--------- thank you everyone for being here tonight Mary Joe and Barb nice to see you and um so we will do approval of today's agenda as it's written I'll look for a motion for that so move to got a
motion from Kim second from Neil any discussion on the agenda seeing none all those in favor signify by saying I I oppose the same sign all right agenda's approved and uh number four on there is
a review this superintendent search timeline and process and Barb I get to turn it over to you Barb Dorn from msba people thank you thank you very much I it's good to see everybody again I am glad to be here to
continue to assist school board with the search for your next superintendent there in albertly area we do have a lot uh to cover tonight so I think what I'm going to do first if it's okay is tell you what we're going to cover and see if there are any questions and I'll let you know know sort of in what order all of
this is going to happen tonight um so the first thing I always like to do is to talk about the public input survey and so I'm going to be screen sharing that summary report I know that the board members should all have that as well and then I want to encourage
questions uh throughout or after the survey report because you're going to have some decisions to make uh relative to next steps specifically the interview process and I know the board has already talked about and is very interested in the option to include interview committees in the interview process so
we're going to want to iron out some of those details I always ask school boards to wait to make a final decision on that however until after you have seen the public input report just to give you some context around how people felt what different constituency groups felt about
some things relative to leadership and so that is on the table to talk about in depth tonight and you will need to make some decisions about that so we can prepare for your first and second round interviews so that's the first piece we're going to cover tonight the second
will be talking about interview training and you should have a packet of information on that I will also screen share the interview training uh packet there's always things we want to make sure board members are aware of um relative to interviewing for this position a public position paid for with
taxpayer dollars there are some things that you need to be aware of from a statute perspective so we'll be going through all of that and I want to make sure again I'm answering your questions as we do so the third and last part of the meeting will be reviewing some draft
schedules for both round one and round two there in albertly area and then once we've sort of had a chance to talk those through I am going to ask Norma to distribute some suggested interview questions for the board that is there in Albert Lee Mary Joe I'll email those to
you because I want you to take maybe 10 minutes and individually really make a note of what questions jump out at you that you think you'd really like to ask in the first round of interviews then we're going to gather back together and talk about them but we'll talk about them very carefully
it's important that those questions remain confidential so as not to create an unlevel playing field for your candidates so for that reason after we've talked about question three and question five and question eight we'll try to be careful not to share the
questions out loud I do know that there are people listening so of course we want to make sure that we don't give an advantage to anyone who might Beed interested in the position over someone who is not there in the meeting tonight but then Norma is going to collect those back once we've narrowed it down to perhaps 10 to 16 questions and then
she'll shred them right after the meeting as well so those are the big three things the public summary report the interview training and the draft one and two schedules and questions for round one does anyone have questions about what we're going to cover tonight
and the decisions you're going to be asked to make quick question question for you Barb when we talk about uh the board interview questions I understand that process when we look at the two Community teachers groups are those questions that they bring that they ask
the same to each candidate or do we also give some suggestions to them or does msba give those suggestions that's a great question thank you for asking it can operate um in any of those three ways uh the most typical would be once the people who are
going to be on those inter view committees are identified um we give them a deadline to send their suggested questions directly to me at my email here at msba so I gather all of those perhaps we could create a form that they could click on the link and submit their
suggestions right there in the form that's probably easier and we'll just email it to everybody but once we have all the questions that they want to ask um then I'll look for some commonalities and some overlap or duplication and come up with a list that I'll work with that group Direct IR ly to finalize the
questions I'll also run them by the board for your okay and I'll have to make sure that none of them are illegal we can't have your committees asking questions that you're not allowed to ask for example per statute so it could be a combination of practices the most
typical is usually for the group themselves to just organically tell me what they want to ask and then I route it through what's legal and also by the board and make sure there's no duplications between the groups did that that answer your question
okay go ahead great thank you so much so I'm going to screen share I practiced this right before uh five o'clock so I'm hoping that it works when I screen share I just want to make sure everyone knows that I'm looking at it on my entire screen I can't minimize it so I can keep
an eye on the boardroom or on Mary Joe so if you have questions as we go through all of the things I'm going to screen share here tonight you just have to interrupt me I'll try to pause and ask about questions if there are any but I can't see you if you're just waving your arms wanting my attention I won't
be able to see you at all so do interrupt me and I will give screen sharing here a shot so I'm to screen share a window there we go and I'm going to ask if somebody could let me know when you
are looking at the Albert Lee area school superintendent search public engagement superintendent search survey is that what you're seeing yes okay I know that it's not very large for people so I'm going to zoom way in
as I work through this report and I'm going to review it verbally with everyone um but again questions are welcome so let me zoom in much larger how is that on your end does everyone be able to see that okay yes
thank you very much all right so in terms of public engagement you'll see that a total of 420 people completed this survey that is phenomenal I want to thank everybody who took the time to fill this out it is really important and
deeply deeply appreciated by both msba and your school board so one of the things we always do is sort of look for an average and based upon the number of students in your District we have a certain percentage of the student body enrollment number that fills out the survey uh with the student body at
3,220 we would have expected about 386 U people to fill this out so the fact that you have 420 is above average and I think it indicates a great deal of interest in the search process and I want to thank everyone for doing that
you'll notice that almost all of them were filled out in English there was one filled out in Spanish however what I always want to tell folks is that does not indicate that people who um have Spanish as their first language didn't fill this out very often and sometimes
surprisingly many people who speak Spanish as their first language choose to fill out the survey in English so it doesn't mean they're not represented in this information very often people who are taking this survey do it in English with the assistance of um one of their
kids or someone within the district or a neighbor or acquaintance or something like that so I don't want people to assume that you're Spanish speaking population did not complete the survey they very well might have but simply chose to do it in English all right here we go we feel
there was a good cross-section of people who took this survey um sometimes it's a heavily tilted toward one of the self-identified groups or another but in this case as you can see right down here under self-identifiers you have a nice balance um the top two groups the
highest percentages that filled out the survey were staff members and parents and Guardians that is not unusual for every survey that we have done in the last couple of years those are the two largest groups in terms of number of
respondents what's a little different about Albert Lee area is you had more staff members fill this out than parents and Guardians typically that's flipped you might see about maybe 35 to 40%
parents and Guardians and maybe 25 to 30% staff members but in your case you have a heightened interest on behalf of your staff members to fill this out but again it's distributed where we might expect with the largest two groups being those two and I also want to give a shout out to your students in albertly
area it's really great to see them uh being interested in the search and you had over 14% of all the respondents were students and you're going to see that information broken out in more detail here in just a little bit so thank you to your students for having their voice heard as a a part of this
process this is the first quantitative question that was asked is uh what are the most important areas of expertise that you think the next superintendent should have uh these are the top six it was out of a list of about 17 choices and I just want to let you know that
we're going to circle back to this but these are the things with collaborative leadership and finances and budget being the top things that your public uh groups were interested in the leader possessing so you can see all six of those and again we will return and talk about them in more detail here in just a
minute previous experience should they have previous experience as a superintendent it was asked of the school board and it was asked here of your survey respondence you can see that it is even basically a 5050 split between those 420 people I don't think it could be a
whole lot closer than 49.87 to 5013 it's very very close um and that almost mirrors what the board said but I'll show you a direct comparison here in just a minute with the school board the specialized skills report when it shows those top six this is one that we really
like to see filled out by people so thanks to everyone who took time to go through that list there were 27 choices and asking people to choose six out of 27 is challenging because all 27 are very important every single thing
mattered but we needed the community communities and the staff and the parents help and the students to prioritize those things so this is what Rose to the top for all of them across the board and in a moment here I'm going to break it out by respondent category
but these were the top six and this is an Apples to Apples comparison with the school board because Schoolboard members you might recognize some of these phrases this was the hiring criteria survey that you took individually before the search even started we used the
school board is responses to these categories to create the leadership profile that's in your vacancy brochure so it's really important for the apples to Apple's comparison to see if you are or are not aligned between the school board and the stakeholders so we're
going to get to that in just a moment could I interrupt thank you um are are these listed in in any particular order uh is number one that they are yes they are these are as were the bullet points on the first page they are listed in in order thank you for
asking that okay any other questions yet okay uh personal characteristics again we're looking at the entirety of the 420 people that took the survey these are the top six personal characteristics and we're going to be able to break that out by respondent
category as well and here you can now see the numbers of how many people make up those percentages so you can see for example you had 153 staff members fill this out 12 22 parents or Guardians 63
community members 59 students 9ine who identified as business owner District partner or Agriculture and nine who chose other in the other category we ask them to expand on that and it's usually something such as a grandparent or um a
taxpayer in the district or staff member and parent or something like that so um generally speaking everyone ident ifies a little bit differently and seven people did choose the other category because they didn't feel the other five captured who they were so this is where we broken things out by the category and
I'm going to start here with previous experience required you'll note here interestingly enough your staff about 55% said yes they should have been a superintendent previously and about 45% said no and
it's almost a direct flip with your parents and Guardians they had 45 say yes and about 55 say no so when you look at these numbers crosswise from parents and Guardians to staff members they really do mirror each other but just
flipped around a little bit uh community members about 60% said yes to that question and about 59% of your students said yes and then interestingly enough your business owners District partners and agriculture folks said no um 87 to
88% said no sometimes that's due to the fact that those folks do tend to be more entrepreneurial or uh looking for different skill sets as far as leadership so they pretty resoundingly said that it was not necessary for them to have previously been a superintendent
and then the people who were in The Other category said yes um by 75% so over here I think the largest groups staff and parents you can see generally again we're going to be right there at about 5050 and that does align with the school board a little bit but I'll show you that in a
second here are the top six areas of expertise that I said we would Circle back to so I'm going to tell you some trends that I saw and you can look at this later in much more detail I don't want to walk through all of it with you but collaborative leadership showed up
in all six of your respondent categories here it is in staff it was top for parents and Guardians it was top for community members it was second for your students and it was third for business owners Etc and second for others so collaborative leadership obviously
matters very much to your respondents as did budget and finance budget and finance showed up in all six of the categories and this was really interesting it was number one for your students we don't see that very often but your students must be very be very
tuned in to the financial circumstances in the district because they did rate that as the number one area of expertise that they would would be looking for here's personnel management and that showed up in five of the six categories the only one it did not show up in terms
of the top six it did not show up in your student category for personnel management and that makes sense they're probably a little bit more removed from that in terms of areas of expertise your staff members had special education in their top six they are the only
respondent category that chose that now remember this was out of about 7 choices um but it pretty resoundingly came through that your staff members are looking for someone who understands special education um and that was the largest group of people that filled out
the survey this was interesting curriculum development evaluation was in the top six for all six categories it was here it came in at fifth place for your staff second place for your parents fifth
place here for community members and interestingly enough third for your students your students are paying attention to the curriculum that's being offered in the buildings and then this one for your business owners Etc it was in fifth place and in third for other so
the collaborative leadership the budget and finance and curriculum development were in the top six for all six out of 17 that's that's a pretty strong Trend another thing that I thought was interesting was here social emotional support services it showed up for two of
these six groups and this will tell you something your staff members brought social emotional support services to attent to your attention and your students brought social and emotional support services to your attention so the people who are in the buildings the
most students and staff want to prioritize social emotional support services and then just a couple of other ones here for a moment um student testing results and achievement it is not unusual to see parents and Guardians
prioritizing that okay they think that's extremely important as does let's see here we go over here District partnered um uh business owner Etc but the second largest group prioritize
student testing results and achievement and three of your respondent categories chose public relations your parents your community members and the category of other so those are just some of the trends the only other thing that stood out to me is diversity equity and
inclusion was fourth for your students and it was fifth for the other category and again by not including them in your top six for example they were that was not in the top six of either of the first two largest groups doesn't mean they they didn't think it was important
by any means it does not mean that it simply means that they saw other priorities as being at least more immediate for the district District to address but your students I think loud and clear placed diversity Equity inclusion in their top six so are there
any questions on this part of the report the top six areas of expertise I've got a lot more to go through but I want to make sure I pause for just a second anything I just have a quick question Barb um under the other do they identify what when when it says other do they
identify what that other might look like or is it just other no no they do and we've seen things in there such as um former School Board member uh grandparent taxpayer or um sometimes they list all five or six of them because they are a
Community member and a parent and a staff member you know and so they have uh many different ways of interpreting so we always want to have a category where they can list what they are but there's no consistency among those nine people they represented all kinds of different things they just didn't want to pick the other
five any other questions okay interrupt me if you do here are the top six personal characteristics again broken out so I'm going to give you the trends here a lot of consistency this list also included about 17 choices so all six categories had honest and
ethical right up there as number one that was across the board most important and then effective Communicator across the board number two this is unusual to see this much um consistency right here in terms of your number one
and their number two was the same for all six respondent groups that's unusual so clear prioritization of those two things then you can see transparent that was in five of the six uh the only group
that did not list transparent was a priority was a student group right here but every other group had that in their top six out of 17 as did problem solving so right here problem solving is in every group except for the other
category so your students did identify Problem Solver community members did parents and Guardians did and staff members did so that is also real consistent and then the word consistent came across five times it's here for
this one and this one and this one it is not in the student category uh but it is here in your business owners and in other so consistency in your next leader appears to be real important to everybody and then the only other thing I would say well two things one is
here's personable staff members are looking for someone who's personable as are your parents and guardian and are your community members so when you look at the total number of responses those three groups the largest groups all
three listed personable as being important the second thing I'd say in closing in terms of these personal characteristics your students are looking for someone in their top six at least that is confident oops I don't want to do that confident creative and
resourceful I didn't see confident creative and resourceful in the top six of the other five groups so you're getting some direction from the student voice in your District to look outside the box a little bit for them they are looking for someone who's creative um
Innovative Problem Solver resourceful of course and also confident so that was a an interesting thing I thought to point out for the students that took the survey so one thing I do want to say is um the next couple of pages directly compare the school board responses to
the uh survey responses and there's a lot of alignment I mentioned earlier that we look for whether or not there is alignment with the school board and the community and staff Etc so on the top of this page in the report this is your leadership profile so those five bullet
points are in your vacancy brochure that is one of the tools that we will use to evaluate your application once the deadline passes to see who matches up with these things that the school board said you're looking for we created this leadership profile from
your hiring criteria survey which is right down here so the hiring criteria survey over here for the board these were your top five things from which we built this leadership profile with you the exact same survey when I said apples
to apples are over here with the public input these are their top five so when you notice this I see tremendous alignment with the exact same survey out of 27 choices you align on four of your top
five that's really really great so you both chose this one the bright green honesty and ethics the works cooperatively showed up over here for the school board and over here with the public input survey being a strong
Communicator is in both and developing directing and leadership team is in both and then even the fifth that the school board had which was um experience in school finance that didn't show up in the top five verbatim by your public but
it did show up in those areas of expertise it was the number two Choice out of those choice of 17 responses was budget and finance so when I look at this list I see a lot of commonality between the school board and the public
now of course there's going to be some differences but this to me shows uh School Board you're very in tune with what your staff and parents and Guardians and community members and business partners Etc are looking for so that's very good news I'm going to pause
for a moment and see if people have questions or comments on this page in your report okay the only thing at the very bottom of this page that I said I would visit with you about is oops I got to make that bigger the previous superintendent
experience so if you remember on the survey your public said 5050 the school board said 71 yes 29% no so the school board is leaning more heavily towards someone who has served as a superintendent and yet you were not 100%
on that and you um you had the language in your vacancy brochure to reflect that you did not require it because you wanted to keep your options open and look for leadership you actually said uh previous superintendent experience preferred but not required so that does
align here with what your public told us as well now the next page might be sideways oh it's not good when I printed it it was sideways so this is and I'm G to have to make it a little smaller so that all of them show up there you go the top
six specialized skills this is that Apples to Apples so it's broken out now by respondent category not by the whole big number when you look at it here it is the acts with honesty and having ethics that's in all six respondent
categories the strong Communicator is in four it's not in let me see students and business owners Etc the strong Communicator um but it did really rise to the top because of the size of the parent and staff member groups that had that in their top five
the developing and directing a leadership team here that was in all six that even showed up in your students develops and directs and effective leadership team so every respondent category had that in their top six effectively mediating and
accommodating different perspectives is in three of them um but it is in the largest group your staff and then right here the visible and accessible being visible and access accessible
is in three groups um staff parents and the other category however because your um parents and Guardians and staff are the biggest groups being visible and accessible really did rise to the
top and then develops trust and works collaboratively that was in five of the six the only one it wasn't was Community member um however again there were 27 choices so it doesn't mean it was important to those groups the only other thing I
noticed when I looked at this long list is the only group here that shows Visionary creative thinker is your students so that goes back to them looking for someone that is uh the resourceful creative and here they chose
the word Visionary so that Rose to the top for them as well so I think you have pretty a pretty clear indication of what you need to look for in the next leader we certainly feel it's very clear as we go through the applications to try and come up with those that we're going to
vet more deeply and recommend to the board so i' encourage you board members when you're looking at the applications to keep this information front and center uh not just the leadership profile but the information you got from people in this survey so I'll pause for a second and see is there anything in the Apples to
Apples comparison here that you have questions about okay then I'm going to move on to the qualitative these are the open-ended questions and the themes and patterns that emerged from those comments so I'm trying to keep this big hopefully I won't make anybody dizzy as
I'm going through here but uh this was also really great out of 420 people 255 took the time to put something in these open-ended questions which was great there were no um no limitations on
characters they could type as much as they want or as little sometimes we got a single word sometimes we got a novel but uh this is what they answered these four questions and I'm just going to go through and I'm going to read out loud the themes that we identified and then there's
representative comments under each of the themes but I'm not going to read those because you can certainly look at them yourself and I would encourage the board one of the questions I'm going to ask when we're done is would you like to put this on the website I'd really encourage you to do that so that all of your stakeholders can read this report
as can your candidates who are interested in this opportunity so the first question is what are some of the good things taking place in your District today so I'll just read this aloud for people who might not be able to see it on the screen um survey respondents feel the district is filled
with dedicated caring and hardworking teachers and staff who are committed to supporting students both academically and personally it's believed they consistently go above and beyond to create a positive learning environment build strong relationships and adapt to
meet the needs of the districts increasingly diverse student body and over here you can see that 144 people out of 255 mentioned something along those lines so it was by far and a way the number one good thing happening are
your teachers and staff in albertly area schools the comments are here for you to peruse at a later time there are quite a few we try to pick ones that are representative and different enough to give you a feel for what people said
about that pattern or that theme the next thing that people noted was the wide range of academic extracurricular and career focused opportunities that support student growth and success from college level courses and Technical
education to a thriving music Athletics and after school programs students in albertly area schools can access a multitude of Pathways that help prepare them for their Futures that was the second thing recognized by 97 people in the
open-ended question about what's going well in albertly area schools and there's a lot of great comments here as well and the third theme that emerged is that it's also believed the school district Fosters an inclusive student
focused environment that prioritizes social emotional development mental health support and positive School experiences efforts to build a strong sense of community celebrate diversity and provide resources for students contribute to a wel coming and supportive
atmosphere and that was the third theme that really arose to the top in that question so a lot of things to be very very proud of in albertly area we however want to make sure we include a realistic look and so we ask
about challenges and there are some that Rose to the top here in terms of challenges for the next five years uh the first challenge that people notified us of and that was about 120 people pointed this out people that took the survey feel that the district will face
significant challenges in recruiting and retaining qualified teachers substitutes and staff with high turnover and shortages affecting multiple positions that was clearly the number one concern You are not alone in that
that is one of the top things in every survey we've done so far this year it is simply um a challenge that education is facing across the board board and you are not immune from that there in Albert Lee so that is the number one theme and
some comments here about that the second area that was a concern for folks over the next five years is that additional challenges may also lie ahead in addressing student Behavior concerns were shared about inconsistent
enforcement of discipline policies student disengagement and the need for stronger behavioral and mental Health supports 96 people pointed to that as a challenge that lies ahead if not something you're already dealing with that might simply increase in
frequency your comments uh the third theme in terms of challenges that are ahead is it's believed that albertly area schools might also face challenges with declining student enrollment this will also raise concerns about the district's long-term stability and
sustainability you'll see that the phrase declining enrollment was used 33 times verbatim declining enrollment so lots of people pointed to that and I'm certain that none of these challenges come as a surprise to anyone sitting on the school board you are already aware of these things but I think it's
important to acknowledge them uh not just to show that you heard people who took the survey but that your candidates who are looking at this position know about it as well another challenge um was the survey respondents said is related to your
school district finances including budget constraints and Rising costs which of course ties directly to declining enrollment that will thereby Place pressure on maintaining your quality programs and Staffing a lot of interconnectedness when it comes to the
challenges also not unusual there was also a theme in this category around academic achievement uh this was raised by respondents as a concern citing the potential for declining test scores gaps in
foundational skills and the need for a stronger curriculum in core subjects like reading math and science and that I think hearkens back to the curriculum and the test scores that were identified in the quantitative part of the
survey and here is another challenge identified by the survey and this is the last one in this category survey respondents also feel that restoring trust and transparency could pose a major hurdle in the coming years staff
community members and parents all Express concerns about communication accountability and how leadership decisions are made comments emphasize the need to build stronger relationships and create a more open approach to District
governance that was the last theme in in the challenges category and some of the representative comments in regards to that are there any questions before I move on to the third question here that was open-ended board members anything else Barb as we um and we'll decide that
in a little bit to make this available what you suggested we should and I hope we do um will all of the comments that were made be listed or were just these summary comments that uh has been put together just these summ
comments and the reason for that is the raw data potentially contains comments that should be protected by data Privacy Law and or could incude include um comments that might open you up to liability if someone States something as
opinion that they say is fact so we have to be very careful with that raw data and we can talk about that again in a moment but the the report that I would suggest go on the website would be this report here and these represent comments for each of the
categories okay yeah we we'll Circle back to that thank you for asking about it okay the third open-end question in the survey was what does the next superintendent need to know about the history of the school district and the community in order to be successful so the number one thing that
rose up here was that survey respondents feel the new superintendent will need to address mistrust between District level Administration and staff parents and the community to succeed albertly area's next leader must prioritize open communication and
genuine engagement with staff students parents and the community so that uh came through loud and clear in response to that question there was a second theme here
in that the next superintendent communication style may also affect the degree of their first year success highly sought after skills will include someone who utilizes a collaborative approach Fosters open dialogue and focuses on supporting those working
directly with students so here again this report is going to be another yard stick that we use to choose of all the applicants who really aligns with what the report is looking for from your stakeholders and the leadership profile that the the
school board developed earlier so this was also important and there's a lot of comments here so Excuse me while I go through them all there we go and then there was
another theme uh here in the history that we want to know about is that uh relative the new superintendent should know something relative to the breakdown in trust that was tied to ineffective communication and a perceived lack of
transparency which often left staff parents in the broader Community feeling unheard and excluded from decision making we also see this fairly commonly in these reports um one thing I do want to acknowledge is the school board is sometimes in a really tough spot because
the word transparency is what I call a squishy word it can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people you as board members are bound by confidentiality laws data privacy laws so sometimes the lack of transparency is
deserved because you're not sharing information and sometimes it is not deserved because you cannot share information so I do want to acknowledge that um you know perception is reality of course however there are times where a school board cannot be as transparent
as you might want to Simply due to the law but it is one that comes up a lot and the word transparency surfaced quite often here in the albertly area survey and then the last uh theme in this category is that survey respondents
also feel it will be important for the new superintendent to recognize that albertly is a close-knit small town community with strong Traditions a deep sense of Pride and a desire to maintain its unique identity the community is also experiencing increasing diversity
with a significant immigrant population High poverty rates and a growing need for inclusive and Equitable educational opportunities so that is something that your survey respondents also felt the new leader needs to be very very aware
of the last category or question here the only category under additional comments or what else do you need to tell us uh we had one theme that was um far away the winner here is that overall those who took the survey are seeking a
strong experienced leader who Fosters transparency consistency and meaningful collaboration with st St students and the community It is believed they should prioritize teacher and student support Embrace Innovation to sustain enrollment
and cultivate a forward thinking and inclusive culture for staff and students alike that is the last theme and I think it captures the need that we're seeing increasingly across the board for superintendents with soft skills you
know hard skills are things that you can teach and sometimes training will help address that but soft skills very often are just an inherent part of the personality and more and more people in school districts are looking for people who possess those leadership skills
collaboration listening empathy all of those things and they did of course emerge for us here in albertly area as well that is the conclusion of the report so I'm going to try and stop screen sharing for a moment I'm hoping
it's going to work again when I go back and do it doesn't always happen that way but we we do our best so can someone tell me if I've stopped screen sharing now yes great thank you uh my question for the board first and foremost is
that's kind of a lengthy report it's 21 pages and the font is pretty small but um do you feel like you heard the voices of your constituents in this report we purposefully do not include only all the roses in the sunshine we want to make it realistic so that people do feel heard
and we want to make sure that candidates also understand so do you hear the voices of people that you talk to or hear from on a regular basis or are we missing a group in this report i' just like to say I think it's very powerful I mean the
consistency across these groups of people I just really I think we need to focus on the fact that there's there's themes here that are very substantial the other question I have for maybe it's
for the board or maybe it's bar but this last additional comment section you know if we have a 5050 tie on experience versus experience maybe not being as important as important is this the
tiebreaker when you see 10% of the survey respondents say we need an experienced leader here to address the challenges that they are telling us I mean that's I that question's on the table I don't for the
not for me so and I don't it's not an answer is is important okay could you repeat that Dave I knew you were saying something but I didn't hear anything sorry did you say something in response no I didn't okay thanks did you did you hear
Gary's comments so the first ones I did before I answered him but if there was something after that I didn't okay sorry no it should be it I think the summary was very well done and I do feel that it reflects what
I'm hearing in the community I guess the main thing I'm so impressed with how many people took the time to do this what shows the importance of what we are doing now and um how much I mean again when you you change you
change face is in a position um now we're finding out you know what what not only the community needs but the staff does too and I I really like seeing like you said the consistencies amongst what we're thinking comparative you know to
what they are so y thank you any other comments on that if not I'll move on to sort of what happens next from the okay um so my first question is can this report be placed on your District
website it's yes raise your hand terrific I think that is extremely wise that way again candidates and stakeholders alike can read this so um Norma can you make a note uh that it should go on the website and then Dary or whomever can make sure it gets on
there so I think that's great some districts even go a step further and send this out in a Communications piece via email to parents to the distribution list for staff rather than putting on the website and waiting for people to come find it you also could choose and
this is totally the district's call the communications team um to send it out actively as well you could certainly do that um I did want to come back uh to the question about raw data just for a moment because I think someone asked about that this report is um we think
pretty representative of what everybody said but of course it is not what everybody said because there is I think I ended up with 57 57 or 58 pages of comments and it's only eight point font
um we recommend not publishing that information because it could cause some real challenges for the district um down the road because when a survey is anonymous as this is is you can imagine people felt very comfortable saying whatever they wanted to and that was
important for them to do that we had to choose comments that did not position The District in a way that could create some liability for you and obviously we're not sharing any private data in the report um but there is a lot of data we pulled this from and we used a
combination of um Ai and staff time to pull together the report so we always recommend the raw data not be released even to the board members um it is subject to data request if you look at it but I'm going to leave that up to the board and let you think about what you'd like to do with it if you
feel the report adequately addresses the concerns you're hearing in the community and from staff then I might recommend leaving the raw data housed and msba but if you feel differently I certainly can share it with you as well Dave I you know Sarah's not here
with the Tribune but would we or are we considering a press release of of these results minus the the public comment section but I I would think the the appropriate for the newspaper if we do a
press release is to put a link in there to this because otherwise I mean 27 Pages or whatever that takes up a little bit of press but but you know and and along with this barbon I don't know if you send something but a nice thank you for taking the time I mean we know we've
got it in the survey but again it's just impressive that enough people decided to take the time to sit down and say yeah this is what we're thinking so but yeah I mean some way to get it to the newspaper I mean uh would be good too
with a link probably yeah back to your question about the raw data I'm I'm not a fan of and I don't think we should um because um I think this for me is very let's move the district forward let's keep our
windshield um bigger than our River mirror and I think sometimes some of the raw data might go against that thought and so um I think staying positive as we move forward and I think this report does that even with the the um
opportunities and um areas that we need to focus on that maybe were concerns I think um shows that there there was the way that they're stated seems very um like solution driven to me so I I would
like to not see the raw data um personally I think um I agree with Kim on that too and I don't think we're not being transparent without the raw data because if this is all that we've seen this is all that we've seen you know so
I mean as far as other comments on that if they're buried in the system somewhere not that they're not not important but this is is a summary like you said experienced staff I don't want to say the term AI because I'm not a fan
but the bottom line is it does compile a lot of things and concise them up so again like I said I don't think anyone's hiding anything because we haven't seen anything other than this report so as that's what I would say as this goes forward I think we are telling
everything my opinion only okay I I can tell you that we read every single comment several staff persons have read this entire report it does take a tremendous amount of time to read all of them and then we do use the tool to count do word counts of how many times people said things and how often
it popped up um but we read everything and it's really important to us that the report be an accurate reflection of where the district is and I appreciate how honest people were and how vulnerable they were with their comments and and we heard you and we put your
voice in here and I hope that you feel heard um again this whole report is going to be used as we go through the candidates applications and we will also use it as we craft some interview questions for the board to react to um so what I'm hearing is we'll keep the raw data hous at msba this report will
be placed on the district website I'll shoot an email maybe so I don't put it all on Norma's plate but I'll shoot an email to Darcy and Copy Dave on it and Norma to get the report out Beyond perhaps the website Maybe an email blast to distribution lists um maybe in a
press release um those tools could be used to make sure people have a chance to read this so that okay with everybody is that what we're going to do just let let let me make sure I ask is that what does everyone think I don't want to think one or two of us said hey this is it what do we think about
it um I'm fine with that I had uh emailed Barb and Dave earlier wondering if I could see the raw data just because people have asked me if I would look through that and you know I am interested in looking at that um in 2022 when we were going through this process I had read through the raw data and I
thought it was valuable to do that um but I also thought that msba had done a very good job of summarizing it there weren't any surprises in there and so I do if the rest of the board wants to leave it I am you know fine trusting the the summary that we
have I I also think if there was about three or four comments to each question we'd be thinking oh what there had to be more comments you know so fairly extensive lists of uh of things that were made like the one you said 140 times or whatever was said and so I feel
comfortable as Angie said too that you guys have compiled it correctly so thanks yeah I agree as well that the raw data I don't need to see um I I think we got a pretty clear message and I
am like surprised pleased of the alignment with all the different groups how close everything was so I think we got a pretty good picture of what we need to do and what you know the talents we're looking for and I agree I would like to be
proactive and send it the survey to the all staff distribution list and then parents this can go on all the school newsletters Etc just you know as we work on transparency just getting it out there as much as we can
all right are we ready to move on thank you everyone I appreciate the conversation okay the next thing we're going to talk about this is the point where there's a fork in the road you get to decide what to do in terms of next steps with public involvement in the interview process so in your packet you
should have something called um public input during the interview process as I just said so I'm going to try to screen share that and I know you've already had this conversation and from what I understand the board is leaning toward interview committees which is great so let me just screen share this and see if
I can find the right document and it's not the survey I want it to be these three options all right does this say public input during the interview process yes thank you okay so this is
typically what we offer to school boards is as far as next steps uh the three options would be to rely on the summary report as the voice of stakeholders in the interview process the second option is to create interview committees who
interview the finalists separately in addition to the school board and the third option is to invite representative groups to have one person obviously your interviews are open to the public so you're going to have people watching this but there would be designated people to provide feedback to
the board through electronic form where we collect strengths and weaknesses from each individual who's representing these groups and we share that raw data with the school board before your UH deliberations of who to move on or who to hire in the end so those are the
three options I always mention here there's pros and cons to each option we have seen a lot of Trends in the last couple of years toward using the stakeholder summary report as the voice of the stakeholders only because I think of the challenge that sometimes exists
when you decide who gets to participate in option two or three but I do know you've talked about this at a former or a previous school board meeting so I'm going to assume you were looking at two or three and I think what I'd like to do is turn it back over to Dave to facilitate a conversation by the board
to arrive at a final conclusion about what you'd like to do next and then I've got some other documents to screen share based upon that decision okay thanks Barb uh we have talked about about I think option two um any comments and
thoughts about that or we didn't have the other two options written out that eloquently before so um but to and and you know we we've looked at we've had a number of people that have uh expressed an interest in uh being part of an
interview committee and it looks like we've got about probably about uh a dozen plus people so that would actually make up two nice committees uh you know from a school and a community standpoint so but anyway just my thought what are
you guys [Music] thinking a yeah I think I did make some comment relative to involving more people in The Selective process but my vision was not a bunch of different committees to of to which we would
subject all of our candidates I was thinking rather in terms of maybe expanding School Board to include some uh individual and that would be the tricky part determining who gets joined in the Schoolboard at this table that may not be a real good idea
but that was kind of my vision the uhu I was involved in a lot of of committees uh when I was teaching that involved higher reading of English teachers or Math teachers or coaches or whatever uh and was just kind of an an
an addition to those those groups of principles and um and occasionally board members that made those decisions so maybe that's not a real good idea but that was that was kind of the intent of my coming not to create a whole bunch of
different committees that are in place that would have to be organized and that the candidates would have to meet with that seems to me to be a rather C cumbersome arrangement any other um I oh sorry I can't see if
somebody's talking am I okay um I am for the having a couple committees because I think especially when I look at the the top two specialized skills that all the
survey said was with honest and ethical and the strong communication Etc is it's just another group to give their feedback on their thoughts in in interview process with an
individual and we've done this before in the district where we have created different committees it is a long day for the candidates but they know it's a long day and I think especially as we see transparency as one of our issues it
also helps get another voice out there just they're they're not a committee they're not a hiring committee but that they just give us input their thoughts and um but I think it's just another listing
board for us to get feedback from thanks I would be of the opinion first of all with the robust report we just reviewed on public input I mean it's
pretty strong to me that I would lean more towards perhaps number three and that we had if we had Representatives attend because our interviews with candidates are open to the public if we were to have people come that represent different constituencies and then give
them an opportunity to give us feedback on strengths and weaknesses of candidates we could accomplish the same thing in my mind as we would with number two but again I'm basing my opinion solely on the fact that this is so strong if this was
wishy-washy then I would I think there'd be no choice but to use option two but to me this is a great resource for us and I think we can augment it by by using option three yeah I was the only thing that I was going to say around that is
sometimes with option two compared to option three is it it it um representing a group grp is an identity of of of the way that group feels where sometimes maybe when you
have committees it's more of a personal feel well however they a lot of that aligned in the report right so um I I I too am a little bit like Gary that I was leaning towards these these individual committees but I might be more inclined
to the representing groups and getting feedback that way um so it doesn't cross over to individuals because we align in the pre-work the different groups aligned in the pre-work so it um I I really would go with what the the board
decides but um I also like Mary Joe's comments about um you know feeling that everybody had a voice and um I'm just concerned about how we vet that those voices in number two so couple things about um first of all I
mean number three uh I mean as it mentioned we'd get input I am I reading that barb that they don't set at the interview table they just give information is that correct and number
three correct correct okay and I mean we do I'll tell you the hardest thing is you get 15 20 people that want to do it you pick them we're just pissed off 14 of them oh excuse me I shouldn't have said it that way but that's just me we
just made 14 of them mad because we picked one of them and uh that was the other thing I thought about you know getting a little bit more input now if you use the group you get the questions that they have as Mary Joe said it's a long day I think Barb addressed that
earlier when I was thinking three groups we got to two maybe we go to one I mean I'm I'm it it it's fully what the majority wants to do I just want to make sure that we include as many as we can but one or two could
work too are for number three the the individual feedback form or the what's it called the online audience input form so they're they're just filling that out as the interview is going through and
then do they turn it into the board speak speak at a board meeting how do what would that look like so maybe what it would be helpful for me to do is um talk through some of the opportunities and pitfalls
of both two and three um because one of the things is exactly what you just asked about if you have interview committees who gets to be on that committee and I know that you said you have people who are volunteering the challenge with that is
there will be people who didn't volunteer that would have loved to be a part of it so we need to find a way to um systematically invite people to submit their interest in being on that committee but we also have to be super clear about expectations because it's
going to take the whole day if you have three finalists on March 31st because this is done in round two round one might be six people and that ends up being like 10 hours and so most people cannot dedicate 10 hours voluntarily to the search in round two the board has
wintered it down to two or three people so it's more like a 4-Hour commit maybe four and a half so it's round two um so who gets to be on that and then creating the questions as I mentioned earlier they could send me those questions we need to vet them make sure
that they are uh legal and that people understand why they can and cannot ask certain things this interview could not be sort of a free-for-all um because there's things that statutorily you cannot ask including if you're on the interview Committee of these candidates for example about their intentions to
move to Albert Lee residency cannot be asked about at all uh nor considered as part of the that's just a statute there so um that's one thing but then the other thing that ties to what your question was is how are they going to report out so if there's an interview if
there's two interview groups and there's eight people on each that's 16 people two different groups are they Broken Out by identity do you have one group of Staff people and one group of parents or do you mix and match
parents staff community members um uh funders students in one group in the same thing and the other so it's like a mixed group and then do they provide the board with one overall sort of evaluation of hey we really liked the interview with all three of these people
we saw this was great about Jane do and this was great about John Doe so is it a group decision and how do they arrive at that report there needs to be sort of a spokesperson for each interview to report out to the board or do you want individual reports from everybody on
those two groups so it might be 16 people and what what um format would those reports be in what would be most useful to the board and then option three and I just apologize for talking so much but there's a lot of things to consider here option
three the way they report out is it's Anonymous um you do know who the let's say 10 people 10 or 12 people are and I work with them ahead of time to uh practice filling out the audience input form it's an online form that says
here's the leadership profile please list up to three strengths for each candidate and up to three areas of growth or weaknesses for each candidate and then they do that after the interview so they're listening to the interview of the board so they're hearing the same information the board
is hearing and then they fill out a form within 15 minutes after that interview concludes listing what they saw as strengths and weaknesses and then the next interview starts and after that one they take 15 minutes to fill out the same form again we provide that to the board anonymously and in hard copy
before you start deliberating so you see what the audience members thought in addition to what you as individual board members thought so the thing that might be helpful that's the report out piece but I'm going to switch for just a minute to the conversation of who gets to be on these groups because that has
been the number one reason that most school boards go with the public summary report one because of the alignment which is great and also in your case you had what 420 people 420 voices in your head you would use it for that if you
want people involved though this is where you have to think real carefully of how do you invite them and who gets to be a part of it and that's why most boards don't do it but we want to do it here in Albert Lee I understand that so these groups did it switch to District groups to
consider yes no yes it did okay thank you sorry I just I can't see you guys so if you're nodding your heads I can't see you all right so for either of option two or three and this is something I believe uh Norma you have copies of this
right could you hand out a copy of this to each board member to kind of read through thank you while you're doing that I'm going to to sort of walk through so considering who gets to be a part of the interview process here's some suggestions for you you want to
think about what groups would you typically ask to support you in terms of um a referendum that might be coming up um what subgroups are out there um you might consider asking the leadership of those groups for example if you want someone from the business Community to
give you feedback you might consider the chamber president or something like that um the best idea in our opinion is to invite the groups and then ask them to select someone on their behalf because
whoever said earlier one person cannot represent the entire group that is absolutely correct however if the membership of that group has a chance to say hey I think our um bargaining unit leadership should
represent peras or whatever it might be they've had a voice in kind of nominating someone versus the Board choosing whatever you do please board members do not choose who gets to provide input that's a slippery slope and there's all kinds of things that will be misinterpreted if you're
handpicking people to give input but we would say please let each bargaining unit be represented in some way so here are some suggestions principles Association we always say selected by the membership just so you're not doing it so principales Association teachers from
different grade levels Administration from the membership you might want to consider um executive assistant or someone who works very closely with the superintendent here are other areas that might want to send someone I think in your community
involving someone who is potentially a cultural liaison or elll teacher or something would be wise parents love to be included so if you have a PTO or some way of choosing a parent to represent or two parents to represent um not just
their opinion but sort of a broader group of parents students sometimes are included on these groups and here District Partnerships are real important Andor possibly higher education institutions uh the chamber I mentioned a business person perhaps and then if
you have major foundations funders or donors you might want to give them a seat at the table to provide feedback and then if you have any substitute Grassroots Community organizations this is just a list to think about and
we say any more than 15 because if you have 15 people and everybody lists three strengths and three weaknesses what's 15 time six close to 100 you're going to be reading a lot of stuff before you begin your deliberations so we'd like to keep it at
15 or fewer but this is where a lot of boards run into well who gets to be on this committee or committees or provide input so I'm going to stop talking I know you have this in front of you now if Norma handed it out and just
Dave I'll let you facilitate a conversation about how you might have people invited to participate in either option two or three and see where the board lands with your conversation I'll be here to answer questions but I'm going to stop talking all right Neil you look like
you're ready yeah I'm going to contradict everything I said pre previously um when I was a teacher and was asked to be a part of hiring other teachers or coaches I was asked because
I was the head of the English Department or I was a coach so it made sense and it didn't and it didn't complicate things and when we hired an English teacher the social studies teachers weren't upset because they weren't on the committee I can see that this is a can of worms if
we're going to select people who are going to be on committees and logistically it's going to be a a difficult process because uh Barb and her staff have done a wonderful job of educating us on all the fine points of being on an interview team and involved
in that process now they'd have to do it again for the these additional groups uh it just complicates things and U the bottom line I guess is we were elected by the people in this school
district to make decisions like this we have sub we have uh G given the community an opportunity to provide input which is the report that we've just examined and I'm certainly willing to
listen to anybody who comes up to me and wants to uh you know give me their uh input as personally as to what we should be looking for but I'm pretty I'm pretty certain that that decision should be left to
us so I I would St for number one um my I would prefer two or three my uh the main thing that I'm concerned about is I would like to get feedback from people especially with this feedback from the survey saying that people are hungry for collaboration and
transparency I think um even though it could be tricky I agree and maybe cumbers if we do number two for the candidates I think it would be very appreciated by our staff and our parents and those who have the opportunity and I would be very interested to get feedback
on the specific candidates once we have them um which we wouldn't get if we just go with option one um so my the one that stood out the most to me was option two because I think it would be interesting to see to let groups come up with their
own questions that are important to them um but I would be comfortable with three also Mary Joe any thoughts well I like what Barb just shared that that makes more sense to me now of understanding kind of the options
and I think having the different groups a representative from the groups and they pick um would be valuable information um so I I'm okay
with actually I'm okay with one two or three I now that I know more of what each are and what it looks like um I'm probably leaning towards one chairman clot this may contradict what I said also but after hearing the
feedback and that's our job i' like to make a motion that we adopt option one concerning public input during the interview process I will second that motion we have a motion on the table uh is there discussion and I'll start at
Barb could you bring option one up again so we can see the comments on that then we can go from like that so can I just say so
so sorry no so if if we had not had the response we'd have I read the bottom no other public input will be gathered as part of the interview process I would struggle right with that but we had um
above average and significant responses to the so many times when people do surveys they just check but we had significant written response and for me I don't feel like uh public input wasn't
gathered and so um I'm also I also know that when we start to look at two or three there are going to be people that are upset with how that went potentially I shouldn't say there will be there is we open ourselves up for that potential when we have the data that show was that
we received public input um cuz I was really leaning towards three I actually had 12 different positions but as we discuss I'm I'm I am more leaning towards one only because I feel like we
got significant public input to move forward so just my thought um this gon be funny but I'm going back I I'm reading on the Chromebook and it's really small what I'm trying to read here so Barb when you showed us the list
of people I thought that went with one so I sorry I am sorry I'm going back to three and I guess when I think about it is the survey was people answering what are we looking for in a
superintendent now we have the candidates who do you think me meets that so I do still like I I guess I really do want to hear from um other people such as a principal represent representative because they're
gonna there may be things that we wouldn't think of that they're in it every day and hearing things that maybe we wouldn't think of as a board and I think getting their input would be valuable as well as teachers uh Community
member um I know when I sat when we hired a superintendent we and we did the actual committee the different group groups and I was on the staff group uh the people on the business Community the business Community um
interview um advisory they gave way different input than the teachers and it really made us Ponder of oh okay we hadn't thought of some of those things so I still think I would be for number three to still get that voice out there of you
told us what you're looking for in the superintendent now now we have people in front of you who do you think who in your in your um opinion would meet that criteria that it has been set for Davey she beat me to it that's
exactly what I was going to say I'm I what I see with number two is I see that there's additional training and coaching and teaching on how to interview um I like three I like having a representative there from each group being able to give full detail and and
their opinion um right after each interview knowing after the candidates they've had um they're able to listen and then give that feedback uh I'd like one would be an option but I like three more because I like to keep the community involved as much as and being
transparent and having them involved as much as possible without having to I don't want to with without them going through the training and coaching of asking the additional questions um so my my choice would be number three um no I just wanted to Echo what Mary
Joe was saying I was going to say the same thing that I think we've gotten a lot of really good feedback but it isn't about the specific candidates and once we have them out in public I really would like to get more feedback from especially I would say the staff I think are very hungry for collaboration and to
be listen to and share their feedback I would really be interested to hear their feedback on which candidate they feel will be the best fit did I interject something here in a moment I'm sorry I can't see you so I'm just raising my hand is that okay yeah
well go Neil's got a question I might add something too but if you got something you'd like to say go ahead so that made me think of something so I got two things that you should think about because I really appreciate this conversation it's a very healthy dialogue so that you each have a chance to Think Through the implications of
everything on number one um there's a word that I need to start inserting in here if you rely on the public survey summary report and that word is formally no other public input is formally gathered as part of the interview process trust me you will have
informal feedback from the minute you announce the candidates names us board members will get emails phone calls text messages about every person you're interviewing and again after round one and perhaps even during or after round two so the formal
process is not uh to collect feedback during the interview process but informally you will hear quite a bit and then there was just one thing that someone said I want to be sure we want to be real careful about expectations if you choose option two or
three um we'll go back to that list because you it's a long list you do need to decide who gets and doesn't get to be on the committee and there will be people who will feel excluded because they weren't invited or part of a group that was invited um but you need to be real careful that
you don't ask them to tell you who they prefer or who they might want to work for or who they feel would be the best superintendent because you might not hire that person and sometimes the downside of asking for that kind of feedback or if you if people say I
really liked John Doe the others were great but John Doe was it and nothing but stars for John do if you then as a board because you've seen more material you've redmore all of that if you hire Jane do those people will feel betrayed they may say well why did you ask me for
my opinion if you didn't listen to me so you gota be real careful how you set up the reporting format so that you're not giving them the impression that they're going to help you hire the superintendent because they're not so as long as that's clear I think you're in you're you're good all right I'm done
thanks Dave go ahead all right thank you Barb that that your your thoughts were exactly mine relative to that last sentence I I it looks like there was a word in there that perhaps we didn't see the word formal and that's exactly what
I would like to see in that statement uh because I I it would be ridiculous to to exclude listening to anybody in the community or in the staff and uh the the employees of the district about you know
what they consider important in the hiring of a superintendent so that's that's a good that's a good addition or a good editing of that sentence secondly uh as I understand it once we have interviewed the finalists
pretty much all of those things or many of those things that are that are referenced in uh the third choice would be available to us as I recall once we have interviewed the candidates uh typically the chair
reaches out to various parties to get input relative to each of the candidates that that we have as finalists so I'm there's opportunity for all those people that we're talking about to provide INF it to do that with option
one torn on this one there's been a lot of thought going on um last time I don't mean good b or IND different when we didn't have we would have basically used option one I I can say that and and Neil you would know better than me did you have
any comments after the hiring process did I have any comments from home I guess did you have anyone say boy we should have done something else and we you know we should add another group another group interview or anything did you ever hear any of that no I didn't
hear any any uh issues that uh that we neglected or any processes that were neglected Ed um but but I did call a lot of people talk to people who knew the C the finalists um very well and so and I I
didn't uh you know call up the uh principal of the high school I I I I guess I I I don't know I I I couldn't could have been done and we could do I mean that third option offers a lot of opportunities but I think we can do that
within the framework of of the first option yep that was a first thought I mean it didn't it it seemed to have worked um I I do like the uh option two for the reason that it does give us a a diverse set of additional questions for another
group to be able to ask however as Davey and a few said we're touchy on those we have to run them through msba and somebody may feel slighted if we pull a question because it's not something that we can ask um so I I've worried about
that an option too um and finally since it was there's a lot of alignment in this survey that uh I think people are feeling like uh you know and we can see that we've got similar thoughts um and that's why I asked I
mean obviously they not at the board table we're paid to make that decision but um you know I I want to make sure that you know we don't feel like we're not including people but but we've included a nice group of people um I do like the
option again of having extra questions but um you know I I don't think last time we had any complaints about the way the uh uh the the system went so that's why again I I like the opportunity for
more people but last time it didn't seem like anyone complained about it so chairman Claud I'd like to call the question questions and call Gary would you uh restate your motion to make sure that we
adopt option one concerning uh public input during the interiew process all right with that read um let's uh take a vote on that all those in favor of the motion to adopt
option one signify by saying I I and those opposed with the same sign I chairman Cloud I want a division of the house I'm sorry I'd ask for a division of the house there is a division but we
do have a four to three oh sorry Dave we have to do roll call when we have um a remote remote board member I believe Y and we can sure do the roll call vote too so let's yeah let's go
ahead and start with Davey option one okay I nay Neil I Kim hi
hi it just reminds me of the co meeting when I sat back and I just kind of smiled that everyone and we didn't run the meeting till we got our mask on um what's that Jo Mary Jo yeah oh I'm sorry Mary Joel
name thanks for this opportunity to everyone um nay so uh motion fails uh 4 to three so I will look for another motion chairman Cloud I make a motion to adopt option three concerning public input during the
interview process okay is there a second to that motion I will second that okay uh any discussion option three um mine's just more of a point of reference I think we need to be very
intentional about who's invited to par participate um what groups are invited but those groups decide who they're sending and then how many spots those groups have and so um I think that's the second part of the discussion um because
I think we want to be like Barb has pointed out we want to be careful that we're not excluding Voice by including voice and I'd like to seek msba guidance on a process that's followed
uh to achieve option three yeah and I think well I think we've got that somewhat in front of us I mean but as far as there's I think what we would need to do is figure out which groups because as Barb said there's a a large number of groups there's more in
this group than uh we probably need so we would want to look at that and I think one person from each group regardless of sizes of respondents or anything else like that would be a appropriate so we wouldn't feel like we had an over uh overum any one group
whatever that group was Transportation so I I would I would agree before you take the vote on option three I would suggest you take some time to go through this list and we may have forgotten some on this list but the board has to decide
tonight which groups will be invited to send a representative to the round two interviews and then once you've decided on the groups however many groups there are and one per group is a great idea then I would early next week send out a Communications to Darcy that is a sample
kind of invitation that says your group is being invited to send a representative to the round two interviews on March 31st this is the commitment we're asking from someone from your group by we'll give them a deadline you must let Darcy know who is representing your group and when she
collects all of those email addresses and names then I would reach out to to those 10 or 15 people with an email um sort of reframing the expectations and giving them a practice audience input link so they could go in and practice typing in strengths and weaknesses and
then I would reach out to them again um just a couple of days before round two to let them know again what's expected of them as a part of the process so the hardest part is still for the board to decide which groups get to have someone provide input in a formalized way the
room will be full there'll probably be a lot of people but who do you want input from and who gets to be invited so either this list or other lists I'll turn it back over to the board because we need the decision made tonight about which groups will be invited Dave uh Neil go
ahead um question to Barb I guess uh would would uh the decision to uh go with option three require an adjustment to our timeline because it seems to me that there's an offer lot of things that are going to have to be done to
facilitate that process nope we can do it your second round interviews aren't until March 31st so we do have time but it will require some quick turnaround on behalf of these groups also they'll have to be given maybe a
week to 10 days to return a name to Darcy to represent them and maybe they do it by who wants to volunteer and then they draw a name out of a hat since more than one person might be interested that'll be up to that group to decide whose name and email address they send
back to Darcy to then share with me but we have time thanks for asking about that but we're we're good Mar I'm reading um the list and for teachers are we're looking at four separate teacher Representatives representing each segment there or is it
one teacher representative are you asking me yeah yes okay sorry I sorry I can't see you um generally it's a good idea to have someone representing early childhood and someone from elementary and someone from middle and someone from high school that's a lot though depending upon how
many other groups you need to include and some of it that comes into play is how many bargaining units do you have and which employees are in which bargaining units and is one person from those groups enough or is it too much if you have 15 bargaining units for
example that leaves you no room for community parents business Partnerships chamber of Etc so it largely depends on your structure internally as far as any formalized groups that you want input from so nine what do we have yeah seven
nine seven probably yeah I think seven of more than one or two members so I what I heard you say Barb is one from each but I had kind of um disseminated a little bit just based on responses and the the the the voices we heard in
responses and maybe that's how we regulate how many we have from each group so I have um one from principals and uh Association the the administrator one I have two from teachers one from District
administration one executive assistant one par professional one elll director or cultural liaison which could be our also our SRO depending on how we wanted to go with that two parents and two
Representatives any District Partnerships and then um that that's kind of how I divvied it out but it doesn't have to go that way I thought it would be good just to start with discussion because I was basing it off of how we had respondents from our survey 10 was it I think right a 10 you
which I would like to keep in that number somewhere but uh um yeah I was looking through there too and I and I know we've had some people that have already expressed an interest and uh they look like they were kind of somewhat those groups but um yeah again
I don't want to be overweighted anyone's specific group but I want to make sure we get good representation so maybe let's just let's go through the list I'll just read through them quick and we'll at least make first cut and then second cut and if we decide like I said
two one two whatever maybe we'll see what we come up with so principles what do you think I mean that's obviously principles teachers how about District administration I mean someone from that you know okay executive assistant that
would only be really one person but works pretty directly pretty so what do you think any opposition there okay um the next big group I see is a pair of professionals I don't want to skip over
building and grounds um nutrition Transportation building grounds is kind of anyway any thoughts on that building grounds just say if you think yes say yes nutrition
Transportation par professional yep secretarial maybe that's yeah could fall under the executive assistant but I'll cut them for put them in eel I like the comment with the SRO too
that's a pretty direct uh eel for sure obviously parent reps I would think okay student reps respon okay uh District Partnerships business Community highered institutions that would be obviously Riverland here
or anyone in the community I mean Chamber of Commerce rep follow those put uh I guess District fund donors foundations uh Grassroots anything we
think about there what did we they're all part of District Partnerships what's that sorry they I would consider that to be part of Under the Umbrella part the bus yeah we're just saying that would maybe be considered under District Partnerships
parb so we got I'm just looking at four five six seven eight nine 10 in there but that's not giving any like Kim had mentioned to with you know do we have a you know maybe a an elementary in a high school you know we split it to give them two in the
teachers so um any any thoughts on to multiples in any of those areas if we did multiples I would just say teachers and parents would be the only two spots I agree that one teachers and pars
you mentioned parents okay I would add Community reps just because if you get someone from the business Community or an agency that's a different hat but I'd be open to one that was the only one other one I had to in yeah
I think secretarial and and uh executive assistant could probably go together just one there um now before I go any further and I'm so sorry Mary Joe I don't look at you I'm sorry I see you on screen do you have any specific thoughts nope I I can
hear what you're all saying and and agree so sounds great okay so if we're looking at we had one from the principles and uh let's just do the ones to start with District admin executive
assistant I'm just going to put one for per to start with uh eel Liaisons and I'm going to throw SRO on there just since I deal with kids all the time um skip over parent reps is a
possible multiple student reps one probably and then if we get something someone from the community as a maybe a a one shot that that gives me seven that I've
got which leaves some multiples in here like I said with teachers what Neil go ahead um I I we're making an awful lot of plans here but I don't recall voting on option
three Barbed mentioned that we need to put this list together before we vote on option three okay that's the reason otherwise I agree with you but tonight since we have to move forward with it so sorry sometimes conversation actually affects the
vote because you're voting on option three but you really don't have an informed vote until you know who you're going to be inviting to participate so this is during the discussion we will questions been the questions been called let's do a uh roll call vote uh
under there was a motion first and second yep for this option for option three okay let's uh we'll start Kim I
Neil Angie I Gary I Davey I mayor Joe I and I will say I also now let's make sure we get some kind of a representation here um what
are your thoughts I mean I do we have what group should we have more than one and maybe just go to two because again I don't want to overweigh I that's just my opinion but I want to get a representation cross-section so with what we said there's 11 I would entertain the idea
that just going to 12 and putting two under that representative of a district partnership business community and or hire Ed just because it's such an over encompassing category and if you're at 11 I don't see Y2 would be a problem
but okay just a logistic question now to whom are we going to go that would be defined as whatever you just said District partnership I what group are we going to approach and ask
them to select a member of this committee Kim any thought on that well I think you could um you could we could uh talk with either City officials or the chamber and
or the president at Riverland I don't know what whatever we think is important to this this this this piece I just think that if you just say business Community then you're just representing one sector of those Partnerships that's why I said that so think of the three
partnership sectors that we have which is business commun Comm um agency or nonprofit and then higher ed so and and I mean kind these are all going to get together and then select some
representation you could just do one and go to the chamber and say who would you repres if you want yeah that's that might be easier yeah that way they and there might be someone there that be interested okay um so um back on let's let's talk
about the teacher should we think think a couple in the teachers maybe a high school and an elementary as a split okay so we did two and we had talked about uh so that's
one I think your parent representation should be similar which one the parent representation so yes and that was I say that would be the so if we do that would give us that 11 then so just just as I'm reading it now and
I'll just bring it I read what I've got uh principales Association one two from the teachers preferably element one from elementary one from high school one from the district Administration staff the executive assistant PA professional
staff uh the el director cultural AA on SRO one from there two from parents one from one student rep uh one District partnership uh Chamber of Commerce that
was that would that would only give us 10 then that would so if we come back with again that's 11 is that but if we add chamber but I said if if chamber falls into there you know District partnership
business Community hire Ed there's one from there that would give us 11 then right 11 total that's okay one from that group okay so one from either the chamber the district or the higher ed
right that would be 11 yep okay all right now let's dis any discussion on that yeah once once again I'm you know I'm rather concerned about the particulars that who is going to approach these groups that we have
now defined and uh ask them to from their their uh constituents a representative for this committee how's that going to work Barb do you do that
or do we send out I mean 80 85 to 90% of these are here within the school district um as I'm looking on here other than the chamber that so do we send out something do you send it or how does that work this is coordinated internally
by the district so I do have a blurb that I would send to Darcy and Copy Dave and then it's up to perhaps the two of you to email or send a letter to the did you say 11 you end ended up with yeah I
have a that she could share but I'll always Copy Dave on it on behalf of the board a letter or an email that she could share that gives them expectations what it's going to require for them on March 31st and what the deadline is to let her know who is representing them and then it's responsible those people
are responsible for getting back to her they can use whatever ction process they want but ultimately before a deadline then I'll put that in the blur that I share with Darcy and Dave we need to know who they are so I can start working with them to prepare them for doing this on March 31st so it is done by the
district but I've got a template you can use to send out to invite these groups to participate okay all right Kim so I think the less structured ones or is what Neil's concerned about so the bargaining units is not an issue but your student group
your partnership and your um your parent groups um I think could we look at those people that have volunteered and if anybody Falls in that they've showed interest already I just
don't know how else you bet them by by them you know um because I think of parent groups so I'm thinking all of the four elementaries have a PTO there might be someone that so how do you coordinate that and that's kind of what Neil's getting at and then you know if there
was someone from you know if there were multiple people in the partnership piece you know how do you how do you coordinate that so you know as is my thought before was everybody that calls you get a number and someone draws a number out of a hat and says it's number
four got it that's the one on yeah I mean that way it's totally sub subjective it should be anyway um if there's only one I know they've got a list of a number of people that showed some and I don't know if they fit into these groups or not but um but that's
what I thought is if you did that just drew a number out and that's who got the not and as Barb said too when they see the expectations of it's going to be a few hours and this time there may be some that say I can't do that so you know with the guidelines we put out and
part of the guidelines is you know it's it's total informational feedback just like the survey it doesn't make the decision you know no votes in included so all right um any other thoughts does
that sound all right on the 11 GE here you look like you got a no I would my only and that's not even a concern but that initial ask to me needs to be the same to every individual or group we reach out to I I don't I would not want
to and I maybe would' never do this but a phone call isn't going to work for me I mean I think the the the fir the first ask needs to be formally done everyone gets the same request in the same language I just think continuity of process is really important yeah
everything just like the questions all need to be the same so yes a pretty quick deadline too because I'm sure they've got a lot of work to do to get them prepared all right are we done with yes got it thank you very much that was a really robust discussion I think it's
important everybody had a chance to say say what you've said and we'll get to work on creating some audience input Forum people to participate on the second round interviews watching your interview and giving you strengths and weaknesses anonymously their names will not be attached to their comments you'll
just have 11 people providing you input and you'll see it all and the raw data sound okay great yes so do anyone want a quick break or do you have some other business to conduct we still need to do interview training and schedules and questions so does anyone want a f minute break or are
we good what do you think you let's take a five minute break because I have a baseball meeting in 10 minutes so yes five minute break no that's fine so go ahead Barb all right welcome back thank you very much we are now going to go into
the interview training process and that is a packet that looks like this I will screen share the entire document it's a lot I think you might have in your packets an abbreviated version that's like 13 Pages um just to
save some paper but we will now begin on this and I'm going to screen share but again I can't see you so please interrupt me um throughout if you have questions but we want to make sure you're very comfortable with the legalities of the interview process so if someone could please let me know
if you are now looking at the interview training and preparation packet we are thank you I'm going to zoom in on it um are there still people in the audience that I should be zooming in for to make sure they can see all of this or are we okay with just Page by Page since you
have hard copies yeah yep should I zoom in or leave it like this fill in what I can't even catch it zoom in yeah you don't need to zoom in no you're fine do not need to zoom in
okay no correct great thank you let me know if I need to at any point however so in this packet there's a couple of things um one we always want to revisit your vacancy brochure I do want to let you know that there is interest in your position and I'm fing phone calls with people who
have questions I can't tell you how many applications there are are because people will come in and out of the pool over the course of the entire application period so I don't want to set your expectations too high or too low but once the deadline passes you will know how many people applied so I think they see this as a great
opportunity and this is one of the things that is driving that interest there's your leadership profile and we'll revisit this again and again throughout the um getting process your timeline is in here I also want to give a shout out to whoever in your district
is working on your web page I don't want to name names because I'll probably miss someone but it is a terrific web page so many thanks to whoever is making sure that the information is current and accessible they're really doing a great job so many thanks to those folks and
that does include the timeline within the timeline they also have a link for instance right here where it says public input survey open they will on the website have a link that basically says click here to read the report because they already have a link in this section where it says click here watch the Q&A
session so thank you very very much to those folks okay I'm going to start talking about relevant law first and foremost um there are such things as protected classes and you are bound to abide by every single one of them what this means
is these are categories of things you cannot ask about and you cannot consider a lot of it is common sense and yet we just want to make sure that you know you cannot ask about or consider these things here are all the protected categories so because you are an equal
employment opportunity District you have to abide by this so we cannot ask about age we cannot ask about marital status etc etc however if you go to the next page and I'm going to go through this kind of quickly because I know you have this stuff and you'll look at it later and if
you want to look at the electronic version you've got that from me as well but interview questions in terms of non-discrimination laws these are the protected classes over on the left you cannot ask things in this middle
category if for whatever reason you want to ask about some of these things you could so for instance um if it was important to you to ask about their religion I guess you could ask are you available to work
Sundays I would highly recommend you not ask that but from a purely legal standpoint there is a way to ask about some of these categories however considering everything else that's going on in education right now you have a lot more important things to ask about other than these protected
classes but please know that you cannot and should not consider these things when you hire someone okay here's one on disability all kinds of things you could not ask but you do have some things that are permissible for instance in job
descriptions sometimes it does say you're required to be able to lift 50 pounds that's totally okay if there are parameters that are required to do this job that's okay to ask about but again you have a lot of other really great questions to ask I don't think it'll be necessary but I need to tell you about
it now this model policy is not in your abbreviated version the only thing I'm going to say here in terms of model policy this is uh 401 the EEOC stuff so there again you cannot ask anything that is illegal and I know you have a great HR team to make sure that you don't but
please do not um ask about that I do sometimes get asked about Veterans Preference Veterans Preference does not apply to the position of superintendent as it does to some other positions model policy 406 is your public and private Personnel data I'm
going to zip ahead in here to this page now I am going to zoom in on this because we we talk a lot about this as you might have noticed in this model policy and I'm sure you have it adopted in your District the names of applicants are private data except I'm going skip
the middle part except when applicants are considered by the school board to be finalists for public employment this is the data privacy part names of applicants are private data except when applicants are considered by the school board to be finalists for public employment so then I'm going to
go back to the first part and go right here a finalist means an individual who is selected to be interviewed by the school board for a position so on the evening that you choose your finalists technically they're going to be semi finalists because of you know round one
six people or whatever are semi-finalists but when you do that their names go public that night because you the school board will interview them those names go public you're going to be talking about candidates a b and c that whole night you have to be very careful
not to use identifying information I'll recommend candidate a b and c Etc but that night you have to be super careful because those are private data you'll make a motion to interview candidate a b and c after after that motion passes at the end of that meeting I'll read the
names out loud of who you're going to interview every other name forever and always our private data okay any questions on that this policy is kind of an important one because of the interviewing in a public meeting um but talking about private
data okay moving on that's policy 406 policy 205 is the open meeting and close meeting law the only reason we include this is is to remind you that every step of the process must be done in an open meeting you may not close a meeting for purposes of the superintendent search you may close a a
meeting to discuss and evaluate your superintendent but that's it other than evaluating your superintendent relative to their position the only thing you can do is for evaluation everything else is in the open including everything we're going to be doing in terms of the
search Okay other considerations based upon statute we include these in here because sometimes they actually apply for example in statute uh 122 a.4 under employment contracts and termination it
defines a superintendent as a quote teacher only for subdivisions 3 and 19 okay so right here subdivision three is on hiring and dismissing a teacher superintendent we'll say superintendent a superintendent related by blood or
marriage within the fourth degree comp imputed by civil law to a board member shall not be employed except by a unanimous vote of the full board the reason I have this in here is if when you see the applications because you're going to see them if you know
you're related to one of your applicants please let me know as soon as possible okay because there is a different voting circumstance for someone who's related to you within the fourth decree um and that I'll talk to you about that in a minute but if you see someone who's related and believe me it happens um
in-laws cousins all of that has come into play several times in the last few years so let me know if you're related to someone please also a teacher or a superintendent shall not be required to reside within the employing district as a condition to their employment or
continued employment so that's the one where people want to ask are you going to live here you know are you going to be a part of our community you cannot ask that and sometimes people volunteer it during their interview just because they know it's important to people you know it is if they volunteer that you
still can't consider it if they could do their job as superintendent as based upon the contract and the job description they do not have to live within your District boundaries and you cannot ask it so I always want people to know it's a statutory requirement it's not that you don't care about it it's just a
statutory requirement and then this one just talks about when you can employ or take uh you know within the last 365 days of the contract you can sign a new contract but that's less relevant the search here are the special board um voting guidelines the only one that
applies at least as far as the search goes is this first one the initial hire of a superintendent related to a board member requires a unanimous vote of the full board so if your first cousin applies
for this job and you let me know that it will require the entire board to vote unanimously to hire that person not to interview them and not to bring them back for round two the hiring decision must be unanimous and if you're the one related to them you cannot abstain you
must vote so even if it's a 61 vote they don't get hired if even one person doesn't want them as your superintendent so the um relationship one is really important again it does happen but not very often any questions on
that okay comment Part: 2
relationship one is really important again it does happen but not very often any questions on that okay common interview mistakes I'm going to go over just for a moment you will not make these um you have very
clear selection criteria you know exactly what you're looking for you have received very clear instructions from your stakeholders with what was it 400 and some people responded to your survey so you know what you're looking for that's great it is a two-way street so
please try to make a good impression on these candidates they're interviewing you as much as you are interviewing them occasionally a candidate does turn down a second interview or even a job if they get bad vibes from a school board during the interview process so make a good impression if you can not going to worry
about three not going to worry about four you know this is a big picture you're hiring someone for probably a two or a threee contract but it's big picture don't get too immersed in the details there um why do they want the job this this all goes to interview questions uh one way street we talked
okay number eight incomplete notes is a mistake because you're going to have a lot of information coming at you and it's hard to remember everything um when you for example are reviewing the applications it's going to feel like a lot and I suggest when you review the
applications you don't have to look at every single thing in their packet the big stuff will give you a sense of if you want to interview them or not their cover letter their resume their answers to the questions that you're asking in your application their letters of
recommendation those tend to be the big four five things maybe their work history but you shouldn't need to delve down into the details of their transcripts and their license and all of that kind of stuff um but you do want to jot down things about each person so you
remember them because if you do get 10 or 15 applications you forget who you've looked at so take notes however take notes very carefully because if you write down something that is a protected class your notes are subject to a data
request and they're going to go on file with your HR team according to your data retention policies same thing with the interviews take notes during the interviews please don't write down something that is um a protected category just because that's how you're going to read remember them
and I'll give you a really faci example but when you interview people and you want to remember who's who if you interview six people you're going to be tired that's a lot of people don't write down um old white guy or um crucifix
necklace or something that is a protected class just take very appropriate and professional notes and you won't get in any trouble uh that's it you don't have to rush this decision if you have to call a recess while you're deliberating because you're tired and you want to come back
the next day you can do that you don't have to rush to a decision and don't accept the wrong fit um we would be happy to do another search next year for free you do have the luxury of time this year as I've mentioned I think a couple times um you still could extend the deadline if you don't like the pool that
you see when it closes we'll change the timeline open it up for another two weeks maybe you'll get more people and if it doesn't happen we'll get you an interim and then we'll redo the search again next year no additional charge and then the last thing is please um make sure that you do check your bias at the
door and I'm going to talk about bias just for a moment unless there's questions on the mistakes I'll give you five seconds any questions on these you go okay great thank you next page is the bias and this I think is in your abbreviated packet um there's
nothing wrong with bias because everybody has them um what it means is that when you see people you make an assumption about them based on what you see or what you hear you just automatically make some assumptions you cannot exist as a human being without having bias it's a very natural thing to
have what we want to be careful of though is allowing your bias to affect the decision you make for the district and I'll give you a couple examples of times that it that it did affect the decision so these are true stories but there was a board unnamed Northern
Minnesota a couple years ago that had two finalists and the finalists were both incredibly qualified people one was a man one was a woman and the interviews went great they had tremendous answers they were both very strong during the deliberations the board was talking
about the candidates trying to figure out who to make an offer to and a board member said you know what I thought John had a really strong personality he was very direct he said what he thought I think he'd be a great fit in our community just head nodding
around and then they eventually got to the second candidate who was a woman and I swear the exact same board member said you know Jane has a really strong personality she's very direct and I just don't think she's going to fit in in this
community so I want you to tell me and I can't see you but someone tell me what kind of bias that was gender bias gender bias thank you very much that individual had a bias to
a strong man with a direct opinion and whatever had a had leadership qualities a strong woman with a direct communication style was not good so without question the exact same observation was good for the man and bad
for the woman and so that is something you want to be super careful of you're looking for the best person for the job um the other one that happened was um age so there were three finalists actually but one finalist was probably in their 50s um and the other two
finalists probably in their 30s or 40s and during deliberations they were talking about how important it was to be on social media and get the message out and make sure that you have a Twitter account and this you know everything was so important and people said I'm pretty sure that Arnold Arnold
does not have the Savvy technologically that I know Ben does and so gosh I'm leaning toward Ben and everyone's agreeing with it and nodding and luckily they didn't make the actual decision on that because what happened is we found out Ben refuses to use social media
there was he did not have a presence and Arnold who was in his mid-50s was a mad Tweeter he tweeted every day like six times and so the Assumption about Technology based on age would have really hurt that search if they made a decision based on that so age is also
big the last one is geography and I think this is going to be applicable in Albert Lee um there is some bias in the Metro against Greater Minnesota and there is bias in Greater Minnesota against the Metro so I just want to ask folks to keep in mind that we're talking
about individuals and we're going to want to get to who they are as a leader in the interviews and not make assumptions about who they might be based upon what district they work in but I know that that in albertly is going to be something that we're sensitive to um we just always want to
be careful that we're not assuming something about them Without Really Trying to find out who they are so we can ask questions to try and find out who they are to uncover concerns you might have but the geography bias does rear its head and the last one is it's a hard word to say
familiarity the bias of being familiar with someone this comes into play most often with internal candidates sometimes it's the very best thing for an internal candidate that you know them and sometimes it's the very worst thing for an internal candidate that you know them
um so a double-edged sword same thing with people in neighboring districts you have administrators all around you in South Central Minnesota and so some of those people might be in your pool and you might know things about them good or bad so trying to set that aside is tricky because there's going to be
people that you probably know and people that you have no idea who they are and trying to find a middle ground on that that's objective and fair can be tricky so if nothing else pay attention to your bias about who you know and don't know
but because it's human nature I'm never going to say that don't trust your gut because you should trust your gut just be aware that you have some stereotypes that exist in your head and we want to be as clear of those as possible that's all I'll say any questions about that
okay then on to deliberation scenarios um these may or may not happen and I'm not going to go through each of them in depth but I will tell you deliberations can get sticky one if you have a great pool and you just can't agree on who to move forward because everybody was great
or in the last round maybe two out of the three were great and you're split with who you want to hire it can get um people can get very stubborn and refuse to compromise or not listen anymore
openly to what someone else might be saying you will feel differently about candidates because of your own life experiences correct you all you grew up differently you have different occupations your family backgrounds are different all of your life experiences will help you make these decisions based on your
own individual lens just keep in mind that every single board member feels the same way so if you are deadlocked between two people for example there's a couple of things I would say that you should do and I'll I'll be there for your interviews so I can help you too but if you're
deadlocked let it kind of ferment for a while to see if anybody moves and if not we're going to go back to that leadership profile and maybe even score the two candidates on your leadership profile we're going to pull out the stakeholder report and score them based on what the stakeholder said was important so you can actually kind of
quantitatively try to break a tie you also could um take a break you know I said we don't want you to be tired if this goes late I had boards go to one or two in the morning sometimes and still couldn't decide so they just called a recess till the next day came back at
four o'clock the next day or whenever people could make it and within 10 minutes they knew who they wanted to hire so you can always call a recess the second one um where comments are becoming personal from board members to one another remember you're doing this in the public people are listening and
you are role models and people are going to write down what you say about these candidates so we ask you to please try to speak positively about them even if you don't want to hire them we don't want to do any mudslinging in a public meeting because that will get back to a
candidate and sometimes it can actually affect their career prospects so we don't want you to do that nor do we want you um between yourselves sort of devolving into an argument about who's who's right this is a time where you call a recess during the meeting call a
10-minute recess get up go out get a fresh fresh air get a drink cool off come back see how it goes so call a recess if you need to the last one is about rumors you are going to be lobbied and I'm I'm not exaggerating when I say that when you have candidates announced
and you've interviewed them people will Lobby you for and against pretty much everybody including these social media sweeps now we do social media sweeps on everybody and if there's something questionable we investigate it sometimes there's absolutely no basis to the social media
information so we still recommend them however you will be told by people boy I Googled them and you wouldn't believe what I learned and how in the world did you choose them well you have to trust the process but also you're going to have to have thick skin um people want
to tell you you what to do so just thank people but do not under any circumstances as board members share a rumor in an open meeting about a candidate if you are shared if you get information that you think is
credible um a pending lawsuit or something something whatever please call me immediately and let me know and we will look into it for you if it's factual yes you could share that in the meeting but if it's hearsay don't do that because you're opening up the
district to some liability um defaming someone's character or career in an open meeting so be super careful with hearsay I'm talking a lot normally I ask you to talk as well but I know it's late and you're tired but are there any questions on the deliberation
scenarios going l no ma'am okay so the next page excuse me is um I'm going to skip all of the and you do not have these in your packet but they are available to you if you want to look
through these seven pages to see if there are questions you really like some of them are really good in here however we've suggested questions for you that are customized based on your stakeholder survey and your your leadership profile so if you want to look at this later and pick questions or if you already did and
have some favorite questions um let me know and we can certainly talk about them later tonight when we do questions this is in your packet the candidate will ask you questions if they leave enough time we're going to do one hour interviews um depends how many questions you have but I'm going to be
there holding up signs that say you know 30 minutes left and 10 minutes left we want them to stagger their responses so they get done with the interview and hopefully have chance to ask you questions if they have time to ask you
questions please don't make Dave answer all the questions we want every board member to answer if possible now that doesn't mean every question needs all of you to answer because then we'll run out of time but look at these questions here these are some typical ones people are
asking but candidates are getting more and more Savvy all the time they're trying to figure out who you are they're trying to figure out what makes you tick because they want to know if they want to work for you or not so think about the things you're most passionate about and if they ask a question about the
Strategic plan volunteer to answer that one you you know Dave's going to say hey that's a great question who wants to answer that one and hopefully at least two of you will answer it kind of try to build on each other because they like to watch you interact with one another they want to see how you work together as a
board so answer questions if it's a question about um I don't know what are you most proud of that's really fun to answer um but if you're really into a curriculum and they ask a curriculum question feel free to answer that the only thing I will tell you is that I've
seen um candidates ask a question that in hindsight is a trick question okay so as you know our governance model is the board governs and the superintendent manages and that works really well as a team you all have kind of your Lane
right I've seen a couple candidates ask a question that is very very detailed and very management oriented and they want to see if the board tries to answer it or not and if the board actually answers it if someone or two people on the board actually answer it and they know the
answer that can actually give that candidate pause because they might think that you are then a micromanaging board and they want to have the autonomy to run the district based upon what you tell them to do so the question might be something a really complicated question about Finance you don't have to have the
answers to those questions you should feel comfortable saying you know we trust our finance department to handle that that bring information to us as a board we take a look at it and we make decisions based on their recommendations and what we feel is best but we don't really know that stuff that's really down in the
weeks so I just want to caution you that if someone asks a really detailed question it might be a good idea not to answer it if you truly don't you know don't fake your way through it and if all seven members know everything
about Finance those candidates will probably not accept an offer they're going to want to know that you stay out of the weave but something learned at a different District all right just about done here reference check I know we've talked about this and I don't have my notes but
we would like someone on the board to make a couple reference check calls between round one and round two can you remind me who volunteered for that does anybody remember I believe I probably did yeah I think it was Dave yep Dave okay so um I have two or three
Pages kind of similar to this that I will give to Dave when he starts making reference calls um between round one and round two um the gist of it is you'll be surprised what people will tell you as a board member versus what they'll tell the search firm they're generally pretty guarded with us about what they say plus
we're limited to the references that are listed on the application because the names aren't public yet by now everything is I out in the open Dave could call whoever he wants to and ask anything so they'll tell you a lot of stuff that will help you decide if you've got the right people in round two or
not and then this page is about um deliberating in public I already talked about it so I won't hammer it home speaking though please try to speak positively of these people not every state forces people to interview for this job in public many
states um do allow all of this to be done in Clos session so until you announce the candidate nobody know who's applied but in Minnesota they've put themselves out there they're in the public their own District knows they're interested in albertly area and it's not easy for them so we do ask you to please
treat them with um the same care that you would like to get which is don't criticize their performance don't point out things that they didn't do very well try to focus on the positive but ultimately you're going to have people rising to the top and remember that not everybody interviews great they might be
really nervous but they might be a stellar candidate keep looking at those application materials don't dismiss them them if they blow the interview because they still might be really good and they might do much better in the second round but deliberating in public is important I think to keep in mind again and you're
doing your round two interviews um in the evening at four o'clock so you'll be deliberating that night there might be a lot of people listening so keep this in mind and please just um do your best to keep it positive that's it other than the
superintendent contract and I know we did talk about it and I believe you have someone on behalf of the board negotiating with this person if you do end up making an offer yeah a board designity begins negotiations on April 1 that also was dav's board chair wasn't
it yeah yes have you been talking about a model contractor coming up in um you know working I think with Ashley your HR or your attorney with a contract you're going to be ready to roll out on April 1 not yet
no that might be something you want to do um in the month of March to make sure that you hammer out some kind of model contract that either it's based on your old contract or our model contract and then you need to bring it back to the full board to look at it to see if
there's agreement on kind of the guard rails as far as dollars and benefits that you're in um for your starting point because obviously negotiations are negotiations but the board should approve the starting point for Dave to be able to immediately in April 1st
email a contract to your selected finalists and start talking um you have six days April 7th you're hoping to approve a contract if all goes well but that means that he's going to have to have the board's approval on kind of those parameters that you want to put on
the contract so try and do that maybe in in March if you could so that that's then a um a a board agenda item then that we go through yep I would put it on there you know I I'd probably try and come up with one day um I don't know if you have a
negotiations committee or if it' be you and Ashley and your Council coming up with a contract and then you bring it back to the full board in an open meeting to talk about kind of where are you in terms of the starting spot okay if you want it in the consent agenda some boards do that they're just
very comfortable reading the consent agenda and if they want to pull it out for discussion they can um it really depends on what the board wants to do okay all right thanks okay that's all I have for interview training I went through it qu pretty quick I know you're
tired but are there any questions on the interview training packet no there isn't nope Mary Joe did you oh she looks good we're good yes all right so we're really close now the
other thing I want to do is have you take a look at these um these are the draft interview schedules for round one and round two um um this is holding places for six people you might end up with three that you're interested in you might end up with eight that you're
interested in six is a good number and it is a lot you're doing them all in one day but this is just a placeholder does this schedule still look okay for everybody we'd start at 9:00 a.m. on a Wednesday I've got some housekeeping to go over with the board I want to review
the EMD form which is your scoring that you're going to use for each candidate there 1 hour interviews 15 minute breaks between each interview and then a half hour for lunch at 12:45 and then maybe three more and then a half hour break
for us to tally all of your ratings and scores and then by 5:15 you'll be deliberating on who should come back for round two is this good yep perfect where will the interviews be held I need to fill in that yellow to be determined interviews
will be held in the boardroom oh wait yeah that's where we do them yeah yep what's the room 109 so what would be the phrase in room 109 of the district office or what high
school Brookside Brookside education center room 109 Brookside right is that what we call okay so interviews will be held in um at Brookside Education Center in room 109 and are open to the public sound
right yep what about um live streaming I put it in here in italics because I want to ask you for sure whether or not you want to live stream interview we don't have that capability at this time okay should I take that sentence
off or do you want me to leave it on there and just remove the italics should I just take it off sorry I'm yep I I don't want any employers getting mad at us with employees watching during the the day just kidding yeah take that off we don't
have that capability okay and even if you did have the capability I would recommend you not live stream because honestly the people who interviewed later in the day have a big Advantage they watch the first two or three interviews write down every question they come in it's true I don't like liveing the interviews
I don't think it's fair to the candidates but I will completely remove the sentence that is in italics okay the next page is round two here we are on Monday March 31st beginning at 4 o'clock I won't have any
housekeeping items for you so we can start the interview right away at 4:05 sometimes the candidate is very succinct and they get done in less than an hour so that's why those little Asters are there for both round one and round two we can start sooner because
times are approximate um if a candidate is there and they're willing to start a little early this is not written in stone okay so there's some flexibility here if people go too short and we can move along a little more quickly so I like that flexibility for you I'll do the same thing at the bottom all
interviews will be held at the Brookside Education Center in room 10 109 correct and are open to the public and remove that sentence this is holding three spots you might only have two you might have three or four it just depends the one thing to
keep in mind is that um by the end of March some candidates will be in a couple of different pools not always but sometimes so it can be helpful to have three people in round two because occasionally one of them drops out
between round one and round two and you've got um March 26 to you have five days so you have five days between choosing your finalist for round two and actually interviewing them and in those five days
maybe someone takes another job so if you have three people at least you're left with two the risk of having two people is you end up with one candidate to interview in the second round doesn't always happen but when it does it's kind of disappointing that you only interview one person so we do say three if you find good three if you
don't find good three then don't interview them on this day we'd recommend tours be given of the district I'm assuming that's something that would interest the board and we probably talked a little bit about it already who would I work with in the
district to arrange those tours this is again done by the district but I have samples of all kinds of different ways to structure candidate tours would I send those to Darcy and Copy Dave I think that's a goodidea that's I was saying y you want tours then I think that's great yes correct yep yep want to
give some thought to who are the hosts for the tours and I'll just tell you briefly what your choices are um usually the building administrators give the tours in their own building but a host accompan is the candidate from building to
building if it's an adult they usually ride with the person it's a Community member or a chamber person or a former School Board member that is the host and they just kind of drive them around um sometimes districts don't want that and they want a district transp
ation so a van and a district driver to take them around from school to school to school that is required if you have students serving as hosts and there are some districts that invite you know two students per candidate to be their host
so four to six students could be invited to accompany your finalists on March 31st from building the building to building but then they definitely need to have a district driver and a van or a um something to think about you don't
have to today but you will need to decide at our next meeting on March 18th any initial thoughts of it or yes NOS on any of the who gives tours kind of thing no initial thoughts
so I like the student involvement I'm just gonna say that I think it's a great IDE through student council and districts that have had students serve as the hosts have had really great feedback from candidates because the
candidates get to ask and usually it's seniors Juniors or seniors um and sometimes it's the principal that chooses who gets to be a host because it's kind of that again who do you pick to do it but sometimes the students that are doing it give the
candidate a glimpse into student life that they get to a company for like you know two three hours that day and it brings a new energy to their interview interview so students are great if you can pull it off if not you'll want to figure out who can host them um and
we'll talk about that on the 18th okay tour H all right that is it for interview schedule I will make those notes and I am done with that I'm also done screen sharing thank goodness so now I can see your faces again where are you here we go okay we
are at the last part of the meeting so um Norma if you could please distribute the draft proposed interview questions to each board member that would be great thank you thanks I did email this to U Mary Joel
so she's got it as well um so I'm going to tell you what we'll do with this if you give me just a second so this is simply a list of proposed questions we crafted these based on what we know about Albert the opening question is kind of a standard one and then it's broken out by
your leadership profile and feedback from your stakeholders so one of the things I'm going to do first is ask you to take five or 10 minutes where each of you individually pick the questions you like
and then I'm going to do a quick tally it doesn't mean that's what we're going to use but we usually recommend question one and then for instance in the next category there are five questions and I've suggested you could each pick two of those five you don't have to you can pick one
or none but please don't pick more than two next category please pick two next category pick two so it's it's time to do some individual reflection on what questions you like at the
end question 28 is a question that you ask me to Circle back to after the planning meeting remember that list of questions you talked about and you chose some for the application there was a question in there and it is question 28 but we edited it and we added some
things and you said please bring this back for interviews whether it's qu round one or round two I don't care and then question 29 is also the pretty standard question I'd encourage you to use 29 and then the final page there are six questions where maybe one of those
or two of those could be used so this is simply a tally to start with and then we're going to talk about them but we're not going to talk about them using the language of the questions I'm assuming there's still people in the audience and we want to be very careful with the confidentiality of these
questions that's why Norma is going to collect these from the board members after we're done and shred them right after the meeting and that's why Mary Joe is going to delete them from her computer so we're going to talk by number question two question five question 12 and it's frustrating but
it's it's important that people don't get a heads up about what the questions are any questions before we stop I'm going to give you at least five minutes to do your selections of these questions and if there is three in one
area we wanted instead of one or two we could choose three correct I'd rather you not because I want you to winnow it down and if if you do what I've asked here let's see that's one two three four five 6 S 8
n 10 11 12 13 14 you would have 14 questions if you only picked what I suggested but what a lot of boards end up doing is combining questions because a lot of people liked question eight and a lot like question nine and we merge them together into one question we can do that
too give it it give it your best shot I'm going to log off for less than five minutes and you let me know when you're ready to take a tally e e e e
e e e e e e e e e e I don't want to make any assumptions but
let me know if you're ready to go through and take a tally I can wait we're ready Barb go ahead okay thank you so how many how many board members are still in here five uh yeah we have yep yep okay we have our all I'm do at first
is just ask for a show of hands and I'll do a quick count and then I'm just going to jot it down and then we'll Circle back okay so for now it's just a count is everybody okay with question one yeah okay yep all right we're gonna ask that one so now questions two through six I'd
like you to choose two one or two how many of you had question two in your top two zero question three one two two had question three
four three three people question five zero question six five all right winner winner chicken dinner there okay the next one we had choose two out of questions 7 through 11
how many had question seven in your top two three question eight one question nine three question
10 two and question 11 one all right next category 12 through 16 you could pick two how many had question 12 one question
13 one two 14 two 15 three okay 15 two for 15 and 16 two that's a close one all right the next category you got to choose two of
17 to 22 how many has 17 in your favorites one two three 18 1 19
two uh 20 zero 21 zero you run out of four chose 22 okay that works next category 23 to 27 you can pick two how
many had 23 in your top two 1 24 3 25 3 26 two 27 one all right um question 28 how many
would like to ask that in round one because we could always use it in round two as well or do you not want to ask how many liked question 28 I guess I should just say generally three four five okay five okay so 28 we'll come back and decide whether
it goes in round one or round two in just a minute is question 29 okay with everybody y got it thank you and then the last page about stakeholder input questions one through six they're sort of similar to some other questions based on your leadership profile so I didn't want to
have too many of the same question but if you could pick one how many picked question one no one question two one question three no one question
four one two question five one two three and question six no one okay so go back to the front page if you would please this is what I'm seeing and you
can always edit whatever but on the first category question six appears to be universally light um three and four are very close is there anyone who'd like to make
a case for number four or for number three or is there anyone who wants to Wordsmith it or work with me after the meeting to Wordsmith it I like I liked four because it had ethic it had certain words in it and it talked
about strategies and you know I was a number four person but number three is I mean anytime you can give provide an example yeah is maybe more robust response we'll get too
so yeah the process that's what I walk us to the process just a little more individualized I could incorporate the word into the word strategies into the end of the question in three that' be okay and what strategies did you use yes
if I put that in there does that make question three better Yes sounds good okay so question three and what strategies did you use or something like that okay so questions three and six and
I think those are different enough where someone's not going to give you the same answer for both because I do want to be careful not to ask the same thing and get the same answer this is meant to really help you figure out what you want to um get from them the next category you were really evenly split between
questions s and 11 it's seven and nine got three votes each if we use seven and nine is that okay or does someone want to advocate for question 10 got two I'd be okay with s and n and I was a tener are other people okay with seven
and nine yes okay I'm going to circle seven and nine and those also I think are different enough um yeah okay and and remember that we could use these for round two if you
want also so I've got question one 3 six seven and nine so far this next category you were very very evenly divided the only one that had more than two votes was question 14 um boy it's tough when there's not a clear winner does anyone have a
suggestion of which question or questions to use or combining them so that everybody's happy and remember the question on the very back page is real similar to this category and on that page I would say question five on the very last page had the most
votes there were three people that chose that one how about 14 since I got three votes can we comfortably ask 14 yeah okay so I got three votes that's more than half of you and then if you look back at question question five on the last page
is that enough or do you want to weave in something from 12 13 15 or 16 well I I'm concerned that we don't have a diversity related question so I'm yeah I I want to retain 16 just
because I don't know if we have any other questions that speak to that and with a 50 almost 50% ethnic diversity within our student body and I just you know I think that's our opportunity uh with that
with I'm fine with that I had voted for 12 and 15 but I'm fine with 14 and 16 there really weren't any questions I didn't like no okay Mary Joe you too okay so 16 14
and 16 we will ask um the next one 22 had four votes so I'd say we should include 22 do you feel like we should ask another one that's more specific
to like 17 got three votes if you feel 17 got three votes and 22 got four if you feel 17 and 22 are different enough we could ask both of those or do you think they're too similar and you'd only get the same
answer from somebody I think 18's closer to uh 22 but I I don't know either one of those I just that's what we're seeing as you know the financial challenges so Barb how many were for
17 three wa yeah I think 17 is and you're asking someone in 17 to hypothesize a little bit about what they might do because of all these things that could happen but you could then perhaps get to the Visionary thing that your students were looking for or the creativity to see if they come up with
some out of the box thinking in terms of 17 yeah I like 17 okay so if we have 17 and 20 we're good okay okay 17 and 22 it is um
and then the next category 23 to 27 it's kind of a dead heat 24 and 25 had three each and 26 had two so we could ask one question or we could ask two I just don't want to ask the same
thing but this did come up pretty high with your stakeholder groups they rated this one pretty important I like 26 because it's Pro they need to provide an example yeah and I think there's a similarity between
um 24 and 27 just a point could we word Smith 24 and add that section of measurement up from 25 put
that sure uh combine 24 and 25 together yeah that's a good idea oh good idea okay let's combine 24 and 2 especially regarding that fourth word of measure and evaluate and I'll find a way to it probably won't be quite exactly worded the same but the context will be
the same okay so 24 and 25 so is that enough of a question in that area versus trying to come up with another question for 20 for the category of that you know unless 26 comes with the example but I guess we could probably even add that
into yep 24 25 26 is one I I mean I could try to do that it'd be a long question but these people will have a copy of the questions in front of them and I always tell them make sure you read the question and answer everything they're asking so it could be almost a three-part question if you want to
include 26 up in that also if you're okay letting me do that I I like that because they that makes them think about it then and then how did they give us an example about it so it's not just talking about about
it so the prime thing is the example but we'll combine 24 25 and 26 into one question it'll be a long question but people will have to be sure they answer it to your satisfaction okay see if they pay attention exactly exactly um question 28
was the one we talked about at the planning meeting this could be asked in the first round or you could save it for the second round and the way to think about questions is when you picked your application questions it was pretty Broad you know you just wanted some big picture ideas and you'll read their
answers when you see the applications round one it's like a funnel starts to come down it's a little more specific round two is going to be even more specific and you're going to want more concrete examples even maybe some scenario questions of what they've done or what they would do so if you think of
it that way do you feel like question 28 belongs in round one to help you decide who to bring back again or does it belong in round two to help you decide who to hire it's kind of like a proud parent everyone wants to talk about their kids
so here's something you really did and I think you said that's broad you know maybe a project I was going to say the opposite that that's their time to when they're finalist finalist and really just shine then after we we started to drill down and
then they can it would be a a finalist question to me it's my it's actually my question and uh I see it at potentially I think it's where you're going Kim as if there's a tiebreaker that question could help us discern who is the
strongest of three candidates yeah am I hearing that that could be a round two question is everybody okay with 28 being in round two yeah that's what I'm suggesting was round two sounds good okay and I will bring you a list of proposed round two questions to think
about at the end of March 26th to select for March 31st and I will include this one in round two so that'll be in the list you see next time we're already using question 29 and the last page do you want to use
question five that had three votes question four had two votes and question two had one vote May how about maybe that's a round one question what do you think I mean if we're giving them a the moment at the
end to shine maybe that's a decider on what did you do in round one if it's coming I I don't know just was thinking as you said I thought hey kind of similar philosophy yeah Y at 8 o00 yeah it works
for 8 o'clock at night barbett works for us to do that one I'm sorry I'm not clear on what you are you using questions one through six for round one or not I'm confused so we would want so on
that back page um no number five we just talked about as a round one maybe as round one okay so use question five in round one and then we're saving question 28 or whatever it was for round two yes yes yep yep good okay I'm going to read
these out loud one more time and if you have your notes in front of you please make sure I've got it right okay you have selected to ask questions one three and I'm going to add and what strategies did you use or something like
that 1 three 6 7 9 14 16 17 22 24 25 26 that's going to be one
question 29 and then five is that the same as your notes y y yep let me count 1 2 3 four five six seven8 9 10 11 12 that'll give you 12 questions for
round one that's a nice number it's not too many and it's not too few um it should use up a good chunk of the hour but not all of it so they still have time to ask you questions as the last question so any final thoughts on this before I ask Norma to recollect these
from you and Shred anybody okay a three-hour meeting well done it's a lot of work I appreciate you you uh hanging in there with me very much I will get the no I knew that one in the case I should let you know that I don't
ask them in this order because they're grouped under you know um leadership profile they're too similar to one another to ask them back to back so I I kind of popcorn them up and I mix them up so we start with the easier questions the middle gets a little tougher the end we save the pretty tough questions for
the end and then as a softball at the end as well so they won't be in this ordinance but I will do it the way that you've asked so thank you very much for that that is everything I had for you tonight um follow-up steps I'm going to send probably tomorrow or early next week the blurb to Darcy and Dave to let
the groups you identified and were there 11 groups am I correct about that 11 or is it more to provide input in round two I think it was 11 11 11 11 yeah yep okay all right and so Dave you'll work
with Darcy to be clear on which 11 groups those are to get the invite out but I'll get the blurb to you if not tomorrow Monday we do have time but 11 groups I'll get the blurb out I'll send a blurb to uh Darcy and Dave and copy Norma about getting the stakeholder
report out to people and perhaps in an email blast in a press release etc etc I would also encourage them to include a link to the Q&A session about the albertly area search if you have not watched it as board members please do
watch that um we've only had 23 views of the Q&A so I think being proactive and sending that out with the survey results would be good because people want to know what's going on transparency came up how many times in your survey hundreds of times and so being
transparent with that Q&A I think is helpful but having only 23 people watch it so far is a little concerning that rumors might be out there supplanting the facts that are in the Q&A so that might be a good idea but please watch it if you haven't and then I'm done other
than questions do you need anything more from me tonight anyone I think we feel good great thanks for hanging in there very great discussion on input in round two that's a tough conversation because there's always ripples from every decision you
make so I appreciate you waiting to decide on committees or whatever you were going to do until after you saw that report um very much appreciated the the candid conversation all head so have a good night I will allow you to finish your business or adjourn the meeting whatever's next and I'll see you next
time and please reach out stay in touch if you have questions about the process sounds great Barb thank you very much see you at Capital of the day any questions any other if not I'm not going to vote meeting's adjourned we're
going bye bye see you our