regular meeting okay congratulations that's actually the hardest part of the whole meeting today timelines are tricky timelines are very very tricky so thank you very much for your patience on that all right next thing we're going to talk about is a vacancy brochure uh this in here is a draft I want to thank um folks on staff that helped us pull together the points of Pride for your District I'm going to insert all of the timeline information um on both page one and page two of this vacancy brochure when you look at this first of all if you see anything that is wrong or you notice a typo please let me know because I'm going to make these changes over the weekend what we try to do here is peque people's interest we're not not going to talk anyone into applying with just this vacancy brochure we want them to be interested enough to go to mde and look at all of your reports we want them to be interested enough to go to your website and interested enough to ask people about albertly area schools hopefully the numbers are correct again we got these from Team uh your your team and then we inputed them however we're human and so if we missed missed any of those numbers Dar if you can make sure those numbers are right based on what you all sent us is there anything missing that you're proud of here in albertly or anything about the community that you think would be a draw for someone that we need to include in here otherwise it's probably ready to go on the front page could we simply say biking trails because cool um will explore should we say the Blazing star bike trail will explore the beautiful countryside or do you want more generic and take out the actual name oh so it's the will soon connect is not correct and will connect there you go thank you any other suggestions to the first page okay great thank you very much second page couple of things on here um the leadership profile we also do these a little differently than we did before so you all took the hiring criteria survey thank you for doing that we used to list the hiring criteria survey which would be the next page if you have this in your packet these are the results from the board so instead of just listing those now we actually come up with a narrative around those and so I'd like the board to read the five bullet points the five areas of Competency that seem to arise from your survey and tell me if that sounds good should we uh just take a couple minutes write our own five down then and then we convene to discuss is you to get your five points is that how how we did well we already took this this yeah this is from the online survey yep so we took this and we created this leadership profile so I'm looking for your stamp of approval or your edits to the leadership profile I read this earlier and I thought it was perfect so no changes I did I did too that I was it was nice to see see that pretty much in in three of the categories we were we had a vast majority of the board were in agreement there so I'm hearing that the leadership profile is good what do you think about the last sentence previous superintendent experience preferred but not required we based that on five of you saying yes we want previous superintendent experience and two said no it was not necessary because more than a half the board wants someone with previous superintendent experience I'd recommend leaving that in there some boards want to pull it out so that everyone is I mean it is you could say previous superintendent experience required you could I'm just saying you'll get a smaller pool half the people that get jobs these days have not been superintendent before but you could say that so we're okay with that language preferred but not required got it okay so salary and benefits this um is also a change can I just ask one question yes so seven respondents um seven of us um responded to that question but when I add up the numbers of responses it's like 36 and it should be 43 did did some of us not okay got it everyone could pick six some picked fewer than six okay got it probably on accident yeah are you a math major I can't do math in my head that fast I don't think I could have figured that out all right all right so there's a new law that starting January 1 we have to now publish a range we used to have four options for you in terms of how you address salary in your brochure but now it's required to publish a range and so you can see in here the new statute salary ranges required in job postings this is some suggested language right here and the main thing I think I'd like from the board is what range would you like me to put in this brochure and and you have a comparison here on the next page of other districts similar in size not all of them are in your region but they are some comparable total compensation package numbers but the base salary is what we need to put in the brochure this year AR range I don't think we had a range last time yeah not specific I don't think I mean I I when I look at them I'm trying to look at similar size but it's also hard to uh we don't have it listed on there how many years particular superintendent been sitting there because if I've been there 15 years I should be at 190 whatever that number is versus when I start in 10 at 155 so now now we put a suggested range down bar does that mean that's not like in Granite that's just something for a candidate to look at and determine if it's something they're interested in correct and usually districts are going with a 20 to maybe $30,000 range and that the whole argument is well we can't go too low and we can't go too high but you have no idea who's going to apply for this job so you don't know what you might need to pay but obviously you don't want to put a top of a range beyond what you can afford that's the other thing is do not over promise because whoever gets the job if they have some experience they're going to want that top number so but I do need to know this today so we can put it in the brochure to publish next week um I did a little bit of pre-work and I like your point Dave there are a lot of different variables that can affect the the salary um and I just said a really simple calculation of looking at the cost per student for these areas and we um weren't the highest but we were on the higher end um the average of the other schools was $523 per student and if we we were at 5686 but if we use that average that would put us at $175,000 um for salary and I'm just wondering should we do a range of 165 to 185 just going to say that in the middle maybe I was looking at here and you just said you know mentioning the range of 165 to 185 175 is in the middle again it's not Granite but it's something for people to look at so so I looked at a little a little similar but a little different in that we we five of us said we we would prefer superintendent experience so I my range started at 165 but went to 195 I it necessary to have a range a lower how about up two can't do that read the language in the statute it's new January 1 and every District struggling with how to do this so you're not the only ones going well can't we just say if we had a range that was from 155 to 195 that would pretty much be the same as up to 195 because uh nobody's going to come for5 yes and that's a really big range $40,000 is a big say I think it' be prudent to establish a maximum over which we will not go e but I think Barb's point is once they see that Max if they're coming with experience they're going to be pushing for that and so what I'm trying to juggle in my head is I look at Austin a pretty comparable School a bigger District than us so and you you look at Dr paage Who had experience from Byron as a superintendent then he had experience or is still in Austin and so would we bring somebody in above what he's currently being paid I I I I listened to what Barb said of we don't want to get too high that we're forced into the corner of this is the candidate we really want we set our Maxes this they tell us they have the experience well the way the statute reads we're with with our range we're establishing a minimum and maximum salary and so that addresses your maximum right so you could do 165 to 9 190 if you if you use that you could my my fear is that someone close to that 190 isn't going to make the jump and they had the experience but we also that would be starting out at the top of the range too so I I see I hear both because I'm looking as I look at the comparisons of all the schools I you know I've marked all the ones who have been superintendant for for a while and I I just for me it would be hard to justify bringing them in higher than somebody who has nine nine plus years of experience as a superintendent already and a larger school like I I don't know that I'm comfortable doing that and are we comfortable paying that maybe is a question yeah well that that's what I that's what I was saying that uh our Max should reflect uh just as the term suggests the an amount over which we will not go but that doesn't mean that uh the person that uh applies for this position should expect to receive our the maximum salary we have listed and we' have some latitude and I I I think what I hear you say Mary Joe We compare we should compare what they are currently making in their current position position with their current experience and and uh credentials uh to to uh what we are willing to pay pay and probably you know if if if they are applying for a position here I would assume that they would expect to receive at least what they were getting where they came from I'm just wondering to and there's no case law out there right now because it just started January 1st in the range so all of a sudden you do have a candidate that does have more experience that's looking in there you you can exceed a range you can go either side of a range but we have to put a range is that fair to say I'm not an attorney and I don't play one on TV I would just say be careful however maybe we should turn to Ashley for some questions about what range she'd suggest Andor the benefits I'd love her thoughts on the benefits because we should put and benefits such as maybe there's a blurb that you're already using in your postings that I want to mirror I don't want to do it without her input on that barbar question I have is if a candidate has a PHD do they expect a higher salary than somebody with uh justice superintendent license not everyone but many okay few different numbers we've talked about um again like I said I'm I'm just curious on the Range like if we can exceed one way or the other if we pick something but we don't want to limit ourselves either with candidates that would be interviewing so yeah I don't I don't see that as a as a f figures that are chiseled in stone and I don't think we really need to be too concerned about what they are because we do not have to we're not going to be expected to offer someone that Max which we publish right I just don't want to to exercise some extreme Prudence here and and advertise a maximum which would prevent some good candidates from applying for the job you know hopefully we can publish a maximum uh decide upon an excellent candidate and convince them that they don't need that maximum salary go again Paul and Ashley have you discussed the a range at all okay what we do typically right on our job posting is um obviously the master agreement that is a part of that job um but also that it's based on experience so know it's a range it's a start but also that availability to yeah well from all of our other postings it is jizzled and stone you know there there's an existing salary schedule that prescribes what employees are going to be paid and uh based on their credentials U joining our uh employers employees that that's what they get but here the superintendent is not a member of any bargaining unit so I like the the law with the range because that does give The Negotiator a little something to step back on and say well you read the range that we presented if you're coming and you're looking at 220 maybe not going to work this time so I I don't mind that that's why I'm just you know as Kim mentioned 190 maybe a 170 to 190 because You' mentioned to keep it somewhat 20,000 I mean a little bit of and again it's all negotiable you know and if we do find that candidate I would would imagine be excited to have them here so that would be where we go with it I I would just recommend that we do do not uh establish uh for the sake of frugality a maximum which might detour candidates from applying seems like to don't we Barb we have to give a range so we have to have a bottom and a top you have to have a bottom and a top but whether or not it is off different someone wants to make 220 and they see this range is up to 195 I don't think they'll apply and you probably know you can't afford that right so we want to be realistic yet aspirational which is not an easy thing to do it's a fine balance I I guess I'm just say suggested that we could publish a maximum that is more than we can afford and then not go there I'd rather not do that the problem we get into that is they walk in and they go well it's got two and a quarter down so that's where I'm setting at and now we might just extend the uh the the uh the opening again I don't want to get into that if we find that candidate that's the only reason I say that it gives a little leeway to the you know I mean I I look at a school here that's had a super it's it's a small school it's had a superintendent for 18 years and right now he's making $129,000 oh that's a candidate it's a great candidate that could look at this and go I get a $50,000 and and probably deserves it but you know there's other reasons that he's there she he whatever it's cuz maybe kids maybe that's where they want to live so hey because of the bike trails Neil we all want to live here just kidding the other the other um concern that I have on the the bottom number um and I know it is a range but how close is that to what's what's our Gap from the next level of administrator you know if we have principles close to that we have to be careful about that as well our cabinet members so well that's easy we need to determine what our lowest paid administrator is receiving and then the come up with a minimum a little more than that I don't think this it's we need to spend an awful lot of agonized time in determining how about 170 to 190 would that work I'm again I I I fear that a a candidate that might work for less than 190 may not apply for it if that's if that's published as the max I mean we're currently paying 191 according to into this chart and that's for that's for um the the current year so we we'd be hiring somebody uh for the subsequent year so a c the current salaries are you know reasonably uh less than what the person would expect to to be paid for the first year of employment so I mean if we use a current Sal salary as a Max I think 190 is a little low but again I'm not saying that we we should expect to pay what we are publishing as Max but I don't want to scare people away we do negotiate we're going to have a three-year contract so you start 3 just using 3% if you start at 190 and 3% and that's you know $5,000 not that much and then so about you're at 205 or something after two or four after three years that might be something to sell them on Sal be% to that because that's next year that right yep that's why I I like 195 because of that but I'm I just you're making it harder on negotiator that's a hard butt here you know that 19 I like that there there will be some candidates nobody not P we can call it I mean that becomes the next year the next year me could be 222 if you start a little bit higher it's a 222 you already look at me like wouldn't want to talk to me when it comes to this no I'm just kidding 170 to 195 it's a $25,000 range I usually say 20 to 30 and that that's fine I don't really care so much what we list for the range but if if we start out paying somebody 195 they're going to have to be a rock star or I'm going to vote against that so going once going twice 170 195 okay and then Ashley could you look at the parts that are in um italics and maybe just send me a blurb in an email by Monday afternoon what you would like to say benefits may include I mean whatever you want to list okay thank you very much great that's a new conversation for all the searches this year so you did great thank you that's what we go in this part of the brochure I do want to point out at the bottom of the second page of the brochure is my contact information under deadline and selection so board members please feel free to text call or email me with any questions I am also happy to talk to any stakeholders candidates applicants if there are questions about the search process please have them reach out to me okay all right um vacancy brochure done I do want to talk about public input for a moment back on our agenda um I already gave you a bit of a sneak peek on the Q&A with msba and search preview meetings we're going to get those uh set up and I'll reach out to Dary about the search preview meetings and figure out what days or times work best um for those groups to visit with me I usually do those online also um but if for some reason I need to be here in person I can the community and the staff survey uh is going to be open then next week and we will have a Communications blurb that we'll send to Darcy probably on Monday that you can copy and paste into email blasts you can put it on your social media site you can send it in press releases to the media to get a lot of interest in that staff and Community survey as soon as possible once it is open and then the finalist interviews I just wanted to REM mention that you'll have a chance to talk about that and what you want to do and you won't talk about it in detail till you've seen the report okay that stakeholder report is going to give you a really good foundation to make decisions about the next steps for your um your public and your staff relative to the interviews okay uh review search agreement so where's the survey oh survey gosh that's what I was going to do this for just a moment I want to confirm one thing on the staff survey and the public student Etc survey this is going to be open until February 19th we have it in English and in Spanish and it will be available not only electronically but it will also be available in hard copy on not everyone wants to or can use a computer to fill these out so hard copies will be at the district office for anyone who wants to do it with paper and Pen um I just need those scanned back to me before that deadline uh on ter in terms of self-identifiers we've had some districts choose um District partner as a self- identifier or agriculture if a is a huge part of the community or business owner or all three so I'm just curious because we already do have staff member parent Guardian Community member um students other and then in the first area what might you want people to be able to identify as the things in highlights I like the business owner slash uh District partner okay can you slash and put agriculture in there too that way they can I mean we we know but I'm just thinking give them that opportunity you can put three yeah separating agriculture yeah I think that I I was going to suggest same thing that's a good idea so business owner District partner agriculture will people know what a district partner is because districts have they've added that because it's like um Community Foundation higher education institutions um major donors they're your partners maybe it's the internships that the manufacturing companies in town they're a district partner because they employ your kids in internships so it's kind of a catchall phrase but there are people who go District partner what do they think they mean the vast majority will be parents and Guardians and staff and community members those will be your biggest three unless there's a way for us to really capture student voice which would be great and uh we can talk about how to do that perhaps working through your advisory periods or your senior high clubs or associations we'd love to hear from the kids you cannot require them to fill this out though please it's a survey so you can't make kids fill it out but boy would we' love to hear from Senior High kids as many as we possibly can I what in that same vein that I'm wondering principal Dibble how do you how do you see this being promoted to students and as far as an opportunity for them to complete the survey what advisory time be the time you guys tell me long do I do it okay I we like that's the right answer so it's good so the the the question question about District partner I think it's a if someone looks at the list if it just said business owner and you looked at the list and you're you're not the owner of the business and you're not a Community member but you work in the community that and you partner heavily with the district so I'm thinking of the HR Director at innovance he partners with the district heavily he's not doesn't live here works here but he wouldn't fall under any of these other parts I know there's an other but I think um you know calling that out would it's that would be a good reason to do that I think fair then correct yep yep yep so we'll go with uh business owner District partner agriculture okay sounds good the rest of the survey is what we have used very successfully in the last year there's quantitative questions the second page you'll recognize this is the exact same survey you all took to come up with that leadership profile we really like this page because it is a direct comparison Apples to Apples and it tells us whether you as a board are aligned with your stakeholders or not so that's a really great page to have people fill out uh then there's the qualitative stuff which are open-ended questions and people can say as much or as little as they want to everything in this survey is anonymous we don't know who fills out what we're not a market research firm so we don't track who's done it who hasn't all that sort of thing and it's opt in um they take it if they want to take it we hope that a lot of people take it I think there's a lot of interest in the search so I'm pretty sure you'll get a good response uh they also do not need to complete the whole survey if you have people say boy that seems like a long survey they could answer one question and hit submit and they're done and that answer is counted so they're not required to answer everything in the survey any questions on that though it'll stay in those two languag if that's all right did you decide for the survey to be completed by we just saw the date up here and I didn't write it down February 19th okay one question Barb so when we get the results of the survey will the the results be broken down by the categories of here's what the parent said here's what the staff said business owners Etc all of the quantitative stuff will be that choose your top six background your those will all be broken out by respondent category the open-ended questions we don't break out by respondent category okay you know the only thing Barb is when we do surveys we're doing them in three languages now in the district so I don't know if we want to have it translated to Ken or if we talk to our Ken success coaches and we do it at like their Community meetings Church Etc where we go regularly and meet with families so if we want to add a third one and get it translated we could get that to you yes and I would need it by Wednesday um the survey tool we use doesn't have Karin it does have Somali in Spanish and English but not Karin okay so we need translators to do that otherwise what you just suggested Mary joa has worked really well where they have opportunities for District staff or cultural aons to meet with families and help them fill out the survey um and very often families in our experience even if that's not their first language they like to fill out the survey in English but they want to translator to help them fill it out in English even if they speak Spanish or Somali or kin and so just the fact fact will be that you will have much fewer responses in other languages sometimes we have a district that has you know 400 responses in English and zero in Spanish that doesn't mean that population didn't fill out the survey they probably filled it out with the help of a their kids or a neighbor or District staff person in English but if you wanted in Karin we'd need it actually we would need it on Tuesday in order to copy and pasted into our program to make it go live in on Wednesday but yes we could do that all right um that's it for the survey then I want to review search agreement stuff real quick because you have some decisions to make about some options so uh the next page in the packet it's public input and at the bottom it says three this is what I was talking about earlier and that the online survey as well as hard copies the Q&A session and then we've added search preview meetings and then the input forms or interview committees are all included in msba search package if you want those parallel focus groups and listening sessions running starting like next week or the week after we do charge for those and so if you want those added I need to know today so I can start scheduling them and I can adjust the contract to reflect the allart charges do that before correct I don't believe you had time before yeah that was a really condensed search even now though I mean we've we've launched 23 searches so far we have not yet had a district do these early in the process they rely on that survey as the tool hard copy you know special language groups all that sort of thing they haven't done it and I don't think they feel like they've missed anything because the survey report is really all-encompassing um so we haven't had someone ask for it yet but we will certainly do it if you expect it and you want it that's why it's still in here as an option for you and and you you said that you've had pretty strong responses through the survey in it on its own well listening sessions are tricky because we try to schedule at least three or four at different times of day in different parts of the community but people's lives are incredibly busy and so back in 2019 and early 2020 when I was still doing those I do listening sessions with one person there sometimes and I did one one time and it was the newspaper reporter no community members could make it they're like I'll take the survey online or I'll go tomorrow to the one in the school I mean it just it's very hit and miss as to the kind of information that you get from those groups we ask the same exact questions that we ask in the survey there's nothing special about it unless for example if you had a partnership with a higher education institution and there was some really critical part of that relationship that was going to impact the superintendent's job maybe you want to do a focus group with leadership at the higher you know may maybe there's a circumstance where a specific focus group to gather specific information would be helpful just offering them generally to the community has not resulted in any new information I've never learned something in a focus group I didn't learn from the survey but it did make some people feel HT some people who expect to be you know have influence on the decision they loved coming to those because they kind of a PR move for those folks to be included so that that can be useful too if a district wants to do it I guess I'm hoping that uh it's not a focus group exactly but if we get three different uh interview groups too and we get toward the end of you know we talk community members we got staff Administration we decide to do it hopefully that might be able to give us some focused uh energies at those particular candidates do the two or three or whatever we in second round interview my thought it is more productive General at the end than in the very beginning it used to be that boards wouldn't even create that leadership profile until after they' done the survey and after they'd had the listening sessions because they wanted to include those voices I have to tell you though the school boards that now go ahead and do that leadership profile you're right in tune with what your community wants you're elected by your community to do this so I've not yet found a board whose leadership profile is out of step with what those survey results say so I don't I don't think you need to wait to do anything with that leadership profile it's it's going to align I already know that but um it's also it's just a traditional methodology people are used to you know this is how we've always done it so I want to make sure you're aware of it and you can tell me if you want me to do it and I will you know I like the survey that it's there's some just check boxes and then there's open-ended questions and that we make sure the public knows we're going to see it all so we are going to hear your words or your voice so I'm okay not doing the listening session I was reading this when you were talking did you say we have to decide that right now or we can decide that later uh these listing sessions and focus groups we'd have to decide now because we'd need to conclude them before February 19th and that means scheduling them can take quite a bit of time and then doing them and making sure we're done before the survey closes I'm okay just doing the survey okay so no focus groups at least in the very beginning we're going to keep that whole option open for the interviews here okay the next page says summary of search services this is what the process is I want to make a note that um this is all from our proposal in the very middle there's two bullet points just over halfway down that have two sets of red asteris by them we have a hybrid model now and we deliver those meetings virtually however there are some boards that um want us to be in person for every single meeting and we can do that but we do charge $300 a meeting to be in person um because the hybrid option has been working really well and it saves time and money for the district and for us but if you're an in-person board I could come to those meetings in person it would be the February 27th interview training and discussing the survey report and March 18th picking your finalists those two meetings I would join you virtually unless you want to add $600 for me to be here in person for both of those any thoughts virtual we did that before yeah yep okay virtual for both of those meetings okay no additional charges for extra inperson meetings great and then page 10 from The Proposal would you like to do any national advertising that's that first paragraph these are all the sites we could put this position on if you are interested certainly not required Rellis also that we switched from alpack to Rellis Rellis is a national application database um anyone looking for jobs in their home States through a School Board Association will see Minnesota opportunities um but I'm happy to at cost adverti on these sites if you'd like we don't mark it up um large districts want all of these um otherwise smaller District districts might want particular places and I'm thinking um some districts that are located in or near reservations would want to advertise on the national Indian Education Association that has been a selection for some districts that have a high indigenous population other districts um with a high uh Latino Or Hispanic population sometimes choose to do Latino administrators and superintendents for $250 otherwise word of mouth is probably the best advertising and Minnesota is a small community of Administrators everyone knows Albert Le's open people are already talking so simply your choice if you want to try to reach people nationally or not we also do have someone however I should mention this uh someone just joined our team this year who goes to National superintendent conven conventions he's a consultant and he is doing um National recruiting for us at those conventions he'll keep a card on him with a QR code to mb's jobs board and he'll hand those out when he when he's at those conventions if he talks to someone that he thinks might line up with one of our districts we're looking for I guess last time we didn't add any all the carts did we any thoughts I I don't feel the need to do them at this point okay yep thank and then the last underneath here last choice is background checks um obviously you will do a Minnesota background check that's a requirement of employment this is a background check that we can do for you if you want is through Baker Eubanks and it's a much more in-depth background check it's a national criminal database um there's just a lot more to it they do a social media uh evaluation of a candidate it's they verify 10 years of employment 10 years of um or they all of their educational credentials if they say they have a PhD from MIT they verify that however it's up to you and it's $395 a person so on whoever you want some districts that really want it want it on all five or six other districts say can we wait and decide after we hire one person the the finalist and then have it on them and we're like yeah it's just a little tight if you hire them on March 31st and you approve a contract on the 7th of April it takes five to seven days to get that back um but it is an option and you can certainly wait and decide after you see your pool maybe you'll recognize the names of everybody you're going to interview and you don't think that this is necessary if though there's candidates you really don't know or they're maybe from out of state and you want to vet them more deeply we could add this and maybe do it after round one on the last two or three people that's an option so it could be to be determined I guess is at this point okay to be determined background check checks that's it uh just a couple of last minute checkpoints to make sure we're on the same page I always want to visit with the board about the role of the current superintendent do you want um Mr cren to have any role in this search at all typically a sitting superintendent does not have a role but I want to make sure that I'm clear with you if you want him participating in any way that's one of the things that talked about his strengths he's like to mentor and help people along so I mean I would suggest get him involv somewhere what do you guys think would he be willing to maybe serve as an ambassador for the district so if candidates call me with questions that I don't have the answer to about Albert Lee the buildings the districts the programming I can refer them to him and he'll take phone calls and say it's a great place and here's what I love about it and is that okay okay all right thank you uh School Board spokesperson typically it's the board chair and that's in the case of media in particular if someone wants a quote about the search we'd like it to come from your chair please don't give individual interviews uh please also on social media share the district's postings on your pages don't try and create a from scratch post because sometimes you might not quite have the information accurately so try to speak with one voice if you can and is it okay if Dave is the voice of the board if there's interview requests for him okay board chair uh ground rules dos and don'ts just some real simple things um if someone asks you to serve as a reference for them in this search we would prefer that you not do that you you are the uh decision makers so it's kind of awkward if you have a letter of recomend recommendation or your name listed as a reference for someone who wants this job so we'd recommend that you um not serve in that capacity I can't tell you you can't do it but we'd recommend you don't it just makes people uncomfortable um please don't recruit people to the position even if you say hey you should apply for the job if you say I think you'd be great what is that candidate hearing I think I have that job School Board wants me to have this job so because you're in a position position of authority you have to be very careful to not miscommunicate the intent of the process and you have a process in place we will recruit and advertise you don't need to you certainly can make people aware of it hey did you know we're looking for a superintendent go look at the website there's a vacancy brochure on there and then stop don't try and talk them into it if you hear anything in the community that is um misinformation please let me know I can try to address it the best way I can but once rumors start it's very difficult to stop them I would um also suggest that board members do not need to attend that Q&A session when it's live on February 6th not that you're not interested but if you're on the live session people will see who you are because they see your name on there you know when it's on zoom and there might be people listening they're like I want to ask something but when Barb reads this question out loud they're going to know it's me and so there's kind of this power imbalance between the board and everyone else so if you're not on that Zoom call people can be a little bit more transparent with their questions um because once we record it and put it on the website you don't know who's watching it anymore and so they're presence on the zoom call would not be there when it's on the recorded link if that makes sense uh and then also let me know if you hear anything about candidates or applicants that you're concerned about it's our job to vet people and make sure that if there's rumor about them even when you're looking at the applications before anything goes public call me if you're very concerned I'll guarantee you that if you Google the people that are in this pool there's going to be some things that are not flattering that pop up and that's okay half the time it's true half the time it is not true and I'll guarantee you every strong leader in education has people that don't like them and might be very vocal about them on social media or whatever so there's a lot of untruths out there and we want to be sure that we're getting into that but if you hear a concern um give me a call and I'll have our service providers look into it for you and then let me know if you're related to anybody when you see the pool we're going to revisit that again but there's special voting circumstances if someone you're related to through um blood or marriage it's a different wrinkle okay so if someone is um an in-law or a cousin or something I need to know before we actually vote on who you want to bring in to be hired in district contact person I'm assuming that's going to be Darcy for the remainder of the search she already is for me thank you very much so what I will do is as things progress um she'll have to be my internal arms and legs to get stuff posted etc etc but if I send things to her I always copy the chair so through the chair the board is aware of what I'm asking your staff to do my goal is to make them make their job as easy as possible we don't want to bog them down because everybody's overworked so everybody on staff that might have a part to play in this process we're going to try and make sure that they're not overburdened that's our job to do all your heavy lifting for you your confidentiality employee I'm assuming will be Ashley if you want hard copies for example it would roll through her office that one set of hard copies uh since she's in HR we're good with that she's a confidential okay got it finally the last thing are questions that you can ask about your applicants this last page one of the reasons we switched from App track is that it was the same application for every position and every District was very different and they're looking for different kinds of things so having the same application questions was just not not great so these are some sample questions there's 15 you know categories the yellow highlights kind of identify the category you can ask two custom questions we always ask you know based on the leadership profile why are you a good fit for this District but there's got to be things about albertly area that would help you decide if you want to interview these people or not and they may or may not be on this list and you can write your own these you don't have to use these These are what some other districts have used um last year and this year so you get to pick two or make up two new ones you do you need the suggestions today then also well I I think number three would be fairly appropriate to for us to consider little over also big into s you know me like number eight just because they can some Nar 11 and 14 I know it's more than gives us the options little of blend you had four hanging or five hanging out there any thoughts I like all the suggestions I can be easygoing on this one um maybe nine or three to cover communic I think it was overlap I go with it would get to leadership style I think yeah I had three too so get what I said so we still got 78 did you mention 14 also Kim okay I kind of like the uh the initiative part what could show some experience and you know I people usually feel pretty good about talking about something they did good in those initial five priorities would try to link an initiative to one of those so with question eight sometimes there's some value in that initiative question is just another question linked to it what what may you have done differently so if they're leading an initiative they can assess the impact but if they also is part of their self assessment what might they have done differently because those are learning opportunities and I like to see their superintendent is learning as they you could also ask any of these or something like that in your interviews remember as well and see how they answer them in interviews this this is intended to be a pretty big funnel to Intrigue you enough to want to meet them in person you know well when you say it that way then I like to yeah that would go with but it would be they would list instead of shle and when we look at our um qualification sheets you know communication definitely jumps out in there so I think we're good with three for sure and then somewhere else like you said the other would fall in there what would be one more if we go to three right so what I heard the third would be based on the leadership profile why are you the best match for this District something like that we always have something in there about the profile and tell us specifically why albertly area so you only need two from us I only need two from each today did you want something added you said two and three right did you want something added to question two about in hindsight what would you have done differently or is that a thought for maybe the interview I think interview more than adding it to your application questions good okay I'll Circle that one though I have circled question two and question three for your application to go live next week does that sound good yep okay two and three are there any questions for me otherwise I have everything I need to get started on this but what might you need for me before I head out so what will this schedule U once it's cleaned up be on should we put it on District website how do we let the public know here's what we're doing yep uh so if this is going to all go live the 28th and 29th posting on the 28th to 29th is a public survey I'm going cross out focus groups or listening sessions um we'll have a blurb that we send to Darcy that she'll share with you Communications team and we suggest that that goes on your social media in an email blast to your parents and your staff um out to all your media Outlets um any way you typically communicate with people you announce this great opportunity to provide feedback and then there's I'll keep you updated maybe every five five to seven days about hey this is the number you're at and then that might spur your staff to put out a reminder and then we always suggest closing soon survey closing soon maybe on February 17th or 18th and you get a big bump at the end so it will be everywhere we could possibly think of um but your District knows it better than we do so we just say trust your Communications team to get the word out maybe is there a district newsletter Community Ed some people put this in community ed if there's a flyer going out soon or a catalog they do put this in there if it doves tailes with the survey anyway um and then far as student voice I think it's great if Chris can work on getting students in Senior High to fill it out we want to hear what they think as well but again you cannot require it and you want to double check you don't have a policy that prohibits you from surveying your students I don't think you would but just just in case you'd follow policy if that's the case did that answer your question Mary Joel okay then my work here is done for today anyway so I'm going to head out if you need anything you've got my contact information there'll be a big burst of activity next week and then it's going to get quiet for a while because that's when we're kind of waiting for surveys to come in we're waiting for candidates to start filling out applications and then I will see you next on February 27th virtually um but between now and then you got my number and I look forward to working work with you we really truly are excited about this again and thanks for selecting msba okay take care everybody thank you very much board today this kind of reaches the our adjournment but I'll still open it up if not I look for a motion to adjourn second second motion a second any discussion all those in favor signify by saying I I pose the same sign adjourn