[Music]
One recording in progress. Good evening and welcome to the June 17th special uh school committee meeting where we'll be interviewing our um final two candidates for interim superintendent. Um before we get started
I I wanted I was remiss yesterday in not thanking the folks who served on our preliminary screening committee. Um, so I want to thank Brian Denitzio from the Lincoln School, Dan Breman, Matt Dubois, Olivia Rayald, Amanda Cretchar, uh, Kierin Carson, Liz Crane, Katie McGra,
Liz Sullivan, Bonnie Samson, um, Vir Hawkins and, um, Mona, um, also our parents, Linda Hagar, Dan um, S, and then our students at DT and Kieran, and then our school committee members, Suzanne, Andy, uh, and Bob. So, thank
thank you all for lots and lots of time, lots and lots of work. Um, very professional, very dedicated, uh, and got us our finalists that we've been interviewing over the last two days. So, thanks to those folks. Uh, our first candidate today is Bella
Wong, and Betsy is going to bring her in. We're again going to start with our questions from this side. One, two, three, four. Hello. Good evening. Let's get We're gonna get your microphone set on for you
and water. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thanks for being here. Um, welcome back and we are going to get right started. Um, we're going to go through just each asking a question and then we'll we'll go back around and we have about a dozen questions for you
about three three to four minutes each if if uh that works for you. Okay, we're going to start with Bob. Thank you. Hi Bella. Hi. Welcome. Welcome. Thank you for being here. Um, I get the first question. Um, please tell us about your
life's journey. my life's journey. Um, so many of you know now that I um was educated through the Brooklyn public schools, but first I was born in Boston and um left in the care of my grandmother most of the time. And when I
started kindergarten, it turned out I didn't speak any English. So I actually started my first couple years in elementary school um learning English and then moved here in Brooklyn in grade two. and um and through my years here um
had really wonderful teachers um all the way through school and then Brooklyn High School and um just just benefited from that and then throughout and I have to say that when I look back when you go to where you go and you look back there
isn't anything around my experience here um education and experience that I wish had turned out that had been more or not. I received um a lot of academic rigor here through thoughtful and caring
teachers. Um was presented with a smorgus board of high quality clothes and activities that I could try. And also here in Brooklyn, it was um it was extremely diverse culturally for me and
um and very welcoming. And so a lot of um what I advocate for now in public school education and and the person that I become was largely influenced by my time here in Brooklyn. So, and um so
I've had um 11 years at Welsie Public Schools as assistant superintendent and superintendent um 17 years at Lincoln Sbury as a teacher and the superintendent principal there and then a year in NATIC as the preK12 superintendent. So I um but yes,
I feel like a lot of who I am as an educator, as a person was informed by my time here. Thanks, Caroline. Hi. Um, thank you so much for being here. Welcome. My name is Carolyn Thal.
Um, and I will ask question number two. Schools are about learning. Excuse me. And I'm so sorry. I'm going to say that in between questions, I'm going to run and get a water after this. Sorry. Um, schools are about learning.
Please talk about your own intellectual development and important influences in your own learning over time. I think um for all of us our influences come primarily from our families and um
expectations and social norms come from that. So I think growing up I was very influenced by the paths that were acceptable to take and try. Um, I will say that, um,
when I left Brooklyn High School, I was sure I was going to be a doctor. That's what I wanted to be. And then I I got to college and I was like, no, that's that's not what I want to be. And my friends that wanted to be doctors, I I go, "No, that's not what I want to be."
But I stayed in science and I went to graduate school for science. And I love science. And then I realized I didn't want to do science 100% of the time. And so while I studied molecular biology, I realized that wasn't for me. And um and
then I went to law school and I really appreciated I felt to me that law school was more about what you invested and it was connected more for to what you could do for society. And um and I actually really really
liked it a lot and I practiced for a couple of years and then um actually worked for a New York laurel farm while I lived in San Francisco which was perfect for me being on the west coast and still having a taste of the east coast um drive or or just the way people
work. And um and then I realized one day that that wasn't corporate law wasn't what I wanted. and and partly was because I taught when I was in law school as a student and worked with with um students that were struggling in
their first year and I was really I found that very fulfilling. And so at that point I switched that a lot and I came back in the classroom. And so I think the path that I took away is
influenced a lot by um social cultural influences in my family and then it took to go to to the west coast. I'm really grateful for the time to be um eight years on the west coast and coming back here that um opened my thoughts about
what it is that was possible for me. Um I I think it's a I think it's okay to share because I've shared a lot that my mother cried when I told her I was going to be a classroom teacher. She said she was worried I was going to be poor but eventually my parents came around. They were really happy about the path that I
did take. Um but entering the classroom I realized I have found my vocation and um and ever since that I um I really I support everyone that goes into education that works with youth. Um but
I think that everyone's entitled to a strong public school choice. And so that has been part of my advocacy and my work and um and I I just really appreciate it. But it it wasn't a straight line.
Hi Bella, it's very nice to see you again. Um our next question is uh please talk about special moments of accomplishment in your professional life as a teacher and school leader. Ah special accomplishments. Um I I will say that working with with
um teams over time there have been accomplishments around general ed curriculum that are that are like small wins about expanding. I will say at Lincoln Sbury bringing the city of Mandarin to Lincoln Sbury was a was a
was a win. Um but also in special education I think there are many many wins about bringing programs in district to develop them. Um I think if you can it's really important to be able to keep students in district um for the
connections that they make and networking. I find sometimes when students go out of district as they might and they and they need to that when they graduate they've lost that networking and connections um that they could have had if they had been in district all along. So I think it's
important to do that. So there have been many many wins in that way about bringing program creating strands for students in um special education whether it's um behavioral or autism or non non
um non-verbal language disabilities um or other social emotional learning and supports. Um but I'm also I'm also um an advocate for for um for actually global education for ensuring that
students by the time they graduate um and leave our schools that they understand their place in the world and also they understand their agency in terms of like making what they can do to make the world the way they want it to be not simply as they found it. Um so
for me um the work around supporting global education continues to be um something I do in addition to all the other work whether it's training educators um or also bringing students or or expanding their horizon in terms of um
world perspectives. Um so I I have to say again influenced by my experience here there's just so many things that it it's hard to say just one thing. Um but lot lots of different things. So general ed, special education,
um global and um and also supporting the performing arts wherever I can find it. Um and advocating for the importance of that. Okay. Sometimes you really need to hold it up close to your face. This is better.
better. Yeah. Yes. Okay. Thank you. My name is Mariah Norrega. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Um my question is about educational equity. So the term educational equity is omnipresent in conversations in and about schools. Can you please talk about what this term
means to you? Educational equity. Yes. I think that all of us aspire to ensure that students are getting what they need. And so what an individual student may need um may be different than what another student needs. And so it means
that we have to be able to know our students all of them however way we can find um to determine that whether it's through assessments or through surveys. um just to really know our students um
and using that data um and also then determining how they're doing um amongst their peers and looking at that and disagregating the data and looking at it that way. Um and ensuring that all our students are getting what they need to
be able to realize their best potential. And so that is looking at their data, looking at their learning style, assessing them um to ensure that they get what they need. Um in terms of just for for
I I guess for me to answer that question also is just looking at that we when we look at our our information, we often find our students have disperate outcomes. And so how do we narrow narrow those
gaps um and bring them closer together? So I I will say um in 2013 I heard the work presented by Ron Ferguson um who was a professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education and his work continues to be my northstar in terms
how to approach um this work strategically. um his his presentation is that it's multistrands. So one of it so the most important thing we can do is what's in the classroom. So the one is to focus on our instructional practice make sure
it's diverse diversified if we need or tailored to what we need and teachers um have those tools that they can do that. Um so instructional practice the other is looking at data to inform our practice. Um, the other is leadership.
And for me, leadership isn't just the isn't just the person with a title. It's anyone in the district that has a vision for how things can be and has a way of making that happen. So leadership happens, I think, um, in the classroom
with teachers, across schools, across central administration, in the board, in the community. So you have to have leadership, people with a vision about how things should be and a way to make that happen. Fourth is understanding youth culture. Where do our students
come from? How do we know them and how we can um diminish barriers or mitigate barriers to their being able to access the curriculum. So youth cultures, understanding them. And the other is engaging our families in partnership. So
instructional practice, looking at data, um fostering leadership, wherever it might be, um understanding our students, where they come from and engaging our families on partnership, um however that might be. Um so, so I so I feel it's
multistrands and you have to do all of it. And um and I I love having um broad way of looking at it because different educators within a with district have different strengths. So I feel there's always something that you can follow
your passion and work on. So if people feel like they want to work with youth culture, they can. People who want to work um more with family engagement can. There's just something for everyone um to do. But I believe it has to be intentional and strategic and it it's um
it's really multirong to to look at ensuring equity or um diminishing gaps in um academics or other opportunities for the students. So that leads to my question I guess which is how do you work to address academic and opportunity
gaps while pursuing excellence for all students? Please share examples from your experience that would inform this work in Brooklyn. So I feel um every student is entitled to rigor um academic rigor and so what
excellence looks like for one student might be different for another student. Um but it is about making sure where the student is at that they're being challenged. Um I um I am an advocate for um
for um heterogeneous opportunities um to support all students to all kinds of learners. um as well as um
paths that ensure or support mastery um whether it's in the academic core but also in the co-curricular whether in the arts like I I think um the oneoffs aren't necessarily um
really help students grow to become who they might want to be and what they want to explore. Um so for for academic I think you really need to make sure where your baseline is and have strategies intentionally across
the district across buildings um about how you want to address those disparate outcomes to be able to close the gap. I think over time I've really learned that um gaps will not be overcome unless everyone is working together
consistently. um to toward that effort. And it takes it takes time um to understand that it can take um anywhere from 8 to 10 years from an initiative to seeing it all the way through. Um but I do believe
strongly that it is something that has to be done intentionally across across grade levels, across buildings, across the school district to be able to do that. Thank you, Sarah. If you are selected, oh sorry, I'm Sarah
Mocktaughter and it's nice to meet you. I was just so excited to get into my question. So, if you are selected for this position, will you have to select some you will have to select some important members of the administrative team. The deputy superintendent for teaching and learning, the deputy superintendent for student services, for
example. What might your team look like? I think I would be informed by um the entry interviews that I would do um by talking to the people that um are currently in those positions um the other members of the leadership team um
to understand what what they think is needed um and what what strengths or other gaps in the team might need to be filled. um and have an understanding of um for
instance I don't know what the longevity is for the other positions that might have been f that would have come under the supervision of these positions. So I don't know I don't know how deep um the
the these the skill set has to be in these new positions. um I don't know if we are looking to build program. So I don't know if these these the part of the skill set is what if they have built
those programs before. Um so I would better I would better understand knowing um what it is that are are gaps or aspirational goals that need to be fulfilled by the persons that would
fulfill those roles. Um sometimes if you for instance sometimes it might be really really important to have someone who's a veteran or sometimes
depending on um disability or where the other positions are. You might be able to take someone who's more novice. um maybe there's someone within district that is ready to take the leap for that.
So I I um I mean other than of course you know the basic requirements that you would want anyone in those positions to have the breath of their experience. Um, it it could be a teaching and learning person might come in that has more
specific experience in one area, but the district has a lot of strength in the other areas and they can grow into it. Um, your high school principal is very veteran. Some of the other principles are diff are in different levels of um,
years of experience here in Brooklyn or otherwise. So, it just it kind of depends on what's needed at this time. And so, again, could be a veteran person, could be someone newer, um someone with experience building program that that
Brooklyn needs to have built um all of that. But it it would be about building a team um that works and and I I look for people who are reflective
um that are able to describe how they've learned as an educator over time, how they've learned as a leader over time, how they help others to learn. So the position these two positions are people that supervise people who supervise
people and that's a different skill set. So it's it's about their potential to be leaders and fostering leadership within those p those strands on the team, but it's also about modeling learning um how
they help others overcome mistakes, how they overcome mistakes themselves. Um but and then the best that we can do in terms of assessing the ability to listen and receive feedback
um would be all the things that I would look for in um building that team and um and you're only as good as the strength of your team. Thank you Suzanne. Yeah. Hi Bella. I'm Suzanne Ferispiel uh a
retired uh teacher and educator administrator and I also worked with Ron Ferguson when I was in Boston. So I enjoy his work very much. My question is number seven. The town of Brooklyn is exploring a possible Prop 2 and a half override in
2026. Tell us about any experience you have in this area and how you might work to build trust in the community to create support for such an override. So, um, while I was in Welssley, we actually had several overrides. Sometimes it was operational override,
sometimes they were for, um, debt exclusions for building projects. Um, I will I will say that that um, and well, they had a very very organized parent structure campaign team. And so whenever there was an override that we were
looking at, we had this sort of ready group um that that took it over that would take um on the um publicity and all of that while we the team created um the facts that we would use to to do the
override. Um I would so I feel from that experience I kind of learned what it looks like to have those things in place. Um, and so coming to Lincoln Subbury, we really, it was not a it was not a climate that was going to be
friendly to overrides. And so it was really working around um, how to be creative about our financing. And then I would say that for the successful debt exclusions or capital projects that we
would try to do um it was more like a three-year run. There would be like the there would be several attempts before we got through it. Um, and so that affected sort of my timing and and
affected my need to project more in advance to allow for time in case they didn't pass to to try to get there. Um, I've also learned over time actually starting in Welssley is sometimes we
change our messaging because we think, "Oh, that didn't work. So, let me try explaining it this way." I I actually find that that actually causes confusion. And so some then what happens is people think like, oh, you changed
your story. Was it this or was it that? And so I actually learned that it's better to decide what your your messaging is going to be and then you stick to it and then you do it over and and and keep to that messaging.
um in NATIC when I arrived it was clear although I was interim that they were going to need an IV override in the near future. So in that case um
I I did a lot of leg work in terms of working with the members of the school committee to help them understand why I thought that was the case. Of course, you know, working from that from the leadership team was just verifying that that was going to need to happen and
then learning through them who the key people were to reach out to that um influence how the town manages its finances. And when I say that, of course, it's the town manager, of course, it's the chief financial officer
for the town, but there are also other people that might be part of um the select board or the finance committees or other people that are important to have um oneonone to explain and let them ask questions about why I thought this
was in their near future. This was something that they needed to do. when I arrived there, it was something they didn't anticipate that they were going to need. And so I I am pleased to say that they did successfully pass their override this
year. Um and and I and I feel a lot of it was not a lot of it. I'm just going to say that it was helpful to have laid the groundwork. Um a lot of the work is is um building
trust among the key people and um because they influence others um when others see that these key people feel that it's important and it and it's the way that it should go. Um I think the key to any coming into any new
environment and for a difficult question like that is to identify um as many of the independent thinkers that you can people who are persuaded by the information that you will give them
um and then proceed from there. But I I feel every every attempt is is nuanced by the community and you have to understand who the key parties are, what the culture is about how um to get to
get things like that done. Um I I do believe in most cases it's about being as transparent as you can be as possible. Thank you. Okay, there we go. Hi, Bella. I'm Donna
Perry. Um, I also moved to Brooklyn when I was a year old, grew up with my grandparents next door, and did not speak English until kindergarten. It happens, though. Um, I was assigned question number
eight. As you know, in Massachusetts, we are all faced with fiscal challenges. Please talk about your experiences in addressing these fiscal challenges. Um, every I feel like there's always never been
enough money for what it is that you might want to do. So, I I would say I would say it's a decade's experience. Um if you think about where we were in the financial crisis of 2008 and then it just goes on and on about different
crises right now. Um a lot of districts I would say maybe 250 out of the 350 that are in the in in the Commonwealth were facing crises because of um the loss of COVID grants. And I and I want
to say that um the co grants were they were a blessing to receive at the time because our students needed more and we were able to provide those re resources to them. Um but when the co grants went away, the student need
didn't go away. So after the pandemic, there's just a long tale of um work that we need to do to support our students academically, socially, and emotionally. Um how do we address that is
multironged. Um we have to look at what we're doing within district where we can find operational efficiencies and that's always been the case. Can you find it in transportation? Can you find it in energy? Can you find it in food service?
Those are always the areas you look at first because they are not studentf facing. Like what efficiencies can we find? um whether it's health insurance as well. Um the other is operationally can we can we restructure ourselves to
be um more efficient that way or not? And um but I think you have to do that reflection to be able to advocate more strongly for the organizational structure that you have. You have to look at it and see if you can make it
more efficient. And if you can't then you have the rationale for why. Um then if you if you have the needs that you have and you've looked at yourself organizationally and it is what you need and the staffing is what you need then
that's your advoc advocacy and you work with your board you work with other people um in town and you advocate and so that may be the basis for an override in the future. You do that. you also maintain your agassy um in the
legislature and um you can never let that go. Um I will say I'm frustrated that money doesn't come faster than it does. Um I and we hear about we hear about pockets of money that are available and where
they're going to instead. Um but you you continue that adv advocacy as well but you have to look at your own own organization and look for the efficiencies so you can advocate more clearly for what it is that you
need. Thank you. Back back to Bob. Thank you. Okay, Bella. Have you been in a district with both personnel and budget challenges as Brookline has? What areas would you prioritize? And what was your
biggest win? Personnel you I personnel meaning um changes in leadership or Okay. So changes in leadership. Um well actually
when I started in in NATIC the director of student services was maybe in starting in our second year the um fin chief financial officer was brand new um and we had of the principles a number
of them were in year one two or three. So actually the leadership team was very new. Um the the most stable group actually was the school committee and that that actually I find a stable school committee a blessing um in that
in that way um but um usually it means they've found a way to work with one another um and and so anyway so um so the leadership team was was very brand new and uh it gave me an opportunity to
mentor um to to do that. So for Lincoln separate, I've had changes over time. Um, and then Welsie also with changes of leadership. So I honestly
there was a time where people stayed in their positions for like from beginning to end for decades. But that's just not true. It's actually the norm right now. No matter where you go, um, leadership
is changing over. and um whether people that you've been cultivating go on to lead other districts or they're going up or just positional changes. So this is the norm. Um my working with new
administrators um who who are brand new, never never done their job before or just new to district is um I I say as much as I can and orient them and I assume they only absorb 10% but I don't know which 10% they they absorbed.
So I just make sure that with new administrators I have a one-on-one with them at least once a week. At least once a week. And this is just to help understand um what parts they need reinforcing what questions they have and
supporting them. Some sometimes if I feel like they are ready then I might switch to every other but for most cases all new administrators new to position I would have a weekly oneonone
and um and and uh there and just and just mentor them with a lot of questions about what's on the horizon working on their goals. One thing I say to all new administrators is um when someone asks you a question, you feel like you should
give an answer. Don't give an answer if you don't know the answer. Just say, "Let me get back to you." And then you find the answer, but you have to be sure to get back to them. So that that's one my caution for new administrators is just hold off, you know, wait, give
yourself time and then but you must you must you must circle back and follow up. Um, but I I I like working with new administrators, but it it's the norm. It's the norm right now. Was it personnel and what was the other part?
Personal challenges. Budget challenges. Budget challenges. Um, I mean, I think I've spoken a lot about budget challenges. um more more more times than I can say, you know, um coming into a budget and not
having it balance out um has happened a few times. And so it's working with your chief financial officer. Sometimes you need a outside person to come in to understand why when you run the numbers
that they don't they didn't all match up. And so um that is that is pretty much the highest priority I'm going to say coming into a new district, new position is to make sure
the the books are in order. Meaning when you run when you oops so sorry when you run hope that still works if when you run the numbers um that they
all come out the way you you want them to. Yeah. Yes. Carolyn, the next question is um in these tough fiscal times, how important are the fine
and performing arts and career and tech education in your budget decision- making? So when um when you say performing arts, I think you're including visual arts as well, all arts. And when you say career
and technical, actually I I I corrected myself. Um I did look at the um course offerings at the high school. So I understand visual arts are in the career and tech. Um I
I think they are really critical and as I said it's not enough just to have the introductory course I think it's really important to have a pathway toward mastery um in in performing arts in visual arts
and within visual arts there um there there's um two-dimensional there's three-dimensional there's all the all the categories Um I I think it's really important to be able to off the breadth of um of
offerings as much as you can. Um I guess the hard decisions are if you have to reduce breath but I would never reduce breath just to have breath. I would um support
that there needs to be pathways to for further depth even if you're looking and you just can't offer all the things that you want to offer. Um but I think it's just such a critically important um way
of growing and expression and as as I've said like I um like music I'm a I'm a lifelong musician because of my exposure here in in the public schools and I don't know I can't say enough about how
it just balances one's sense of well-being um buts also the opportunity to be an ensemble with others in that way. Um it's part of um
it's just part of you know being our humanity the arts and that expression. So I think it's really critical and that's not to say that there aren't difficult decisions that we have to make but I I guess I would just say that I wouldn't I wouldn't opt for all breath
and no depth. We try to find a balance in that. All right, we're entering the home stretch now. Uh, question number 11. Uh, as superintendent, who do you believe you work for? Uh, and how do you balance the various stakeholders to whom you're
accountable? I think I think we all work for students and their families in collaboration, right? So with our with our faculty and administrators, with all of you and our families, um but it's
it's for the students. And so I think that many times there are difficult decisions we have to make. And so the way to to get through them or work through them is about what will be best for the students. So we work for the students. We work to um be able to
achieve all our aspirational goals for them which includes equity which includes being challenged um in rigor in the performing arts or arts and career and technology all of it. Um
it's about communicating being clear about our strategy our intentionality our goals. So when we say we're going to do something, why we're going to do something, when we ask for it in the budget, why we do. Um so it's about the
messaging. It's also about having an open door to um to so that people feel like they can access um you as the superintendent um to ask those questions so that they can be heard. It may be toh hold forum so larger groups can have
that access in that time but it's being um as transparent as possible about the decision making um what our shared goals and intentions are um all stakeholders or community members are essential in
that and being able to have the support especially in these times. Thank you Mariah. Thank you. Next question is, we will be negotiating six contracts during the FY26 school year. Please tell us about
your experience negotiating collective bargaining agreements. So, um that is daunting that you'll be negotiating six pound. No, no question about that. Um I've been I've been president of the association. I've been on the teacher
negotiating steering committee. So, I've been on on um from the teacher side of it. I've served on Weston school committee and we negotiated. So I've been on school committee for that and I've certainly been um as part of central administration in negotiating.
So I've negotiated also as part of the case collaborative. So so through the case collaboratives and also um in district and also regional meaning you have to come to agreement with all parties Lincoln and Sbury. Um,
every negotiation, um, you start fresh and, um, you usually, um, start with ground rules and and working with the representatives on both sides
about, um, really getting on the table what what the interests are on both sides. um and then working through that. I as the superintendent have not been at the table in um in the So I will say that
it's usually been the assistant superintendent. Um I've also been part of negotiations when there are lawyers at the table and I've been in negotiations when there are no lawyers at the table. So um all all kinds of arrangements. There have been
negotiations where everyone was interested bargain trained um and then also in negotiations where that was not the case. Um I do feel that negotiations
the pos the process of negotiations what you do to support best outcomes never stops. So even after you've settled a contract, it behooves us to maintain positive open
relationships with our our union representatives across all the unions. Like you have to invest in that relationship. So it never it should never stop. So the way So obviously if you're doing them next
year there won't be time to like in invest in that relationship but I would do my best to meet with um the representatives to be able to establish relationship in um problem solving or just um being able to have two-way
conversation or two-way communication about things that they're wondering about. um just like could you you know want to know like could you help me understand why that happened or what you were thinking or this is what I've heard is it true like being able to do that on
a more personal level um but ne I so it's really the relationship with with our unions never stops and negotiations just one part of it um but it's it's to be as open as possible but
they are they are um they're harder than they were. I I want to say that. I don't want to diminish that. I've always had um very positive relationships with with my unions, but things are things are more challenging.
So, the more we invest in the relationship outside of bargaining, um the better. Thank you. Um so, when I said a dozen, I guess I meant a baker's dozen. Um, what has been your approach to recruiting and retaining educators of color?
Um, it's always making sure that if there are job fairs that we are present even if we don't have an opening to be present um to be able to be there so that when candidates come they can see like the identify the district. I think
it's really important to create materials that highlight um highlight your strengths um highlight your demographics, highlight the diversity um that might be in the district. what it what are programs that
are done to support that um to to make sure that it's in a handy place um whether it's on the website but at a job fair often you know they can scan something but I think actually it's good sometimes if they have something
that they can take away if they'd like to so that's part of recruiting is just making sure you have a presence in people's minds as they're looking at where they might want to E the other is once you hire people, it's
just really focus on retention. So it's really offering um supports whether it's mentoring, it could be offering affinity groups um but there should be places where people that are new to the district, new to the practice have a
place to feel supported um and to ask questions. I've I've run affinity groups myself as an assistant superintendent. I would be happy to run affinity groups as a superintendent, but I've been told that it can't be the superintendent that
runs the affinity group. So, I have deferred that to others on the team, but I think that's important to be able to offer that. um the more the more you're able to retain
um people that you hire and the the more positive they can be about their time in district. That is actually the strongest recruiting tool that you can have. if they know people who are looking they
are they won't hesitate to say come here come apply here um so often I hear people say like oh I wouldn't I wouldn't I wouldn't ask people to come here and so the best recruiting tool is it is
making sure that the people you have feel valued and feel good about where they are um so that's you know it's it's recruiting ing it's retaining and um and then making sure um people will say good
things when people ask about your district. Thank you. And Sarah's going to round us out. So, we want to know if you have any questions for us. Um I What are you hoping What are you
hoping to happen in this coming year? you're going to get nine different answers. And there are only eight of us here today and you'll still get nine different answers. Um, so priorities that that I think that's
okay. Yeah. So I'll tell you my my two um and they may be the same and they may be different. So those those leadership uh positions and teaching and learning, student services um positions just under those um permanent principal positions.
Those are are for me critical in this year. Uh and making sure that our our budget is on solid footing, particularly as we go into that six contract negotiation cycle in about six weeks. So, six weeks, six or eight.
I would add to those um continuing or launching the literacy initiative of the district, which is a big multi-year effort and this is a pivotal year for it. I think it's excuse me. So I just um was elected to this school committee and on
the campaign trail um I felt from the community that there was a need for trust more additional trust in our school system. Um and some of the stuff that you spoke about comes under what I was calling we have to find
our academic center of gravity. Um there is some there is some skepticism in the community about um curriculum and sort of um you know around issues of of educational
equity um pluses and minuses and um I think the most important thing that you would be able to do was to build trust um in our school system going forward. All right. I'm I'm also
the sec the with Bob the newest member of the school committee. Um so I would I would agree with a lot of what Bob's saying, but my priorities would be to um and I think we discussed this, but restoring a culture of collaboration and
communication and accountability in our district. Um, I would like to see uh certainly budget transparency and um uh a a m like budget stability and then
um not quite sure how to say this but a return I shouldn't say return to but using the data um at our disposal and maybe increasing our reliance on data to make datainformed decisions.
that are um bringing impact to the classrooms. Like I said, nine different answers from each people. Um any other questions? No, I I think um just if I were appointed to the position, I think it's
really important to do those entry interviews. And so there's I have a gazillion questions, but it's not really for the for the board to be able to answer. So that so the entry interviews would be for each of you. And obviously your your length of tenure has been
different on the committee. And so the interest just to hear what it is, but it actually the multitude of voices is helpful to understand. Um, but to the different leadership team members, I would be anxious to grab the ones that are leaving to be sure to hear what they
they have to say. Um, I will share with you my questions would be what they think is the most important thing I should know. What is the thing that most immediately needs to be addressed? And then the third would be what needs to be addressed long term. And I feel like
asking those questions um of of a broad group of people and I usually pick you know people based on their roles. Um but I also open the door because sometimes there are people that just want to tell you what they think
and that's valuable too. So remember leadership doesn't mean you have a title. Leadership might be you're just that person in the school community that should be heard. Um, but I I think doing that helps create an action plan for for
the immediate future. Um, so so I have a gazillion questions and and that would be something that I would be um anxious to to start before I'm well aware that this is mid mid June. Yeah.
Yeah. All right. Thanks so much for being here tonight. Thank you. Thank you. [Applause] And then when I looked down and saw my handic Hey
mommy. Let's go. Bob, not not candidate Bob. Yeah, not sorry. Not not Rob. Not Rob. That was deserving of some. Um, next up we have um Robert Wargo. Um
would you just introduce yourself and we're going to get going with questions but just your your name and and uh just a a brief intro. Sure. Robert Wargo. Um excited to be here and we'll go right. Great. Thanks. So we're going to go just um similar to how we did at the
preliminary a question a person and we'll keep going until we're done. We have 13 questions for you. Great. Thank you. Hi Rob. Uh my name is Bob Wro. I was the high school principal here for a while um among other things. So your first qu welcome your first question is
please talk to us about your life's journey it's a great question and and this is one of the few opportunities I kind of said this before to get to brag about my my parents um you know sure one's alive one one passed many years ago um I was very
lucky to grow up in a very loving family uh with two very unique individuals as I've shared my dad went about Yell and Harvard. Uh my mom graduated high school and that was the end of her formal education. Um but both of them instilled
two unique things in me. My dad was the power of thinking and my mom the power of kindness and compassion. So I I find myself comparing uh that journey to MLK's uh tough mind, tender heart. And I and that's what I got from
my mom and my dad. So because of that love, it really provided opportunities to fail. and they watched me fail a lot, but they let me keep going. And I won't go into how many times I failed. I continue to fail, but because of that supportive network, I could make very
large mistakes in life and recover. And that's been very important for me. Uh the second most critical moment in my career or my journey, I worked at the Protestant Guild for the Blind that serves students grades uh are age 14 to 22 with the profound and severe uh
intellectual and physical and behavioral disabilities. And as I've shared, this really challenged my mindset of believing in all students and that all students can succeed. Um, because of what I was faced with, I found myself
judging a book by its cover, which is something I thought I would never do in life. But, but honestly, I did. And I was ashamed. But I quickly came to understand that if you can open your mind, open your heart, you quickly come to realize that
everyone has something powerful about them. And that and that experience was life-changing. I was both an assistant teacher and a teacher at the Guild for a number of years and was very life-changing. And the third kind of seminal moment pushing me forward was my experience at the Bramfield School,
which is the pro public school, Harvard, Massachusetts, in my interaction with then Superintendent Moran Kiojan. Uh he was the probably first person that took a a professional leap of faith with me. You know, I had my mom and dad and my family, but he was the first person that
said to me, I was a really crappy teacher. And maybe this was intentional, but he he asked me to apply for the athletic director position. So maybe looking back it was more of let me get him out of the classroom and put him someplace that's safer. But I became AD, but also became I I was 0.5. So I still
was inside the classroom doing space. But what did for me was see something in me that I wasn't seeing in myself that he took a chance on me and provided that opportunity and again a really important moment in my life that pushed me forward. So that's kind of
experiential um education. You can see it on the piece of paper. You know, not that much bachelors and masters and then going from an assistant teacher to teacher to director to dean of students to assistant principal to principal to assistant superintendent to
superintendent. That's my journey. Thanks, Bob. Hi and welcome. Thank you for being here. My name is Carolyn Thal. Um, and question number two is, "Schools are
about learning. Please talk about your own intellectual development and important influences from your own learning over time. All right, this this is where we continue on the vulnerability tour with you guys. Um, I'm a two-time doctoral
program dropout. So, I went enrolled in one program. I'm not going to name the institutions because it wasn't their doing, it was mine. I enrolled in one program, was very excited about moving forward with about getting my doctoral degree. Didn't feel like it was a good fit.
Stepped out, did it again in another institution. Had the same feeling. And I'll explain the feeling to you. I was finding that the educational experience that I was having was not comparable to what I was getting in real life. So as much as I was chasing three
letters, which was really important for me, I found if I really wanted an education, it didn't happen to happen inside an institution, university or college. So unfortunately, I I came to realize that twice. I'm financially in debt for those decisions. Uh but I'm grateful for those opportunities. The
the universities were both wonderful, but it triggered something in me to say to myself, you don't have to if you don't need to. So I found again that there was learning taking place by the work sites I was in the people that I was connecting with and I found that so
enriching that I put away kind of a professional personal goal of getting those three letters to saying to myself I'm learning and beyond that sorry um was what I do now so if I consider that formal PD formal learning I love the world of
informal learning and maybe it's not so informal it's listening to colleagues it's networking with other superintendents and other professional organizations. I'm a huge fan of the hard business review. I read that every single day. There are snippets that they send out and that has great um articles,
viewpoints on leadership uh beyond just the educational sphere. I'm a member of or I subscribe to the Marshall memo and other memos out there that really provide great insights about what's happening inside the world of education and and I learn by watching and I learn by listening and that's a constant
basis. So that's my pretty um not so successful professional personal uh experience of educational institutions but also what I've learned outside those those four hallowed halls. Welcome. Uh my name is Andy Lou. Uh this
is my sixth year on the school committee and my first year as a math teacher at a public high school in There you go. Congratulations. Yeah. All right. Our next question is uh please talk about special moments of accomplishment in your professional life as a teacher and school leader.
So again I I I wasn't a great teacher and I don't think I was the only one that assessed myself in that way. So I in the beginning it was it was surviving. That was one of my greatest accomplishments was um not believing in myself and finding that and you kind of
get thrown into lines and everyone says okay baptism by fire and you're kind of left alone to just kind of figure stuff out which is which has some merits to it but also it's emotionally draining because you don't know the feedback isn't there to to have you understand whether you are not making the marks. A
lot of it you're judging on student reaction. you know, it appears they're not listening to you or they're actually not listening to you. So, you're feeling you're falling short and you put all that time developing that lesson. So, I guess one of those accomplishments really was was getting through the first couple years and and not saying to
myself, you can't do it. It was, you know, later you found out it was not yet, right? But that was the mindset back then for myself was stick with it. There was something in my court that said, I think I can do this. and I did find a a cohort
of colleagues that helped me get through that. So, not to short answer your your question, but that that was a huge accomplishment. Uh there were numerous ones where you really felt you made a difference in a child's life. And and this may sound a little somber. I I'd
worked very closely with a student who after I left the the school and after she had graduated, uh unfortunately a couple years after that, she passed away. And I was very close with the family. And I was really honored to be called to deliver the eulogy.
And I know that may be a strange runaround here, but it was about relationships and understanding that if you develop quality relationships, you may not get it in the moment. You may not understand the impact you have. Unfortunately, there are times where it takes events like that to trigger a response
and you kind of to start to value the work that you do. And there's other more positive ones. I had a young man call me who was going through a obviously it seemed through a 12step program and he called me to say and ask for forgiveness which I was I was blown away by that
this young man had so many challenges in his life and he found himself in a much better place and thought it was important to call me up and apologize and is a lovely mom and a great kid and he's doing great great for himself. So those are some of the teaching moments. As an admin, I think my greatest success
has been building a team and in building a team in which you are preparing the bench for the next step in their uh leadership roles. So every time I left a school, the person that filled my position was from
my team. And I take that as a big feather in the cap that we built a collaborative environment where we entrusted each other and we worked very closely with each other such that if someone left someone could move in. So those are probably the biggest accomplishments both at a teacher and
admin level. Hi, my name is Mariah Norrega and I've been on the committee for six years as well and my question is the term educational equity is omnipresent in the conversations in and about schools. Can
you please talk about what this term means to you? Yeah, we we use terms sometimes and and sometimes they kind of lose their their meaning. So, I'm glad you're asking that question. For me, educational equity means providing full access to all opportunities and resources that exist
inside an institution. And the important thing is access in all um we can we can disrupt education by not doing those two really critical things. It means creating a culture of belonging where every time a student or staff member
walks into a school or their place of work, they feel accepted. They feel acknowledged. They feel rewarded emotionally for the work they're doing. So, it's key for me to make sure that for educational equity, we are honoring, recognizing the great work that's
happening inside our schools and provide that really inclusive belonging environments for all all that walk inside those spaces. uh it means creating instructional practices where we place high cognitive demands on our students. There's a misnomer at times that certain students
can't learn as much as other students. And I would challenge that belief that anyone would have on somebody. It's our job to put those academic tasks in front of students so they can think critically, so they can demonstrate their learning. And I'm sure Brookline
is doing this. It's that shift away from the teacher in charge to the student in charge of the learning process and really having uh that concept put forward by uh Lid Doll, Peter Lizall about thinking classrooms and again putting the thinking into the hands of
students versus staff unintentionally kind of answering questions for students before they had the opportunity to think. Uh those are all critical pieces and when you talk about educational equity if you look at your goal number one on your strategic plan it's all about teaching and learning and you already have a roadmap to get there and
I think it's critical for the next superintendent or interim superintendent as well as the team that's developed to examine that strategic plan because you've already done that great work. So let's follow that plan. Let's find that northstar and that's where we're shooting for because if you can be
consistent you can provide equity. We have to make sure that there's consistent practice across our board. So again, all students are getting what they need and have access to. Thank you. Um, how do you work to address academic and opportunity gaps while pursuing excellence for all
students? Please share examples from your experience that would inform this work in Brooklyn. So honestly, or when we need to be honest with ourselves, we talk about opportunity or achievement gaps. um they've been around for so long, it's time we start doing something about it,
which means we need to change our approach. If we've been doing the same thing over and over again and it hasn't had the desired outcome, it's time to change our our direction. So beyond just looking at the data to determine where the gaps exist and who the students are
in that group identified with that that gap, we have to go deeper. We have to have the courage to ask the question why. Why do the gaps exist? And it can no longer be about pointing the finger exercise. Well, it's because
of this that or the other thing. There are certain things out of our control that we will not change. So, we can control what we can control. And that's the type of educational experience we provide for our students. So, we talk about gaps. It's the data mining is important. I'm not saying it's not. But
one of the questions that typically gets left off through that Ruth cause analysis is reflection on the educators, reflection on the leaders, reflection on our community, on what we value. Because what we ask teachers to do, what we ask students to do, what we demonstrate to
the community reflects our values. And if we're saying that on average we're doing great, well, we're missing groups and we're ignoring groups and we're saying, well, they don't impact the average, so it's okay. We're just going to keep moving forward. So, it's to have the courage to ask those
questions that sometimes are really difficult to ask, but if you don't ask, you're going to perpetuate what you have and what other districts have as well is that achievement gap will discontinue and unfortunately may get worse. Thank you, Sarah.
If you So, my name is Sarah Mogtter um and I'm a veteran teacher from the system um but have been on the school committee for two years. Um, if you are selected for this position, you will have to select some important members of your administrative team. The deputy superintendent for teaching and learning and a deputy superintendent for student
services, for example. What might your team look like? They're going to be caring, compassionate, and driven. There are certain skill sets that people have and can't always be taught. uh you can teach some of the other kind of
contentbased work that will take place, but I need caring, compassionate, driven people that come to work wanting to do whatever we need to do to make our plan successful, which means our students are successful. To me, this is critical work and you guys are in a tough space right now.
This is middle of June. Your school year is just around the corner. There is critical work that happens during the summer around building your administrative team and focus. You know, what are your focuses for this upcoming school year? So, the person selected should start this work tonight. You
know, there's the formal process of just getting the application or the the postings out there, but beyond that, it's it's developing the who and that human capital exists inside your school district. That human capital sometimes may have to come from external sources.
I have the great fortune of having worked in a number of institutions and developing kind of that mental rolodex of a lot of people that I think could be fit certain fits for certain positions in school school district. So part of it is already starting to think about how we get that process started because the
process will take you at least a month and if school's around the corner you want to make sure that you're able to bring that team together to have collaborative cohesive conversations about the work we're about to do. You have to start building a trusting environment. Um, and I might be guessing a little bit based on the research I've
done that there's a trust breakdown at this point and how do we rebuild that? And that's hard work but critical work and that that has to start on day one so that myself and the team have to address that. You have to exemplify trust. You have to exemplify transparency and
openness and belonging. All the things we're asking everyone else to do. We have to model that work and we have to come together in a cohesive unit to accomplish that work. So again, to me that if if a whoever is selected really starts that tonight and you get the ball rolling, it doesn't mean you're going to
select the person tomorrow. There's a difference between urgency and important, this is important, but you can get this work done before this, but it needs to start tonight. Uh who would be on the team? Again, I think you've got human capital that already exists inside your district. You've also got
structures that work inside your district. So, and this may come up again, you're a great district. It's you're not falling off the cliff. Okay? You're you may feel like that at times. You may feel like you're in such a desperate spot that the challenges
that present themselves may appear to be end points. They're not. These are opportunities for the district to do and get better to deepen educational excellence. So, and that might be easier to say from the outside versus looking in. Uh but I can promise
you, you may feel like you're in a bad situation. You'll get through it. And I think with my help, we'll get through it together. So the the I can stop. No, no, he was still.
Hi, Rob. I'm Suzanne Federsville. I have question number seven. The town of Brooklyn is exploring a possible Prop 2 and a half override in 2026. tell us about any experience you have in this area and how you might work to build trust in the community to create support
for such an override. So, I've not had direct experience with a two and a half override. Um, in Rhode Island, we have we have the luxury of a 4% tax levy gap or cap. I know year-over-year, not unlike the two and a
half in Massachusetts. So, uh, but because the district I work in is, uh, taking on a very large school building construction project at $250 million cost and understanding the hit it is to the taxpayers's wallet, all departments in the town, which I know that the
school department is not part of the town in essence, but we all came to an agreement that we would come in at a 3% max, and that's on our local appropriation year-over-year. So, we had done great work. uh we presented a budget that was fiscally responsible,
but because of the loss of revenues, we had to account for some cuts. And like every district, you always start furthest away from the student and then you unfortunately find yourself out of stuff and out of people at those outer rings. We have to start moving closer to
the student. Uh we were lucky, I guess, in some respects. We looked at enrollments and because we had some dips in some enrollments, we were able to not fill certain positions. Uh we looked at some retirements and figured out that uh not every retirement position need to be filled.
So long story short, we were still short money and uh we have financial town meeting. It's a uh old school come to town floor and everybody vote for a proposal that's presented. We have a very strong relationship between central office and
the union. So we had some really closed doors off thereord conversations but I can share the process was we wanted to work together to get a motion on the floor at financial town meeting to ask for an additional 1% to the local appropriation to provide enough funds to
restore some of the positions that had to be cut. None of the district level positions but closer to the student classroom type positions. Uh so we had a courageous teacher who lived in town who filed a motion. Uh there were thankfully two other community members that filed
similar motions. You go through the long process. It's presented Q&A. There was a vote taken and the majority of the members voted in favor of adding money to the school budget. So what you learn from that process is trying to develop
trying to develop advocacy trying to find people who can help you do that work because you can't do it by yourself. Uh in two separate districts we had building projects in which the town had done the same thing. They mobilized a group of really strong advocates community voices inside
the the town to push certain initiatives around two building projects. And because of that group work and what the central office do can support that work through factf finding you you try to make everything as unemotional as possible. So our job is to work with the team provide facts about X Y and Z the
finances and the the timeline related to a construction project. But you find that if you're looking to get something done it can't be done by one person. It takes one person sometimes to spearhead that work but one person can't accomplish all that work. So the the
experience I've had is learning to uh build a strong base, put a team together that can take their work on. And you'll be amazed sometimes what you can accomplish. Doesn't always uh end in a positive way, but you can you can you can start building momentum maybe for
the next time as well. Hi, my name is Donna Perry. Um I have question number eight. As you know in Massachusetts we are all faced with fiscal challenges. Please talk about your experiences in addressing these fiscal challenges.
I I try to take an approach and this is not to minimize any um calamity that may present itself but a lot of things we do are fairly simple but they're not easy. So when you when I break down budget I always explain it's revenue and expenses. Revenue and expenses. And that's not to there's a lot of context
related to revenue and expenses, but when you come down to it, it's revenue and expenses. So in building a budget, uh we've shared this before, we go through a zerobased budgeting process where we start from zero and work up. It's never just add a certain percent to your budget as you move from year one to
year two to year three. We're also really cognizant of looking at budget forecasting and what's coming down the road. You know, that was critically important during ESER times that you truly understood that money you were getting in was wonderful, but it was short-lived. And what were you going to do to sustain people, staffing,
programs, projects that you use those funds on? So, you can't just be focused on year one. You're always looking five years out to understand kind of that path you're going towards. There are times when you have to make some difficult decisions those as well.
Um when you talk about revenue, there's two sources. There's local aid and then there's state aid. And then for expenses, it's predominantly your payroll, your personnel expenses. So those are the two kind of drivers. There's transportation, there's special ed, uh there's utilities that are other
expenses, but those are the kind of the balances you have to you have to deal with. So you have to have those conversations with a lot of people, your central office team, your union, your staff, your community about what do we value
and what's critical that we have to have in place to support the needs of all students. And sometimes you can find that when times were great, we added a lot to the plate. And then times were tough, we had to say to ourselves, we have to start making some assessments where not everything can stay on that
plate. So what comes off the plate? And that's a critical piece when you start doing forecasting. You can't just assume that the the great times you're having in fiscal year A are going to look similar in fiscal years B and beyond. So thinking forward is always important about creating the now. But there's
always fiscal challenges. There always things that people want to have inside their school budgets. Uh what I've done every place I've started the budgeting process is to include all the cost center managers. And you'll find sometimes that's not a common practice of bringing principles and cost centers
into the conversations from day one. And my my kind of speech to them is as we go into this process, I ask you to think through a district lens, not your school-based lens. So I I don't want the high school teacher to come forward and say, I need five more staff. You can do so as long as you understand the
implications that may have on the rest of the district. So again, the catchy term we talk about is we're a school district, not a district of schools. And we have to be strategic in our conversations in building the budget. And where you're when you're falling on deficit times, it's being transparent.
And as soon as you know something, you need to share it. So you may may have built the best budget in the world, but as we know, by the time that budget's been approved, it's it's old. It's been sitting for months before it gets that final approval. So everything was based on sometimes conjecture or assumptions
or understandings of what's going to happen in the future. And sometimes critical things change by the time you submit that budget to when it's voted to when the school year starts. You see enrollment jumptimes in certain neighborhoods. You need to hire teachers. You've got some compliance issues. You need to bring in more TAs.
Uh, you know, EL populations are increasing. You want to make sure you provide those services. So even the best looking budget probably won't be perfect when you know August 1st or September 1st comes along. So once you know something though, you have to share it. You can't say, "Oh gosh, I just realized
that it's July 1 and a group of families just moved into neighborhood A, which means we have to hire another kindergarten teacher." And you sit on that information. You know, this is a a fairly easy one, but there are other critical things that are happening during that time that you have to share
out. You have to communicate with your direct reports. You have to be communicative with your staff. You have got to be communicating with your community about what's going on. Because when you start withholding, you start breaking down that trust. So good or bad, a lot of experience with budgets, a
lot of experience with budget deficits. Always trying to understand, excuse me, what do what's best for students, but sometimes you've got to get closer to that circle than you really want to. Bob, thank you.
Have you been in a district with both personnel and budget challenges as Brooklyn has? what areas would you prioritize and what has been your biggest win? So, I guess just to piggyback on some of
those questions, yes. Um, no one ever asked for it, but it seems to become more more normal than it used to be. Uh, so you face it quite often when it comes to budget. As we described earlier, there are time frames in which you think you've got a wonderful budget and things
happen and you've got to adjust. Um, and sometimes there are reserves in certain places you can kind of dip into as one-time coverages. As far as personnel matters, I think you could probably take that question in a number of different ways. Um, and I'll take it one or two and you
can tell me if I missed uh something additional. Personnel is our staff. So, I try to humanize and understand our staff. So again, I might be taking this in the wrong direction, but um you've got to build relationships so that when tough times happen, you've built up a
level of understanding and trust so that when you deliver bad news, it doesn't hurt less, but also there's there's a a better understanding about where it's coming from and who it's coming from. It's it's less cold. Uh
so personnel matters are you know the budget personnel are impact with each other again as we talked about earlier cost of our uh personnel eats up most of your expenses but again beyond that it's getting to know who our personnel are. Um, we try to have stay conversations
with our personnel at all levels so that we can build an understanding of where they are and what we need to do to keep them because sometimes you find yourself doing exit interviews and you wonder why is the person leaving when you didn't invest the time in having the conversation about what can I do to keep
you and what's going on in your life. So um again personal matters can can vary into the world of uh contractual challenges when it comes to what might be happening from administration to an educator. Uh we have built very strong relationships with the union to the
point where you try not to get to that level of grievances. Sometimes they become formal and get there but you try to head things off in the path. So uh personnel matters um yes budget matters. Yes. And I'm not sure if I if I truly
answered the question when it came to personnel, but personnel are people. So I I I I I don't like data points. I like people. Thank you. Okay. Number 10.
In these tough fiscal times, how important are the fine and performing arts and career and tech education in your budget decision making? Yeah. So, this is this is where the my
shine comes off real quick again and I I'm going to be honest with you. So, through the budget process we just went through, uh, when I just talked about enrollment and trying to take advantage of of declining enrollment, uh, and what I'm going to say isn't going to touch on anybody's names, but we we had an
opportunity because of declining enrollment to reduce our middle school by one art teacher. That art teacher contractually could bump somebody else who is a less senior and beloved art teacher at the high school. So through that process of
making a financial decision and what we thought was a sound decision based on enrollment in one of our schools, the impact as we knew would go out to the high school. And and what we saw was wonderful. We saw staff and students come out and lobby on behalf of the teacher that was going to get laid off.
Uh I knew she was wonderful. We appreciated the arts. Again, the decision wasn't about getting rid of arts. it was because of dropped enrollment, we could reduce the number of sections that have would have to be run. But people don't see that, right? They see the the person in front of them
getting a layoff notice. They see the person that the student turns to every single day for guidance or uh bouncing questions off of and them losing that trusted adult inside a building uh was critical and eye openening for me and eye opening for us in this process. So I
say that to to I guess just illustrate that how important the arts are in the lives of students. And sometimes as the callous administrator you may forget about that and think okay this is I can I can provide rationale for this decision but I can't look a kid in the
face and say this is the right thing to do. So again we we took the money that was appropriate at a financial town meeting and restored that position so the person that was laid off got uh came back into their position. So the arts and and and CTE are are places where
kids go, where they feel part of something, where that sense of belonging truly exists and and that's what brings them to school. For certain kids, that that's what gets them out of bed every morning is those opportunities that present themselves in the fine performing arts and CCT programs. Uh I
work in a a a very high performing school district. One of the first people I met was a senior sitting in our on our strategic planning development team and he wanted to become an electrician and I congratulated the young man for the courage because you you you exist in
a system where going to college is kind of the default and if you don't go to college what's wrong with you and he said to himself college wasn't the right thing for him. He wanted to be an electrician. So that was one of the first kids I got to meet when I moved into my current school district. So, it
just reiterates again how important the programs are beyond just hands-on learning, you know, which is kind of more engaging for certain students. It's the type of relationships that develop in those spaces because there's a little more freedom, you know, it's not as
strict. Not saying it's not rigorous, sometimes it's not as strict and there's more interplay between the educator and the students that really allows for the development of really healthy relationships. So to totally believe in them. Uh if you read the article, it looked like I was the miser that wanted
to cut arts in the schools. It wasn't the case, but you you you'll learn. Um and I truly value all all programs where kids have opportunities to grow. All right, just three questions to go. Three? Yes. Three from us. All right.
Um, as superintendent, who do you believe you work for and how do you balance the various stakeholders to whom you're accountable? Yeah, this and thank you for asking this question again. I think it's probably one of the easier questions you guys will ask and it's the students, right? And that's the question the answer you probably get from
everybody or should get from everybody. Um, it it's what gets us out of bed every day. It's why we come to work. It's what we do. It's all about the students. But in saying that, there's plenty of people I work with, right, to make sure our students have the best experience. I work with the school
committee. Yes, you could you if if hired, you also fire me anytime you want, but I think what's important is we work with each other. You know, we we want to have leveled conversations and I try to impose that in every level I work at. We have leveled conversations.
There's not a disparity between parties when they come together to have conversations. So again, I work for the students. I work with many different groups. I work with the school committee directly in ensuring that we're aligned that the work that we are doing is consistent and we're giving one message
out to our community. It can get fractured and that's the the place you don't want to be when we don't see eye to eye publicly. Privately we can have our discussions about publicly how important it is that we're all on the same page uh to move the district forward. Um there's many other groups you work
with. As I've talked about, the unions are a critical body to work with and collaborate with and I've been fortunate to have the ability or opportunity to work with wonderful union leadership to establish great relationships. Um, I'm not sure if it's going to come up
tonight. We talked about last time negotiations and we were just fortunate Oh, okay. I'll try to make a note on that one. So, it's um it's working for students and is working with everybody else.
Speaking of negotiations, we will be negotiating six contracts during the FY26 school year. Please tell us about your experience negotiating collective bargaining agreements. Yeah, I don't know a superintendent who's been able to avoid this process. Uh so, currently we have three union contracts
in the district. The Weimoth had nine union contracts. We have non-union contracts as well. But as far as the negotiating union contracts, plenty of experience um some really wonderful experiences, some very challenging experiences in that process, it's
critical um as you approach negotiations that there is kind of an understanding of where we're trying to get to. And and I challenged the group when we started the teachers negotiations in the current district I work in. And I said to them, we enter this process as friends and we
enter this process focused on students. Uh kind of met with some smirks. Um but I meant that that we're colleagues. We're not enemies when we come into this process and we're going to find that middle ground. It may take a while longer than people want. We'll find that middle ground. Uh but it's having that
true respect for the parties that you're not trying to get over on by somebody nor will you kind of fall victim to something as well. But prior can I jump off prior to negotiations? So outside of just negotiations itself, that's every three years. What are you
doing in between those three years? And it's those relationships with the union members, having a really strong relationship with your president, your vice president, the board, uh getting to know the building reps in insisting that your principles have great relationships with the building reps because we can
fix stuff before it really becomes major problems. And and sometimes language in a contract can get thrown in your face because you continue to make the same mistake over and over again and you don't learn from it to the point where the union finally says, "You know what? Enough's enough." So a avoid that. Be
honest, be straightforward. to have those closed- dooror conversations because you've developed strong relationships to understand the issues that are taking place. Because as much as I thought I was I was a great princip as much as I thought I was a great principal and I told everybody at an open door, the first person most people
go to is their union reps. As much as I thought they'd come to me, it's usually the union rep and there's usually a disagreement or concern that exists and how can the union support them and then the union we usually come to me and we sit down and resolve the problem. And I'd always say to them, please tell Sally or Mark next time, just come
directly to me. And they say, Rob, they love you, but they're not going to come see you. So, it's it's it's just good to have the understanding, the relationships between those parties. So, u experience and we can get through that process. And you want to get there hopefully before you have to go to
mediation or arbitration. Thanks. What has been your approach to recruiting and retaining educators of color? So I'll dispense with what you do typically because I'm sure you already do those things. Um so I'll try to jump into what I do differently and that's as
I spoke to earlier about building a a central office team. It's having developed a network of colleagues where I can turn to and places I can go to as a resource to find strong candidates for the school district. And I've done that a number of times. uh I've been able to
make phone calls and encourage somebody to apply for a certain position knowing in my heart they were the right person but allowing allowing the process to unfold and in the end the people that I encouraged would get jobs and that was great for me because I knew them and I valued them but also was an opportunity
for them to show their value to a school district and be selected by an interview committee. So for me, it's critical to every time you have an opportunity to build your network, to have an understanding who's out there or where to go to find the populations that
you're looking for. And and I shared this before, don't wait for go to. And I gave a silly example, but um I don't mind being silly. if it's important for our school district or our students. I was at the a local dry cleaner and there was a couple gentlemen in front of me
who had just retired from uh their positions in law enforcement and I was listening to them about what they were going to do in retirement and I tapped them on the shoulder said it's sorry to be rude can I interrupt I'm a superintendent would you ever think about becoming educators and again someone laughed at me in life so they
laughed at me and said what are you talking about so quick conversation they never called me but you have to put yourself out there you have to approach people you can't always wait for them to come to you So, I'm not sure if that's unique to me, but I pride myself in that. In any opportunity, in any place,
in any venue, uh, you go to and recruit and look for. The other piece that sometimes is just forgotten about is how do you retain, and kind of talked about that briefly, it's the stay conversation. It's not waiting to do the um post-mortem after the fact as to why
someone left your school district. It's having the constant conversations with them about what's the culture that we've created. Are you comfortable in that culture? And what can I do for you so you feel more belonging inside this culture? Because sometimes, yes, back to my experience when I was first in
education, we do that with certain staff. We continue to throw them into positions and assume they're going to be fine without any support, coaching. And it's critical when you try to retain or or in the process of retaining staff, you're having those conversations.
you're hearing and listening and it's not in a supervisoral way. It's in a coaching way to ensure you're going to do everything you can to address needs before they become critical. Thank you. Sarah, you're going to round us up. So, we were just wondering that's
the end of our questions for you, but we're wondering, do you have any questions for us? I I I do. Can I go off script? I know it's a it's if I'm going to take just a minute or So, I'm going to ask questions in a second, but I'm just going to try to provide a closing statement. Um, I'm
going to take advantage of the the the speed at which we went through this process just to kind of give you one more insight or give you an insight as to who I am and why I want this position. You know, being a sitting superintendent, one would say, well, why why would you go for an interim superintendent where there's not a promise of stability or a future? Uh, I
believe heavily in the work I do. I believe heavily in your school district and I see the opportunities that present themselves and I want to be part of that process. And again, we're we're not recreating the wheel in Brooklyn. You are in a great place. It's not the place you want to be, but you're in a great
place. And we're going to get through the budget questions. We're going to get through the central office questions. We're going to get through those trust questions. And I feel I can do that. And that's I think the hallmark of my work in the last two districts I've stepped in. there was a perceived
um in one place micromanagement and in another place it was just kind of a very strong central office and and I believe in a strong central office but not to the point where you are diminishing uh the authority that our cost center managers and principles should have. So
that's a critical piece of my philosophy is to ensure that the work goes outward and I'm there to support. So I I I want to thank you for the opportunity to come before you. You've been a wonderful group. I know it's been I'm the last of four and I guess uh I'm not really I
don't know the Bible all that well but there's a thing somewhere that says the last shall be first. So as I I leave you tonight I hope the last shall be first. So just uh questions and I kind of asked the same question last time and I'm not sure if you can do this. It may be unfair right now is that the questions
you ask lead me to believe there's a certain focus you're looking for. So you can just nod your head. You don't have to say anything out loud. Am I'm hearing and building a central office team is critical. Yes. Okay. Building back trust that may have
eroded. Yes. And then addressing the budget. Okay. And not last to be least again, but probably also talking about student achievement and ensuring that while we're addressing the needs of those that need the most, we're not forgetting about everybody else. Again, we're
deepening excellence. We're not just focusing excellence. We're deepening excellence across the board. Okay, I think everybody's That was it. I'll get you guys out of here and I'll get out of here and I and I wish you the best and thank you for everything. And this I'm assuming you guys are here to listen to the next step of the process.
Yeah, that's it's that says a lot about your community. So to come out for a night like this says a lot. Thank you all. Thank you, Rob. So, we're just going to take about 30 seconds and then um I am hoping that we
can start the conversation with um people's thoughts and um yeah, good night, Rob. Um people's thoughts and and uh everybody's ranking if if um you have a first and a second choice.
So, 30 seconds and we'll be back. Okay. I have no friends. It was better. Something about the public process feels. This is
never what I and I'm watching [Music] right. I hear I hear you. Yes. Now question. Facebook.
All right, we have everybody back. Um, Donna, before you take your bite, I'm going to start at that end of the table. Thank you. Yes. So, we're going to go through and uh initial impressions and sort of a a bit
of a a straw poll on people's um preferences and ranking. Um I know this is awkward to do in public, but it it uh um we were instructed that this is the um the way to do it. So, yes, understood. Um,
so I wrote down on my notes, um, that I really loved, uh, Bella's emphasis on academic rigor and mastery of skill, um, and depth of mastery. In general, I
thought um her responses really demonstrated a deep understanding of um operational issues and specifically what appealed to me was um
her approach and like real thorough understanding of issues that we'll be wrestling with. um like the mentoring and hiring of um senior level staff um
overrides um she talked about building programs and serving students in district which um has come up for us for us and also um I think if I'm remembering correctly and
I want someone to to um tell me if I'm making a mistake she is the only candidate that talked about using assessments and surveys to know your students which is which I really appreciated. Um I really uh appreciated I have to look
at the names. Um Robert and I think it was BJ talked about zerobased budgeting. So I that appealed to me um as well. And then for Moren, I was really struck by
um sort of her uh ability to think outside the box in terms of partnerships and being resourceful in times of um you know in in times of uh in lean fiscal times. So there were things that I liked about
every everyone. Um, but I I there were I I was really impressed with um specific things about Bella. Thank you, Suzanne. Um, I was pleased with all our candidates. So, I'll just say that up front. Um, so I was delighted with the
pool that we had and I thought the the work that that Bob and Val did in the screening really was helpful and got us through to this point. Um, I particularly am looking at uh our candidates who have um interim experience.
I think that would really help them get started uh as they come in. That's going to be a short time frame between now and the beginning of the school year, believe it or not. It's it's a very short. So those uh Meen and Bella both had experience as interims and I thought
that would serve them well uh here and um and they know what that expectation is in terms of it's it's a short term commitment. You have to really hit the ground running and you have to um really understand what the goals of the
committee is and the and of the community and of the district. And I I thought they both explained that well. Um I was uh really imple pleased with um Bella's uh connection to Brooklyn. She went here through her all through her
school. It's really carried with her even in her professional life what she learned here and those experiences. So I would say um that Bella is probably my top candidate at this point. So, um, with Moren, it was just
fascinating to hear, um, her energy that she brings to everything and that I I really felt like, um, she is proactive in, um, what she does. With Barbara, it was impressive to hear the the breath of experience with special education. Um,
that's something that we're going to need to look at going forward and it would it just would be so helpful. Um, with Robert, I um appreciated his his anecdotes. I think he helped us get to know him as a person. It it felt very
personable with him. Um, Bella Wong was my favorite candidate and it's because her experience feels really relevant to me. Um, she has been an interim. she's worked in like districts and to go to a
lot of what Donna just said. um the the emphasis on rigor. It felt like she understands what it means to be a Brookline student and to take um the experience in the early um years of, you
know, um of the early language experience she had of learning the language in school and then being a student who the rigor really sort of helped her out. And I think that that speaks to our district and and what we
need here. Um I also really liked her specific um examples that she talked about about doing the job. Um so you know if that we were to face an override understanding the communication that has to happen with the public around that. So I felt
like she had a good understanding of us as a district and her way of fitting into it. Thank you Mariah. I agree with my colleagues Andy. All right. Um well, I found very very intriguing about Meen um just her her
deep experience in a district Worcester that um is at least as complex as Brooklyn and very very different. Um I I think she would bring kind of an outsers's perspective to Brookline and would tell us and the rest of the community some things that we might otherwise not get to hear. Um, so that
was intriguing to me. Um, I also, um, really liked the way that Robert talked about the importance of, um, personal relationships. So, but all of the candidates are extremely impressive. Are are those your rankings? Um, well, those two I found particularly in um,
intriguing. Okay, Carolyn. Um so I'll just start by publicly thanking um the candidates, the committee, the screening committee um for getting us for um interesting,
caring um fascinating, dedicated people who who all talked so passionately about um their care and love for students and what they do. So, um I find this extremely difficult. Um and I'm really
grateful for for having had the opportunity to spend an hour um listening to each of these professionals. Um I I I really loved also Moren's um
resourcefulness. um her her sort of what Andy said, I want to use the word folksy, but I don't know if I and I don't mean that in a I mean that in the best possible way.
I felt she was just um very very real um in particular and I loved her resourcefulness. Um, I really appreciated um BJ's experience with special education. Um, and she's clearly
um gets things done and has a a wide range of experience that's been successful. Um, really enjoyed listening to Rob. Also, very successful.
loved him talking about working with um and he's clearly effective. Um I do have to say I I guess for me um Bella having worked in like districts um
and and being a from Brooklyn um probably gives me a puts a little edge um there. I noticed that she didn't have notes, which was fascinating. Um, and impressive. Um, I like that she had gone
to law school. Um, and she just felt very calm and extremely competent um, and intellectual um, as well as compassionate. Um, I I
felt she really had a big picture and was holding an enormous amount of information in her head at once, which made me feel that she was very capable. Um, so I guess that would be my my my top at
the moment. Thanks, Bob. Yeah, thank you. Um, so we have a lot of information and we've had experiences, some of us have had two experiences live and in person with the candidates. Um,
I'm sure most everybody got emails from people once the candidates became public. Um, and I felt it was important um, for Val and I to talk with the references,
which was um, very insightful and important. Um, so Moren is a Worcester legend. She's I mean she knocked me out. She's
just she's smart. She's energetic. Um, she got so much done. She, you know, she she just is an amazing. I think she's amazing. She's a Worcester legend. BJ had that kind of energy as well, but was much more limited in terms of her
experience. And um, maybe we should consider BJ for the office of special to student services. Who knows? She's good at that. Um, I like Rob. um some of the reference people that we
talked to about him um created some concerns for me. And then there's Bella. Um Bella Bella provided very powerful references. She provided two school committee chairs
and one union president. um school committee chair from Lincoln Lincoln Sudbury, school committee chair from NATIC and the union president from NATIC and we had very long and good
conversations with all of those folks and they described some pretty extraordinary stuff about Bella um that you really can't get out of listening to somebody for 45 minutes or for an hour. Um I thought last year last year when she was the um interim in
NATIC a few things really stood out. I mean one of the things the the um one of the things the chair of the school board said was she got NIT quickly which I like. Um one of the things that the school board chair said
about Bella and NIC was that she came into a mess. she came into a fiscal mess and what she did with the budget um in NATIC was she kind of blew it up, sort of rebuilt it and then then
communicated to the community that no matter how many how many um savings she could identify, they could identify, they were going to still need an override this this year. um and
and she worked with a team to communicate to the community about what they had done and what they needed and this year that override passed. One final thing about the NATIC experience which was the interim was
that they had decided to close one of the small elementary schools in NIT um the year before she got there. You know how painful that is. It's a small community.
They had their school that they loved and because of the enrollment problem um they decided to close it. Bella spent time in that community demonstrating tremendous empathy for that community
and they were supposed to close the school in three years but because of the work that she did with that community in pain they decided to move more quickly and close it in two years instead of three. So that was powerful um for me as well.
She also had, you know, she spent 11 years in Welssley and 17 years in Lincoln Sudbury. Um, she was an outstanding teacher, a science teacher in Lincoln Sbury. They they loved her and they promoted her to be the department chair and then she did a
great job as department chair and she became the superintendent for 10 years. That's a nice pathway. I think that says something about Bella. Um, she's got an she's got an incredible academic record, which I think is not a
small thing. Obviously, she's proud of her Brookline High School roots. She's talked about that. Um, and I guess what I want to say about sort of a summation of of Bella is that
she's she's much softer than the other candidates. She's incredibly humble and she she thinks pretty deeply before she talks. And one of the powerful things for me is I like to I like to be
with people who want to listen to me as I don't I don't mean that in an obnoxious way. I I want one of my goals is if you if you're meeting with someone Mariah with you
I want you to leave that meeting feeling that I really listened closely to you and I felt that that Bella can do that and that's a very powerful leadership tool and so obviously I've spoken about
three people quickly and Bella for a a lengthy amount of time I think we know who And so the final thing I'll say about her is she's mentoring superintendents throughout the state. She's one of 12 of those people. And my close close colleagues and friends who
speak about Bella have always said she's an incredibly talented and decent and empathic strong leader. They sing her praises. And so my my choice is Bella. Thanks
Mariah. you had an addendum to your comment before I go. Yeah, I still agree with my colleagues, but I I just want to say too that um several people have mentioned the fact that she's from Brooklyn. And I just want to reflect on the on the fact
that in the entire state after Prop 2 and a half versus before, Brooklyn schools are quite different than what they were when she was a student, than when I was a student, than when you were an educator in Brooklyn schools. Right. I mean, this we are in a corrosive long-term corrosive
environment is I guess what I would describe it as. So um and I was having a conversation earlier with another one of us and we were talking about you know what is the difference over time with superintendents. The expectations of superintendents have changed dramatically. People talk about our our
dear superintendent Jim Walsh. Um he did not have to answer emails, right? He was not on social media. there is a different environment that we live in today which is and so I think um it's wonderful too to look backwards and to look at people's roots and I'm
supportive of Bella as I've said like many or most of my colleagues I think it's important for us to anchor um her value to the community and her present experience and expertise as a recent interim as an interim of like communities as many people have said um
those are really really valuable current experiences that to me make a tremendous difference. Thanks. Um, so I would like to move to appoint Bella Wong as interim superintendent of the public schools of Brooklyn subject to uh successful
contract negotiations with the chair. Is there a second? Suzanne seconds. Any further discussion? Okay, Bob, how do you vote? I vote an enthusiastic yes. Carolyn,
yes. Andy, yes. Mariah, yes. Sarah, yes. Suzanne, yes. Jesse, yes. Donna, yes. And I also vote yes. Um, thank you very much. I will uh I will call Bella. Um Betsy, I believe, is
going to pull us for a session next week, right, for needs for a a quick school committee meeting next week. Uh and we are us. What is the process for um notifying formally notifying the other
candidates and and sharing feedback as such? Does it go through the committee? It goes through Alvin. Okay. But there will be a formal process to close the loop with candidates. Yes. Thank you. Sure. And thank them for their petition. I absolutely will. Great. Thank you.
I will call Bellow when we're done and Alvin will get in touch with the other three candidates. Um and Betsy is going to pull for a meeting early next week. Fully remote meeting. Uh sorry related to this or
just Yes. contract. Um okay. And we are adjourned. Thanks everybody. Thank you. [Applause]