Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Yeah. I'm still trying to wake up and home. Yeah. Debbie and I were talking about how early we went to bed. But here we are. Yeah. Just getting down to, these retreats. So welcome everyone for our third, right, third and last retreat, of this school year. Quite a year already. But we're excited to be here because we have a lot of exciting things to, get down to and discuss. And, so let's get to Claddellton.
Please call. Yes, ma'am. Good morning, Director Carter? Present. Doctor Duncan should be on his way in. Doctor Gerken? Here. Doctor Chlipi? Present. Director Reinhart? Present. Director Casacker? Present. Director Tomlin? Present, sir. Thank you. And then it goes through the Alright. I would like to welcome, doctor Debbie Brown, who will lead us through our Emergenetics activity. And, hopefully, we will walk away with, the forward submission and vision today. What's up, doctor Debbie? Good morning. The floor is yours.
Alright. Okay. As soon as well, I feel like there's a Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, Claudia is gonna put up the slide deck in a minute, but we'll we'll go ahead and get started. So, excited to be with you on the last of your three retreats. We are gonna work on drafting your mission and vision statement today, and we will be walking out with those drafts today for sure. We might even finish just a test. Early so you get a little more extra time for lunch. How's that? For incentive, actually. So what I'd like you to do is
take a look at the two handouts I gave you, which are your profile, and your, what we call tip soup. I believe you, we gave you these before. We're gonna use these for our check-in. So if you go to the next slide, please. What I'd like you to do is take a look at your tip sheet. Now the tip sheet the purpose of the tip sheet is for you to share information with others. So what a lot of people do sometimes is just, provide a copy of the tip sheet to the people that they're working with or wanna communicate with in a certain way,
so that they the other person has better understanding of who you are through your Emmergenetics profile. So what I'd like you to do in the next seven minutes, how about that, is take a look at your tip sheet, and you'll see up on the slide, what I'd like you to do is pick one thing that you want the group to know about you from your tip sheet and one thing that you're gonna keep in mind as we engage in our work this morning around the shim condition. Okay? Let's take a look at that and then be ready to share out. Okay. Great. So I'm sorry. Say that one more time. One thing from the tip sheet that we'd like everybody to know about yourself.
Contact. Just be Either one. Right? Wherever, you know, whatever resonates with you this morning. And then one thing that you're going to keep in mind as we engage in our work around drafting mission and vision statement. Okay? K. One ready, or do you need another moment? Yes? Alright. Is there someone who'd like to start us off? Remember, you're sharing one thing you want the group to know about you from your tip sheet and one thing that you're gonna keep in mind as we continue our work this morning. You'd like to start us off. You pull the teacher card, and I'm gonna Yeah.
Alright. Well, how about we're gonna start in the middle. So how about Debbie? And then you get to decide left or right which direction we're going. I often start, so I was trying not to. But okay. You get all my names. Alright. Well, before you start, though, are we going left to your left or to your right? I'll go to her. Okay. Great. So wrap around. So So, I I think what you probably already know about me is that, I'm a trimodal thinker in that, analytical and social as well.
And that although this side of the tip sheet says, I usually don't need time for thought. Disagree. Okay. Great. I need I do like to process things. Mhmm. And and then once I've thought it through, I'm like, okay. Ready. Why can you tell help us understand why you like to take time to process things? Probably because I I see lots of different points of view, lots of perspectives. It's sometimes I get wrapped up in that. Mhmm. And, you know, on on the one hand,
on the other hand, this over here, this over there. And so sometimes it's hard to just settle. Great. So Okay. And what's one thing that you're going to commit to as we work from your tip sheet? Listening to everyone and, just making sure that we have this we have the luxury of time together today in a in a more informal setting Mhmm. And to take advantage of that time. I hope that we're all doing that.
I'm feeling Feeling good about that opportunity. Okay. So that's that's your commitment. Is that okay. Great. K. I'm having a shock out of you. I am a fast paced action person here and also very confidential in life. And what? Lively. Okay. I'm sure it's a shocker. Okay. One thing I am gonna pay attention to or keep myself accountable to is not occupied the space. I have already started doing that Mhmm. Letting people talk versus me talking all the time.
So Mhmm. I'm watching myself on that, but I'm still committed to doing that today Great. Talk less and let others who talk less talk more. Okay. Thank you. One thing I would like to add to what you said, even, is that in our world with Emergenetics, we don't actually like to use the word confrontational. We like to use the words words third, third, assertive. We believe that that's a more positive way to indicate really what your behavior is. I mean, you're moving at such a fast pace,
and your opinion is given in a way that's very directed, which, remember when we talked about the intent impact gap? So the perception is that you are being confrontational when, really, that's not your intent. You're just being very directive in in the way that you're advancing your opinion forward. So I just like to bring in that, what we call the language of grace into this space because I think it's important for us to keep in mind. Yeah. Yeah. Just this weekend, there was an email that was just that Okay.
That I have to address, soon after that Yeah. After this Okay. Okay. But but And you're gonna do it through a third, third, assertive case. Absolutely. And there there are times that we have to take that pace. Right? Yes. So, so that is a brilliance that you actually bring to the group. So I do want I wanna be sure that we highlight that. Thank you. Okay. Third, third, a survey. Yes. Yes. My third, third, a survey. Right. Alright. Thank you. That's the brilliance I bring to the group. There you go.
He goes way too fast. Yeah. I know. He sounds like he's gone. We have that established. So Jack will trace master of nine. That definitely resides with me Mhmm. Just even on, what I do as a career resource level. Mhmm. And, you know, it does take me time to like, I I kinda go into space, and I'm like, yeah. I knew what I knew. That's figured out. But then as I start to hear from other people, I'm like, oh. Oh. Oh. Mhmm. Right? Mhmm. And then by the end of it, my, my decision might completely blip, but it's, just because of just after hearing my going out. Sure.
And I definitely have a, big picture vision, and sometimes I think I'm clearly articulating Mhmm. That everybody else knows where Mhmm. I I want, what is needed. But I may not have given enough direction or details. Great. Great. But in my mind, it's absolutely clear. Yeah. That's the vision. I'll get there. I'll do everything, and you're like yeah. He gave us a lot of yeah. Great. And what what stuff, but not how to get there or what we need to do. Okay. And what is it that you'll commit to today during our work from your team?
I think committing to, yeah, also, like, just providing that, like, safe space for other people to speak and Great. Yeah. Hey, mister vice president. For mine also is this jack of all trades. You can master them. Yeah. I'm third third expressive, so it says I'm talkative, outgoing, and lively. And then the assertiveness, amenable, easygoing, supportive. Yeah. I agree. And the intuition rooted in proven methods. I think that Mhmm. I'm not yeah. This is what I work on. It says I get wrapped up in inconsequential details. I'm trying to do that. Okay.
Alright. Make sure. Where so the the this is a nonjudgment space there. Physical nonjudgment space. I can see that as the teacher, I'm gonna have to position myself back in. Good idea. Right up. Control the yeah. So my my thinking preferences, are conceptual and analytical. So two interaction strategies. One is, with decision making, I want the big picture and not the, details. And then I'm an internal processor and like to think before elaborating.
And then, like doctor Kiki, I'm I'm also in the first third flexible flexibility. So, that commitment that I will make for today is just to to listen to others. Okay. Be open to other options. Yeah. Yeah. Right? Because, I think a part of what I'm learning about being first, third, flexible is I have strong opinions of land. Yes. And you land it. So you're you're just ready to go. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Thank you. Similar to Jesus, knowing that I'm social and conceptual,
a lot of my faith in process I process internally. I don't wear everything on my sleeve. I keep things to myself. I don't feel like I need to occupy a space unless it's absolutely necessary. So I know that sometimes I can come off as if maybe I don't have an opinion. I don't care. And so I really have to work. I guess, what I'm, like, I'm committed to is the same thing I commit to with my team. I realized that they need to know what I'm thinking and where I'm going. Mhmm. So even in this space, trying to move in more and stepping out of that first third assertiveness, get into the midst of third or third. Particularly when decisions are being made and and and isn't safe.
Okay. Awesome. First of all, I just thought this was funny because on the back in the interact interaction strategies, it says I'm multitasker. That's what I call myself. Mhmm. Last name is Taster. Yeah. Right. And that's the origin of me, so I'm multitasker. So I thought that was hilarious. Yeah. But, anyway, so I have one thinking preference, which is analytical, which is convergent to being short form conceptual. And that basically used to be slight bias for the intuitive and inspired over the rational
and logical. Then I have two thinking press preferences, which are analytical and conceptual, that are really abstract and one social. And I'm not like a so I'm not a jack bold phrase. Well, I'm a Jack Baldrades, but a master of none, which I have seen now. And then looking just looking at my leadership style, I thought that that was something to really point out, to find my experience with Sarah. Sure. Yeah. Absolutely. As a leader, they can be quiet or animated, and they value theoretical thinking and personal relationships.
When the unexpected occurs, which, of course, it always does, they do not become flustered, but instead use their flexibility flexibility to find another way that works. They probably have a vision that extends ten years into the future, and they expect others to share their enthusiasm for the overall concept or goal. They probably are not afraid to ask tough questions even if doing so puts others on the spot. Most likely, they forge strong alliances and excel at team at team building and mentoring. So, with that, it really points out the aspect for me of,
like, I like when people share the same enthusiasm as me about the concept or goal, but I have to be cognizant and understand that, you know, just because they don't match my level of excitement. Being excited does not mean they're not engaged. Right. Does not mean they want they have you know, they've prepared by people, and that's just something I have to be aware of. Yeah. Great. Great. So is that your commitment Yes. For today? Great. Thank you. Because some of this is is, like, so light on,
and then this time management thing you're telling me I have is so awful. Because We can't off. Yeah. Level of expressiveness is in the first third. They're probably calm, thoughtful, and quiet. In general, probably keep their thoughts to themselves. Their facial expressions may be stoic. That's probably not true. But they maintain confidential information easily and learn by listening and reflecting. Most of that is that that's me. That that is who I know myself to be. Also, may prefer to get the job done with a minimum amount of discussion.
I'm afraid to ask tough questions. Focus on goals that can be accomplished within the next one to three years. It also tells me I'm task oriented. Maybe, maybe not. The first part of that was true. What I will focus on is, cognitively seek and weigh all the options. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for, sharing those, because I always think it's helpful to keep building, kind of our understanding about how this particular tool works. But one thing I do wanna say because several of you have mentioned it, there are some, phrases or sentences or verbiage on there that may not resonate with who you understand
yourself to be, and that is absolutely fine. So remember that, the point of our particular tool is we don't wanna pigeonhole, if you will, people into a certain space and say all people who have that particular combination of attributes do these things. So remember, there are nuances to some of it. So what I would say, and, Vicky, in your example about being task oriented, I imagine that there are times that you're very task oriented around things that, you find meaningful or matter or need to get done.
And there are other things that maybe, don't feel as important to you in the time that you're having to deal with them. So that may be kind of that balance that, is occurring in there. So alright. With that, we are going to go on. So just remember what people shared and what, your commitments were. And you might have to remind yourself as you're going through it because we're human beings, and so we just naturally, lean into our tendencies. Just really quickly, just a reminder of who, the collective brain is within the room is this group report.
The next one is also, a visual of the collective brain, which is that doc graph that we've worked with before, just a reminder of who we are. The nice thing about this group is we're kinda down the middle, if you will, except for green, which we have talked about that structural thinking. So on the next slide is just a reminder that we have talked about in the past this whole idea about are we a group or are we a team. Clearly, you all are a team. And just a reminder of what we believe team is, team's about,
you know, gathering around a common purpose, moving forward together as a group, being interdependent, in the work that you do. So with that, what I would like you to do, which is on the next slide, we're gonna just really quickly talk about, changing the attributes. I did provide you with this handout here that we're not gonna spend a whole lot of time, but the reason I gave it to you is because whenever there's a change going on and so change is happening constantly. And and right now in the world, there's a lot of change going on.
And when there is change, we do feel, a higher level of anxiety and sometimes stress. So, I did hear that negotiations are going on right now. We're trying to close out the school year. We're also looking to shift kind of our thinking around having a mission and a vision for the board that, supports the mission and vision of, the district. So that may feel like a change for some people as well. So I just provide this as a resource for you. We're not gonna delve too much into it for today.
So with that, let's just quickly look at, the attributes and change. Sorry. I don't really know where to stand right now, so I'll stand right here. So, on the next slide, we're gonna just look at all the, the different attributes. So we always start with, the purples, and we're starting with expressiveness. The percentages above the expressiveness continuum there is just an indication of this room and how we balance out. So, a good chunk of us live, prefer to live in the first third of expressiveness, and a good chunk of us prefer to live in this,
third third of expressiveness. And so you heard some of those commitments, about making sure my voice is in the room or making sure I allow other voices in the room before mine. So when we look at change from first third, remember that through expressiveness, it is that internal processing. So when change is occurring or there are conversations around change, we most likely will not be hearing it from those that are in the first third of expressiveness. So that is where we, as a team, we wanna be sure that we're allowing those voices to come in when they're ready.
Remember that first thirds need processing time, and so they may not be ready or have their thoughts gathered in a way that they're ready to share at that moment. So we wanna be thoughtful about that. Third third is processing the change externally. It's just what they do, in terms of processing any kind of information. Oftentimes, as they're processing externally, and we've talked about this before, it almost sounds like they're advocating for the change, but they're just saying it out loud because they're trying to understand it before they've decided if they're, agreeing to the change or ready to move forward with the change.
So the next slide, we'll go to is assertiveness. Again, here is the breakdown for assertiveness. The majority of the group is in that third, third, fast, quick pace, directed with their opinion. So what we wanna be thoughtful about is allowing for space, if you will, to, have others advance their opinion in the way that makes them feel most comfortable about the change. So, you can see that, from first third, of assertiveness, if they are first third expressive and first third assertive,
what's happening inside their head oftentimes is listening and making sure that the group is feeling good about moving together forward as, a group with the change. So remember that we've talked about this from a leadership perspective. Leaders who are first third in assertiveness tend to kinda gather everybody up from behind and are saying, okay. I got you. I'm supporting you. You know, keep moving forward. Those that are in the third third, remember, when there's change, they're standing at the front and saying,
come on. You know, I've got you. We can do this. Follow me. So we wanna be sure that we're balancing that out a little bit as we're thinking through, some of the change that may be occurring in the conversation with Mission Image. So when we look at flexibility, which is the next slide, you can see the breakdown here very similar to what, assertiveness was, which is really interesting about this particular group. And so, what when we look at flexibility is kind of what, Jesus was actually sharing. You know, he's already processed the change,
and he's kinda landed, what needs to happen. There are several others of you that have that committee brain, and you've all talked about it. That's that what that phrase means, that jack of, all trades master of none because you're you're continually processing it. It's what Debbie, shared at the very beginning. So while first thirds have already they see it. They're like, okay. We're we're done. Let's get going, which is not about assertiveness. They just can see what the decision is and they come to it quickly. Those that are in the third third need a little bit more time to think
it through. Now I bring that up all those things up because as we're looking at drafting these, statements, we're not we what I don't want us to do is get into this, process of having to process it so much that we don't get move forward and land on, a draft of your mission and vision statement. And so with that, that may feel scratchy to some people because for third third in this particular example, you're wanting to process it a little bit more. And first third's like,
we're done processing. Let's get going. So, so it may feel scratchy to both because I'm gonna keep pushing this forward a little bit with that. Make sense? Alright. Now from the behavior or thinking actions, we'll start with, analytical. 78% of you in this room have an analytical preference. So the reason I bring that up when we're thinking about change is that's where those why questions come up. Sometimes we wanna dig into it a little bit and make sure that we've kinda covered all our bases as we will. It makes sense.
It's based in fact, rooted in logic. And so that is important. And as we think about drafting a mission and vision statement, that question is gonna need to be answered. Okay? For, structural thinking, which is the next slide, 22% have a preference for structural thinking. So one of the things that we need to make sure is that when we're drafting, sorry, a mission or vision statement, we we have to make sure that it has enough detail, not a ton of detail, but it makes sense to others who who really need,
to be able to understand where it is that you're heading as a board. And so they, the last bullet point's really important. So anyone who has green as a preference, change, is, approached with a lot of caution and wariness, if you will, because it's not you know, do we really need to change? Do we really need to be writing this mission and vision statement? You know, because we've got the district one. That's the kind of stuff that starts going on in the head of those who have a preference for structural thinking. So for social thinking,
55% of you have a preference for red. We've talked about this before in this particular group. As a team, you really lean into your red. Whether you're expressing it or not, you can feel it in the red. So that's something else that we wanna be thoughtful about, especially when we're drafting a statement. The tendency is we don't wanna hurt people's feelings because we took out everything that they said. And we have talked about this before at the other retreats that I said there's a lot of red in the room, so please don't,
be offended if I take out the wording that you've put in here, because that's not what this is about. This is about getting to these, concise and powerful vision and mission statements. And then finally, the last attribute, which is conceptual, we have a lot of yellow in the room. So I appreciate what Danielle had to say, about yellow because what happens with yellow is they do see it, feel it. They can almost touch it because it's such a sensory visual sense that they have.
However, oftentimes and I think I've mentioned this to this group. What happens with yellow is yellow will start kind of describing it, and then they don't actually finish it out. Right? They finish the rest of the conversation, if you will, in their head. They don't even realize that's happening. So people are kind of angry a little bit, and they're like, okay. Is there any bit more that you're getting? So extra stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Because I they just don't yellow just doesn't even yellow doesn't even realize it. Right? So it just happens. Now here's the thing with yellow.
Yellow gets, as I've mentioned to you before, loves change, gets on board with it right away. But as soon as it started to implement their app, because it's just that implementation is not part of what gives them a lot of energy. So they're on to the next idea. Now here's the problem with that, especially when you're on a team, where not everyone has a preference for yellow. The rest of the team is is thinking, you know, okay. Well, we we still have to implement this. So how are we gonna make sure that we finish this out,
because we can't leave it hanging? And you still have to participate in it even though it's really hard for yellow to keep checking back into that process, if you will. Okay. So with that, we are these are just I just put these these up just to remind us. We're not gonna read through it because I know this slide has a lot on there. But these were your are are your APS core beliefs. The next one is, the APS district mission statement, which I imagine you're all familiar with.
The next one is the APS vision statement for the district. And then the next slide is, what was shared with me from doctor Kiefer about, the unified, APS unified, board job description. Okay? So I just put these in front of you, to remind you that, there you there has been a lot of work that's been done already. But what our, task is today is to think about us as a group to develop a mission statement that's gonna drive this school board and future school boards,
if you will, and the vision statement that will drive this school board and future school boards, which will be attached to the Aurora Public Schools district vision and mission. But now we're kind of narrowing our focus a little bit about what the purpose is and where you wanna head as a board. So in order to do that, I'm gonna give you kind of the way we look or I look at vision and mission statement development and what those mean to help us kind of bring things
together a little bit. Because we could debate all day long about what, you know, the purpose of a vision statement is, the purpose of a mission statement is. So I hope you'll indulge me in the definitions that I provide for you today. Okay? So with that, we are gonna go to, I believe, our fur oh, one last Yeah. The next slide. Yeah. Sorry. Other the other thing that I just wanted to bring your attention to is, remember, this might have been our very first session together. We, tried to identify what does each attribute need to define success.
So the reason I'm bringing this back is because when we look at a mission statement and a vision statement, we've gotta keep in mind what's our criteria of success that we know we've gotten there, once that we've created these, statements themselves? So, remember that when we think about these criteria of success, that, those are the things I was mentioning before from the attributes that have to be fulfilled. So as we're drafting the mission and vision statements today, there may be something that keeps popping up and you're like,
this doesn't feel right yet. What I need you to do is try in the best way that you can is hook it to one of your preferences. So if it's not feeling right, I need you to try to figure out, is it because your blue is not satisfied, your green is not satisfied, your red is not satisfied, or your yellow is not satisfied? Because if we can do that, it will help quickly, help us to quickly identify what needs to be tweaked or added or deleted from whatever the draft is that we put together.
Okay? So with that, now I think we're at our first test, which is, we're gonna take what I like to call a we approach, a whole emergentetics approach. So we're gonna do this sort of work individually, but then the rest of the work is going to be in what, we call mid triads, which means that I've grouped you into groups of three, clearly, from triad, that are, where you've got connections between your profile, but you're not so what we call cognitively different from each other,
that it's gonna take a long time for you to process the information, because we wanna move as quickly as we can through this. So, the next slide is, we're gonna do a little bit of drawing. So in front of you is a blank piece of paper. It should be in front of everybody, I hope. I can bring some markers if you want markers, or you can just use whatever writing instrument you have. Here's the question. I want here's the task then. I want you to make marks on your paper. Oh, sorry. Thank you, Claudia. They might want a cup you can take a cup of colors if you're gonna
need it. So, so what I want you to do is I want you to draw on your paper your dream school district. What does it look like, feel like, down like, make marks on your paper to do that? Once we, once we do that, then I will group you up and you're gonna share your drawings and or your marks on your paper. So you can do it in any way you want. So here's what I'm gonna say. When we say make marks on the paper, it doesn't mean that it actually has to be a drawing.
Okay? So you can do it in any way you want, but I don't wanna lead you into how what's best for you. But if somebody asked you to describe the year or ideal school district, What would that look like, sound like, feel like? Put it on your paper. Okay? I'm gonna give you about well, my number today is seven. So I'm giving you seven minutes to do this, and then I'll, put you in your groups. Do you need any paper? No. No. I can I can hear you? Okay. I was alternating. Oh. I have plenty of paper. Do you need more or another?
This is I think mine should be, like, one of these in speaker. Maybe a little time. Yes. Every arch in my Okay. Three minutes left. Two minutes. The two profiles, I mean, like, you really enjoy them? Everybody's in this. I think mine was big. I'm a copy. Don't get it. It's a big dumb story. I do. Yes. You do? I I think it should you should change the a's to that. Your You do. Your icon. Yeah. Right? Yes. Yeah. I think it should call it AS logo. I mean Yeah. That's right. Yeah. So we're waiting. Uh-huh.
So that's not the line with the grades. Fine. Okay. Would you advance to the next slide? Slide slide, please. Okay. So these are the groups you're gonna be working in. And what you're going to do in your group is obviously share your paper with your marks on it, explain what you're thinking was behind it. And then what you're going to do on this chart paper is, write down what are the common elements that came up from each of your images. Alright? And then you're just gonna make a list of what those common elements are.
And then what I would like you to do is take your, images to this chart, to your group chart. Okay? So I'm gonna give you, how about ten minutes to do this? We'll see where we are in ten minutes. So I need one person from each group to come and get one of these charts. Make sure you get markers. I brought some markers. I see that everybody has put a lot of markers on the table. Alright. Okay. So make sure that you're going to the right group. So let's see. We got Mike's group over here, so Tiffany and Debbie.
Yep. Great. My question is, do these markers go present if you write on your wall? That's a really good question. Mine do not, so I don't know about Claudia's, but these can just what? Do what? I know you are. Can you do that? Small. Okay. Okay. Experiences, which sort of No. Here's my I was thinking Aurora, the Borealis, but it's more like sun rays anyway. But, I'm performing Mind a growth mindset. And socially Yes. You're cut. Well, the coming in will still get Carmen to ask you a little early.
Yes. That would be more involved. Right? And then the blue means putting a positive and bright environment. What I did is means both. And that's in the head. Yeah. I can get curriculars because you probably Alright. So I'm saying this Yes. Hey. You have five midnight. Alright. Two and Opportunity. That's still be an item. Alright. You have three more minutes. Yes. Alright. Write down your last thought, please. Okay. Here's what we're gonna do is share out. Make sure your, your images are posted
on your cards or an app to your chart. And what we're gonna do is share out each group so probably what's easiest is if we sort of rotate around the room We're gonna start with group one. So if you can't see group one's chart, I'd like you to come over here where you, have a good have a good look. It's kinda like being at an art show. Right? We're gonna do the gallery. Yeah. Who is sharing? Whoops. Alright. So we I have a lot of stuff that were in common. Student centered,
clearly visualized on diagram one. Right? Community engagement is actually right that's student centered right community engagement, happy and positive environment that's the big concern. But yeah that was also mentioned here like safety mental health right creating a safe space for our students. And then also we want to say not just for our students but for everyone in the district, teachers, staff, leadership, and so on. Right? Career and life preparedness, and that kind of goes into, like, opportunities, Right? And then opportunities for diverse needs. Right? And then access to resources. So a lot of the,
things that were mentioned here was, resources for our students, for our teachers, principals, leadership, and then, all of the speaks of our community and more, and including our board. Great. Yeah. Nicely. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Oh, and then, yeah, we also, you know, just spoke about I think one thing that we shouldn't necessarily call out here, but, like, the growth of our students is it is academic, but it's more than that. Right? And so and it's not necessarily a couple down. Right? But it's yeah. And all these things will support that. Okay. So nicely done. So I'm just gonna get you to get to that. And what I just want you to think about is,
you know, when we look at the way people process information, especially when it's a big question open ended question like that, in terms of how people are processing that information and the format that they use looks and feels different. However, when we are trying to find the commonalities, there wasn't really one group in here that wasn't able to find the commonalities quickly. It was really landing on what what's the best way to say it? What's the right term? What's the best descriptor in that? So Yes. This is a great example of how what we call,
like, this idea of cognitive diversity sort of brings everything together in that way of approach. Makes sense? Alright. Let's go to group two, which is, I believe, this group. So we're in yeah. Yeah. Very, very Well, you were not only abstract, but very efficient. Oh. Right. It's harder. You are very efficient in the way they would put your paper information. Yeah. So okay. Here we go. So she said it was pretty shit. They were was it? No. No. No. So when I started thinking about my dream school, it was,
the first thing I thought about, I wanted something to the pool, and I wanted something to pay, athletic complex, the stadium, and a certain thing like where oh, that's literally what my high school was, like, in back in high school. So I was like, but ground up. So I want something that includes that community engagement, that community hub with a % graduation rate, but the, parents and teachers being part of it. And so when we started literally, when we started talking, we're like, oh, students, teachers, parents, and community, which is what she already had.
Mhmm. So we just kinda took my concept and put together with her actual ideas. And so we came up with first thing we both had was students And, a % graduation rate, Michelle, so we also kinda put in the need. We wanna create those critical thinkers. And so that was the next step. That was our what we want from our students. And then we kinda group the the teachers and the parents together, and we wanted them to be involved, but we also wanted them to be, you know, unbiased decision makers. And then the final thing was that the the school
was, my concept and hers as well. The the the, school being the community hub, and that includes the wraparound services, the extracurricular activities, just the the the pool of the community just or the school being in the middle, what the community should be. Really really nicely done. I just had a clarification. What what do you mean by unbiased just to this denominator? We we we kinda this is not just parents and teachers, board members, but just the the the people who are kinda directly affecting those schools and schools.
Years. But when decisions are made, we look at the diversity of the community of students that we serve. Gotcha. Right? In every community Yeah. Ours is very special, but in every community, there is diversity, whether it's diversity of skin colors, of thoughts, of background, and all of that. So that's what you That's what you meant by unbiased unbiased. Great. Alright. All of that. Yeah. Nicely done. Give me one moment. And let's go to grade three. Who's the spokesperson? It's a very similar format to the previous two groups.
You You can see the different representations that we, begin with. Very easy to find the commonality. So we talked about the emotional well-being of not only our students, but our staff, also for everybody who built in the school ecosystem ecosystem. Talking about engagement, really wanting our decisions to be engaged in the process of developing the school, environment that we want. Student centered, absolutely. All the decisions, everything that we do are focused on what's best, for kids. Opportunitive, meaning different opportunities for our students to engage different pathways, different opportunities to demonstrate their excellence.
Again, the whole child, which is something that we already focused on. How do we make sure they're listening to the entire child? Job? I just want to type of, thinking what type one type of way of showing what we need. Forward thinking or innovative, always being able to cut an edge, look into the future, what are our kids gonna be for the community that we're serving. Academic excellence and growth mindset. We wanna be at the very top of the state where performance and growth now comes for our students. And then all of that being done, this becomes also by investment issues. The people want to come and be.
Alright. Nicely done. Yeah. Let me Thank you. I also wanna point out there were similarities really with this group, group two. Because of the blue was really resonating, through that group in terms of the way that they put their information together. What I did wanna point out here that I think is interesting is, Debbie has preference for yellow and, so does Mike. And so through yellow, the it's this imaging, if you will. But when red is involved or hooked to yellow in this way,
that there has to be sort of this almost concrete organization, if you will, to it, which is different than Jesus' yellow and different than Angela. Right? Because that doesn't really that's, like, up here, which is, and you were really referencing this, Danielle. It's when that yellow idea that's rational and logical, but it's not it's almost not complete in terms of the actual concrete, what it looks like, sounds like, and feels like, if you will. Right? So just different ways.
And I believe you have a preference for grading. So I had a great No. I am trying to Yeah. I was gonna ask you Yeah. About that. I saw everything up here Yep. And I didn't get to write everything down, but everything looked like that's what happened. Going. I was, like, writing everything. Trying to do this. Mhmm. So this is, again, what you see here is the concreteness of red coming through because red lives in this sphere of, concrete and divergent. But the concreteness of red,
it's gotta be in some kind of package, example, form, whatever it is, which is different than what blue yellows typically do. There's no concreteness to it. It's just sort of up there. Yeah. Big picture, but it's sort of up there. Right? It's just you just imagine Just imagine. This coolness. That's what I said. Yeah. Exactly. Imagine. Yeah. Imagine. So that is what happens, which is blue yellows can definitely imagine it, but when we add in even though others have yellow as a preference,
when you add in that concreteness of red, it's like, okay. Well, I can imagine it, but tell me more. Give me more. What what exactly do you mean by blah blah blah? Whatever it is. And and I can say that we we were trying to come up with, like, sort of umbrella words that all of our details Yeah. Yeah. Could kinda fit without trying to write everything down. And and if it's still a challenge. Yes. It is. Well, it's hard because we're and so once I give you what I want you to
use for the definition, if you will, of a mission statement and a vision statement, that will help sort of bring this together above it. So, again, that is that concreteness of red coming through a little bit. What I'd like to do is, take a break. Let's, take about ten minutes. Is that good? Yeah. Take a break, and then we'll dig right back in. I have a parent date that we have to let you know by the time we wanna volunteer for field day. I was I forgot to ask. You know what? I mean, we'll do the Friday so that complicates things for you.
It's Friday the sixteenth, I think, like that. Friday. And no. No. No. And, again, they they we're accepting donations to snacks, water bottles. Snacks and water bottles. So Yeah. What school was it again? This was Charles Burrell. Charles Burrell Field Day. Yes. Okay. Awesome. Yeah. So Brandon said to mail it instead of updating the policy. It's not attached to that. Would you send it separately or do you send it by one or do you have a plan? In our in our regular, on on the same one we've been using? Okay.
So maybe I just go into board docs and Yes. Okay. Go ahead. That's Yeah. Thank you. I just wanna make sure that he didn't send it separately and I missed it. Okay. And now? Yes, miss Tasker? You want your chair? No. No. No. No. No. He was a child. He was a child. I'm sure. He was a child. Claudia thought your comfort was more important than me to have it in my chair. Well, she doesn't And she was right. And she was right. And I'm not going against Claudia. Right. I mean I'm just saying see. And I was like, oh, cool. Yeah. It's very important that you become Can you request that chair for the rest of the year?
You should. I should put it in a spot. I'm supposed to do an email. We should put it in that spot. Put it in your writing. And then say, I dare someone. Anyone has a problem. Object. If he's sitting in this chair, please. Please speak up. I dare you to try to remove me from this Yes. From this chair. That's what you could say. Please. Objection. Put your comments on the record. Boss. Who's that? We can select American Heritage Month. Tuesday, it's only going through a four. Correct? I believe so. And there was a new Tokyo Joe's. For lunch?
Mhmm. Yeah. For the I am too. That's what I said anytime. Yes. I've got for you. It is the season. Mhmm. That exhaust. Okay. Yes. Thank you. Someone who does it to to put that in. Alright. Let's, keep moving forward. So, on the next slide yeah. So, here's one of the things that, we're gonna start digging into a little bit. And so, one of the ways to look at how we're gonna construct a mission and a vision statement is built on sort of this concept that I have up here on this slide. So, when NASA was first,
being organized, this is how they started to identify their mission and vision. So it was based on this belief that man could fly. And, what the mission the actual mission of NASA when it originated was this whole idea about interplanetary travel. And so the vision at that time in the sixties was to put a man on the moon. So how are we gonna fly the man to the moon? So when I say it's all connected, we think about what the core beliefs are about Aurora Public Schools,
and we're gonna start thinking about what the mission is of the board because there's already a mission statement up for the school district. And then when we think about this idea of vision, it's about how how do you what are the aspirations of this school board that you wanna put into place that will stay in place as we move into the future? So on the next slide, here's one of the ways to think about how mission can be, defined. So mission is really a bundle of goals.
Not only is it the purpose for why an organization or an entity exists, but inside that purpose is, a bundle of what we would call goals. So right? So when you think about the, vision or or the mission of, NASA with the interplanetary travel, Inside of that is a bunch of goals that have to be accomplished in order to make sure that, that's gonna start happening and that you meet your purpose of your organization. Missions clarify the vision.
And so it is once a mission statement is set, it becomes the constant. So it's not something that we're changing all the time. However, vision statements are changed because we we start to go through this process of revisioning, if you will, because it is the aspiration that we're trying to reach, and we will reach it. And once we reach that aspiration, then we have to get into this process of revisioning. So when we think about a mission statement, what I'm gonna ask you to do is think about, how you're going to,
identify the identity, the purpose of the Aurora Public School Board, okay, based on what you really identified, which were the beliefs about the ideal school board or, the ideal school district, that's gonna stand the test of time. Alright? So it you know, at the very basic nature of a mission of a school board, the purpose you exist is to make sure the district runs. You're following, law, policy, procedures. You're providing the funding that needs to be put in place for that.
And you might wanna think about how you can, make that so that it is, more engaging, energizing, revolutionary, if you will, in terms of the purpose of the Aurora Public School Board. On the next slide, mission is tied to your beliefs. Right? So think about that idea from NASA. Man can fly. The mission was interplanetary travel, and the vision at, when NASA started was to get man on the moon, which they did. After that, they revisioned and then where where we are now.
Right? So pardon me? Oh. I said wherever that is. Yeah. Well well, there's a lot going on out there. Right. We are here. We we yes. So, the mission or the vision statement is what, do we want and this really should say school district to look like. What and that's what I asked you to do on these charts. You know, what should it look like if the beliefs that we hold, those core APS beliefs, are realized? And so as we think about putting the mission statement together,
it is about conveying the future aspirations of this school board. Right? So what is it that you want the school board to become, to realize? And while I know that, what's hard about that is that for some of you, as I understand, you know, November's coming up, so there are gonna be some changes. Hence, the reason I put those change slides in, hence, the reason I gave you this just resource about thinking about stress. Because what we don't wanna do is allow that while we have to think about
it, we don't want to allow that to influence what you believe the aspirations of the Aurora Public School Board should be, what you believe the mission of the Aurora Public School Board should be. Does that make sense? Yes? Thoughts, comments? So, this is processing. Yes, please. Thank you for identifying that too, Deb. It sounds to me like you're starting in a different place than where I normally start. Right. So I wanna check that out. I would I start with the vision.
I'm like, we wanna what what is up here? Mhmm. And then how do we get there as the mission? You know? That that kind of thing. So it sounds to me like we're starting building from the and the other direction up to the vision. Yes. Yeah. Well, I guess you could you could go from where your pet where you start and move down. What I will tell you is that I've done this as a principal, I've done this in several schools, and it just seems to work better that if we kinda get our idea around
our beliefs, which you already have in terms of the core ABS beliefs, thinking about the purpose of the Aurora school board. Because then once you've got that purpose, then the visioning, it sort of opens up, and there are options there that you could think about the vision. And so one of the things that, I ask groups to do when you're thinking about visioning is think about where you wanna be, like, five years down the road. So we don't wanna make it for the school board so big that,
it's, you know, a hundred years down the road. We want from the mission standpoint, we want the Aurora Public School district and board to remain as an integral part of what, students experience in this district. So what that's your purpose. So it's really grounded and that that that doesn't change. Your mission doesn't change. NASA's mission has not changed from interplanetary travel. Now their vision about how that's going to be realized has changed over the years
due to technology, other people at the helm, if you will, funding, the direction of the country, all of those things. So that's why that revisioning process will become important. So if you think about the vision statement for the Aurora Public School Board in terms of if we look from now to five years from now, what is it that we want to realize? I like the word realize rather than aspire because now we've got forward movement to make sure that we've set ourselves up,
that we're we're going to be able to accomplish the vision. The mission is our purpose. Why do we exist as a school board? Yeah. So and what we want it to be is all connected. Right? So you've got your core beliefs. You've talked about some beliefs about the board. We did all of that norming work, if you will. So you've got some of those base pieces. So now that we think about the mission of the board, it becomes pretty clear. I mean, there are there are the, what I would call the organizational
aspect of what has to happen on the school board. And then there's this other element that you've really talked about in here, that can be more than that. So it's not just about enforcing or developing or adopting policy, but it is about how that policy affects the bottom line, which came up in all of these posters as students. Right? And in order to do what's right for students, we we do have to think about all those support levels that are in place, that touch students in the system, the wider system,
which is also what you talked about. So thank you for that. That's a great question. Other thoughts? Because I wanna make sure that this part is really clear so that we are able to move to the next piece. Is there something that's just, like, just not sure or I don't like it or that's not been my experience or any of that because that's important. I think it is hard for me to switch from that, like Yeah. From vision. Mhmm. Mhmm. You almost say, okay. Where do we wanna go? And then Mhmm. How do we get there? This is everywhere. Yeah. So in this process, the beliefs is the found the the beliefs you hold are the foundational elements.
You can't really develop the mission or the vision without considering how it's connected. That's why I had that slide. It's all connected. It has to be connected to the beliefs. So we're almost think about it like building a house. Gotta pour the foundation first, then we're gonna put up the structures, which would help give us the purpose of the house, if you will. Mhmm. And then the roof is sort of what we're trying to head toward. It does work. So I trust I trust that. Okay. Alright. So here's what I wanna do. On the next oh,
the next slide's about goals. So as we think about kind of that when we're putting the mission statement together, if you will, you know, as you all know, this is not new news. The goals, you know, this is the whole idea about having a SMART goal. You know? What's specific, targeted, measurable, and results oriented? So but thinking about what needs to happen inside the mission statement in order to realize the goal. Goal. So one way to think about that is if the purpose of the school board is to make sure that we've allocated we've been good stewards of our money,
and we've allocated the money in the ways that we believe are the best ways to support our, staff out there, whether it's operational side of the house or the instructional side of the house because operational side is just as important. I used to say that all the time as a principal. We could not run schools without the custodial staff, the paraprofessional staff, all of that, the clerical staff. And so they're they're equally as important. So if you think about those goals that you set, within the mission,
then you're able to start realizing your vision. Okay? Alright. So on the next slide, we're gonna, go back to the future, if you will, since that's now like a play out there, which is, like, crazy to me. But, here's what I want you to do. Back in your groups, I want you to go back to your charts and identify what you put on your charts or are in your images that, connect to what I just said about the vision. That the vision is, identifying the purpose of why the Aurora Public School Board.
So I want us to shift a little bit, which is why I keep saying it. Because I I asked you to talk about the district. Right? What's your, ideal school district? So now what I wanna do is is narrow our focus a little bit. Based on what you wrote, what connects to the mission for the Aurora Public School District, the vision? Are there beliefs and goals that you need to identify or that you see connected? There may be all of these may be directly connected to the core beliefs of the Aurora Public School, which my hunch is yes if we were to map it.
And then I want you to be ready to talk about what you've noticed in your, charts. Make some notes on your charts because we're gonna need those notes to start drafting the mission and mission statement. K. Clear as mud on the task. I know this is hard. This is like heavy work at 09:35 on a Saturday before, it's Well, for some people, they're celebrating the mystery. Yeah. And so I know it's I know it's hard, and that your heads are buzzing with all kinds of other unrelated things to this.
Okay? Alright. So I'm gonna give you eleven minutes, which should bring us, if I can see the clock right, to, 09:45, and let's just see where we are. Okay? So we can just keep moving at this. Try to go. Well, how about a second, third pace? Alright. Thank you. Yes. Kinda forget. It's what in the image our images speak to mission, vision, beliefs, and goals of the APS school board? Yes. So what and and the way in which I defined mission and vision about your purpose and your aspirations. You can label it,
write a note about it, whatever it is that you need. Okay. I And based on what I've seen, again, we'll then finish. Like, some of the things around. What are your next, like, just settings. No. We didn't really like that too. The rare Yeah. So that's okay. Yeah. That's okay. No. I believe so. Find Okay. Are we listening? Fundamentally. So is that the reason you exist in the school board Agree. Before It's, hey. So I'll give that up to five. Believe how to get also passed out. Okay. But let me so let me say,
if this is if you started that, I I did that. Vision for your vision. Is Right. Of a team, if you will, emotional well-being and forward thinking. Okay. Or is the Well, but she did plan the panel. Yeah. We this well to the people of our happiness will be able to now to the school district. To the school district. Yeah. Yeah. And it's all billed, I do. Yes. Please return different. Then I mean, the board's actually messed up right now. Right? Right. I would like to hear that. I'm here to the other thing that
So So their vision was to, you know, Okay. Okay. Thirty seconds. So we're just if you're not finished, it's okay. Yeah. That's it. It's the old tree. That and grass. That's heating. Okay. Let's let's pause for just a minute, see where you are. I actually would like to start I can't remember what group I'm doing. But we are That's the only truth. I I wanna start with, this group first because, they, I think had a pretty Good process.
I know that other groups are still working. And so let's just talk about what your conversation went, and then we'll we'll keep moving through. So tell us how you decided what fit under vision or mission or with connected. Okay. Sorry. You said vision with regards to creating these, like, student center, student focus. But how did you decide student center would connect it to the definition of vision, which was your asterisk. The way I'm asking you to define it is asterisk. I think it resonated. That's like the whole nodding on the moon.
Like, what's what we're trying to do? We're trying to have successful driving the students. Okay. I'm gonna try. I'm gonna push on you. By adding more green. So when you saw student centered Mhmm. Did you look at the definition of vision, or you just started talking about it? We're talking about it. I want students to be prepared to exit as a graduate. Right? Step in the next step of your career. Okay. Okay. Whatever program. Whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So as the Aurora Public School Board Mhmm. You see the aspiration of the school board is to be in the student center. Is that
or show you a six well, academic success for our fields. I'll do it in the Friday. Okay. I we need to add that. I'm not with the student center. Great. Thank you. Alright. Then how did you decide for community engagement that was part of your mission? The purpose for your work on this program. So but I know what a mission is. Like, you can't mention, like, bundles of goals. Right? I don't know what the mission was. That's Mhmm. And we did struggle with whether some of them, goals or some of them were part of the mission. Right? It could kinda depending on how you phrase it,
more than one. We said that our goal, right, something measurable is career and, like, preparedness. Mhmm. Right? And then we're like, okay. How do we get there? It was through or even get to academic success, etcetera. The hows were making sure that we have, opportunities for diverse we need opportunities for diverse needs, we have access to resources, we create a positive, safe environment, and community engagement. So we'll do how to get to here. Okay. But remember what the definition of mission is. It's the reason the Aurora Public School exists.
Right? Or school board. Just so I'm I'm sorry. School board. Yeah. Yeah. Correct me when I need that. So I'm talking about the school board. So I I'm not I'm not arguing with what we have here. I'm just clarifying. Yeah. Yeah. So the Aurora Public School board, the purpose, the reason the Aurora Public School board did this, and it's never gonna change. Right? That's how we have to look at mission. No. Interplanetary travel have never changed. That is the purpose of math. So is the purpose is what you're saying the purpose of the Aurora Public School
Board but there let me go with time. It's different. Is, the purpose is for community engagement, a happy positive environment, career and life preparedness, access to resources. Is that the purpose of the school board? Is that what you're saying? Can I go on your words, please? Via the school board. Via the superintendent. Via the superintendent. I don't hear what that means. Delegate to the superintendent how to get this to this. So we're not doing the work, but we are maybe ensuring that putting the things ensuring that the superintendent and leadership
team that they are. Sure. Sure. So interplanetary travel is the mission of NASA. But there are different, departments, if you will, those parts of the organization that are actually doing work, and they're all doing different work. So the superintendent does have work, but there are also other areas of the district that need to have that have work as well. Right? So, again, is your mission as a school board, community engagement, happy, positive environment, career and life preparedness, access to resources.
Is that what you believe the purpose of, which is fine. I'm just clarifying. And that the aspiration of this district is for academic success as student centered, and I think diversity is just under there. Yeah. Is that where you're headed? Yeah. I guess I'm not sure. I think I could so That would be good. Question. Yeah. It could be except all into different categories. Okay. Right. Because they can also fall into beliefs as well. Right? So we believe that So maybe that is more of a belief. Succeeds.
And then we believe, obviously, that they must be a positive, safe environment. Right. Right? So And can we change my If that is more of a belief and not part of what you categorize yeah. Then I I'm just asking you to think about. I'm not asking you to change anything. Just think about. Okay. Okay? Alright. Let's go over here since that's an easier transition. So what's happening on the record? Trouble is happening. Yeah. So I would say I mean, I keep going back to the the vision of Aurora Public Schools and the vision of the board.
Yeah. When I when I think vision I know. I'm still struggling with this, but I think this is what we want to achieve, that every child shapes a a successful future. Why would we be different Mhmm. Than what unless the district changes, you know, that. But if we're saying every child shapes a successful future, that entails lots of ways to shape that future. Mhmm. The board should be part of the community engagement that you know, you're looking for goals and guardrails,
vision and values of the community. And then, so we ensure that we're reflecting those in our mission. Mhmm. And that, and then also being good stewards of taxpayer dollars Mhmm. Policy, all that. And that's that's that's the work of the board based on why are we doing this for the kids at student centers. Mhmm. It's all for them. Okay. So to your example, so do you I feel like what you said, and I don't know if this is true for the whole group, is that, you're getting closer to identifying the reason your Aurora School Board is.
Right? Is for all of the things that you said. Now the district does have a vision, which, I probably know. Every child shapes the same on the whole picture. Thank you. So when we think about the mission, which is why I wanted you to start with that first. What is the purpose for this group, this part of the district? Why do you even exist? And then we think about what your vision is as a bridge. It might be to realize the Aurora Public School District vision. Right? That could be a way that you look at it.
There may be another way that you wanna look at it in terms of, is there something you want this school board to become in the future that's different than what you are right now? So if that's the case, then your vision statement will reflect that. So what I want you to it's really I know it's hard, but what I want you to try to do is put some space right now between the school district vision and mission and think about this group. What is your purpose,
and what do you wanna become or realize or aspire to? I and I don't know if I I will articulate this the way it's in my head right now. What you just saw there, the first part of if it becomes the board's vision is to whatever to realize the vision of the district. Whatever the district's vision is Right. To me, that sustains over time to the appointment made earlier. In November, we may have new board members. Ten years from now, that'll be when you grab them. Mhmm. That that vision will still always be in alignment. Okay. The second that you that you offered to me,
if this board decides a completely different vision Mhmm. Then you get a new board member come in in a year that may not be aligned with that or ten years down the line. There's opportunity for that to shift and not necessarily be in alignment with whatever. But the the the the the applies to ten years from now if there's a new superintendent. Mhmm. Everything may change as as well because that superintendent may not align with the current vision and mission. We've had a new superintendent who believes that the mission and vision of the previous
superintendent aligns with somewhat aligns with their mission and vision. Right? That's why we're currently running with what is there, but it could have been completely different. But even in that scenario, I think that's if the superintendent let's say superintendent does come in and tries to work completely, in the mission, the board mission and vision will still be alignment because it's to realize whatever the vision and mission of the district is. So even if it changes, the board's vision and mission is still being aligned. So yeah. And both good points. And here's the way to think about this.
So what I was telling this script over here, the power of trying to get this down in a document, if you will, is that every decision, every action, every expenditure has to connect back to the purpose and the vision. Every conversation has to be done. Now when it's in a document like that, that drives your actions. So for example, if well, I don't even wanna put this out there. If there were to be a superintendency, let's say, in this example Ten years.
Ten years. Yeah. Yeah. Gotcha. Then what happens with these these documents is that what guides your process as a school board to hire that new superintendent. Yes. And so you don't want what what happens when we don't have this clearly articulated, it's the same thing within a school. When they're not clearly articulated and we're interviewing a new principal, principals, and I was one of them, notorious for coming in and, like, blowing the whole place up and doing something new and innovative.
Yet, really, what should have happened in those interviewing processes is I should have been given Yeah. The mission and vision of the particular school because we set them for school. Right? But they have to connect back into the district mission and vision, because we're all part of the same system. Right? But I need a guiding document that explains the purpose of when I was the principal at Jewell Elementary, what why we Jewell Elementary exist, and then what is the vision that we are trying to realize for Jewell Elementary,
right, which is connected into the district mission and vision. So it's all that's why I have that set. It's all connected. But my entity within the system has to run a little bit differently because I've got a different population. I have a different community. I have a different teaching staff than what I had at Von Elementary, so I couldn't necessarily do the same things. Right? So if I'm gonna be successful, I have to understand those elements within the system. Right? So having having these guiding what I like to call guiding documents keeps bringing us
back because when we get way off and we're like, wait a minute. Our purpose was, you know, to be good stewards of our tax dollar money, and we just spent all of it, because we we bet we bet it on this initiative that we thought was gonna work, gonna get more. So, really, our purpose is at odds with that. And spending that money, was that connected to our vision, what we wanted to realize in terms of academic success for our students? So there are ways to do this if if we're willing to make a commitment
to saying these documents are the guiding documents that we are gonna stand up earlier. So those are the two, two different ways that I mentioned that we can start taking orchid test. I think you were gonna use this now. Alright. That was fine. Yeah. Sorry. Yes. Talking about the guiding document. You you commented on it. I was actually gonna say it in the context of the the like, a new superintendent coming in. Ten years down the road. Similar to ten years down the road. Similar to when you said that the board are the ones who are responsible for
hiring the superintendent. So we're in search of Right. You know, what are we looking for? Do we want somebody to to come in and, you know, they're gonna help us develop a new mission and vision, or do we want somebody who's gonna, you know, help us to realize Yeah. The mission and vision that we've already set up for the district? Exactly. I don't know. Like, you might I might always simplify it, but, like, when you think of the purpose of the board, I think well, what is the struggle of this is that we started off with, like, the district. Yeah. Right over the head back. The other way around.
I feel yes. So if my writing we would have a hard time switching. Right? Okay. When you first did sound like, what is the purpose of the board, which connects with the superintendent and ten years down the line. So, like, it's like, we're here to advocate and be the voice or represent our community. Right? Our students and our teachers. Maybe. So yes. We were elected by our community. Right? And wider community and access to be a voice for them. Yeah. Right? But I don't know. I'm thinking around, you know, at New York. I'm thinking of why do school system take this? It's not a whole different question.
Well, school system means why does the board exist? That's what school system is because we represent school system in March. But why does why does why does school system exist? One thing and one thing. So that improves student outcome. Yeah. So the main work there for me is not outcome, but it's students. Mhmm. Right. I guess, for me, that's the vision. I don't know what the mission, which is the purpose of the board, which is to support the vision or to be that Right. What they show. But the mission is the purpose of the mission.
Exist. Why? That is not exist. That is the question where we exist because Yeah. To be to represent our students in our community. Right? Yeah. And as a result, choose our superintendent. Yes. Right? We are that's the one business that we're responsible for in the district. We choose the superintendent based off of what we what we know our community wants, was looking for. But those eyes. Not Yes. As as a role of why you exist, but it is also I would imagine this is what happened. I you know, I don't know.
But there was a vision in mind about where you all wanted to head Yes. As a school board, and you needed a leader who was going to get you there. Right? Mhmm. So that's how you wanna start thinking about it. But when we don't have these guiding documents that we continually go back to because we, organizations, write mission and vision statements all the time, and then they go away, or they print it on a poster, and nobody even knows it then. But so what I'm doing is encouraging you,
if we write this, you have to use it. Every conversation needs to go back to really the mission or the vision statement is, does this conversation does this decision, does this expenditure, does this hire get us to where we wanna be in five years or not? If it does not, then we shouldn't be doing it, talking about it, even you know, it shouldn't even be a topic. So let's stop doing that, and let's get back to and what's the reason why that's so helpful is there's
so many diverse perspective in this room because of who you represent in the extremely diverse city of Vermont. Right? So as good, politicians, if you will, you're representing your, area, I guess, what you could say, of who elected you. So, you're wanting to bring that forward, but yet your purpose is to make sure, basically, kids graduate and your district keeps growing. Like, this whole idea about destination district,
is so important because you don't wanna lose that. You don't wanna have to shrink so small. Now we're consolidating with other city, because we're we're not able to do what we need to do. Okay. Let's just hear from this last group, and then what I'm gonna put up are some filtering questions that might help you move forward a little bit more. Is there something you and you would like to share? I think we were I think. Yeah. Let's move over here so we can see the answer. Yeah. Yeah. I think we're when we need help. With that same thing? Right. I think we're settling with those the the mission angle.
And I mentioned we kinda decide my other one is sick. We kinda settled on the mission directly related to literally, we wanted to create students with fundamental skills. We we just kinda left critical figures out there. Critical figures Right. Fundamental skills, and we wanna educate and create lifetime learners. That was our mission. Of the school board? Yes. Okay. That's our mission. Okay. And then we were kinda getting confused about the vision Yeah. In which was stepping back Yeah.
And can't believe that picture of the lord in. Yeah. And so we step back and try to what does that look like as a picture? Yeah. And the we kinda the way we kinda articulated was, like, the center of the village. Yeah. And when I asked doctor Kiki specifically, what does that mean in the Ivory Coast? Like, what is the center of the village in like, what does that that community look like? And that got us to, what's it called? City what do you call it? Under the oak tree.
Under the oak tree. Okay. That was the the vision. What do you want this all to get to? Is that being on the okay mind? My my concept in my head Yeah. Was, we used to go to something called Black Pool. Okay. And it was a pool where all black kids hung out. Okay. Because we used to be a segregated pool, but at a certain point, it became everybody went to the Blackpool. So that's as far as we got. Okay. Yeah. Mitch, consider our mission is this. Our vision is this is what I believe is gonna look like. Okay. I don't know that. Okay.
And we got okay. That was our Okay. I don't think you guys are the next part. Okay. So, Claudia, could you advance to the next block? Yeah. Go one more. So, I also have and you probably have it in your hand notes. So there are some filtering I call them filtering questions. So when we're looking at developing the mission statement, and if you feel like you kind of now are getting an idea of what is the reason the Aurora Public School Board exists, does it define the purpose? Does it, state it in accomplishable terms?
Does it mobilize oh, sorry. There's a typo in there that I should not say, Whitman. See, I've done this in, like, the bazillion before. Does it mobilize the commitment of the board? Okay? And is it hitched to your vision, which we haven't worked on yet? So what I want you to do is think about that those filtering questions and see if you can now draft a mission statement. Okay? So go back with your groups. What I'd like you to do is put the mission statement on a new piece
of chart paper. And if you need to move so that you're sitting or around chairs or something, because we've been doing a lot of standing, please position yourselves in a way that makes your work most comfortable. Okay? But what I want you to do, now that we've kind of talked some more about the purpose of the school board, why you exist, see if you can please. See if you can draft a mission statement that would answer you. Yeah. Let's let's go for twelve minutes and see where we are.
Okay? Yes? No? Did I lose you all? Okay. Mic's mic's time. Party's time. Alright. Yep. I wish I had I should have brought chocolate to it. Oh, So what I'm gonna ask you to pause for a minute. The stem for this should really be the Aurora Public School Board and then blah blah blah blah. Does. Overall thing. But they also have to have, like, I think it's helpful to start walking there before. Yeah. But, you know, No. No. So
what we're gonna do, I'm gonna pursue it. But we have to have a an incumbent. That board. It has to that way. Yes. So By centering Fundamental skills. Discussion. Yeah. Because that's that's congratulations. We're gonna need we got graduation there. Oh, what is that? Skills. Yes. Testing and graduation. Testing. Yes. And then they can get it. Side there. Yeah. Yeah. To what it's Oh, I'm just I'm roaming because I can't just stay mission. Right? I'm roaming the So we're just just grapple with mission only. Oh, mission only. Yeah. Well, not the APS.
I mean, it's mission. It's the board's machine. No. APS board. APS board. APS board. Yes. Well, I'm not trying to make it longer, but I I I would argue that the board has to be Yes. I have a board, isn't it? I know. That's not your purpose. My purpose is that I don't think that accelerate I feel it. Okay. Four minutes. Go on. It's lovely to narrow narrow people. Sitting four minute on The creation On Alright. This is on the I mean, education and creation of I'm just trying to help you out.
Yeah. Everybody get up to this call. See this one store. Yeah. I I know. I feel it. You can see to be successful. Oh, but Oh, it had good I could be right there. Yeah. Right. Just coming up here. No. No. I'm not even right. Request to you. They claim that Because that is our that is a quantifiable goal that a customer accomplishing. Accomplishing terms. Let's just say, what was the emissions of the family that Okay. Alright. You've got your last thoughts, and and we're gonna share out what we have. Alright. Here we go. Ida, I'm gonna ask everyone to come over here and join
I'll let that group whatever group group number you are. The a team. How's that? Group number seven. Group seven. Go ahead. K. So what we came up with is the APS or commission is their higher effective leader Okay. Does that answer all the filtering questions except for the voice and cheese? I don't have a permission. I mean, I only use the Right. But does your mission statement define your purpose? If the Aurora Public School Board did not exist, could this district function? No. Okay. Why not? Who's gonna hire the effective leader?
Who's gonna hire the effective leader? Okay. Alright. So is the mission statement stated in accomplishable terms? Yes. Will gradually graduate. Well, you will hire a leader. Right? I'm a little higher. So you will. You will. Okay, Chuck. So Okay. I guess that's fine. Hire you will hire a leader who's going to do Yes. Yes. With students. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Okay. And we we haven't written the vision statement yet, so we don't know if it's pitch is not connected to it. Okay. Thoughts, comments about what this says about the purpose of the Aurora Public School
four? I think, like, the mission is just well, I see just but to hire the superintendent, like, I think I'll I'm just I think there's a way to expand on the Okay. The relation between the board and the superintendent is not just the hiring one. Okay? Okay. What? Hire What do you mean? Well, that's right. Before you do that, let's let's hear, go around because you might say that. For an interview. Oh, what's I don't. Yeah. Right. I would just say expand that the comment was, could this be expanded? Yeah. Okay. Any other comments or thoughts about this? Vicki said something. I I appreciate it.
I was going to the next step when you were just saying, again, the typical Oh, you're gonna okay. Yeah. But I agree with expanding. Okay. Yeah. I think it is more That it's higher than Alright. Yeah. Okay. Alright. Great. Let's head that way. We've got a strike. I I feel like I'm gonna make it back. So sorry about the word that they I don't even CAES award is community representatives provide oversight, direction, and accountability via the superintendent to ensure academics that are all the best. Okay. Thoughts?
Comment? What's what you say? Evaluation. Or it could be funding. I'm directing the others. Yeah. Mhmm. It's showing some, opportunities that would squeeze a med, access to resources, and engagement. Okay. So just this define the purpose. Why the Aurora Public School word exists? If the board wasn't here, do those things Okay? Okay. Alright. And is it, written so it's accomplished? Are there roles and roles that you're able to take action. Right.
Well, the goals and actions are oversight, direction, and accountability. That means all of you're doing all of that to ensure students' success. K? Any other thoughts or comments? Great. Okay. Let's go over again. You redraw it. You redraw it. You redraw it. Yeah. You redraw it. You redrafted. Yeah. So so don't look at the top part. Just look at the top part. So we have the mission of the APS school board is to ensure effective governance, be stewards of taxpayer dollars, be responsive to stakeholders, and hire a superintendent to accelerate student academic achievement and well-being by honoring a full
child and engaging the community. Okay. Is that stated? Does that state the reason this Aurora Public School Board needs to exist? Is it inaccomplishable goals? Like, are there things in there that the Aurora Public School needs to take care of? I mean, what score? Others, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So here's what I'd like you to do is go back with your groups. Now that you've heard what other people have said, in their statements, what would you, amend or delete in your statement?
Is there a way to make it more concise or not? Maybe not. What we don't want is something really long Mhmm. Because we're not making a long laundry list of all of the goals that are in the mission. But this would be about, you know, is it is it stated in a way that makes sense to everyone? And when I say make sense to everyone, I want you to think about it through the Emergenetics atrophying. Does it make sense to blue when we're talking about why logic rational thinking?
Does it make sense to green that you can actually see that there's, details to it, if you will? We don't want a laundry list to be put up enough in there. Does it make sense to red that we're making sure that we are connecting when everyone needs to be connected with the community facing? And does it make sense to yellow in terms of sort of that idea of, what this what's enduring about it that keeps going down the road?
Because that's the other big question to this mission piece. Is it enduring? Will it last the test of time? If this is your mission statement, it doesn't matter who the superintendent is or who the board is. This will always last. K? Alright. I'm only gonna give you I'm gonna give you ten minutes, so you really gotta get after it in here, to get this this done. What's that? No. And then we'll then one was the vision. Expand the hiring door. Yeah. But I do like Deal words on each other. Yes. Yes.
So here's what Yes. That's You don't know a word then. You know, like, every man, how should this Not that I don't. I think it's no. Right? We can talk about chemical. Yeah. Vision and all of that stuff. Well, I think that all the sites. No. He he's the concept that makes this is this is how I see work. It. So insurance. He is so this is the superintendent. Here's the civil board. Provide it. Here's the rest of the senate. Right? He's the conduit that takes what you need to understand overall
Let me ask you a different question. Is the purpose of the board really to the Alright. Oh, great. Are you guys finished? We're Spanish. No, ladies. Are you guys even better. Alright. Let's, let's share out, and, then we'll take a really quick break and move into the minute the vision piece. Okay? Yeah. Alright. Good. Who wants to go first? Oh, good. Sorry. Right here. I was in so we shortened a little and borrowed a little, and we have, as community representatives, the Aurora Public Schools Board of Education's mission is to provide effective governance,
be stewards of taxpayer dollars, and hire a superintendent to accelerate student achievement and overall well-being. Nice. Alright. You guys wanna go next? Yeah. Oh my gosh. You picked on her again. The APS thing. The APS board, as community representatives, ensures governance, provides direction, and upholds accountability via the superintendent to ensure academic success and social and emotional wellness for all students. Okay. Alright. Next one. The ABS board as trustees of the community.
The APS board as trustees of the communities of the community's mission is to oversee an effective leader focused on educating and creating lifetime learners and critical thinkers. Our students will graduate with fundamental skills to be successful at night. Yep. That's lots of connections and similarities, which is really nice. Okay. So let's, take a little brain break, and then let's come back. And what we're gonna do, the vision statement should come easier now. I am gonna put all three of these mission state am I allowed to post
on this beautiful, word sheet thing? Am I allowed to post on that? Oh, yeah. I'm like, Okay. I didn't know it. I'm violating, like, a You cannot step past these lines. But I know, and I already did. Okay. So let's just take a five minute stretch break, get some more food, get water, drink, whatever, or maybe there's a. I'll take a break. She said, babe. That's what she said. Yeah. Okay. You know what I mean? You don't trust the process. Yeah. But sometimes it'll be a mess in the moment. Yeah. It's all messy, Alex. Yeah. It's all messy, Alex. Yeah. It's all messy, Alex. Yeah. It was. Okay. Okay. So now that we have,
a draft of, mission statements that are all very similar, so the nuances really are in terminology, in my mind, not being Mhmm. Which is great. So now what I wanna do is, start excuse me. Move to the visioning, which should go a little faster, I hope. That was the hardest part, is to really get grounded on what, your purpose is. So now what I want you to do is think about now that we're clearer on our purpose as a school board, in five years, where do you what what is it that you will envision will be happening with
the school board? Okay? So remember the purpose statement, the mission statement has to be hooked to the vision. So think about what our purpose is as a school board. And then as we think about where we wanna be in five years as a school board, that's what this statement is really about. Okay? So you wanna answer it in kind of the way of what does it look like, sound like, feel like. The, original list that you generated can help give you some of those words. You may be clear in the vision,
but what we're thinking about is not what the vision will be forever. So remember, the mission of NASA was interplanetary travel. Landing on the moon was their vision at that time. When they realized it, they had to revision. Right? So as you think about the vision for the Aurora Public School Board, in five years, what is it that you want to have realized? In five years, what will the board look like, sound like, and feel like, if you will? Makes sense? Yes? Yep. So find your groups.
If you need a new space, so there is this neuro kind of pathway thing. If you need a new space to think about it in, you know, move around the room a little bit. If you feel like the space that you're working in is giving you the right energy, great. Keep going there. Okay? I am gonna give you twelve minutes, and your time starts now. You're writing a vision statement. Yeah. No. Sorry. I'm sorry? With his Yes. Yes. Yes. Over there is this is that corner. Thank you. Thank you. That group. Yes. Same for We don't have no dream.
Yeah. Well, clearly, neither do I. That's fine. You can see in my slides. It can't. Just a half a board. Oh, a half a board. Sorry. Yeah. A half a board? Right. This is the vision of the board. Vision of the board. Vision of the board. So remember we talked about kinda two pathways with this vision. The vision of the board could be to realize the oral public school vision, but I would encourage you to think about the vision of the board and not take the easy way out if you will. Right? I mean, what will this board look like,
feel like, and sound like based on why you exist in five years? Yeah. Please continue. It changed my life. Yeah. We're getting there. I think it's a matter of we've had a start at like, we started as community representatives, blah blah blah. But as as the vision, we will for what we are. We have we don't realize or in five years, we will Okay. However, it's pretty much late. Yeah. Just to get me started. Okay. Thank you. That's helpful.
Not necessarily forever and ever. This is like right now. I think we have a Exactly. She will. You feel like we have a healthy that he should have watched. I'm just I mean, I'm gonna make a point. Bring in some help. And I just I feel like I need to make some commitment with my my own payment. We all work together. We have strong funding, helping stewardship, and that kind of thing. Students who can stay with their community engagement. You know what I mean? But then, yes, it's not just a pain point driven, but it has that cost. So whether it's, you know, in five years, we paid off. Actually, not only that we have community,
but our community fee is information. Mhmm. But isn't it also, like, sometimes we don't want this to What is I have to try to get my between. But that's not what I hear Debbie saying. I heard he wasn't saying that I can pay five years. Yeah. And five years. To do to do have it off your list. But No. You know, and not actually do it. So remember, someone asked you because I Okay. Not So like I say, we did month and every school board, the child takes care of that. What you're saying? Okay. So what
is it called? The communication that we've said is, like, oh, thanks, billing, and funding. So in five years, I'm using this in. You know? What is it that you won't have realized as a healthy backlog? Or you could have realized that it is so well functioning that we're able to do these things. That's why you could be You keep we kept our missions She meant to say six. But, you know, but, yeah,
plenty of steps into our world, but they've been it's been probably late for just past. Yes. But remember that vision is about the enduring something about enduring in each measure of the nation. Right? So in five years that's why I keep saying, in fact, in terms of five years, start with the four. And he doesn't I just don't I just don't I just don't you know, what is it? The school board. Actually, is this right? So the school board might have realized, you know, any symptom, any way of operating,
you know, whatever that is. Yeah. Two, we didn't have that. These are in your account. For this pandemic since that. That's right. Increasing community game plan. Industrial and happy environment. We need those. That's so Go for it. Oversight. Right? Is working on a building. So we get that. Or we've out to continue. It's two years and two years. Equal position for both of our collection hours in within two years with the community. Yes. Concise sort of Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. You don't want a long vision. Put man on the moon. That was the vision. Period. I mean, so will that help us That's it. Achieve the mission. Yes. Oh, okay. That's your you have the school board. The school board are at the altitude. Right? Seven happy Oh my gosh. Yeah. And this the question the filtering question here is gonna be, does it, help you understand what the school board looks like? Yeah. The school. The record. So does it answer your question mark for our school board? Oh, second before.
Yes. Okay. Three minutes. We usually have to be in relationship with the community in a certain time. Suggest that. No. No. Yeah. Each other. Yep. Four. About four. So when you realize this, you'll have one minute and chase Alright. One minute. I'm like playing the or anything. Like, not sure. I say keep the words. Provide direction. I think a month. So is is it compelling? Here in four months. Does it answer the question, what does the board look like?
Or? I think we're gonna change on it for some more time. Okay. Alright. Let's see where we are, and we'll go back to I know. It's okay. She's okay. Alright. So, let's start over here with Tiffany's group. Excuse me. So why don't you come over here so you can see it? Because this might help everybody as well, like, we get to the last to the last 200. Alright. Go. So, first, we're thinking that it does need to be more brief than our mission statement. Mhmm. So our visions our vision is to deepen the relationship among the community superintendent and
each other. Yeah. So what to tweak it a little bit is that we're not gonna say our vision. We're just gonna say that yeah. To deepen Yeah. The relationship. That we'll know we're there when we have deepened the relationship, among the community superintendent and each other. And so the questions are, is it compelling? Yes. I I would say it's compelling. Does it, help you on can you see it, basically? Does it draw a picture, in the reader or the listener's mind? I mean, can you see how that would work?
Yeah. Great. And it's connected to the purpose that you said in terms of why you exist, that you're there to gain oversight, make sure there's accountability. You can't do any of those things without relationships. Right? Yeah. Great. Okay. Do you wanna share? Sure. Definitely. So let's get over there. Sweetheart. Yeah. The vision statement that, came up with we have visioned a school system where every student is equipped to succeed with the help of human trust and strong interest. Great. So we know all day we're there,
but we have have a school system where every student can receive and is equipped, with the help of community and strong leadership. So, clearly, there's connection in there about oversight, accountability, in terms of the purpose of the Lord. Mhmm. And when that happens, then we'll be able to revision. Right? So is it compelling? Yes. Mhmm. I would say so. And does it paint a picture in your mind? Can you see it? Okay. You can kinda see what that's gonna look like, feel like in someone. Right? Okay. Do you guys wanna talk about what you were saying or thinking about writing?
You're being pointed at? I'm so glad that as follows all day. She just whispered a great idea. I know. Good lord. I will get to a different group. And we we started with stuff we couldn't quite get to what we wanna say, but we're pleased with it. Mhmm. And then we thought about the word champions leadership. Yeah. And that's what I just said. You know? But I like that. Okay. Things in my head. Yeah. Leadership. Great. And it would have been something very close to what the last one was. Yeah. Okay. Great. And then two successful students. I I don't know what exactly.
I actually like like the setting of the school system because I know we've been working really hard. I'm not some leadership today. But, like, a framework. Right? So, like, no matter who's here coming and joining them, we have supported that effort. Right? That's that's the legacy we need to have. That's a certain place, for every Saturday. Like, this kinda doesn't cost much work. So do you feel like this statement really covers what you were going to put down, or do you feel like you need to write a separate statement? Or do you wanna join forces over here and and massage this statement?
Yeah. You can put hasten knuckle in. Yes. They'll write it down. They'll write it down. Yeah. Does that make sense to either four of you to do that? Because it it seems silly to rewrite a similar statement that may say the same thing. You could just tweak this one. Yeah. Does that does that work for you, No. Yeah. Okay. Alright. I'm gonna give you seven minutes to go back and tweak. Maybe since noon is like Well, we have a lunch delicious lunch. I was gonna say this. I'll start with this. Well, we are gonna need a clean one and Yeah. So what do you do?
Here. Make yourself useful and for a little bit. For a little bit. I'm here for a little bit. I'm here for a little bit. I'm here for you. I'm here for you. We said a person totally. I know who he is. I'm a watching him. Alright. Question. Sure. Just quick. But I feel like we were talking about a vision for the board. K? So, like, this is the vision for the district. Right. That's where we got stuff. Yeah. That's where it goes. So can you turn that into a vision for the board? That's why I think it's that's why I misspoke. Like, we wanna chunk in the leadership to be able to brighten this. Right. Okay. Because then what I like about I like champion leadership,
and I like the community trust Yes. And building that. So that's kind of where we were headed around. Plus, a relationship healthy relationship with the superintendent as well that it is the active side. Now that you're saying that, do you all wanna work on this vision statement together rather than adding two. Tiffany finish. Finish. Alright. What? Sorry. Go ahead. I I just wanna make sure that my Tiffany and Debbie. Debbie, feel comfortable incorporating what you had in yours with this statement.
Yes. Or you wanna bring your statement over here. She's a little bit down to one we'll come out with one vision statement, that incorporates what everybody's saying. Now remember, we don't want a written statement that takes forever to do. No. No. Right? That's right. So it's gotta be concise. So think about how you can convey what's important, like champion leadership, community and strong leadership. What was the piece from your study you were saying? The relationship. Relationship. The Yeah. So work together. So figure out how you wanna do that.
I am only gonna give you seven minutes for this, so we gotta Yeah. We gotta start the champions figure shift even though I can change black, black, black, black, black, white, black, white, I How about champions leadership and strong oh, no. Champions leadership and community trust to develop to test the the student achievement after that. Yeah. I would agree. It's okay. I know who's writing. Write. It's okay. Just start writing and get it done. Satisfied. Okay. Okay.
Uh-huh. And community trust, where every student is equipped to succeed so that every student Mhmm. So that every student is equipped to succeed. That's something short. Is there anything missing from that? This is about This is about This is about the board. The board, not necessarily the how. Right. It's not it's just the board. It's all about the process. Information. Okay. Okay. Can you achieve that in five years? That can you realize that in five years? Yeah. That you are a chant are you champions leaderships or champions of leadership?
Yeah. But, well, that's gonna be important. So it's so that first word, it champions leadership. Is that the action that member. Yeah. Thank you. I'm saying the board champions leadership. Okay. Great. So put that down. Unity Trust. The board. Right. The or the APS Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna do that with you. What did what do we mean by changing the relationship? Simple as support. Right. Because, resent, engages, inspires. The superintendent Yes. The president and his team. The district? District leadership. I I don't directly,
but it's you always Right. Yeah. No. I appreciate you asking. No. I appreciate you asking. No. I have a question. K. So is the school board, champion are their champions of the district leadership to be able to do all these things. I think one of the so we will champion our leadership, I guess. Right? And then with that, we Good. We're willing. I didn't know. I know. I said they're like, yeah. I I think so good at that. I thought of it as, like, we're supporting those already out there to be successful behind the But I can see what leadership.
Yeah. I can see what, Tiffany is also saying. Like, how do we remain accountable, you know, supportive of our own leadership, to be able to support the district's leadership and create that trust from the community. I'm not sure. I know. I know. Well, that is Yeah. Yeah. So encompass a whole lot. That's a shame. Yes. Leadership. Yeah. So I was saying I this is good to me, but I'm saying I'm what she meant. You wanna be clear, though, about the vision.
So if you're asking the question, what leadership? Who who does leadership represent? It's not clear. And we don't wanna walk away today with interpreting we're talking about the board, we're talking about the superintendent team, because that's when we start going down five different rabbit holes, if you will. Mhmm. And then you're not getting anything accomplished. Mhmm. Right? So put man on the moon was the vision. Very clear. Everything that they had to do,
talk about, spend, build had to do with that. Then then maybe I would say I would suggest the APS Board of Education champions district leadership and community trust so that and by that, I mean, we're setting goals and guardrails. Yes. So that But we're not doing the work. We are doing that work. That's sweet. Something for you. Chance not to do now. Selfishly from my angle, I love the idea of champion district district. That I do. It's really clear then what it what
you will be realizing. Mhmm. And so through that champion Yeah. We can't be We're way off thinking about making it very clear. Right. When you're in the community, you're talking about the great work that staff is doing and the best champion in your course. Yeah. Leader. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Support you guys to be successful. So you can see what this would look like, sound like, and feel like in the future. Exactly. I think it helps with the means to get to the end. Yes. That's your role and you Yeah. Together. Yeah. That leadership. I mean, honestly, it would I would think I've never been a superintendent,
but that would be a dream that I thought they saw it legally. Yeah. But Yeah. I I have a friend who's a superintendent in another state, and that is actually what the board is doing, and he feels like he's in a green position because it's not always that fortunate, right, as we know with school boards and superintendents. So so, now before we leave this and go to here, I wanna make sure that, this makes sense through the attributes. Right? So from blue, it explains the sort of the purpose behind the vision statement.
Right? Yes? I'm keeping it blue. From green, there's enough detail in there that I could actually see it and understand it. If I wasn't in this room with room with this conversation. Yes? For those of you who have green as a preference. Yeah. I'm gonna lean into you. Because I'm blue, green all the way. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that it makes sense to you. Right? Yeah. Okay. Great. And from red, you definitely kind of built that feeling of, vibration activity. And then from yellow, clearly, we five years down the road, we can see it. Right? Mhmm. Yeah. Great. And we're gonna have the light Okay.
So now the next part, I'm gonna bring this over here, is, this might feel scratchy, so we're just gonna go with it. But what I want you to do is and I can strike these, mission statements tonight. We're gonna vote. Okay? They're so similar. We're gonna take a vote. So you need a marker. Oh, what kind of work? And you only get to choose one. So let's see where we are. Should be. We can't work. That's right. I mean, you can fix the monoclonal out. I agree. I mean, you can fix the grammatical errors.
I agree. You helped build the statement. Yeah. We've done this for some I I so the question was, should my income has used to vote? I'm saying yes. Yes. I'm saying yes because they helped me build the statement. Yep. I say, no. I'm saying no because it's I I I feel, and you all can push back, is where the board can, really own this. Okay? Great. What about the rest of the meeting? I'm missing your email. You got to need it to pick up now or on number four. Yeah. I'm fine with the You're fine with them then. Because it's a boy's suspicion. Yeah. Fine. Okay.
Alright. Go. Yeah. With what are you on the mission? Yeah. I'm gonna move this. So you're just looking at the Yeah. So So go and do all the need to call for one. Alright? No. We're not doing that. Sorry. No. It's not. Oh, oh, thoughts. Yes. Do what what do you mean? Just, like, share my thoughts. Oh, yes. Please. Please. We're not doing that. So I feel like synapse. The mission thing in the middle is is really wordy and convoluted, and our mission statement needs to be great. Okay. And then when I'm looking at this one as well, I was reading it and trying to
I was thinking that the same pet idea that is, more convoluted with with words. And I wanna be brief with our mission statement. I wanna be more brief when it comes to the Yeah. Yeah. To the Okay. Alright. Any other thoughts or comments before you vote? Alright. Oh, you did? Oh. I didn't even see the vote. Mark. A mark. Yeah. Make a check or hash mark. Just get a mark on there. That doesn't mean they're like They gave me a letter. I'm gonna have a chance to put it in the Alright. We'll talk about it.
I can read that. Let me see where we are. Does it mean that even if she's gone, maybe it'll be like we can That's what she's asking. Find very I feel Yeah. But we can we can go back. I just I I need to see where people are. Yeah. It's good. I know. That's, like, answering those names. Yeah. That's true. And it's not a problem. It's very important. Well, right, because you're not walking around. New business. Okay. Did everybody vote? We did. Did you vote? Yes. I did. Oh, okay. Okay. So it looks like we can remove this one. Right? Now there is I'm oh,
I'm so sorry. This is the only thing there. Okay. It's a little bit. It's still there, isn't it? Alright. So there was a thought about I'm situation two and two. I was hoping that one would rise to the top, and then we could combine a little quicker. So, clearly, the tie The tie did not float. So the breaking up the tie did not vote because I'm You didn't vote? You have to vote. You have to vote, Anna. I like all of them. That's not me. The last time. To make a tweet. We can add a little It's okay. Yeah. We we one.
Yeah. Yeah. We can to the buying them. And I need to know which one we can start. Yeah. We have a chunk anymore. It's leadership. I don't think we're good and well said. Are we gonna stand here? Or we can yes. Do you wanna just stop being with Ninja? Well, I was gonna get it. No. But, yeah, go get something. Yes. Okay. Alright. Great. Thank you. Alright. So here's what we need to do. I wanna bring a chair up here because we can stand on the line. I don't mind you. So since this one has three boats, we're gonna use this as the core. Okay. And then we're gonna pull what we'd like from here into here to revise it.
So So let me see if I can bring this over here without creating that. Do you need some time? Maybe. It's kinda heavy. It does have roller hair, but that's cumbersome as they say. Yeah. Top heavy. It's still kind of Alright. I mean, with all of this Alright. So this is our fourth wave measure. Our vision. And then specifically, point I mean, mission. Sorry. Sure thing. We wanna be precise. You can be a little more wordy if you will, but not we're not doing a laundry list. Right? We're just getting really clear on our purpose. So you have to just so what my recommendation is is use this as your
core. Figure out what's in here that you can, alter or revise in here. K? So who voted here? I said that I'm just reading through it as you're talking, and it's at least to this point. Mhmm. Pretty much the same. The words are in different order. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Governance. Yep. Okay. Provide effective governance instead of shared governance. Provides direction, which and uphold accountability, which those phrases could be stewards of taxpayer dollars. Sure. Hiring superintendent. We just didn't hear you.
Mhmm. Yeah. The superintendent. Yeah. Great. Yeah. And I think my feedback was just, like, the hire or superintendent. Yeah. I just want I wanna take out yeah. I don't the hire. It's more of a relationship, right, with the superintendent, not just the hiring of. Right. And then I'm not Mhmm. Agency. I don't yeah. The evaluate instead of goals. Well, do you do more than just evaluating? We do. We do. Yeah. And and it's it's, not the business. Okay. Yeah. And it's also it's a relationship. This doesn't sound relational to say oversee,
but our job is to hire True. And evaluate, and build relationships. Mhmm. Mhmm. That's what I was saying in my time. I say a word that is a reason to and through the super like, I don't know. It's like it's more than just specific Well, actually, I understand. Printed and made it. One of the most important roles I see a school board, needing to fulfill is the hiring of the district leader. I mean, that a good job. It it is huge. The biggest. It's important. And so I what we don't wanna do is start to create this laundry list
about not only hiring Yeah. But evaluating and overseeing. Right. Yeah. I mean, really, clearly, that that it it could be inferred. I mean, it's not that you just hire them and then you never, interact with them again. So I'm not saying that you keep the word hire or not. I'm just trying to help you think through that that is a fundamental responsibility of the school board in a district, right, in a school district. And it's critical. I mean, really, it it sorry to put pressure on you, but it makes your breaks in this whole district.
Right? Mhmm. It does. Yeah. Like I said, the fact that I'm not necessarily like, the taxpayer dollars is very specific. I like I like the phrase upholds accountability or something with accountability because that also covers that part as well. Right? That we're accountable for finance and even a beholder. Is finance a better word than taxpayer dollars? I kinda like where Danielle is going because accountability encompasses so much. Right? Okay. We're taxpayer dollars, monitoring the goals, and maybe so.
Provide effective governance, upholds accountability, and hire a superintendent. K? Yeah. Who's who's got the pen? I like accountability. Okay. Instead of So let's say it again. Superfund effective governance upholds accountability oh, uphold accountability and hire a superintendency. But what so Yeah. Accountability for what yes. This is I can't I I can't believe our district resources. Can resources be held accountable? No. We are responsible. Accountable.
We are finding it. Because it's The the community the board of education's mission is to provide effective governance. We uphold accountability, or we are stewards of taxpayer dollars because it's the budget that we say yay or nay to. Whether it's grant funds, it does come from taxpayers. So that we uphold the budget. I hold what is it about taxpayer dollars that's uncomfortable to you in a year? It's just a very specific like, we we are accountable for a lot of things.
Right? We're looking for our student success, the superintendent's, performance. Like, it's just like we're in accountability. Do you think effective governance include security. Okay. Well, wait. We could use that too. Does effective governance include accountability, of taxpayer dollars Yes. And student achievement Yes. And the efficient literacy of district operations. That's true. You know? I don't know if that is not Yes. To be stewards of taxpayer dollars. So So maybe we hold value $30. So let's let's let's that and keep Effective governance and hire a and to hire
a superinte salary. Yeah. How does that feel? I made that Board of Education's mission is to provide effective governance and hire a superintendent to accelerate student achievement and overall well-being. Overall well-being. I was gonna say yes. We met students. Accelerate student achievement and enrollment. So it's a Accelerate achievement and overall the way up the last student. I would know. That doesn't sound like that. Little chunky. Yeah. Chunky student's achievement and student overall, rural and native schools.
Because we're thinking whole child, not just academic. Mhmm. So we're ready to accelerate the well-being and achievements of all students. I like that. Yeah. Say that again. To accelerate the wealth the well-being and achievement of all academic achievement of all students. Well-being and academic to Sorry. Well-being and achieve How about students? How about students? Mhmm. Yes. Community representatives. The APS Board of Education wanna speak louder? As community representatives, the APS Board of Education's mission is to provide effective governance and hire a superintendent
to accelerate the well-being and academic achievement of all students. Thank you. How did that sound? So so I can k. Does it does it have to define your purpose? Define our purpose? I can see here. It keeps thinking. It is for governance. Okay. Here. Again. I'm sorry. Governance. Purpose is to hire a superintendent and provide executive governance. So Purpose? The board is the one that provides the governance. The board is the one that hires the superintendent. And then we turn it over to the superintendent.
We we do the we put both guardrails in there, but that's part of the army. That's part of the army. Yes. That's part of the army. You asked it, when you said, like, if this wasn't in place, could the district run? If there was no school board, could it run? Could it could the school board exist if there were There was no one in the school district. Governance and if no one was hiring the superintendent. Right. It would run effectively. It could always run, but it wouldn't run as effectively. Well, it might not be able to run. I mean, really, if you think about the finances, then after going and running a school district,
then someone spends all the money. There's they're still running in the school district. There's no school buses. Locked out. So if that is this enduring? Can it stand the test of time? That when in one hundred years, let's say, you know, we're all gone, can this stand the test of time? Would it still be the purpose of this of a school board within the school district. Thank you, Katie. And if you should come into an institute, I'll visit them for more and provide effective.
If if school boards stay in place, I think, yes, they Sorry. They can I know? They can function and work through this statement. Yeah. Yes. Yep. I think it's pretty good. I like that. It's pretty good. I like that. Alright. So, oh, gosh. There's one other piece we're gonna see here. So what this means is that you need to keep this statement. We'll clean it up. And it's gotta be in front of you every meeting, every conversation so that when you can pause and say, okay.
Have we gotten away from our purpose? And are we now what happened to her vision? That's right. Oh, it's over here. And are we now able to realize are this now? Because we've got effective governance. We've hired a superintendent who's gonna accelerate the well-being and academic achievement of all students. And so in five years, this is what it's gonna look like in the Aurora Public School District from the board board's work, but the board will be doing.
Yes? I think so. Very good. I'm afraid to eat. I know. I know. Can I offer a a fishbowl box? Please. So, when you ask the question of a hundred years from now Yeah. Where I went was the word accelerate. Yeah. I think what I would offer is more of a word like ensure because a hundred years from now, I think what I'm hearing from this room is that, like, we're maintaining Mhmm. A standard of excellence as it relates to academic achievement and student wellness.
And Accelerate, to me, has a connotation that suggests we need to hurry up and get there because we're not there yet. But I think in a hundred years from now We we might be there. Too. Well, we're not In five years, we'll be there. Oh, we've been good. Oh, we might not be there. They've changed. And, yeah, we might might not be there. So Yeah. When we say that, Mike? Five years. Well Right now, I feel like that is the right word. But Right. Yeah. In in the in the long term. This conversation with debt. We said ensure, then we said accelerate, then we said ensure,
then we said accelerate because we were thinking well, my peers is What I heard Jesus say that I'd like to put on the table is this idea about maintaining excellence for the well-being of students and academic achievement can then underneath that is a goal to accelerate the achievement and well-being of students because Mhmm. This is our purpose. Mhmm. One of the goals, though, for us right now is to accelerate that process.
Right now. Right? Yeah. But it's ten years which is the goal, And we'll realize that goal in five years because we we have this in place that what our district now is championing, district leadership in the community so every student is successful. But what I'm hearing Jesus' thing is five, ten years from now, if students are achieving academically, the the need to accelerate would no longer be there, but maintaining that That's right.
That's what I'm saying. Just to be maintained I love the word. I mean, that then we're not just maintaining the status quo. Maintaining excellence Mhmm. Or to ensure excellence. This is another time we went back and forth instead of to maintain, but to ensure. Yeah. Can we ensure it? Can we ensure it? Works. For the well-being and of stew For the well-being and academic achievement of all students. Okay. Do you want do you wanna go back to maintain? No. I'm just trying to I'm trying to read what's I know. We'll have to reboot. We'll have to rewrite it.
Yeah. Tiffany, read it out loud. Okay. As community representatives, the APS Board of Education Mission is to provide effective governance and Higher. And hire a back in. Yes. Okay. Hire and hire a Superintendent. Superintendent to maintain excellence for well-being and academic achievement of all students. Sorry. Can I have to do with that? For the well-being For the well-being For the well-being. And I'm For well-being and academic achievement of all students. Yeah. I'm not For the just For the well-being and academic achievement of all students.
It does keep coming out of my mouth, but I can see why. For well-being. For well-being or so well-being. For the well-being. What? And academic achievement. For well-being and academic achievement of all students. Right. For the well-being and academic achievements. All students. Mhmm. Mhmm. Mhmm. The. What's that? The the well-being. Okay. And you wanna restart it, and then we're going to close this out because I think we're gonna. You're gonna rewrite it? Yes. No. I need I need it to wake up that chance.
Well, this is this is Heather Rock on the Saturday. Community representatives. Well, we're gonna celebrate in just a minute. I think this is huge. I know. Excited. I won't volunteer you for anything. Yeah. Right. Superintendent Jones, I won't sign you up for anything. What's that now? I won't volunteer you or sign you up for anything. Okay. I appreciate that. But the deputy is That's the wrong way of studying that need to be accomplished. Because we're gonna champion your leadership. I know. It's not gonna be a great race. I think I think you're gonna regret that.
I need that. Whatever you go on your farm. It's a fence. It's a fence. It's a fence. It's a fence. I need to screw this up. That's alright. Guys. You're making it in your mind. No. For the well-being. For the well-being. And academic achievement for all students. Of all students. Yes. Effective governance and highest student attainment to maintain excellence for the well-being and academic achievement for all students. Other more students. Mhmm. I all students. Okay. Our mission statement that's pitched to our mission statement.
As community representatives, this the APS Board of Education's mission is to provide effective governance and hire a superintendent to maintain excellence for the well-being and academic achievement of all students. And then our vision statement is the APS Board champions district leadership, and community trust so that every student is equipped to succeed. Nice. Are we there? Alright. Awesome work, everyone. Awesome work, everybody. Awesome. Alright. So let's Do you want these to be?
Yes. Yes. That's fine. So, let's go to our last slide, please, and do our checkout. So I want you just to take a moment and think about everything that we've done. So we looked at our tip sheets, you looked at your profiles again, we worked through this vision and mission piece, Came out with two amazing statements. So what I'd like you to do right now, your stem is I used to think and now I think. So please complete that stem, and then we'll share out and close out, for the moment. Oh, whatever you want.
Yeah. No. You don't. I just put it up in your house. Just got head of the store. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One day. About thirty seconds to input the tours. Okay. Who'd like to start us off? Excuse me. Left or right? Desperate. Okay. Awesome. So, I didn't use the stem. I guess, really, my moment was really just kind of as we're all working on the mission, vision, and our goals, how aligned our thinking was was just, it was amazing. And, like, it was definitely challenging to develop the mission,
vision, goals etcetera. And so but I'm proud of, our progress, like, the board's progress and success. So yeah. Nice. I won't go with the semi, but I think, what I do think, though, is that there's clarity, not only for this board, but for future boards to come around what we're envisioning mission, are for the work. The other piece is I just appreciate the process of demonstrating, going through the exercise demonstrated that everyone in this room
shares the same spirit of, outcomes and desire desires for for the students we serve in our community. Although we may articulate it differently or approach it differently, but going through that muddy exercise allows us into a place where we'll get actually coming around to develop some language that captures what each of us are endeavoring to do. Using the stem a little bit, I think I I used to think that, you know, we didn't have a clear mission or vision for the board of education specifically. Now I think there is clarity and alignment,
which I think is fantastic. So I was just on the board of education's website on the APS website, And there's this question that is, what is the APS Board of Education? And it has a sentence. And, you know, what are results and limitations? What's the meeting format? How do agendas and amendments work? And this piece, which, you know, we'll be adding, soon to that page, I think, is significant. So proud of the progress today too. Yep. Obviously, I think, just another, you know, reminder that even though we're all different, we think differently,
different personalities, how we could rally together and we all have the same common goal. And then, yeah, putting that as a board member, what does it really mean and putting it out there so other people know, you know, like, we're here for you. Like, I think it was important that that part was in representing you, the community. And so when when any space reminding ourselves and the community, that's that's all that's who we are. Mhmm. I used to think people would never get to. We would never get to realize this. Oh. And now I think we are onto something really brilliant and building,
putting this strong foundation for people that are coming ahead of us is, like, something it's a legacy. Yes. The the tree that we have planted today is gonna grow and, the simple fact that, all of our rooms are gonna be under the tree as the the foundation as well. It is making me feel very privileged to be working with you all. Thank you. So I use the thing that, why why do we need a separate vision?
I'm a mission. I've got vision. You know? I struggled with that for seven, but I love where we came down. I mean, it is centered on leadership, which is what the board is about, and community and students, and it still envelops the district vision in that every child is being equipped. Every child shapes a successful future. I I just love how it all came together. It feels good to know. Alright.
Used to think mission and vision was somewhat irrelevant because in the daily grind of everything, that's not what you really know. All this other in front of you that leads to. That's But now I I do see much more relevance in the fact that it's being put forth not just for the people in this room, but it provides clarity, and several of you already said it, to the community to and they just well, what what the board of education for? It gives the purpose it gives. And it was it was great. Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah.
I there's a lot to celebrate, this morning. I think that, while the process was scratchy Mhmm. And it it always is. It's, you know, it's just it's hard. It's how do you work, if you will. But the fact that you are able to harness the, what I would call, cognitive diversity in the room and quickly start to see that you really are very connected in the way that you need the work to be about. It's just in the way that we've been communicating it sometimes,
that is hard to reconcile us, when we're in those, challenging conversations. And, these statements to me are clear, and I think what's gonna be really nice is it provides clarity not only for you all as the school board, but the school district itself. I mean, I'm excited to hear what teachers think about this, you know, when they start thinking about what what is the board really doing? What are they about? Where are they going? Because as you said, Vicky, you know, in the daily grind, it's hard to see it because you're so focused on what you need to get
done. The challenge for you all, and I guess I'm gonna have to start coming to board meetings because I'm not sure that you're doing it, is you've got to actualize these two statements. So every that's why I kept saying every decision, conversation, action, plan, goal setting, whatever it is, has to be connected to these two, to these two statements, especially your vision statement. So as you were thinking about next year and where the board wants to head, you've gotta make sure well, does that have anything to do with landing on the moon?
Anything to do with our vision statement. And what will be really fun I don't know if it'll be fun. I think it'll be fun. Is when you get to that work that you, always do at CASB in December, these better be out in front. So I'm gonna have to come down the prom more and make sure you're doing it, because it's so important because you you sent a lot of hard work in here, a lot of brain work. And if you're not gonna use them, it doesn't matter. That is the problem with mission and vision statements. They have to you have to keep them alive.
And I'm pretty sure these two are gonna keep bringing it back and say, remember, you said you were championing the district leadership here. So, you know, are your actions really doing that? It's a good check for everybody. Right? Yeah. I'm really I'm I'm proud of all of you. I'm so excited. And, I just I can't wait to see what comes out of this. And with that oh, I gave I get only gave you ten minutes. I thought we'd be finished a little better here. But I did finish early, so I'm taking that as a win. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah. Program. Thank you.
We really appreciate your work and you're pushing us mentally to get to where we are today. Yeah. It's been a pleasure. Mhmm. Absolutely. Pleasure to work with you on. Thank you. Alright. Have a great rest of your afternoon, and enjoy your lunch. You too. Lunch is already ready. Okay. So what time? We can we can do you think one of one of those two things, like, the working lunch, so we can barely or, take take a break. How many minutes do we have for lunch? We have an hour for lunch. Sixty minutes.
Take the full sixty minutes for lunch and come back here at is AJ in person? Is that the last here? He's here in person at one and then finish the rest. It's up to you. So manager? Do we wanna just, take a break or we can do thirty minutes? I need a break. Break. This is okay. Okay. Let's do it. So like, thirty minutes. Thirty minutes. So let's do thirty minutes, and how about we come back at 04:30? Okay. So that is more like thirty minutes. Yeah. Yeah. You can come back at 04:30. That's what that's then.
Alright? Have a good lunch. Thank you. And then test. We're live. I can make sure I hop. Okay. He's always doing it in weeks. You know? They might it's better to sit to be there and to go through it and to go through the score and all those other things that we talked about doing. Right? Where a survey doesn't I mean, you can do this. Mhmm. When we're joining a meeting, that's great. However Yeah. They're making room, not Right. Which is It's like we are adding in time. Yeah.
I'm having a full day. I'm following the statement. And they anticipated a hundred people. She sent me the 6,400 panels. It's here. It's here. I forgot. That's very quite a window of time. That's processed. Mhmm. And permission. We have one to switch gears now and jump into our community engagement conversation, or part of the afternoon with our, the board coach, AJ Clevel. Welcome, sir. You know, you have the floor to get us into the community engagement conversation.
I know behind the scenes, some conversation have already started, but, hopefully, we're gonna walk out of here as well today with a solid plan to start, this community engagement without who, what, when, and everything included. I have sent, several emails to my colleagues here, as we have, continuously, talked and discussed arrangement engagement. So thank you for being here. Look forward to seeing you at some point. Well, thank you for having me. It's always great to be back. Thank you, whoever dialed up the flawless,
Colorado weather. This is, just a beautiful day to be here. Our intention, as the board chair describes, is to really set you up for success with your community listening campaign. This is a necessary part of your work because the job of the board is to represent the vision and values of the community, but you can't possibly accomplish that task without actively listening for the vision and values of the community. But that listening takes some amount of intentionality. You don't want to be haphazard about it. There are a number of things that will set you up for success,
and a number of things that will set you up to fail. And so our intention today is to get you on the path where you can conduct a listening so that you are in a position to adopt a new set of goals and guardrails since your current set will expire next year. And so the timing for doing that listening to have the new goals and guardrails in place is now, so that they can be in the superintendent administration's hands in time to deploy for the s y twenty six, twenty seven budget,
so you don't catch any gaps. So that's why you need to do this work now. It seems like it's early, but it's actually not early. It's actually about on time. The key elements of your community listening, are what are you going to Listen for, and we'll talk about that in the form of your script. How will you conduct that listening? We'll talk about that in terms of some skill building activities we'll go through, and to whom will you listen? And we'll go through and try to identify where does that listening need to take place, who needs to be invited into the listening,
what's the level of intensity that you all will apply to that listening campaign. So we've got not a lot of time, but I'm pretty certain because you all are kind of pros at this stuff that we'll be able to move with some amount of alacrity. So, to get us started, what's the difference between observation and interpretation? What's the difference between observing something and interpreting something? What's the difference between observation and interpretation? Oh, yeah. So the way I see it, observation is what you see, and interpretation is how you understand it.
Yes. The difference between what you see and how you understand it. But else, what's the difference between observation and interpretation? Solutions like to me means it's not factual. So everybody is as observed and we're all sitting, but it is fact. K? Mhmm. Whereas, interpretation might come with past history or experience. And so Yeah. Like, I'm seeing somebody sit, but somebody might be in that person sitting relaxed, Whereas depending on my my my, where I'm at emotionally, I might interpret the way they're sitting as they're not paying attention or they're distracted
or Yeah. Observation is of what I can actually see is happening Yes. Yes. In reality, whereas interpretation is the meaning that I assigned to it, based on my experiences and things of that nature. Anybody else else see the difference between observation and interpretation? Feel free to dive in. I I don't know if I can add anything different, but observation is actually what's seen, and interpretation is what I made of it. Yeah. Why might this distinction be relevant to a community listening campaign? Engaged. So when I think about with us understanding and,
why this is important for community engagement is because we have to actively listen and empathetically listen to what's being said, and then go on. You can interpret the team, and generate the information out of The US. Yeah. What what why why might this distinction between observation and interpretation be relevant to this idea of community listening? I think that that's a great question. It's helpful for me, because we can all hear the same words, but we can interpret them differently or make sense or meaning out of the same
words we all heard. Yeah. Anyone else? Why might this distinction between observation and interpretation be relevant to community listening? Anybody else? It also helps shape the questions that Yeah. What are you trying to get out of this experience? Are you able to do that? Any questions? Right. I think, also, maybe you get a fuller picture when when you're interpreting, not just observing. Because sometimes someone could say something, but their tone or their body language or their, you know, other stuff you know? I think there's something else going on here kinda thing. You know? It's not just what they're saying.
More than one person can say the same thing, but it can mean 10 different things. Ideally, you all will go out and you will conduct listening with, hopefully, not tens of people, hopefully, hundreds of people, maybe even more than that. As you do that, which of these are you wanting to deploy during the listening process and why? When during the process would you want to be observing what people say, versus when in the process would you wanna be interpreting what people say? I have to observe first to capture exactly what was said,
for instance. And then when you get more data Mhmm. Then you can start putting pieces together. Just individual things work better when they're all together, and you can begin to see patterns. Yeah. Other thoughts? So when will it make the most sense to have to observe what you're hearing? When will it make the most sense to interpret what you're hearing? Any other thoughts? It's it's test right there. And I was saying it's to observe first, and then later on, you can interpret that data.
So as they're more I'm thinking of observing my sleep on record and then evidently listening, it's, you know, engaging with the community. Not you know, they say their, you know, their piece or values or vision, etcetera. And then you two present that you're actively and empathetically listening, and you would need to paraphrase to make sure you capture what they meant and not what you think they meant. And then you can take that gap with amongst the board, for instance,
and how you interpret that. Yeah. Definitely, it's our recommendation that you observe first, interpret later. That you try to capture, like, what is it that people actually said first. And then, later on, once you have a lot of that captured, then collectively decide what is the process we're gonna use to interpret what all we captured. Part of the reason for this is because it's really helpful for people to have the experience of being heard when they can see exactly what they said word for word has been captured. What we find is that if somebody says,
well, I really don't like this curriculum, and then they see written down, some you know, parent, you know, disagreed with the curriculum. Often what we find is parents are like, that's actually not what I said. That's not what I said at all. Like, why didn't you why aren't you actually listening to what I'm saying? Why are you, you know, twisting my words to match whatever you meant for me to say? A easy way to solve for that is to start by observing first, capture exactly what people share, and then interpret later. And when you do it that way, you can actually then later give people both exactly what they said,
just the full raw receipts of here's exactly what we heard, unedited, unmodified, uninterpreted. Like, these are the literal words that came out of people's mouths. And here's our interpretation of it, and here's how we're using, what we've interpreted the community to have said. And then often when we come back to the community with all of those pieces, that that does, a more powerful job of creating for the community the experience of actually having been heard. We say, here's literally what was said, here's what we interpreted to mean, and here's how we used that in the creation of our next set of goals
and guardrails. Often what happens is people say things to their public officials, and the only thing they ever see is the end result. And then they're stuck with, like, but how was that how'd you get from what I said to this? And it's public official. We just we don't connect the dots for folks. Mhmm. And so part of our recommendation for how do you connect these dots is start with what folks said, and provide a raw copy of that back to folks. Put it on your website or wherever you wanna put it, but let make that available. That might be 60 pages. That might be a hundred pages. That might be 200 pages.
If people wanna look at it, great. Let them look at it. But let them know that you, as their public officials, captured what they said word for word. But then there also should be a summary document that here's here are the themes that we drew from that. Then then people can, you know, compare those two. It's okay. Well, they didn't write this summary document doesn't have exactly what I said, but I can see the themes of what I was talking about, you know, in it that are interlaced with all the other stuff that ethical people said. And then I can take that thematic document and look at the ultimate set of
golden guardrails. Okay. I can see how they took what they heard us say, and how they got here to the actual policy that they adopted, the language of the goals and the language of the guardrails. So that is the and and again, we recommend all three of those documents be made publicly available, so it's fully transparent, exactly what we heard, what we how we interpreted, and then how we use that, in our policy making. This is why we suggest to you that the first part of your listening would be observing what your community has to say, not interpreting what your community has to say. So I wanna practice briefly,
the difference between that. And so you tell me what I'm doing. Am I observing or interpreting? Alright, so I'll I'll pickled you first. So just, you know, tell me something about your day. I need to enjoy the sushi. I just say we I really enjoyed the sushi. Did I hear you correctly? That's correct. Gotcha. Did I observe what she said or interpret what she said? Oh, what did you say observed? She was just a word for word. Yeah. It was just word for word. I didn't add anything to it. I didn't subtract something from it. I didn't try to put it in my own words. I didn't try to, presume what she meant by that. I I didn't do any of those things. I I didn't make any effort to interpret it.
I just observed it. Alright. Tell me something else about your day. We had a really good morning session. When the board came together and we were able to, even though we're all different, pull together, different initiatives. Got it. Sounds like you enjoy working with your school board members. Yes. Good. Did I observe what you say or interpret what you said? Very rude. Why do you say interpret? I'm paraphrased, how impressed with the text. Yeah. What I said isn't at all what she said. Not even a little bit. Now it may have, in fact, been a fairly, accurate or fair interpretation of what she said, but it wasn't at all what she said.
And so that's that's the difference, is that to really create for your community the experience of being heard, you wanna start with what did they actually say before and then later on in the process, you will, in fact, interpret. Well, but that'll be a second step, not the first step. Any questions or reflections about that difference between observing what your community says and interpreting what your community says? Any questions or reflections on that? Alright. Well, then let's, briefly practice. So what I want you to do with your shoulder partners is to do exactly what you just saw here. Hey.
How's it going? Right right on time because we need it yeah. We've got two, so it's coming. They both show up. I don't know. Well, then we'll have a group of three over here. But over here, we'll have two and then two and then two, and then you two and then three. And what I want you to do, is I want you to, with your shoulder partner, just say a little bit something about your day or your week or whatever the weather, whatever you wanna talk about, usually just a sentence or two, and then pause. And then the partner, you'll just observe back exactly what you heard. And then you'll confirm either they heard you correctly or not.
If they didn't, they could try again. And then once they've gotten that correct, then switch. Now they'll share something with you, and then you will observe back exactly what they said. And just kinda go back a little bit, in practice, and then a moment, we'll talk about it. Any questions? Alright. Enjoy visiting with your partner. You want me to you gonna start first? Yeah. We're with your family earlier. Right. And now you're with your Yeah. Because which It it doesn't. It might have somehow. Right. Let's, let's let's talk about it. Hopefully. That's a big That was definitely interpretation, not an observation.
That was an interpretation, not an observation. Thank you. Now you're here. I am. Here it is. Alright. So what did you notice? Well, welcome back. So what'd you notice? As you were trying to practice observing what what your partner said, what'd you notice? Well, even when you're trying to be observant and say exactly what they said, you don't always get exactly what they said. Yeah. This this is part of the invite scene. Yeah. Exactly. And some it's not just one or the other. Sometimes something is said that's not quite one or the other as we were doing our little thing.
It was like, I don't think that's either an observation or an interpretation. It's something What what's what's your example? My grandson. My grandson. My grandson. You have that right? Oh, she said, my grandson is the cutest baby on earth. And I said, he's not cuter than mine. Oh, wow. That was her last real case. That's a good observation. So that's neither I mean, it's my word, but she said So you neither observed nor interpreted what she said. He actually ignored what she said. Yes. So give me another response. Although it wasn't verbatim, it wasn't it was what I said that there was a slight change in the
state. Yeah. She gave it. Change of yeah. Yes. So so this is this is an important question. There are gonna be times when somebody's gonna say something, and you may completely agree with it, or you may completely disagree with it. Tell me. Is expressing your agreement or disagreement with it, To what extent does that aid or detract from the listening? It it shouldn't happen. It should not. Why do you say it shouldn't happen? Because you know what? I don't believe we want it to become a confrontation. Detract from what someone else is saying.
Yeah. Say the sentence. What are you saying? If something like that happens if we're in, like, a community setting and you make that statement, that, like, really fast, someone else from commenting as well. Yeah. So what happens, any amount of judgment that you insert into the conversation will have the effect of shutting down the conversation. And that's judgment whether you are expressing agreement or judgment where you're expressing disagreement. Because the moment you disagree, people go, oh, well, now I don't know if I should speak because maybe I'm gonna say something wrong, and I don't wanna be put on blast. But even if you agree,
now when the next person says something and you don't express agreement to them, now they're like, oh, well, maybe they didn't agree with me because they told the last person they agreed, but they didn't tell me you agreed. And so any amount of judgment that you inject, undermines your attempts to kind of observe what your community members are saying and will likely have the effect of force someone else in the crowd that you will never know, of encouraging them to shut down and to participate less fully. And so, the injecting judgment, whether I agree or disagree, I would strongly encourage away from that. Injecting gratitude,
not for what they said, but for them having chosen to share is absolutely fair game. Thank you for sharing. Well, I heard what you said. Did I hear you correctly? Yeah. Excellent. Thank you for sharing. Alright. What would you like to say? And then I, observe back what you said. Okay. Excellent. Thank you for sharing. And I and move along. That absolutely works. But, oh, man. That was a really great point. I'm glad that you, that you said that. I I hope some other people say that same thing as well. Now we're steering the conversation. And what we're not going to get is people feeling safe to kind of show up with whatever their authentic voice is.
Now they know that everything I say is going to be publicly judged by the facilitator, and so now I've gotta try to rework what I'm saying. I don't think that's where you want the conversation to go. Any other reflections about this difference between observing what people are saying, your partner was saying, versus interpreting? Part of interpreting is knowing who you're talking to as well. Mhmm. I mean, I knew I could say that to Victor, and we'd both laugh. Yeah. But, you know, it it wasn't a true, like Yeah. Hey. But cast me outside. Exactly. You know? So I
yeah. It's important to remember that you Yeah. Let's, let's run it back one more time. Again, we got a group of three over here. And so let's do the exact same activity. And again, just practicing observing what your partner is saying, rather than interpreting. And so, again, observing what they're saying is just like literally what do they say, whereas interpreting what they say is kind of putting your own spin on it. So as an example, tell me something about your day. Tell me something about your day. Yeah. Say something of you know, share something about your day or your week with me. Yeah. Am I interpreting, observing,
or No. You're literally telling me something about your day or your week. I just came from a town hall. I heard you say I just came from a town hall. Yes. Did I interpret what he said or observe what he said? Observe. Alright. Tell me something else. There were teachers and students and parents there. The place was packed. Yeah. Do you guys remember what he said or is that what he said, sir? Durban. Again, there is a role for interpretation in your listening process. My coaching to you is that it is not at the point of listening. First, you wanna literally give people the respect of hearing what they said and the words
they said and the meaning that they meant it. And And then later on, you will have to interpret it. There's there's no way to get to a revised set of Golden Gargoyles without interpretation, but you want people to know that you didn't overwrite their ideas with your own, that you started the process by honoring them and their words and their way of communicating it, and however they said it, whatever they meant by whatever words they chose to use. They chose those words for a reason, and so part of listening graciously is we honor the words that they chose, even if they're not the words that we would have chosen.
So take a moment again. Visit with your shoulder partner, and then, after a little bit more practice, we'll keep it moving. Enjoy. Yes. Alright. If you haven't switched it up yet, switch it up. Let the other person know. That is absolutely not what he said. That is definitely not what he said. That is definitely not what he said. He began about a survey. If I could ensure that I'm a selfie. It was definitely an interpretation. Alright. Come on back. Yeah. Alright. Finish up and come on back. I'm gonna have to separate y'all. I just said I just said I just said I just said I've been talking. Any reflections? You did another round of practicing trying to observe what folks are saying rather interpret.
Any other reflections before we move on? It was an interesting process because, like, I know when observing that speed 5%, nine %, nine %, or what that person says. But it was interesting because superintendent Giles and I were speaking. We didn't we didn't interject, like, too much of anything, but it was just a different way of saying it. We're talking about how we have to be aware because that one shift in a word can change the meaning, the person's viewpoint. Yes. One thing I would add is just that or highlight is just the intentionality.
You have to be involved on the intention. You can't just assume you're not going to the space and that, you know, you could so do any interpretation, and just be an observer without intentionally thinking through what you're listening for, how you respond when you're listening. It's a different style of listening that requires some intentionality. Any other reflections before you transition? When when we make interpretations, there's a possibility for inferences to be drawn or conclusions to be made, that aren't necessarily wrong,
but they're distinct from, an observation. Yeah. You know, if there is a community within your district, and at one listening session, folks from that community say, Our children aren't getting enough tutoring. And at another session, members of that community say, Our children aren't getting enough tutoring. And in another session, members of that community say, Our children aren't getting enough tutoring. Like, the community's being crystal clear. Mhmm. But instead of observing, the board is interpreting what's being said, and so on the first, what the board member writes down isn't,
Our kids aren't getting enough tutoring. It's like, These folks don't like their kids' teachers. And the next one, instead of writing down, These kids aren't getting enough tutoring, it's like, We should be spending more time in math class during school. And the third one, instead of writing down, My kids aren't getting enough tutoring, the board member says, well, I just don't think these people like the curriculum. Now you've got three entirely different interpretations, none of which help you connect the dots of what was the underlying concern that that community is actually trying to share. Like, community did its job. It shared what its concern was. By capturing the interpretation rather than the observation,
though, the board is left with three different ideas of what might the actual needs of that community be, according to that community. Any other reflection before we transition? Alright. So that gives us a sense of how you want to engage. But when it doesn't answer the question is, oh, what is the content we're going to engage with? And our coaching has always been, you wanna ask the exact same set of questions to everybody everywhere. The last thing you want is, this side of town got the good questions, and this side of town didn't.
And this side of town got to answer four questions. This side of town only got to answer one question. And so you like anything that disproportionately puts more weight, and more, consideration behind one set of community members over another set of community members absolutely undermines the process. And it doesn't give rise to the quality of listening, I suspect, will match your values. And so the way then to protect that is to have a script, to make sure that, you've been intentional as a team of saying, what exactly do we wanna ask,
and exactly how do we wanna ask it? And let's write it down and make it plain so that we can all be asking the same questions in the same way to folks all across the community. That way, when we observe all of the answers to that, when we go to interpret it, it's a whole lot easier to be able to trust some of the patterns that we see coming up, because we've asked the same questions, and we've observed the answers to those rather than interpreting the answers to those. So the next step in this process is, what questions do you wanna ask? Now remember, the intention of this is you want to get clear about what the community's vision
is, so that you can codify it in your next set of goals. You wanna get clear about what the community's values are, so you can codify it in your next set of guardrails. But what questions you ask to get there, that's a y'all thing. You do have two examples in front of you. Online, you have an example of a script from a previous listing, which must have been forever ago, because I thought I saw Armstrong's name on one of the documents. Yeah, so that's been a minute. So you have that example of the script, and you have this one. It's a print out in front of you. Do do you have copies of this? We'll we'll ah,
there we go. Get you copies. So the and this is a survey that is currently teed up to go out on Wednesday, at, community, in a, parent meeting. And so what I want you to do is I want you to take a moment and look over those two documents the the previous example that, prior board, came up with, look over this example, which is what, this board has come up with, and we'll take it in two separate pieces. First, after you looked over these examples, and you may come up with something that's not captured on either, but you may come up with an entirely novel solution that works better than either.
The first thing we'll dig into is what question or questions need to be asked to help ascertain what is the vision of the community, what is the community, what is children to know and be able to do, what are the highest, need, highest leverage areas of student learning that have to be a priority over the next five years. And then after we've done some brainstorming around what questions you'd ask to get at the vision of the community, then we'll come back and ask the separate set of questions around getting at the values of the community, that help lead the guardrails. But first, take a look at these two documents, previous board's work,
current board's work. And what we wanna try to do, in our time together today is leave here with a fairly firm draft of what is the listening that you want to do to help you ascertain the community's vision that will help you develop the next set of goals. So take a few moments to read through those. Maybe jot down, either circle something that you think works, or highlight, or jot down a question, that you think works. We'll give you about three or four minutes to, go over these again, and then let's just dig into it and see if we can come up with
the question that works for y'all, The question or questions that work for y'all. It's it's it's one that's online. Let me see what's it is Does it say community outreach and engagement script on the top? Yes. Pre yes. It's the very first link under previous engagement. Assumes a minimum of thirty minutes. Yes. Okay. Yes. This one. There's a link in What doc? Today's Is it more doc? Yeah. Today's doc. There's a link of Yeah. Today's info. Yes. So you'll need this document, and then they'll print out that you just received. I'm just
Question or questions should y'all be asking of your community to try to ascertain what is the the vision of the community? What what is it that students need to know or be able to do that should be the the high priority goals for the next five years? What question or questions would help them get at that? You see some in the printouts, circle them or highlight them on your computer, or if you wanna write them down, take notes. In a few moments, we'll go around and ask folks to give example of a question that you think would get the job done.
Question or questions to to really capture the vision of the community for what students should know and be able to do. It could be something from these documents or something else entirely that's not captured in either of these documents. Alright. We'll be the first to share. What are potential questions for capturing the community's vision? Questions that will help you begin the process of identifying what your five year goals might be. I want the first two questions that what is the role of early schools doing that is not working? That should have been the You know,
that is working. What are questions that help you capture the community's vision of what students should know and be able to do? I keep coming back and thinking about not reinventing the wheel, it feels like the questions well, first of all, this this is the survey, not a script. Mhmm. But the questions are similar, just posed differently, except there was no, what are you willing to commit to, which is very interesting question. Mhmm. I would never say it. I I like the idea of I mean, the original script was because
we had no we only had draft results and limitations, and now we've gone to goals and guardrails, by the way. But now we have goals and guardrails. And so I'm thinking when you look at these, what I mean, what's most important what's least important? I mean, having a place to start, I guess. And, and I guess I'm sorry. I'm just talking more process here, but I'm just thinking making sure that the the information we already got from our listening sessions that we did Yeah. That we take a piece of we should I think all of us heard we
need to do more for for second language learners or English learners. And so that's why it got dropped into this survey. So not just doing the same thing over and over, but taking what we already know, adding what we need, what we know next so that we're always building on that. Yeah. And So so hold on. Before we move on, so do you have specific questions that you recommend? The the survey questions, I guess, kinda get at for me, you know, rank these in order. Because that gets at what should we keep doing,
but it doesn't ask it that way. And and then if there were two, you would one or two, you'd delete. That kinda gets at what should we stop doing. I was trying to make it easy to be a survey. You know? The survey is serving a different purpose, so to speak, than the script is because this is a very amended version because we have a very brief opportunity this week to get in the group, and we don't have the time. And this if we take this opportunity, because we don't have the time to go through with the explanation of this presenting it as this is presented with that leads to
questions because this is going to happen in someone else's part of scheduled movement. Mhmm. So while I believe all the introduction to this is very important, it doesn't work there. So should we start it's really because there is a long term and there's the somewhat long term and but also it's it's short term. Right? Should we focus on what we're gonna do next week only, or should we focus on the the whole thing so that we have should we do, you know, crack questions as well for the whole creative engagement thing so that we have it
already ready for both if we wanted to do the one next week and Mhmm. And the upcoming so that we don't keep, you know. That's I I this one might not ever get resolved ever since. Is this specifically we have if we're gonna do this this week, we have to have something that's what this is specifically designed for. It it might not be So I would I would not worry about your Wednesday event yet. I wouldn't even have that be kinda part of your contemplation yet. We will come back to that. I'll first try to figure out what are the questions that you all wanna ask.
And then once you all have decided what works best for you overall for the complete process, then we can come back and figure out what impact that does or doesn't have on Wednesday. But I I wouldn't let Wednesday drive your process. I would first design your process and then figure out what impact that has on the let's say. So we've got four ideas so far. Who else? It's designed to avoid the supplement. One that is there was something to say start and stop, but, actually, maybe there's something that they don't wanna start and stop.
I mean, they just wanna modify. So there wasn't really a concern for centralized on modifying. What question would you ask? I mean, what are are, yeah, what are limitations that we would make concerning the goals and guardrails? Anyone else? What potential questions would you wanna ask? I don't have I'm not craft I'm intentionally intentionally not trying to craft the question. What I'm wondering for the group is is this an opportunity to ask Unity a question around what measures they value in terms of students.
And so that's Yeah. That's what I understand. Yeah. I have a question about, like, you know, what does it mean to be successful to for our students to you? What does success look like? When we're looking at the service. Other potential questions that help get a division for the community wants the students to know and be able to do. I think it's, like, really simplistic. Like, I was I was thinking it from, like, as a parent or somebody or student, like, what kind of questions would you know, I was like, what do you like about your school? What do you like about your school community? Right? I'm trying to maybe the way I looked at it was asking questions
that didn't necessarily that opened us up to even more than what we currently have. Makes sense. And maybe that would I mean, I you know, and that maybe that would add to what we have right now, but maybe there's something out there with a different angle, a different view that we're not considering. And I wanna leave our questions or space for that. So I think this is something that the board needs to reflect on is do you know, some of these questions, ask for assistance with refinement of a defined set of things that currently exist.
Some of these questions are more open ended, like, you tell us what should exist. There are significant pros and cons to both approaches. That's for y'all to decide, what makes the most sense to be able to do. I do have a question when looking at the design develop or modification site you would make concerning goals and guardrails. I was wondering if the language was limiting as the I said goals and the guardrails. So are there any I would maybe change that question or add another question of are there any modifications that APS
that you would like to see APS to make and then a secondary question of what are they? But I feel like saying goals and guardrails limits, the community is thinking as an important leader of focus on. On the survey, they want us to focus only on the goals and priorities and not our vision for the for APS. So And so then the vision I Well, like, what I'm saying I'm just I may may have that worded it wrong, but, with utilizing golden guardrails in a survey question is limiting our community members with that
question saying, okay. They don't want us to say what our vision is. Like, for instance, Danielle's question was more open ended about success versus if we have the language of golden guard roles that limits their thinking and going to think about for that question about what we they would like to modify. It's just the goal. Focuses just on the goals and goals. We are going to you you probably would say it better because I think my thinking is around what you just what you kinda said.
Well, I think about, you know, as we were working really hard this morning to push ourselves to what's the board's work, what's the board's vision, the board's mission, what how will the board Right. Use this information? We are developing goals and guardrails. Right. And not not how this, I mean, we want safe schools. We want what's what's the question? What you'd like about your school community could be an icebreaker perhaps, but other than the limitation that we have right now of,
the superintendent needs to ensure that the schools are safe and respectful and so forth. I mean, certainly, that gets into the guardrail. But I I want us to be careful about using what we've already learned. Is this what you're talking about? Using what we already learned or where we're starting from so we're not starting over again. Yeah. Right. I'm thinking that would be helpful to start with what we have and then, you know, keep, delete, modify. I keep hearing that over and over. You know? And so, what questions will help us come up with new goals and guardrails that we're going
to use? As we could pass on information, their principles, we could pass on you know? But for our work, what are what do we need to ask to come up with goals and guardrails? Is that is that what you were thinking, or you were thinking of something else? The conversation is very interesting. Let's let's keep it going. The last part was not what I was thinking the the first part of your observation. Definitely because the community already gave us this. We we we know what the vision and the vision and, what is it?
The vision? Of the community is. We are going to use that Okay. To complete to do what we we we want to do now. We don't want to reinvent Start over. Start over. But I would push back there a little bit because this is what the community saw as its vision five years ago. Mhmm. This is not new information. This this is what built five years ago. Correct. We've worked with this for five years. So I think what you are suggesting what you are suggesting and if that's part
of this could lead to there's a new and different vision from the current community. Mhmm. A lot has changed a lot has changed from, you know, across the region. Variables and the challenges that community is facing has I mean, may have also changed, and so it's just kinda annoying, like, in terms of priorities or, again, something that we're just not considering. Yeah. That was generally, anything y'all wanna add? Simple questions or reflection of the conversation? Yeah. I think, naturally, it's it's the conversation is going towards where I was gonna add my 2¢.
I I feel like we're operating from a standpoint that community already knows and understands what our guardrails and goals are. So you're gonna be able to again, we're operating from this lens that they're gonna be able to critique what what the, guardrails and goals are to give us adequate feedback. And I don't think that's gonna be the case because, like, director Warner just said that was five years ago. Most people don't even speak about Mhmm. APS business in that lingo. So I think to Tiffany's point We need to make it more
layman's terms, for lack of a better word, and not really guide the conversation while I'm saying goals and guardrails, and we've been more open for them to authentically answer the questions as opposed to answering the way that they think we'd wanna hear it because then that makes us at least me, I'll speak for myself. It makes me infer what they're trying to ask as opposed or or say as opposed to, you know, looking at it and really reading what they said and making them a determination Mhmm.
Based on what the group and the direction the group is going, if that makes sense. Because in my mind, in asking those questions, we'll always have the goals and bar drills that were fractured five years ago. And let's remember, yes, it wasn't as successful as we wanted it to be, but that was the objective of the kickoff. Taking it back to them and say, this was where this was what five years ago, you you asked us to to to focus on on this. Yeah. This is where we are now.
Yes. Again, it was not successful, but that was the point of the kickoff. That's the best way I can call it. And and there was a lot of there was a little bit of resistance in doing that, but that was the point of the kickoff. Reminding the community what it was. This is what, you know, you have, access to focus on. This is what we did, and this is where we are now. We're we're coming back to yeah. We're coming back to you. Where where should we yes. Exactly. So that's how I see it. I I don't know where we are where we are going now.
I Yeah. The the conversation that is happening. I wasn't at the last community event or feedback session, But I don't know how much of what was collected aligns to our current goals and guardrails. I think that would be something good to look at to see. Was what the community talked about on March 6 even aligned to what our current goals and guardrails are? If there's nothing, it's clear that we're operating in the lane, and the community has a different idea of what the work should be done at
UPS, in my opinion. Because I don't feel like for one, we didn't get a lot of feedback. Yeah. The rest of that is For two, I don't know if when I looked at the information, I even compared it to what our current guardrails and goals are to even see what they were talking about aligns to what we're currently doing or if we need to not even bring it up and start from scratch. I don't know. So to answer that question, Lee, I agree with you. And there was a collection of, everything that was that was done.
I I do understand that you were not present in the type of map. And there was also an analysis of what directly, the result of the different engagement that was done as well. There's a compilation of information. Yes. The compilation I didn't infer from what was being said. That was maybe what you did with your document. But it was in like, I intentionally put the words that they said on that paper because I didn't wanna infer what they were trying to say. I rather keep it authentically in their voice as opposed to put my interpretation.
What is your interpretation? That's what we're not gonna. Okay. Now let's see. I think if we started this out so that so that makes sense. We started this as something brand new five years ago. We put it out there as a kind of this is what we're looking at. Is that the way we should start this conversation again and ask? And part of that's arguing in this. Should this be continued? What would you change? What would you prefer to see? And maybe in this current community, it comes back that we don't think we need to name but that's not what I wanna say.
But we get something back that says we don't think they're going in the right direction, but that's not what directed them to I'm just trying to not know where to go now. Yeah. I'm just not trying to reach out. Sorry. I'm I'm thinking out loud. I was just I think that there might be a fear in the room that somebody comes back that says we don't wanna continue this model or that we want to change it slightly or that people I I let me I will go back in the past, and I know we don't all have this experience. Blueprint was started on numbers and reveres that. Over my time on the board,
that conversation was brought back up again that we have members in our community that don't even know what blueprint means. So let's go back and address that, see where the understanding of the community is. Is that what we need to do with this is to go back and address or or learn try to learn what the understanding of this work is in our community? So that quest there's actually a third section. Could you scroll for just a second? Of what are other considerations, let's scroll down. What are other considerations for the script? And that is an important question I'll write down here.
Could you ask that again? Something along the lines of what is the understanding in our community of what this work is, of what we're trying to accomplish through this work? Do people understand building guardrails? Do people understand Yeah. I thought I said that earlier. Put me in there. Well, you did. You said people may not be familiar with this lingo. Right? Yeah. Can I just So so that so know that there is a third section? I have a good scroll back up. Write down questions you have that would fit in that section and hold on to them because we need those. But before we, before we spend all our time in that section,
I wanna try to round out, if you were trying to hear the community's vision, what questions would you ask? And there are a bunch of considerations. You know, should we use goals and guardrails, you know, in a question about the vision or not? That's for y'all to decide. Should we have it open ended, or should we have it closed? That's for y'all. All that's for you to decide, but I I want you to dig in on the core task, which is, we need to know what the community's vision is for what students you know will be able to do. What questions do we need to ask that help us get at that? Other other ideas for questions. We've got a bunch up here.
It could be that we've got enough that we could chisel on these, or if there's something that hasn't been contemplated yet. What questions do you need to ask so that you could feel confident at the end of the day, okay. We have heard from the community their vision for what children should know and be able to do as a result of having sent their children to Aurora Public Schools. Are there any other questions that you would need to ask to feel like you had an understanding of that? If this question was asked over and over and over all throughout the community, we got a hundred pages worth of responses to this question. That would be the type of information I needed to know that I'm leaning into
what the vision of this community is, what students should know and be able to do. Are there any other questions you need to ask to be able to to feel like you have an answer to that question, the community's vision, which students should not be able to do. I'll just push a little bit more on the question that I asked. I like the what does it mean for students to be successful, what does success look like. I think people can give you a lot of indicators of that. But what I was also pushing for is, what's community community value around measuring or representing student success in our district? So it could be graduation rates. It could be CMS,
and it could be a whole lot of other factors that the community values over those two. So maybe proficiency, or do they value growth Right. Or both or some combination of both? Yeah. Does do they know what for this purpose of the equation part? I I don't feel like I'm capturing this question well. Could you ask it one more time? I think it's I mean, I think director Duncan just said it. How do you how how would you like us to measure student success? It could be that something. Yeah. For some objective. Like, does that mean that that that that that that successful? I think those are two different questions. Yeah. I guess,
again, a whole lot of different responses when I get up to measurement. Do you like two good measures? How would you measure student success? I want you to put how would you like us to measure it. K. So given that in just this, so how would you advise your student assistance? Yeah. I guess I would like to, you know, what does success look like. Right? Like Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. I mean, for somebody who can tell you what it looks like. Yeah. I think that I think that compliments the idea. It's a concept. Follow-up. Yeah. Mhmm. Yeah. Kinda has a theme around it. Right? We're trying to give them questions so they can start thinking about what success is
for them. Other questions that would help you get at the community's vision for what students should never be able to do? So if I was going to try to synthesize what I've heard so far, then you're obviously welcome to ignore my synthesis. So I just wanna try to synthesize what I've heard so far through all of this. Yeah, it sounds like you'd lean toward opening up with a question about, what does success, you know, what does it mean for students to be successful? Then how would you measure that student success? And then end with, here are our current goals about student success. Are any of the are there any of these you would keep,
delete, or modify? What would you keep? Well yeah. Are there any you would keep? That's a good question. But how would you modify, not just would you Yeah. You you could ask a follow-up. Are there any of these you would keep, delete, or modify? If so, how? I mean, that's really what we're thinking. Would those three questions work? Would that help us write goals? Actually, like, one and two. What's leaking and what's not leaking? What's working and what's not working? Yeah. That's that's you all really felt strongly about those, you know, a number of years back. I remember when you all came up with that, to to try and figure out what kind of but remember,
you've got a whole another block of questions to brainstorm around, around guardrails. And so if there's anything that doesn't fit kind of in this part of the conversation, just be thinking, like, maybe it fits, you know, in another part of the conversation. Anyone else have, kind of proposed synthesis on kind of what questions the board might ask question or questions the board might ask when this happens? Are you asking Yeah. What my synthesis was? Well, like, would they if we're asking them a set of questions, would they be I I would strongly recommend against asking all these questions.
Okay. Mean? Because and I'm gonna still stay with my thoughts, for five and six. As when you say golden guardrails, if you want the community's true authenticity and authentic answers, you wouldn't ask those unique question by asking specifically on goals and guardrails, which is number five. And that's just a common practice within each other's talk in general. Yeah. So I've largely stayed at this, but I I just to try to move this along, I will weigh in on this. You'll notice the questions I'm asking you don't mention both the guardrails anywhere, just as a hint.
I was just trying to find a place to get started. No. What I'm saying is it's, I wouldn't encourage you to start with an expectation that your community knows what your job is. I would start with the expectation that the community knows what the community's job is, which is to have a set of vision and values, about their children and their schools and their community. That, I would expect them to have. I would not expect I would not make a precondition of their successful participation knowing your job. And so while I do think it's appropriate I think the question that you put forward,
Debbie, is, here are existing goals that we are relying on. Do do any of these resonate with you? Would you keep doing or modifying these? I think that's a fair question. I don't think you have to understand anything about governance to know that here's existing goals, and do any of these resonate for me or not? I don't think that requires prior insights. But some of these other questions, I think, do push in a direction that would require folks to have some prior knowledge about your governance model. And my worry, and the reason that you don't hear me use that language when I'm,
you know, prompting you, is because I just worry that anything that requires prior knowledge about your job, I just worry that it's going to alienate members of your community and make it harder for them to participate. That's all. Yeah. Just a, I I think I heard you say this, and I'm sorry. I'm interpreting. But, that I do wonder about narrowing the the the number of questions. So the superintendent engaged with, six building leaders yesterday, for an hour. And I think we had five questions,
and we really only got through three of them. And this is six people because I think that the questions are, like, meaty, and, you know, they wanna think aloud and process and Yeah. Kinda develop their responses. So if you'll notice the last script that the board created years ago had was it five questions total, I think? And so, yeah, we generally rec notice I keep saying one or more questions. Yeah. You know, It's very possible that for this section you only walk away with one, two or three questions, but I generally would not recommend more,
because you do want some questions about community values as well. And so that's why I put forth the attempt at synthesizing that I did, but you notice I limited it to three questions to try to capture a little bit of what everybody's suggesting. That being said, if somebody has a recommendation at this point, so you've got nine different ideas on here, It could be these. It could be something else. Does somebody wanna put forth a proposal for what one, two, or three questions might be that you'd ask? Yeah. So one question would be number seven. Another question would be number nine.
Mhmm. And then I don't think we have the third one out there yet. That's true. Alright. So your proposal would use seven and nine and then move on. Anybody else? Anybody else? Alright. Well, let's hold on to that for a second, use it as an emerging consensus. Let's go down to let's scroll down to the next section, potential questions for capturing the community's values. So the vision is always about what do we want our children to know and be able to do? What what knowledge and skills do they need to be set up for a choice filled life so they can so they can go out and and live a life of meaning of their own creation, take care of themselves,
their loved ones, you know, their communities? That's what the community's vision about. What should every child leave the school system, you know, the knowledge and skills so they can live life, you know, they can pursue their hopes and dreams. The next question is completely different, but still is part of the board's job. The job of the board is to represent the vision and the value of the community. It's not acceptable to do one or the other. And so the board also has to do intentional listening around the values. And the values are really, what are the highest priority areas of the community's nonnegotiables that this has to be true in our community because this is this is what
we say is necessary for our community. So as an example, unfortunately, some of the districts that we work with have experienced significant tragedy. And so when we ask them to go out and listen to their community's values, 10 times out of 10, safety's gonna come up. But that's because that is like, that's that's a value that's just so on the tip of everybody's tongue because they of what they've experienced. And so what's not in question is, will there only be one to three values that your community, you know, prioritizes? There's gonna be hundreds. But your job is to listen to all those values.
Which one's kind of the highest priority at this moment in time, for what's true for us today? Which is probably completely different, though it was true five years, or maybe it's still true, five years later. But it you're never gonna capture all of them in your guardrails. You usually only capture one to three. What are the highest priorities? So the question is, what questions do I need to ask my community to really figure out not merely what are their values that have to be honored, but which ones are just, like, the tip of people's tongue is the highest priority that we as a board have to champion and fight for over the next five years.
What questions will you ask to get at that? What question counts? Yeah. Which question is that? You like what your school could I was suspecting that that might move down there. Now who else? What questions were you asking at the values of your community? What what are your expectations? Do you see your students at school? I would say with that a little bit more because they're, like, if there's a, like, a specific. Because you can get a lot of values out of that. Right? Because peep certain families send their children to school with specific expectations. Mhmm. Listen to the teacher.
Do you work all of this and then others don't have those expectations? So Very different expectations. Just Just trying to figure out how do we work that to uncover Mhmm. Some of those value within that. Is that expectations of the screen when you send your screen? Yeah. Okay. Not expectations of your this as parents, we also have sharp opinions and expectations about children. Exactly. So so I modified slightly. Is is that accurate? What are your expectations of the school when you send your student? Yeah. Okay. Thank you for that clarifying question. And who else? What questions might you ask to really try to unearth what are the high priority
areas of the community's values? So just these are nonnegotiables. At this point in time, for the next five years, we we have to fight that this value is alive and well in the function and operation of our district. What about the wasn't there another question? Can you scroll back up? I'm sorry. What do you want us to stop doing? Oh, who else? What should we keep doing? What should we stop doing? Wouldn't that be okay? And what are we not yet doing? Yeah. What yeah. What is ABS doing that is not working? It should be stopped or something along those lines. What what do they want us to stop doing? What is their what is the community's
nonnegotiable? Gotcha. There might be a better way of of asking it, but what is the what do you want us to what are we doing that you want us to stop doing? I'd actually like a question out here, probably not yet domain that we should stop doing. K. Say that again. What are we not yet doing? Is there something else we need to be doing with? But I but I want my question is more of a not a reflection, but a pushback from the community. You guys are doing this. We want you to stop, which would indicate that that is something that is a a nonnegotiation.
You all are electing Carter. We want you to stop. They got no problem with that. They will not have to worry. But, yeah, what are we doing that you want us to stop doing? Because this is anomaly. I'm actually going to ask for a special one if you like that. Your school community should be all going through the dislike sector, like, for you like this one. Now you're still communicating. There are days of questions that will help you, as board members, really tease out the values of your community, the high priority values that have to be honored over these next five years.
Would it be, I would value to, even do a a sort of a a pulse check on the values that the districts identified through the development of the strategic plan. So, you know, the superintendent last year, did a series of community engagement, listening, learning, and so the the intent of that was to, you know I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. Identify the values. And so we we've done some of that work from as a result of the
superintendent's listening and learning for last year. And Is that question responsive to mhmm. Other questions that would help you as a board really ferret out the high priority values of the community, I'd have to be honored over the next five years. And one way of thinking about this is look at your current guardrails and say, what question imagine that these were the exact values that were in the hearts of our community. What questions would I need to ask today to if I didn't if we didn't have these as guardrails, but this is what was in people's hearts, what questions would I have to ask to to really have lifted these out?
Questions. What I'm gonna do I mean, we wanna ask it in a way that we're we're not leading them on or, like, we've never imagined Yeah. I'm not recommending be way low. Right? No. I'm not recommending I'm not saying, talk to people about well, I'm saying I'm gonna proposing the intellectual exercise for you all. Imagine that the values in your current guardrails were the exact high priority values for your community, but you didn't have any guardrails today. What questions would you need to ask that would lift though that would cause those to come up to the surface on their own without prompting for
it. Do you believe your school community reflects the demographics of the students they serve? So that does feel slightly leading. What is a larger value question that wouldn't be but that would still pull that out if it was there? You said based on our current guardrails, we have a guardrail about the retention of African American color. That's Yeah. I'm trying to think of what's a question that wouldn't be leading, but that would still pull pull that exact concern out of a community member. I don't know how else you can ask that question.
Yeah. Do you do you believe that your school community is represented? Exactly. Do you believe your school community is is not your guys been giving you this. You wanna get yes or no? It's a it's a terminal, but it's also legal. And you have the do you believe that's the thing that they have that whole. Right. Right. So we have to change it to give me a minute. How is your score? And and it could be. This is already captured in your previous question of what do you like or dislike about your school community. I mean, may and if people had a concern about that, maybe that would naturally lift up.
I'm just trying to think of what what is an open ended question that's not leading that, if you asked it, would likely reveal these type of concerns if people still have them? And maybe the ones you have already do that sufficiently. Just trying to help brainstorm. Other questions? How is the community how is the school community reflective of the demographics of the students they serve? Actually, it's the same question, but I asked an open ended rather than closed. Then in a yes, no way. Gotcha. Go instead of no. It's better to say it's not. I would generally encourage you all to not ask yes no questions.
I would generally encourage you to ask open ended questions and let people fill in the blank themselves. Historically, school systems tend to ask yes, no, or multiple choice questions, but honestly, my sense is the main reason for that is because they're it's easier to analyze the data on the back end. But I don't think that's a concern for I don't think that should be a concern for you. Change it to how well you think your school community reflects the demographics of the students that it serves or represents the people it serves. So that feels more open ended than that.
Everything in chat and you can see. Yeah. But don't Don't we already know there's more white teachers than any other Yeah. Kind of teacher? I mean, we already know that. We're not we don't need to find that out. But how does the community feel about that? Good question. Well I'm not at that. That's Yeah. I know what you're saying. I I Okay. So, again, I'm actively say, delete keep delete modifying your So I'm I'm trying to stay out of this, but to try to to try to move us along, an example of a question that might surface some of these exact same things,
but that is open ended and isn't leading or pointing at something, is a modification of one of the ones you already have. What's an aspect, you know, of your child's learning experience, you know, that works for you? What type of your child's learning experience that doesn't work for you? And if that is a concern that people have, then they'll fill in the blank with that. If it's not a concern that people have, then they won't fill in the blank with that. Okay. Yeah. I was sorry. I was just thinking about the number of people. It's way less. But that's very, very similar to why, I think, why you all landed on the ones you did five years ago,
which is what's working, what's not working. Other proposed questions? Any other proposed questions before we move on? Alright, of the proposed questions, so we've got a bunch of potential ideas. Does anybody wanna take a stab at a recommendation of which one, two, or three should actually be used? You brought us home last time. Can you can you do the same this time? That'd be one, two. Mhmm. Live, maybe? Yeah. I mean, I'm I'm I'm just personally not. Unless we we rework three, four, and five, like, I just I feel like we can get so many
answers from that. It's gonna be it's gonna be everywhere. It's not. I was digging in the weeds. Look. I'm I'm tired of this gray meat that you feed my kids. Except some things we just don't have control over. Yeah. But the number six complements number one, what you like and then what you dislike. Yeah. Right now, I'll say one and two. Yeah. Okay. Someone else has. That's just me. You ask me. No. Anybody else got proposals for what one, two, or three questions you might ask to help get your community's values? I'm still gonna push back on him. It's still waiting to me.
Which which question? Eight. So we're done. So so his proposal is one and two. Does anybody else have a proposal of what questions you might ask to get at the, values of your community? This one we might include. Yes. So you've heard one proposal from one board member who says, let's just do one, two, and and be done and move on. Does anybody else have a proposal? Any interest in number five, Laurel? I do. Five looks interesting to me, but it's what do you like? What are your expectations? What do you wish we were doing if we weren't there for that? What do you mhmm. Yeah. I like five,
but I also think it it it it it is definitely part of one and two. Yeah. But Yeah. It it it would force the community to, you know, contemplate what they really, really like, put it back in front of us. But, theoretically, one and two might get those answers. But I don't know. Because Debbie said it, though, in a different way. Like, what do you wish we would expect us to do? Right? I'm open. There's a snippet. I use the word wish. I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. But and that's how you phrase it. What do you wish we're doing that regardless?
Yes. Yeah. When we were at this peak, Carter, there was a parent that wanted to know if we had our LTC outside outside of just one school building that they were aware of. So I'm wondering if number five would get at things like that, like, extending programming or I don't know. Adding I'm sure there's things that all of that. Like, like I said, I I I feel like I wanna the goal assuming, is to get as much information from the engagement without without either putting something into the head of the individual that we're talking to
or over communicating and crowding crowding out of them. So let me let me push push those a little bit. What what would be some expected answers from number five? Well, that's like when we were at Vista and was I don't know if we were expanding the FTC program. There's there's one. Give me something else. With the half cap, what's half cap? Dash as well. Half cap is some high schools are doing a half cap ceremony for students that are on track. So solve. What's what else? Foreign language. Second Oh. Or second, they're learning English, something specifically supporting children learning English.
Well, ID programs. So could it be something of, like, what student support services? I don't know. Like because I I feel like it's broad by asking what is APS not yet doing when we're when we're really trying to get at what other resources in the community or what other resources that you need for your student or Yeah. Maybe your school community. I would What other resources What is APS not yet doing? We will probably get paying teachers well enough, starting school later. Mhmm. Just things like that.
Uniforms. Uniforms. Do what if if it were to be reworded to try to get it back, is there additional programming or curricular opportunity you'd like to see offered in our district. I I would I would want us to go more towards being more specific about that than it brought being what are they yet not yet. Somebody have a proposed question that I can write down? What what's board work as opposed to That part of it. Superintendent work? Because I think we're getting in superintendents, not board work. I
feel like you read my mind when we made eye contact a second ago, but I guess in the spirit of Debbie Brown's push of the board's mission statement and the board's vision statement, same question. Right? Is that, you know, I think some of the things that we're elevating do seem to be more of the district leadership work. Yeah. I thought I thought I'd just entire process sort of like that. That's what I mean. I think I think if you ask a question of what you mentioned, like, what additional, like, resources to support, you know,
you know, that your students need would kind of because then it might be able to focus on, like, need, you know, you know, like, mental health or physical or I don't know. Mental health or other things that we're not, again, not thinking of. How much of I'm probably going on the ten minute here. Well, because then I'm I'm not How much have how much have the superintendents, listened to her and consulted prior to us even coming up with these questions? Because my thing is I don't if we already have a wealth of information that
he's already went out and collected from community, why do we need to go in and do the same thing again? It was for for our community. As time goes on, our community's values are against all it was just a year ago. That was just a year ago. Well, yeah. I know it was just a year ago. But still after learning code and things are, things are always moving, and it should be community engagement should be a continuous fast So we probably should have did this before. Because my thing is and as I'm sitting here and listening to even the comment about number seven,
if the value of the strategic plan, which would you keep, modify, or delete us, like, we could be coming up with questions that are leading us to go in a way that's superintendent's strategic business. So then he's gonna have to go back and reach not not saying that that's not part of your job, but I don't see how that's in the spirit of collaboration when we have a wealth of knowledge and a wealth of information and data that's already been collected yet. For some reason, we're just choosing to just leave it sitting idle, and I don't I don't understand it.
So let let me stick to this real quick. So it is within the board's purview to use whatever data set it wants, for this process. So I've certainly I think in one particular district, they had just finished a superintendent search and a really deep community listening process associated with that, right before they started on this work of listening around goals and guardrails. So they made the intentional decision that they actually wound up doing less listening themselves, and pulled into their listening process all of the raw listening that was done for
the previous and so things of that nature is certainly within the purview of the board. The only real requirement here is that you all have access to a quality and quantitative listening that you all collectively believe helps you be able to ascertain the vision and values of your community. And whatever it takes for you to get there, that's more power to you. So some boards would be like, yep. What the superintendent listening, collected is absolutely exactly the type of information that we needed, and so we're using that. And as a result, we'll be able to do less listening and move more quickly.
Other boards have said, nope. What the superintendent is listening for and who he's listening to is a unacceptably small subset of what our job is. Like, he has an obligation to families, but he does not have an obligation to, you know, a larger community, and so we've gotta go out and do listening, and so we can't use his at all. I've watched boards make both decisions, and I find both of those to be fully credible. It's It's it's just a decision that y'all have to make. But either one of those is a reasonable direction. You all just have to, you know, decide, is there other information that we're gonna pull in as part of that we're gonna
use in our listening, or is there not other information? I have two. One comment, one question. Thinking about are we getting into or moving away from the board work into the leaders superintendent leadership teams or strategic plan is written by this person now. Right. So is that I'm not sure that would be a good question. I think it is a risk that you run. If you ask about strategic plan, I think you run the risk of Right. As was just said, then maybe they have to go back and rework because we can I can Well
Anyway, I don't know if they can get separate time? That is separate. So the superintendent has done some listening. I I know. That's my second part. But to be fair, the superintendent's job is not the same as your job. No. And so who the superintendent listens to is not the same as who you would listen to. Right. So it's entirely possible that you all could go out and do listening that he did high quality listening for his context. Okay. And you did high quality listening for your context and heard two very different things. And if that was the case,
it is still his obligation to modify the strategic plan to match what you all heard. And so and so it is very possible that listening on the part of the board triggers modifications of the superintendent's workers' strategic plan. But it should always flow that way, that the boards, that the boards understand the community's vision and values should always take privacy over the superintendent's understanding the community's vision and values. That being said, in all honesty, the vast majority of the time, it works out that what the superintendent heard and what the board hears winds up being very That's a part of my question.
Yeah. They hire students discussing and so, actually, you are. We hide this health record. We're here. See that. That's our question. Well, but the deal is, he's not gonna go out and listen to, taxpayers who don't have children in the district. That's that is not centered to his mandate. And and we're fine. It's like we had a Where it is, where it is appropriate for y'all, I would not Oh, no. I'm at one. Yeah. Alright. What you got? I was gonna say, yeah. It's probably of it being very different. It's very small. Even based off of our recent engagement community that we've had.
Right? It was very similar themes even with a small thing. I I mean, I think looking at his data and adding as a supplement to what we capture is good. Right? I I don't think it should be ignored. I can I think it could complement what we're doing? But, yeah, we should still go ahead and because this is our initiative, and this is us trying to make sure that as, as board members, we're doing outreach to the community. So so far, the only thing I've heard is consensus around for vision related questions,
ask seven and nine. For values related questions, ask one and two. One. Yes, ma'am? I'm sorry. I can't help but look at these questions as a researcher. And one and two are not when I'm looking at them, they're not they're very leading, and they're not great questions. So, like, for instance, how do you like about or what do you like about your community your school community? Would you revise to how would you describe your experience within your school community? So it's not leading and saying that you'd like it? And then this the one that says this,
like, I wanna make Oh, hold on. Hold on. How would you rephrase that? How would you describe your experience within your school community? Yeah. And then when you say what do you dislike about your school community, that's leading as saying they dislike something about the school community. So we would be revised to, are there any aspects So so that so that one's not that we have on the community. But I think it it sounds like that would get at the things you like or the things you don't like. Yeah. Both of them. Both of them. Yeah. So do you alright. So I'm putting you to work because you got ideas over here.
So for so the consensus that I've heard so far was seven and nine for vision and one and two for values. You've given us a proposed rewrite for number one of values. Do you have a proposed rewrite for number two of values? Are you expectations of the school and the student? Every every question can't be, like, something they have to be able to understand what they're eating. Is that one? Well, that's seven. Where I'm looking at the political environment. I know. I know. The same, but, you know, just to what Germaine said.
Of the values industry strategic plan, which would you keep? We agree you didn't want that one. Oh, I thought you just said seven. Sorry. No. Seven to nine of the vision up about five years ago. Alright. Yeah. We're gonna chat GPT. Yeah. Hey. Well, what you gotta do do do do do do do do. Yeah. Rather just us and chat, do you Do do you have any modifications for seven or nine under vision? If you could scroll up. Do you have any proposed modifications for seven or nine under vision? Okay. I mean, how do you describe student success? Go ahead. Alright. So so far,
what I'm hearing still remains essentially seven and, nine up above and then one a and two down below. Those are those are the four questions I'm hearing. Thank you. If anybody has a recommendation for any other questions, kinda speak now or forever hold your peace. Otherwise, we'll transition to any adjustment to these before we move on. Speak now or forever hold your peace. That's all. Is it gonna take me a minute? No. No. No. You no. You you're good. You're good on that. Alright. I think, yeah, we just we need to I think, again, remember audience. Right? You wanna keep pressing simple. Simple. Simple.
Yes. I'm a parent. Oh, I'm a student. Right? Mhmm. Right? Then any any of your high schoolers They all have income. Should be the VA. What has happened in the history of APS? You just started it as, hey. What's going on in this course? Like it? Don't like it? I'm not asking. Alright. So we've got four potential questions here. And by the way, the link to this document, we'll send out if you could just email everybody the link to this Google Doc, so you will have this, the raw notes that we're taking, how we always do. So the, the next step in this process then is,
actually, let's take a step back then and look at Wednesday. So you've now come up with four potential questions. And so the question is, would you, prefer to ask those four questions on Wednesday Right. As opposed to the, nine questions that you currently have proposed. Yes. My heartburn comes that this has gone into translators already. Mhmm. How far it's gone, I don't know. Because when did I send it to Patty? I, you are cursed by being conscientious.
I would let that go in this moment. I I would I would have your priority being on you all being effective as your role, even if that means that you all have unintentionally caused some staff to do work that you now might ask them to redo. Okay. Okay. Well So they, Patty got it about 1PM. That's when I sent it. But but I but I would not, I I wouldn't encourage that to drive the bus. I want the same questions to be asked. Yeah. That's really important to me. I think if we're going to put all the data together Right.
Then the survey questions need to be the same. If someone's some people are gonna come in person and participate, you know, in person, and some people are gonna say, no. Give me a survey to fill up. If we're collecting, I think it's important to collect the same data either Yeah. Way. And so what I suspect, would work for you all is to keep the header, the the lead in description of this, and then replace questions one through nine that's in sections, goals, and guardrails, with the four questions you've brainstormed or whatever version of the four questions you've brainstormed,
I'd replace it with that. I I I think you'll be better served by that only because then it will allow you to have the exact same feedback from this group that you'll be getting from subsequent groups. I I realize that, again, creates some amount of hardship for hardworking staffers. And and my it it well Yeah. Who is that that? Well, well, like, you spent time talking about Yeah. This at the board meeting on Tuesday. But but I would also urge you. I've I think it is better to have had a bias toward action and gotten
people started on this work product, not knowing if this is what you'd use, but making sure you didn't lose the opportunity to hear from these folks. I think it's better to have done that and now potentially reel it back than to have not done it at all for fear that you have to reel it back. Like, the bias for action, I think, actually serves your community well. And so I I I don't see it problematic, at all that you, you know, pursue this, and I also don't think it's problematic if you all choose to pursue a different approach. But that is a decision y'all need to make.
Do you wanna leave this as it is? I guess, presumably, as a way of testing these questions, or do you want to shift and have these questions supplanted by the fourth, that you brainstormed? Let's see. Anybody any board members on weigh in on this? Alright. Look. Thank you. It is very, very valuable to have your skill set. But I don't wanna let, the board off the hook from answering this question before we move on. Yeah. We got more issues. But here's the You know how far they are. Like, talking transcription into 10 different languages. I I don't know how I mean, they got it late yesterday.
Now because it's in the meeting. Oh, okay. That's cool. I understand consistency. I do. And I, but I also understand. Any other reflections of this before we move on? I may have been completely unattached. I I thought we were going to continue this conversation here. I didn't know you had gone to translation and staff had had permission to move on with the work. I was not in the loop of that. I had no idea you didn't have Patty who emailed you, and you were working directly with her. I was completely out of the loop on that one.
Mhmm. I did get, Vicky's email to everybody, but your email and your words was that I was completely I don't know if everybody else was in I'm not too involved with it, but I I didn't know. I did not know that either, but I still can't get past the fact that I'm talking about translating into 10 languages, and I don't know how far they live on. But yeah. That's that's I agree with that. And, that was the reason why I thought we were all in the understanding that we will review all of that here today. I didn't know that the work had gone and permission would No.
No. No. No. I I don't think it's I don't think it's helpful to relitigate how we got here. I think we are where we are, and the board just needs to make a decision about what happens next. And no matter which way you go, there are ramifications. If you keep this, you'll get to test a bunch of questions. However, you'll have a bunch of people who won't have actually answered the questions that everybody else will answer, and so they're slightly so people may complain about, being left out of the real questions. If you change this, then these people will get you won't get to test these questions, And you will have almost certainly thrown away some amount of staff work,
and supplanted it with new work. So So there are pros and cons either way. Welcome to every day on the school board. Now all there is to do is make the call. I'm but I'm not gonna normalize that. So we we sat here at the diocese on Tuesday, and we agreed that with the minor tweaks that director Gerken or doctor Gerken had to make that, this is the survey we were gonna use. So yep. So we are Saturday saying we need to change it. So your call is conversation. So your call is send it the way it is? Yeah. Okay. And the my my I'm my call is just yeah.
If you wanna the way it is or modify it to match today. There's pros and cons to either. I don't think either is definitively right or wrong. You'll just need to make a call so we can move on. So we've got one that says keep it. So keep it or change it. Before it's discussed Tuesday, keep it. Yeah. I say it. Go ahead. I was not attached. I did not know Keep it or change it. It was discussed. Keep it. I think we keep it understanding that it's a living document that we are going to continue modifying. So we keep it. Then we we keep it. And then we're gonna continue to modify?
Well, not just but going forward. But going forward. This is we're going Have approximately 60 to a hundred Families. Folks. Yeah. I don't know how many survey respondents we'll get out of that. But Alright. Potentially a lot of folks. So will we be able to use the data that I already sent, or do we need to switch it up? So from an analysis perspective, no. You absolutely can't combine two disparate datasets. Oh my god. So, board, if I misunderstood but I thought we had talked about it Tuesday night,
and that's why I I said, Patty, this is what we have so far. And I sent it, and she goes, oh, could I have it, please, so we could get it ready for Wednesday? And I thought, maybe we are ready for Wednesday. I added an introduction. We talked about that. I added an explanation. You still talk about how we got here, which is helpful to know, but I don't think is horribly relevant to the decision that you need to make right now. I mean, so what do you suggest? Because clearly, we're we're back and forth. No. So so what so what I'm hearing so what I'm hearing is it sounds like the majority of the board wants to keep.
And so if that's what the majority of the board wants to do, then let's do it and move on. I agree that we should not keep it just for the sake of that it should be the same. We'll have 60 to a hundred respondents for whom we'll say you know, we'll either have the data that we can add to other data or it'll be lost. And I I so which which ones are gonna be better? Can Patty get the information, Jenny? Yeah. She didn't have that. Can't she? Yes. Quickly. I don't know. Once again, we'll find out something. I mean, if if we're keeping it pretty simple,
those those questions are pretty Yeah. It's a lot less Simple. A lot less than this. Less. I mean, depending on what, preamble and, you know, whatever else we ask. So, AJ, you said keep the introduction, but none of our questions speak about guardrails and goals. So why even talk about guardrails and goals in the introduction if we're not even gonna ask about it. So the so so, basically, this is just, rereading this. So the intention of this is just to try to explain what are we what
is the board doing? Why are we asking these questions, and how are we gonna use the information that's provided? That's what I take away from this little intro. It's not trying to explain what goals and guardrails are. It's not, it's not assuming people know, to say So goals reflect the community's vision. Guardrails describe the community values. How are they not proper? Unless my interpretation of these few sentences are different. But Well, I I I think you could absolutely simplify it just to say, we are trying to set our priorities for the next five years.
We need to hear your vision and values to do so. We have these questions, and then ask nine questions or four questions or whatever. I think you could absolutely simplify that, because the the core language is already here. But, yeah, I think you could absolutely simplify this down to two questions, or two or three sentences, and they'd be done. The only the only reason I said what I said earlier was because if this is already, if this document is already translated, for example, then great. Then take the head, add, you know, the different questions, and move on, or take the head, keep the same questions,
and move on. I'm just trying to think of what is, the what is the way to get the work done by Wednesday, essentially. But, yes, if I was writing this from scratch, could I write it more simply? Yes. I could. In a way that isn't dependent on people having any background knowledge about goals and goals, yes. So what I've heard is, a majority of the board, suggesting to keep it. And oddly enough, the person arguing most against keeping is the person who started the conversation, with recommending we keep it. Now it sounds like you flipped to don't keep.
So is there any is there anyone else, you know, changing their perspective on this, or are you all keeping it? It'd be good to know how far along they are. They got it, like, after lunch on end of day. I'm gonna say end of day, Friday. These are just but that is actually much shorter than, right, what we have here right now. So if they don't if we have not made much progress, I think it's with Yes. But you all will adjourn from this conversation in the next thirty minutes. You may or may not have an answer for that, and yet you still need to make a decision. And making no decision means, you know, just keep it the same.
You will have made a decision. So either way, you're going to make a decision, almost certainly without the information that you want to have, which, again, pretty par for the course for being a school board member. You always are constantly having to make choices, decisions without having all the information you'd like to have. Same here. So, right now, it sounds like the consensus is keep it, so for the sake of time, we move on. Obviously, if sometime in the next thirty minutes, you all change your mind, then speak up. Madam Hi. What you got for us? Okay. Let me see. So, for seven, I was thinking of changing it,
to in your view, because this will make it more thoughtful and unbiased responses as I was looking at this question. In your view, what comes to mind when you think about student success and what are different or you did do, or you can put both together or do them separate, or just only use one, however you like. What are different ways success can be demonstrated by students? Alright. Did you have any other recommendations? Nine. I felt that it was pretty open ended. Okay. Thoughtful and unbiased. However,
if you'd like, we can change it to, like, what indicators might show that a student is succeeding. So okay. And then the final one, I think that one is okay. The I how did she finish this? Okay. So she offered potential revisions for three of these. So there's now a seven a, a nine a, and a one a, but but I only heard a ring endorsement paper for seven a and one a. It's a big question. It's a big question. But it's open ended with with the starting of the question. It's not how interview Yeah.
But we're gonna do it for student. What does it mean for student to be successful is also open ended? It's not it's not closed. They're not gonna use every yes or no. Which wait. Wait again. Which one? I'm done. The seven. Seven versus seven a. But it's more What does success look like? They're gonna use every years and Alright. So so hold on. So I don't think what's valuable is, you know, debating the options that have been placed on the table, their value or not value. I think what is useful is for the board to just say, which version do you like? Do you like seven, or do you like seven a?
Do you like nine, do you like nine a? Do you like one, or do you like one a? So I'm just gonna, quick test for consensus. Board, as you look at these, do you have a preference for seven or seven a? Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Okay. It sounded like Yes. Especially if you translate. Yes. Do you have a preference for one or one a? One a one. I would give you a good What was the one? Actually Okay. I'm a one a. I'm one a because it encompasses that we're just talking about the life and dislike, and it allows them They could go either direction. And share their experience.
One or one a. What do you think? K. Okay. So it looks like where you all at is seven and nine regarding the vision, one a and two, regarding the values. But you've got four questions. Again, I'm sure if the superintendent's staff looks at them and decides something's grammatically incorrect, they'll let you know, but other than that, it sounds like we've got four questions. It sounds like definitively, for future surveys, these are the four questions that will be used. You got, you know, twenty minutes left on the clock on whether these questions or these questions will be
used in this survey, But definitely, after this survey is administered, whatever is used, in a future survey, these four questions will be used. And then as you all go out and do your community listening, these are the four questions that will be used. Have I summed things up accurately? Yes. My question is, is there besides these four questions, is there anything else we need to know in order to do our work? I think because this is our chance to ask it. Well, next January, which means then is there anything else you'd like us to know? Yeah. This could just help him in it. I don't have anything else you'd wanna tell before.
Alright. So then the next piece of the puzzle is, having some type of script that, that you all can use when you're going out and doing the listening so that not only are you asking the same questions, but you're providing the same kind of lead in. And so if there are any other considerations, that you want for the script, this would be the time to describe those. And you can either look at the version of script that the last board worked on, which you have in front of you, if you could work for that, or if you need to create something else entirely. So for example, I just heard you describe a intro,
that, if you think we should use that intro that you just described, then let's then let's capture that so that we can so we can change things up. So Okay. Me? Yeah. Go ahead. Intro. You looked at this and Yeah. I looked at this. And recommended some revisions to this? Yeah. I think that we should Communicate it or articulate that clearly. I was asking if we're to change the question within this survey, then we would need to change the objective that's at the top of the survey. Yeah. No. Because it talks about goals and guardrails, and we're no longer asking about those in guardrails.
You know? It's Oh, yeah. For a question. Had nothing to do with any trip. But on that topic, boom, my bad job, like, man, it's This day at home. Like, nope. Oh, I so I I I do not like the fact that we sat and spent time agreeing on this survey, for it to be pushed out or worked on. But I do not think that we need to send out a survey that is not gonna be beneficial to the census sizing of the information that we need to make new goals and guardrails. So I don't think it'll be in our best interest.
Again, not in the name of Patty or our team having to do more work, but in the name of uniformity and, like, con continuity, we need to have the same questions that we just discussed here on this survey, or know that when we get the results back from this survey, then it's not gonna add as much value as the rest of the community engagement sessions will. So that's my two. It sounds like you'll vote mine to support. It it did. Well, it yeah. Okay. Got it. Good to know. We still are at a four three split.
But if one more flips, I'd like to know. Any other script considerations? Things that need to be part of your script or things that we should be cautious against in the script? No. What about, the last thing I saw that was based on your questionnaire? Yeah. Yeah. The outreach the the timeline. It just it there was a the last question was, will we get we will get what was it? What did you say? By December, we plan on doing something. I think there should be a a time line. So it needs to communicate a time line? Yeah. Gotcha. Something. Like, hey. You tell us this.
We're gonna be back. So so we're we're getting getting this from you. Here's how we're gonna use it, and here's where you'll hear back from us, and here's when the process will be complete. Well, something long something to give them, like, okay. Thanks for your feedback. Yeah. We're actually we're gonna come back to you and and and Yeah. Keep this going. It makes perfect sense. Other other considerations for the script. Can I ask you a question? I'm sorry. It it doesn't answer what you're asking, but it has to do with timeline. Did we establish when you the board wanted to finish its, engagement and have all of that data concerning with the two staff?
I I don't know. I don't think you all had. What's probably helpful is to work backwards. Right. When does the board need to do final adoption? It's it's on the on the board here, the the implementation timeline. And and, Mike, if you remember, we they start back with, four That's what I was thinking. Greg. Greg reminded us. So so I thought the timeline described when you need to do the final adoption. I don't think it mentioned when you hand data over to the staff. Or does it? That's not good. We're down a little bit more. And let me just tell you why I'm asking.
It may be neither in nor there, but to Tremaine's point, it was brought up, Brandon. If if we have time I know there will be other feedback meetings. If we have time, then we not try to force into this one, but we don't have questions that are gonna be aligned to the others. And maybe do the August or September. Yeah. If there's another meeting question. Wait. Yeah. Let's wait. That's my estimate. Yep. That has not been brought up. I didn't know this was did not know we would That's why they're not rushing. They're like, oh my gosh. That's something We did not know that there was another impact. That's what we talked about.
We could talk somebody speaking with, like, maybe liaison staff, so that's what I can say. And they said, until the beginning of the year, nothing else got it left, but then brought this up Yes. Along with the c. Okay? So so according to your implementation timeline, you all are still conducting listening essentially throughout the summer. Now, you all obviously don't have you could go more quickly. You don't have to you know, the timeline generally describes when is the latest that things could be complete. It's not describing when you actually do things. But it does contemplate that you'd be listening throughout the summer,
and then that the staff would need to provide a summary in September at the latest. Now if you all did listening through May, June, and July, and then said, Could you get us the summary in August? I'm sure it's possible, but the absolute latest it's currently contemplated, is that the superintendent would bring it back to you in September. It does not mention when you would get him the information, but it does say the latest he'd bring it back is September, and then it currently contemplates that you all would adopt,
in November. I sub submit to you that is the absolute latest. I would strongly encourage you to have if you could adopt in September or October, I would encourage you I would encourage you toward that. That was discussed as well because Vicky brought up a good point in the fact that June parents are gone, because school is closed. And in July, the board is in recess as well. So there's not a lot of I don't see there being a lot of opportunity. So, basically, what you get done between now and the end of school year is what you get done. We'll start in August with the back of the ski.
We'll then get back and send them with an exception is we could talk to other stakeholders, not parents, but business folks and so forth. Other communities. Which the list of stakeholders is already has already been sent, so we've not stick to Kamean, did you ever thought on this? Unless we wanna keep that list as is and move on with it. Yeah. So I'm just trying to make everything make sense inside of my head. So we have to turn in the data that we're collecting to the superintendent and his team, and they synthesize the information and give it back to us? So that it's the board's choice who will do the analysis.
You could have your staff do it. You could have us do it. You could have another third party do it. That's that's a y'all call. Right now, according to your timeline, it looks like your staff is doing it. But, but, again, that's a that's a board decision. We scratched the surface on that as well, and it seemed like we walked away with the the, leaning of the board was going to do the analysis. That's that's what it was leaning. I we all have our personal opinion, but it was specifically voiced by Jermaine that maybe the board could take on that
work and do the announce. If the board wants to do it yourselves, you are more than welcome. I strongly recommend to fight against it because it's a lot. I'm gonna put it time now because sometimes when people reiterate what I said, they're incorrect. So March 6 was our community engagement session, and I agreed to synthesize that information. Never did I say moving forward, the board should synthesize it. However, I don't think it makes sense, just I'm speaking as Tremaine, for us to do a listening session or this community engagement
tour, give it to the superintendent and his team to do again when they just synthesize his Mhmm. Listening session agent did a year ago. I'll I'll just why are we so, like, we're recreating the wheel and going through processes that were just done not that long ago, and and then we're gonna put work back on our superintendent and his team to give us information that they probably already have. Yeah. Most I can maybe think of one or two boards that have asked their staff to do a synthesis. Normally, boards have either relied on us to do it, or they've had a third party like a university partner or something like that do
it. It is very it's exceedingly rare that, boards have asked staff to do it. I've not ever heard of the board doing it themselves, but the board certainly could choose to do so. The only reason I generally recommend against that is for this listening, the quantitative listening you're doing. Hopefully, you'll have in the range of 10,000 plus individual responses. You know, that's I mean, that's, you know, that's assuming among all if you're asking four questions, you know, that's 2,500 folks who either filled out the survey or showed up in person. I don't think that's a, unfathomable amount given the magnitude of your district.
And so, like, it's just a lot to synthesize. But could a individual board member do it? Yes, you could. We actually have a, we actually have a guide for doing the analysis, that there was another district where the board asked the staff to do it, and the staff asked us how to do it, and we gave them the guide that I give all my coaches, for how to do it. So we could give that to the board if you wanted to do it yourselves. But yeah, those who you have analyzed it, that's a y'all decision, and you don't have to make it today because there's there's other things we need to focus on today, but just know that that is a decision that you often make down the road,
and staff, yourselves, us, or someone else are all appropriate. But the council does it. That's part of our Yeah. It's just part of already. Yeah. There's nothing special about that. Yeah. That makes me really good. Like, we had one board that had 60,000 responses. There was no scenario where the board members wanted to do have anything to do with that. Are there any other, considerations about the script? Other script considerations? Let me say again, like, keep the language simple. Right? I know we mentioned not to expect mentioning the gods and goals and god rails, but which are the images.
Simple. Remember, we wanna engage our students too, and we're inviting people every from all it's like, right. So Yeah. Keep it simple so we can engage students too. Yeah. Well, we kinda did mention that they, like, don't, you know, refrain from things like doors and guardrails and that type of worldbuilding thing. Mhmm. And just like how we work with questions, we try to keep the questions that it looks here. What's the point, Arnie? You brought back into the conversation about guardrails and gold? The community? Yeah. So that that important question. So most boards will tend to do the listening,
and then go out and come up with a rough draft of goals and guardrails, and then, and then open it up for public comment or any type of feedback around the rough draft in advance of actually adopting is what most boards wind up doing. So, certainly, you all could design whatever works for y'all, but that's what most boards wind up doing. Is there a way to, like, based on the feedback we get, show how some of Yes. Their ideas align with Yes. Yes. Yes. So this is I I don't remember if y'all had walked in,
but one of the things I said is really important in this process when we talk about observation no, it was before you got back. We talked about observation versus interpretation, and one of my recommendations to you in this process is that there are three things that I recommend you provide, have one on your website and available for your community at the end of this. First is just the raw feedback. Just here's what we observed you say. That's why the observation is so important. This is literally the words that you used. And when I say literally, like, I could show you some of the raw feedback from other communities. It is some, not appropriate for school language.
I mean, but no, it is literally word for word, here's what you said. The second document is, here's the summary. This is the analysis you're talking about. This is the one to five page summary of here are the themes that came up that we heard. And then the final document is, here's the draft goals and guardrails we came up with based on this summary. And so you can connect the dots from here's the raw, here is the interpreted, and then here's how we used it. And I think having all three of those documents out publicly available as soon as they are available to,
for folks is an important part of being transparent in this process so that people can connect those dots. And if I'm if I'm you all, I'm actively speaking to that. Hey. When we were out and we heard I heard this, this, this, this, and you could see it in the raw data, notice that theme number three here speaks to that. And that's why goal number four goal number two specifically is about that topic. If I'm you all, I would absolutely not simply rely on people to connect the dots. I would aggressively connect the dots across those three documents for them. But that normally happens once you've drafted the goals and guardrails,
and then you put them back out to the community for any reflection or reaction, is that you have all all three of those documents so people can connect the dots themselves as well. Yeah. It's a very important part of the process. Most boards skip over that. What they'll do is they'll go do listening, and then they'll come back and say, here are the goals and guardrails, and nobody can figure out how they got there. Other considerations about the script before we transition? Other script considerations before we transition? So with these particular considerations for the script, with these, potential questions, you're gonna decide the next step. It sounds like you have a potential script writer,
or at least a survey writer, and so you all can handle this yourselves, or if you want, we can toss this back to Greg to modify your last script with these questions and these new considerations, which would be a complete rewrite of the script, if you're familiar with it. And so we could create a rough draft script for you and provide that back to you, or you all could handle that yourselves. Which would you prefer? Oh, we've got always happy to put hey. He's not here, so that means he volunteers. Thank you.
He must be present to win. Oh, okay. So it sounds like we've got some clarity on next steps around, surveys, clarity of next steps around script. And so now all that's really left is once you have all of that, who are you gonna talk to? So you all have filled out let me jump over here. No. I don't see that you all filled out. I thought you all had filled out a spreadsheet of who you should go out and communicate with. No. The, we, opened up the biggest the one that was done, a year ago. That's the one that I saw with Kyla's name and cleaned it out for before
to fill it to fill it with any anything else in mind, but, what else does that pass? Let's dive into this real quick, just to help you all out. So you should have a document, that, Claudia provided for you. The call community engagement stakeholders list, that was shared with you, it's attached to the board docs. The name of the spreadsheet, a Google doc called twenty twenty five copy of board listening sessions. Yes. So you wanna go ahead and pull that up. It's the one that's on the screen now. So there are two different tabs. There's an outreach tab,
and there's an engagement tab. The outreach tab is alright. Let me start with engagement. The engagement tab is who did the board at that time feel like we need to host, a listening session specifically for these groups, so we will set a date and time they will come to us, we will conduct the listening. That's what the engagement tab is describes. And so these are the groups that said we should go out, we should host these and bring people to us. The outreach tab is who are groups that we need to go to their meetings,
that they're already meeting somewhere out in the community, and we need to go to them. Who who are those? And so you see that in the outreach tab. So there's an engagement tab. Those are what the board is hosting. There's the outreach tab. Those are where the board is going to folks. One rule always applies. Board members never solo as part of this process. Board members always in groups of two, sometimes three, but never one. And generally for most of these, not the full board, Though it's some of these, it's appropriate to have a full board. Others, I would actually recommend against having a full board.
But let's start with engagement. That's the second tab. And you're obviously not bound by any of the thinking of the previous board. But is there anything you would keep, delete, or modify, you know, or add entirely new? Keep, delete, modify, you know, or add regarding the engagement tab, the list of groups that the board felt it needed to host a listening session for. You can keep, delete, modify. And do we have maybe a printout? Do you have a printout? None of this. We don't have printout of this.
Let's see. Why you don't we don't use the buddy system. But this is the engagement one. These are the ones that the board said we should have reached out. So the question is, for the engagement tab, what should we keep, delete, modify, or add? Let me have a question. Well, I was just I'm wondering if, I can't remember. So I'm wondering, did we invite, this engagement to come? It was all one. It was online. Was it in person? Did everyone come at the same time, or did we have separate groups? During the pandemic. During the pandemic. Virtual. For sure. But there were separate groups.
It wasn't all together. There were definitely separate groups. And then you usually have two different board members who were facilitating each of those sessions. But so, yeah, there were a bunch of sessions. Board members facilitated them. It was usually just two, not the full board, and it was all done virtually. I don't think there was a single open person. I don't think so. I know I did one with Michelle. I did one with I remember. Neighborhood association. Yeah. I don't remember what else I did, but I remember I joined the one with you and Michelle. Oh, that's a long time. I'm thinking of that. And other board members might have listened in,
but two people Yeah. That's right. Facilitated. Yeah. Like, the one that you would fill in, I think Kyle was there, but she was just kinda lurking in the background listening. Yeah. Listening. We listened in on but as two people facilitated, however many of this got done. And I I do think we got a decent amount. It was I thought it was surprising about us. Yeah. I know the one I did when we did it with with the Marneighborhood Association, but then I saw a high a fair, like, a good number of people who participate. So as you're looking at this list for engagement, which ones would you keep, delete,
modify, or are there new ones you would add? Vicky also brought up a good point when we were talking, when, last time we were talking. He said we need to consider doing hybrid. Right? Both. Not not hybrid. Both. In person and and, virtual. Yeah. All all of that is y'all call. Whatever you think works best to get you the listing that you need. I think we can take them with 13 off. Yeah. Yes. They still exist. Some do with an action. Or they have some kind of, parent, like, co parent parent. Parent. Yeah. So is that is that should we consider that the same as parents out there?
Because well, that's What are you referring to? To I'm sorry. 19 and six will be the same. Right? One of the things Sylvia, who I've spoken with in the past week or so, mentioned was getting not getting attending, getting into some of the bad coffees and such early in the school year. I think those that's what's wrapping up now. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. But that would be and they could help us identify more active groups schools where there are more active groups where we might get more folks engaged. Yeah. So I definitely heard a delete line 13.
And I think what I'm hearing is for line six, you want a list of the most active groups. Switch parents. Well, that if that's a route we, as a board, wanna go, that's something that I suggested. I think two different things. Two different things. The PTA, PTO, whatever that Yes. Yeah. They're gonna they're gonna that's that's gonna be a separate group that we can find and target. Right. But then there's gonna be parents who don't go to those that we're still gonna have to find and target. And one way to do that is to work with Sylvia Families.
Family liaisons on getting them to look at. Things that are gonna be quality scheduled. Yes. Okay. Any other keep, delete, modify, or add? Probably turn the does this commute to the chamber or the rotary. Is the rotary on there? It's probably over on Outreach side. It's on the other side. Oh, okay. The places that you'll you'll need to go to then. Claudia, are you the one driving this? Or and is this are you the okay. So, number 13, I would I would just strike through it. I wouldn't physically delete it. I just go up to format and strike through. Again, on engagement, any other keep delete,
adds, modifies? It sounds like this it's I'm if I'm listening right, it sounds like you all generally concur that this is a reasonable list of folks that you wanna post, whether it's in person or virtual? Okay. How about outreach? Then the other tab. There's all the different groups in the community, that a previous board felt that we needed to go to them, whether that was virtually or, in person. And so let's do the same thing here. Keep, delete, modify, or add. And then keep delete, modify, or add is on the outreach side.
And the Rotary Club of Aurora is always very interested in, hearing about and giving feedback to APS. Okay. I don't know about Kiwanis. We don't have a contact person for them. Contact. Yeah. I imagine most of the contact people are I think this is Yes. Yes. We have that company. I think I think the ABC Collective needs to be added in here. They work with you to know where? You said the ABC Collective? Yeah. Maybe from exchange to the Kiwanis Club. Yeah. Add it. Yeah. One. Right? What was your question?
In exchange to the Kiwanis Club, I think ABC Collective. Yeah. I I don't even know what I don't know. I don't think we have any I don't think we have any t r. Okay. So you I'm hearing strike through Kiwanis Club add ABC Collective. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe guys. That was right. Hey. Line 31, we just have that conversation as we're making. Oh, line 31 is one to be struck through? Correct. That is correct. They are no longer training system. Which one is 31? The high school program. Okay. Great. That's I don't do preschool anymore?
Wait. Okay. You're asking about line 21 over our mental health board? Yeah. I'm just making sure I'm still on the other health board. Eighteenth j d? 30. Then you should turn it into Just Eighteenth j. Yeah. It's not costing the bill 94. Yeah. Just Oh, yes. And yeah. It just yeah. Yeah. And she's still not there. If you could just do instead of 18 judicial district senate bill 94, you could just do eighteen judicial district. Marcy? No. It's the, justice coordinating. Justice coordinating. You can call it. Yeah. The justice coordinating committee.
The the eighteenth? Yeah. Uh-huh. We have another one to minority that the justice coordinating committee that's a subset is, what is it called? Global Which is the call them the minority leaders. In that organization. In that in that just this coordinate. Yeah. Including representative of representative of and that is community then. Second chance in our the licensing center all these folks like. Racial equity stuff here. We just just leave the justice coordinating committee. So second chance is the last one on our list. Do we need that if it's already talked about at home?
Because it's already in the In the point. The Pickens on '27, the Pickens Tech Advisory Council won't meet again until October, which is past our unless we're, just looking to, like, survey them or something like that, their meetings. So I would put that up in the comments section. If there are ones that are survey only, I would indicate that now as opposed to ones that you were planning to do a virtual or in person listening session, if there are ones that you were planning to survey. So it sounds like line 27 is a survey only.
Yes. For introduction, would you say you cross out second chance, second check? What line? 39. 30 nine. I mean, The one you sent before second chance. Because I don't have papers on my sheet. Oh, Pickens Tech Advisory Council? I think it's survey only for Pickens. Survey only? Yeah. Just because it sounds like we're gonna mess with them. Twice a year. Any other keep, delete, modifier ads under Outreach? I'll make them up. Make sure to thank your former school board members for having done so much homework, for you so you don't have to reinvent the wheel. I don't think we got information on all of these groups.
This was our brainstorming. Yeah. Wouldn't it be great to have data from them? Yeah. Some of these folks, you never heard back from. Yeah. None. And or there wasn't there just wasn't time to get to everyone or enough for human activities. We will only do it when virtually you have them. Yeah. Any other keep, delete, modify, or ads? I'm just not familiar with that area, but, the new neighborhoods in the East, are there any organizations and stuff around on that side? Neighborhoods or I don't know. I'm not sure. You, and I feel like right now, there should be something for sure. It's got a lot of
Avenue. Yeah. I'd say neighborhood works like that. Yes. I will check. If you would like me to, I would get just give him homework, information for violence. I guarantee this won't be happening. Yeah. We've got number line 25 is instructional materials review committee. Do we need to reach out to them while they be Staff. Part of other groups? So I'd say, perfect. Strike that. Any other keep, delete, modify ads? And I would recommend putting a deadline on keep,
delete, modify ads for both outreach and engagement. I'd recommend that deadline be end of business Wednesday at the absolute latest, to give people time to do any more brainstorming, and fully populate these two lists. Once you've populated the two lists, the next step in the process is you, Claudia will need to provide you a, cleaned up, spreadsheet. And then there there need to be two columns, column for board member one and column for board member two. And then all the board members need to sign up. And any of these that does not get two board members signing up simply is
not going to happen. You it means you're not gonna host a session or go to them. And so aft so once you have a full list, which, I'm proposing your deadline for having a list complete should be Wednesday. And then once you have the complete list, then after that, you should have, probably just two or three days. I'd probably recommend end of day Friday, but if you all need end of day Monday, that's y'all call, by which people sign up. And then you could sign up to be the board member one, which means you're also taking on the job of communicating with the group,
the outreach group, or communicating with staff on the engagement side. Board whoever signs up is board member one, and you are taking the lead on making sure that this session actually happens. Board member two, you're just showing up to co facilitate the session. And so if people sign up for board member one and two, then the session happens. If nobody signs up for, one or for two, then it just simply doesn't happen. So that is what happens next. Again, you've heard my recommendations. Take it till the end of business Wednesday to populate these lists, and then take till end of business Friday to sign up as board member one
or two for all of these. And then we'll know by next week, by the week after, exactly which ones are happening, which ones aren't. Yes, sir. We're not. May may maybe we are, and I can miss that part. But we're not holding that session for each individual group, are we? I think that is the decision that you have to make. So, for example, if you signed up for both Rotary Club and Kiwanis Club. But this is for outreach, though. Yeah. I know. That's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about for us hosting. Oh, so on the engagement side? Yeah. So if you signed up for,
teachers and principals, then and you're board member one for both teachers and principals, then you're the one who signed up to be responsible for those. If you choose to combine those, then it's a combined group. If you choose to do them separately, then it's a separate group. I think it it strategize on those things. Right? Because, like, we spoke about working with the family liaisons. I know some of the schools have, like, outside of our big back to school event in the mall, they have their own events in the schools. And what and what I'm proposing to you is if that's important to you, what do you need to do? Sign up to be board number one.
I guess just your staff on the which case you are taking responsibility for organizing, coordinating that session, or you could type as board member two, which means you're not taking responsibility for coordination of the session, but you will be there to co facilitate the session. Whoever's board member one, if you want to work with other folks to combine it, say you sign up for board member one, and you sign up for teachers, and you sign up for board member one for principals. If the two of you get together and say, Let's do a combined session, then it's a combined session. So if it is if if it is particularly important to you that a particular
group be handled a certain way, then how should you address that? Sign up. Sign up is board number one, and then you get the say. The other thing is I'm, the other thing that crosses my mind is, like, when would these occur? And I know we talked about deadlines, but I can't necessarily say, oh, I'll sign up to be number one or number two unless I know for sure when they're gonna have. So my recommendation to you all is to have a deadline of the July. Okay. So we hold all these for you? Yes. That's where By the July? By the July. What you current what you currently have is to have it done,
I think, by the September. I thought she had a number of these groups we won't be able to reach. I don't I don't think it's doable by the July. We've talked about that. Then you think it's doable what's the earliest you think it's doable by? So you've already, in your timeline, said the September. I guess the question is, is it doable earlier than that, or is the timeline, the most reasonable deadline to have? Mentioned The the only reason I'm trying to nudge you to do it a little bit more soon is because, ideally, I'd encourage you to adopt your goals in September, October. November, I mean, is what you currently have.
That's just a little bit late. Well, I I just this is probably one of the most in our opportune times to see teacher input within the year coming up and summer break, and then we come back until August. So I don't I don't know how realistic it is to get teacher input within April 20 what's on Monday? The twenty first? '20 first in the end of the school year. So I don't know. That's a that's a fair point. I don't know when is your end of school year. May. May. May. May. Oh, it's in May? No. Yeah. May. Oh oh,
y'all were all different. We Yeah. Most of our districts are in school till June. Okay. So I'm In August. We're tracking the previous statement. I thought you all went till mid June. No. You don't. Alright. Well, then it sounds like August is the absolute earliest that you could do. The question is, do you wanna have the August as your deadline or the September as your deadline? Naturally, I'd recommend it August, but you all need to make the call. I'm almost so if we're go the other thing, it's not all just like, we're coming to your parent copy to do this.
You have to make sure you're they don't already have the full agenda for that parent copy or whatever. So, I mean, I can I can volunteer to Mhmm? You you know, check stuff out and whatnot, but it wouldn't likely There will be some that saying it would be an issue, maybe. There will be some that simply don't happen for logistics reasons, and there will be some that will be converted to online and some that will convert it to survey. That is that is just a normal part of this process. It happens every time, because there are things that y'all can't control. Okay. Deadline? And the August? August. Yeah. So if you sign up to be board number one,
what that means is you need to find a time between now and the August to make that happen. It can happen anywhere in there, and you'll just be working with whoever your population is to figure out what works best for them. But it needs to be done but any if you show up and say, hey. We wanna do this September 1, the board's response should be, sorry. Alright. So, we've got so what I'll commit to is on our end is we'll have our rough draft of a script back to you, by the end of business Friday, so a little little under a week, then we'll have our rough draft of a script back to you.
Are you all good with the timelines that I suggested to you, or do you wanna suggest different timelines for, signing up for listening sessions? My recommendation to you was to have end of business Wednesday be the deadline for populating the list, and end of business Friday the deadline for signing up, for the list. But if you all want more time, you really need to declare that. I can work on, pushing out the list and and figure out contacts by Wednesday. Well, you you won't know all the contacts by Wednesday. What is important is that you know the organizations.
What I'm suggesting is you do need to know which groups by the end of business Wednesday, and then everybody gets the spreadsheet and then signs up for which ones that you wanna be board member one or two for by the end of business Friday. The question is, is that enough time for you all? Do you need more time? Alright. Then, we'll put that down as your deadline. I'll put that in my my follow-up notes. Yes, sir. We're about twelve minutes past the time you have said, but I don't know if do we decide to the past Wednesday? Are we just gonna push it back? I'm not gonna do a survey. I'm gonna wait. Get an answer.
So so you never got an answer. Is there a final decision? If not, the previous decision this goes as it stands. Otherwise that's good. So is there a final call if there oh, right now, the majority of the board was Yeah. They they they say we place you back here. I think we won't If there's another another day. Another day. Questions. Questions. So the decision is simply stop work on this entirely and do the next one, not this one. Yeah. Is that the stop it. Thank you. I sent an email to ask, do we know the date for the next week?
I think here's my thought. If there's one in August, then let's go. Yeah. If there's not one in August, let's do what we can now. Oh, with, with the existing one? Or switch it up at Google. I know there's there's too many for us. It's like We know that. I would guess if there's gonna be a a default in the beginning of the year. Yes. And where where we can say, let's try to push for that so that you have the opportunity. Alright. So just waiting until So it sounds like on this one, we're positive of this. Go on August, and so they'll have access to the final version of the survey.
Yes. To email Christina and Sylvia and say we apologize I apologize. I was out of that. Fair enough. Pay for them because they already had an agenda set up. Well, they did. Then she was asking me for names and it's like they they were ready to roll. Yeah. They were all they were gonna be circling. But I think it's better to make sure we yeah. Let's get the right data. Alright. So I will send out, as usual, just a list of next steps, but all of them are also captured in the document, that you all now have access to. And so we have now officially gotten through every single agenda.
I do apologize that I didn't manage the time well and that it took us, about fifteen minutes extra. Madam chair, back to you. Thank you so much. This, is good starting on everything. I make the commitment to, flesh out the list and send you the thing that is with the maximum of, contact as we get. And then, we'll go from there. We need to decide, though, if, who we would reach out virtually or in person. Because that is and in the absence of the board having a strong opinion on it,
I'd recommend that's a board member one decision, that they'll work with that particular group to determine which works best in person or virtual or a survey. When we did our bond stuff, the principal said they like meeting virtually. Oh, no. Getting it done. Mhmm. But Yes. Some groups will have a strong preference. So board member board member number one will decide whether they wanna do survey, in person, or virtual. So that's my commitment on the moving the agent. AJ's commitment is to finish up the survey draft
for us to review. And yeah. The the script. Sorry. And we already have the questions, and that will be turned into service. Anything else I'm missing? And work to do. We have agreed also that we would we would try and do that by the end of we're trying to complete that by the end of the project too. I'm totally in pushing it to September. That's new. We don't have Actually, you can always stay with with others. But that's just You should I was just gonna say if if,
the council can interpret and synthesize all the answers, all the survey results for any of them. It's all the Yeah. Depending on the quantity of April. I mean, you know, I'm just thinking about backwards planning. It depends on the quantity. Absolute shortest is normally, like, say you have 10,000, you know, responses, you know, that's a four or five day project. Yes. I think on the one that was 60,000, I think it took us, like, two, two and a half, two weeks, somewhere in there. Okay. That's helpful. So this includes the primary, you'll figure out the game plan on how to execute the so what I'm hearing.
Right? Yep. Okay. I'll accept that. Alright. Thank you so much. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you, Megan. Moving on to next on our agenda is Oh, budget. That's not me. It's board budget and, that item item was requested by director Boyd Reinhardt. So the So the. So I'm in five years, and and that's on me. I've never asked to see the board budget, so I am requesting to see it now. Specifically,
I would like to know how that budget is determined and who determines it. Specific expenses. And what is the board spending its money on? Yep. Time, you know, curiosity. So, that's a great question. And, yeah, soon, the whole time that I've been on the board, I've never heard anyone, interested in looking at the budget. But the board definitely does have a budget. It's also a little bit, complex to look at. But when the project's done here, she can pull out, how the funds are dispersed and see where the board spends its money,
and then the question can derive derive from there. One thing is for sure that every year, when we start the year, Claudia reaches out to us. Or when there is a new fourth, Claudia reaches out to us and ask us to pick two PE we want to go to. Two conferences, I'd like to call them, you know Right. On another one. Comp two people that we, like to go to, and, she builds the budgets of the budget around that as well.
There are other specific or there there are other things that come into it. Mhmm. And here it is there. So you have employee training. And Lila builds the budget for us, and she sends it, she builds the budget, with the help of the, finance department, and then she brings it to the board treasurer. And, usually, the board board treasurer really really puts, you know, the, kinda the. So the employee training, for instance, those those are buckets that that are already in the district coding. Correct.
So it's not like this is going to employees. It's asking us. Yeah. Right. It's specific to priority of members. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. So, for example, when you when you see cellular when you see cellular, it's not that the board the district pays for any board cellular. It's what the board secretary uses to connect with us and connect with, things that pertains to us. It's the stipend that is on it, and we can see what's this total consumption. She have not used it.
Is there is there something that you were concerned about within the budget during the grant? Well, I don't I don't know where to find what we are what I'm hearing were paid from the council of great city schools Because that does not come from the board. Originally, when you guys started in 2019, it came from the superintendents first, and it never was added to here. So it never came from the boards first. What about going forward? Going going forward, that that is the conversation that we need to have.
Who's the the board needs to have? Because my understanding is there's conversation that my recollection when I go back to starting this work with the council, we were members. There would not be an additional lump sum fee charge to start working with the coaches to implement this model. If we continue the work and didn't stray from the work, there would be no additional charges. But there were because from the district, $40,000 is owed or has just been paid for the past two years' worth of work.
And now there was mention that for the next two years, the council asked for a hundred thousand dollars, but it's being negotiated to one year for $40,000. Is that correct? And that the superintendent can explain. So the 2,019 information that you have is also what I have is correct. So whoever started with you or with the council, obviously, something got lost somewhere Yeah. And the just got uncovered. So it's not something that this board owns or have owned.
It is way from 02/2019. And I think, the superintendent got, an email asking for that payment and did extensive research. Yeah. And I and not to be redundant, but what you said is exactly what happened. Mhmm. There was an agreement in the beginning, I guess, that, the, if there was a full agreement from the board to partner with the council of the city schools, there would be no additional charge for the coaching services. The district, however, was paying for membership for the coaching of the board at that time. There will be no charge. However, in April and this is after almost a year's worth of research trying to track
down, you know, where the contract was, did we pay it, did we not? What I found out is that in April, well, March of twenty twenty three, there was a contract that was supposed to go to, for a two year period of $40,000 for the coaching that you're receiving with AJ, and some of the other services. For whatever reason, I know that that the district was in a lot of transition. That contract never made it to the board. It was never signed. However, we still continue to use the services of the council business too. So when I did find this out, and this was,
what, four or five months ago, not even that. It wasn't even less than that. One or two. One or two. Like, I shared the right thing for us to do is to make good with the council and pay the services that they provided us in the past two years. To your point, though, now the question so we we've taken care of that. We paid 40,000. I've found we I should say, we found that in our own general budget to pay back. And that's why it's not reflected here. It's just in the budget. But the question became, the council submitted a new contract over two years for $100,000 for the same coaching.
Yes. We're coaching. Okay. Right. And what I offered was there's a lot of questions right now around whether to move forward with the council. There's a lot of questions around will the board remain the same. There's only just a lot of questions in transition, but I thought that it could potentially be helpful to me, At least maintain the coaching for an additional year. Let the transition of the board go, whatever that's gonna look like. If the board remains the same, let's just say it doesn't know what it won't because some of you have to come up with. If the board remains the same, we will add at least another additional year of that coaching.
And then come March of twenty sixth, you all can make an informed decision that we can continue with this as we don't. Or even if the board does change, those folks plan, you know, had some time with the council to make that same informed decision as what they And so that being said, we did go ahead and contract to pay for the additional year, and then it'll be in the course in in, March of twenty six months. I need to be more than two. So that payment came out of the the between tenants first. Right. That's why you're not paying For the year going forward?
Just with this. Yes. Yep. Okay. Perfect. Yes. So, essentially, we're paying for the we need to make up two years and the And the contract. So what does $40,000 include? So in the contract, it includes, Can we just see the contract? Can we just see the contract? I would rather read it myself. Thank you. No no offense to anybody. No offense. Just I The contract is a question. Just, had me sign the contract, and I held that because I have some questions as well. Can we see the contract? So, Tanya Can we get my contract? Always,
send it out. Yeah. So you can also, scan it and send it to the board. But in the contract, it says the general services that we receive, which is, every time we need AJ or anyone in the council to come to the board for the virtual or in person in our meetings, kinda like now, and give us service. Yes, sir. There is also, the lodging and their, logistics that is accounted for, which is what we believe five years ago that we were paying,
but not this 40,000. And I understand, folks, that something happened. I get that. I I think it's fairness, professionalism, respect that the entire board should be involved in this conversation. Yeah. I'm I feel, like, blinds out. I didn't even notice it'll even happen. So I also did that when the conversation happened. Debbie was still born president. All I found out was what the superintendent just said. Hey. They're asking for their money. This is where we are,
but we're gonna pay. We found out we're gonna continue to pay from the first where it's coming from. And a year from now, you guys are gonna have to have the conversation of this money coming out of the boards, first. So in my mind, this conversation would happen in August when we move when we come back, you know, for our retreat. We would come in for our retreat because then the superintendent would have brought that. So this is where we are. If you all wanna see the contract, by all means. Yes, please.
It's not my contract, so it will be sent to you for you guys to look at. And then in August, we're gonna, decide where the money comes from, if it's supposed to if it should stay on the Supermaintainer, from coming from the Supermaintainer's first board now from the to the, the board's first. But you will have time to look at the contract. From what I understand, it is exactly the same contract that, has been signed except for the money that we're gonna pay now. Just real quick. Was there any did you ask for the budget and then receive it,
or was it pushback? Or did you never ask for the budget? I I started this conversation with I said I've been on the board five years, but I've never asked for it. I'd like to see it. And this is part of my concern because that is a huge sum of money. And are we spending are are we being good stewards of tax dollars? There's too much. It's not on there. Yeah. I agree that everything huge sum of money that was paid out of balls being dropped. And I I understand the ball being dropped. I sincerely appreciate the work you've done in over this past year or longer to,
you know, put it together, figure it out, put it together, move it forward. I I feel very strongly with the basic conversation of the entire board. And I'm not saying that you're saying it shouldn't be. I'm not saying you're saying it shouldn't be. No. But moving forward, I don't get past it. We did we did get a budget too. You know? We did get a date last year. I totally agree. Get our no. We did get our we did get it last year. We did get it last year. Again, I want to repeat. I totally agree with you. As I said, this conversation was going to happen in August when we come in because that's when
school board is reset. You know? That's when the super damage, would have brought, you know, moving forward. So we This is I I don't think I should pay. So this is your governance so you guys can see what that. So far, we have never come to the board from what I understand because it can't come to the superintendent's. So it it got bounced out because the bill was issued. It didn't come from the representative because the contract was never signed. The the a lot of all I'm trying. And I I understand I understand that. I'm not saying I don't, but I'm not trying to point fingers.
I'm trying to state that this is is bothersome. It's a huge sum of money. We're talking today as we're writing the mission and vision. Part of our our work is being steward. Being good stewards of tax money. $40,000 is a lot. A hundred thousand dollars is a lot of tax dollars. And is it getting here that there was no hundred thousand hundred thousand dollars? It it it had been. But that ask is a human ask. It is. So see that. Right? So So far, the It was no. I'm just gonna trying to figure out,
like, from years past, the when we first started with the council, the understanding, not in writing, but verbally, was that, board coaching was part of the whole package. So when the bill came or the next, you know, sign the contract, and I I said, this is part of the whole package. I don't know what this is. And so in '23 when you were the president? Yeah. It was when I was president. I said, we this is not I think it was part of the whole package,
and I said, let's see if we can figure out what this is all about. And that's the last I saw of it. And now Right. We're here. So I understand how things change, and it's not part of the contract now. I I get that, but I agree having the conversation. Now what? Yeah. And I certainly appreciate your, absolutely, with chewing things up and then figuring out what happened next. Absolutely. So it says up there for other purchase, professional and technical services, $9,725.45.
PD provider services fees. Does that CGCS travel expenses? Mhmm. So that doesn't come out of the 40,000 that we pay? No. So you'll see when you read the contract, there's 40,000 for the the the coaching services. But anytime AJ or Greg or whomever comes out, like, when they were at CASB, pay for travel, pay for that body. And I think it's the same thing for every contact that we have. Even, when third party come out Mhmm. Have been coming out, we pay for their, mileage and and things like that.
There's not it's it's always been part of contract. That was my understanding from the initiation of this relationship is that those expenses would be covered, but not this other piece. Not any I didn't know how the contract was, but the way I think I did contact. We did. We can see the contract. Yes. Definitely. She she just she mailed it out. K. Yep. Awesome. You know, I I would say this for myself. I'm glad that it is out now because I was losing trying to figure out where's this contract, who signed it. You know? And there were a lot of questions that I can answer.
Document. No. But now we have some answers, and I think it's gonna make some more decisions. Exactly. So here we are. So that conversation can come in August as well. So we can now be reached, and we'll look at it in-depth. There's a question on what is up there as well on the, budget as of April 1. I guess the question I have for you all, is there a process for looking at the budget anyway? It's never Well, do you ask for the budget? You ask for the budget. That's a good question. I think we know that there's the board budget. I think we know that any conference we attend attend is typically covered.
I it's been said before NASB, CASB, and I think at some point, a statement was added maybe that if you have interest in one other cube or that would have whatever that that is, you could That is see where it's if it if it fit, it could be covered. But I I and I've been here five years. I've been asking lots of questions if I hadn't. I think it could be asked how do you determine the amount when it needs you know, how do you use it to determine your cutoff? I'll tell you not only the big conversation,
but if no. But here's my thing is, there are some fees that sit in board budget that I question what they should be, like, legal fees. I think they should be Yes. I agree. You know what I mean? If somebody comes, Joe probably comes and looks at the board budget and sees that you all have a what should I say? 707 hundred and 55,000. Like, why does the board have a $750,000 worth? Because we paid legal I get it. And we pay you. But should that be no. My salary is not in there. It's not. So We are paying personal.
Has been our board. That's correct. Yeah. But but you know what I mean? If Joe Public is is looking at the budget That's the they would want to buy. Yeah. What are we doing? What are we doing? It's almost a billion dollars. Yes. Right. And there's an audit somewhere, right, instead of retirement. Yeah. Because there are things that have I mean, that are that have to be built. Exactly. And then it's built. But there are a lot of there are a lot of things that are, like, default. No. You know? No. Thank you. Okay. For the good of the order. Alright. No. I'm good. Questions I'm good.
For the good of the order. Are we good? Yes. Is there any more questions for the good of the order? Next board of education, do they need help, May, Tuesday, May the sixth at 6PM. Mhmm. Thank you so so much, Lord, for your hard work and your hard questions. If not, note, we are adjourned at 03:38. Do you He has an answer. Alright. Just finished Second. Aye. There you go. Been seconded. Claudia Bell. I'm sorry. Julie Burf. Durkheim went first.
Yeah. And then he was first. Actually, Thurston went first and Carter was second. Thank you. Director Carter? Director Duncan? Doctor Durkin? Doctor. Aye. Doctor. Aye. Director Ray Morrison? Aye. Director Tomlin? Aye. Okay.