[Music] good evening everyone today is April 7th and the time is 6:36 p.m and I'd like to
call this meeting to order our first item on our agenda is to um do some clerical adjustments for the um statement of interest i have some wording here um to read and then we'll
make sure we have a correct motion so we can submit this having convened in an open open meeting on April 7th 2025 prior to the SOI submission closing date the Graanby Select Board of Graham Mass in accordance with its charter bylaws and ordinances has voted to authorize
the superintendent to submit the Massachusetts School Building Authority the statement of interest form dated March 31st 2025 for the Graby Junior Senior High School located at 387 East State Street Grammy Mass which describes and explains the following deficiencies
and the priority categories for which an application may be submitted to the Massachusetts School Building Authority in the future five replacement renovation or modernization of school facility systems such as roofs windows boilers heating and ventilation systems to increase energy conservation and
decrease energy related costs in a school facility seven replacement of or addition to obsolete buildings in order to provide for a full range of programs consistent with state and approved local requirements and hereby further specifically acknowledges that by
submitting the statement of interest form the Massachusetts School Building Authority in no way guarantees the acceptance or the approval of an application the awarding of a grant or any other funding commitment for the Massachusetts School Building Authority or commits the Graanby Public School District to filing an application for
funding with the Massachusetts School Building building authority can I have a motion yes you can it's so moved second all those in favor i I Excellent so I'll sign this and hand it
to Jenny okay all right next is um finalist number one interview with um I've heard it's Joanie Dr joanie Manard
okay so I think Todd is going to go and get her so we have in our packets the questions which we'll give her five minutes to look over when she first comes in and then we have our two um rubrics that states who's asking which question
and we also have um their applications and everything for reference for us any questions before we start uh just a comment uh thank you for all the preparation and printouts and I know that was a lot of administrative work so doesn't go unnoticed to the team yeah
thank you Jimmy thank you you're welcome let's go good evening hi hi John hard to meet you good how you doing thank you thank you for having me happy to have you here hi
nice to meet you too absolutely so we have a list of questions there we'll give you a few minutes to look them over and then we'll begin okay thank you okay are you ready sure okay why don't you uh go ahead and make an opening statement wonderful first of all thank
you very much i truly appreciate you giving me the opportunity to be here um I just wanted to briefly tell you a little bit about myself i'm finishing my 22nd year in public education in Massachusetts uh I entered the educational world as I was older i came
from the business world as a sales manager in BFI and waste management that brings a unique skill set to the table here um not only did I have to manage budgets but manage a crew of team um and also everything I did was based on
building relationships and selling i think in today's world a superintendent needs to market a school district and sell it to the community i knew that I wanted to become a superintendent u my parents are both in education my dad was an assistant
superintendent in Ohio for a county it's a little bit different system than here kind of grew up knowing it but I also knew if I wanted to become a superintendent I needed a unique set of skills so I wanted to do that intentionally so I taught for 11 years
in um public schools i taught both content areas science ELA and math i also taught unified arts so I can really see both sides of the teaching um unified arts teachers or specialists have very different needs than content
area teachers so I know both sides um I had a very unusual experience i taught in South Korea when it was still a third world country just this it's bugging me um I got paid more because I had blue eyes believe it or not um so it was a kind of unique experience but I've
also taught for four year four years at French River Collaborative which is an adjunct professor for Worcester State i taught teachers hands-on STEM classes as well as sped classes so I'm used to teaching teachers also um from teaching
I um was also a union rep when I taught i was also on union negotiations on the teacher side i went to mediation two times in Spencer Springfield a very big learning experience i went from teaching and I went into teacher leadership um
where I became a team chair department head um and also went to medway to become a STEM curriculum specialist and coach um and there was really in between i had non-administrative experience there but um really built standardsbased
report cards which hadn't existed before in the middle school ran a lot of hands-on events for families in the community which drew about 500 people so did a lot of uh really nice hands-on things there from there I went and became an elementary school principal in
Petersham for those of you guys who don't know Peters is its own district so I'm very comfortable with small school districts you can't get much smaller than that 125 students one class per grade um has its own unique challenges i had no assistant i had no data
specialist it was me myself and I so I'm very used to doing Desi reports doing all the discipline all of those ends um I was there four years one thing as a team I definitely am a collaborative leader and as a team we realized that
our literacy scores needed to rise together um we knew as a community that we wanted to protect our five specials for every single student which was STEM PE um art music and performing arts which
included um meditation so we knew we wanted to protect that everybody got together and we created a fluid K through2 literacy block we were able to greatly um raise our scores we went from the 25th percentile to the 48th
percentile in MCCAST um big on safety worked very closely with a police chief there did reunification drills a lot of other things that had not existed before from there I went on to um Gil Monagu right down the road i'm a secondary principal for 2 years for those of you
who don't know um I was a principal for 6 through 12 treated though very two different schools two very different staffs other than some shared staff had very different needs um and you guys know it's in Pioneer Valley very
comfortable with that during the time I was there was the first year I was able to with a team write a successful innovation pathways grants for healthcare and social assistance my second year advanced manufacturing which is a really big deal for Gil Monagu a lot of students didn't go on and receive
other go on to college or anything so it's a really big deal i started culture and climate clubs there um we had when I was hired there was a substantial need for marginalized groups needs not being addressed i kind of dug in with the staff and said "I'm really confused
because you guys are very caring staff with what's going on." They had never been trained to deal with bias in the classroom so we partnered with a collaborative out of Northampton did a lot of digging and a lot of training went up and told the students in front
of whole school meetings that we need to address those needs the staff has been trained we are going to address it in a moment if you feel that it's not done please come and talk to us i had by monthly culture and climate clubs went
up uh substantially from there um in in both schools I've always been a part of the district and that's what I would do in Graanby in Petersham I was part of festivals on the common and the duck
tank i kicked pigs for literacy scores i got duct taped to the walls you know so I I want to do those fun things you know it's a home away for home for the students and the staff and I know that and I need to make it fun um in my role now I've been there four years it's a
smaller school district i'm in charge of all the curriculum the audits the reviews curriculum mapping um PD we tie directly to our strategic plan everything's documented on our agendas how it's directly tied um I have done
learning walks data analysis very comfortable run the mentoring program new teacher induction innovation pathways again we just got the grant for Hollison so working on that again evaluation system vision of a graduate would have done a lot of work i know
you're doing work there standards based report cards really tying it to social emotional needs of the student working on PD on our tier one instruction and tier 2 instruction improving our safety i'm also um very involved with the school committee for budget and policy
subcommittee i really feel that by being a principal at all levels I know the social emotional and behavioral needs and academic needs of all levels very comfortable with that i think it's very important to bring that while I'm working with principles because I've
lived their lives i know what they need um but my background in um marketing and fundraising can also lend a lot here just because of the very uncertain times we kind of live in and I think that all
my skill set would be a wonderful melding of everything um together i was talking to some people earlier at one of theformational groups or elementary and we were talking about my dissertation was partnering with colleges and
businesses to provide PD for public secondary schools and I really am very comfortable with thinking outside the box and approaching people to help the schools i also feel that it's my job as superintendent to get out in the community and sell this sell the schools
during all times and going out and speaking at lions meetings or wherever you guys feels appropriate hill Monu I went inside the community because there were a lot of people that did not have transportation so I went to downtown and went to them so um those are just a few
things and I think I will touch upon some of my other skill set as we go along excellent so we're going to go down the line and ask questions and we have um five minutes for response for each one we have someone keeping time okay first question what does strong
school-based leadership mean to you as an administrative issue and learning strategy what is the proper balance between school-based management central office supervision and school committee policy policym and oversight you got a lot in there but let me try to pull it apart sure thing so I think it's really
important to build a strong leadership team and how do you do that um I think that you need to have time to to learn each other's styles i think a leader as a principal or a superintendent my job is to empower others empower them find
their passions try to get the barriers out of their way or get them the correct materials or find them the right resources or connect them to the right person and help them there i think that leadership is a collaborative effort i
think that um you know a superintendent in no way shape or form should should not be top down management it should be collaborative leadership um let me kind of qualify that though but I'm not afraid to make the tough decisions one thing I was saying earlier today that I
think in um when things are tough and even when they're not I need to remember that I need to go to the boots on the ground and I need to find what's working and what's not and part of what I would do and I'm just going to pass this out to you guys i made a um entry plan and
so part of the entry plan is talking to you talking to school leadership talking to the community talking to teachers of extra copies would be one hand and it's really identifying what people view as
RAM's strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats and what I would do in this case I would take the strategic plan and go through the four strategic initiatives and objectives and ask the strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats for each and that would define
my work that I would do when I first start off in Graanby the first part of it um in building that leadership team is listening i know I'm doing a lot of talking and it's hard to imagine me listening but um it would be listening to figure out what the needs are it's
not what Joanie thinks the needs are it's what Graby's needs are and um that's defined by the school committee staff leadership team um all of that um I think that um to go back to your
question that um learning strategy I think that administration should empower teacher leaders we should grow our own um so to speak um I think that there is
a balance between schoolbased management central office supervision and school committee policym and oversight um I have been blessed that I've been able to be in policy subcommittee the whole time I've been in Hollist and I realize the power that pol school committees
policies can have to support teachers and administrators and let me give you an example so um I'm in charge of all curriculum and one thing that some of our staff were struggling with is the new wellness standards and some of the teachers were uncomfortable with some of
the puberty standards um and so the school committee I brought that to the school committee and said it would be really appreciated by the teachers if we had some kind of policy that we support you know all the groups in the learning and support the standards and we were
able to do that and that gives the teachers more teeth and more they're more comfortable at when they have to address the standards so I think that um I think it's a wonderful thing when teachers share their needs leaders share
their needs and we can all partner together with the school committee to create policies that back them up that support them that support student learning support the learning for all
students uh uh I think that um we have done a big book study this year our leadership style were um reading a book by Steven Cvy called Trust and Inspire and we had to defined our leadership style and I define mine as you had to do
all these little tests transformative leader and it really is defining looking at that big picture and empowering others and providing them the resources in order that for them to do their job
um I think uh I would like to be um you know a sounding board to them we discuss it um I would know big picture i think it's very important that the staff informs me of possible hiccups so to
speak and I inform you um I look at potentially having a memo to you every week of just bullets of things that have happened to keep you ab breast of course if something happens that's of the essence I would text you and let you know nothing's worse than anybody being
caught um not knowing what's going on it's really easy to defend people if I know what's going on or if you guys know what's going on it's really hard to cover for somebody if you don't know what's going on so I just ask them as a leadership team to keep me informed
excellent jan is there time for a quick followup um I don't know where our time Oh I can wait till the end oh we're at five we're going to go well you can uh end okay yep thanks all
right let you grab a drink and relax for a second i know it's tough to talk go ahead all right uh tell us about your experience working in the curriculum area that may include identifying a need to revise curriculum implementing a new
curriculum or assessing the curricula that are already in place what did you learn from these experiences and how would you use what you have learned sure um so I'm lucky enough that I
oversee all the district curriculum and um we rewrote the district curriculum review process and in that is posted online that you can see on our website but it's making a K through 12 district
team that's comprised of teachers of of GenEd teachers of specialed teachers of multil- language learner teachers administrators and district leaders and all those people are coming together and we really utilize Desi has a implement
guide they call it implement guide I've been part of that process I think since 2021 um I'd have to look at my resume um and in that process we go to monthly meetings and we are able to tap into the whole state of what people have done
through their curriculum review processes what have they found to be success and successes and what they have found to be detrimental to the process we use that in Hollist to guide our process um I have curriculum I'm lucky
enough um I didn't have in Medway people underneath me and I did the curriculum reviews in Hollist i do have curriculum people underneath me and we meet and plan all those meetings um it really is making sure that we are hearing that K through 12 voice the only caveat that I
say because Desi is telling us that we need to implement curate rated or ed reports rated curriculum so that is our mandate when we are looking at resources that's what we need to look at um we just went through a 2year last year we
finished up a 2-year math review cycle which had not been done depending on who you ask 17 years or 21 years I don't know which um but anyways it was the first time that we were able to come together and figure out a K through um
five curriculum Eureka math squared and a 6 through 12 curricular resource reveal so now from that re from that um review that team makes recommendations on what professional development they need what resources they need and it's
my job to follow up on those um all along the way those are communicated to the families through school committee meetings um our final report recommendation goes to the superintendent who then brings it to the school committee who approves um the
funds or not i've had to go forward and request capital uh funds for curricular resources that I brought forward so I'm very comfortable doing that um it's really interesting since I've been there we have done when I first got there there was a wellness review that was
done from an outside vendor um so we followed up on that but since I've been there we've done a world language review we've done a math review we've done um an ELA review at the secondary level we're currently in an ELA at the elementary school level um we slowed it
down because we figured uh we got feedback that the capacity to implement new curricular resource for math is just too much like altogether so we had to slow down our roles so we have learned that and we've heard the teachers um
let's see here um going through us also assessing the curriculum review process part of it is doing gap analysis so it's looking at all the data we have MCCAST data we have
a data dashboard called open architects that we looked at and we're able to identify big gaps that we had we also literally drew out all the standards and made sure you know what grade was covering them are we addressing them went through there figured out gaps so
all along the way that team is identifying ways that we need to improve and making changes and pick picking out resources as we go um that work has defined our uh professional development we're working
with a group outside of Vermont called All Learners Network is pushing us to think algebraic thinking even down at the kindergarten level and building that all the way up but we're also getting
specific resource uh training from I um from Reveal and Eureka Math Squared the same time another way we're judging it is that we have I Ready for the elementary schools for benchmark testing and tier 2 instruction and IXL for the
secondary schools so we're able to progress monitor monitor and we have interventions at the same time we're using that to group students according to standards and um correct standards
misunderstanding as we go so that's on top of the curricular reviews wonderful uh I think you took care of the follow-up question so that concludes this question but if I can add something which I forgot to do so our community has asked us to be more transparent with
what we're teaching and when we're teaching it so if you look online we have developed um understanding by design templates that are posted online and it's all our stage one curriculum that's taught so it talks about
standards essential questions the goals the transfer task so we're really looking at designing curriculum in a backwards way and what do they need to know that is that standard and then how are they going to show they master it and we're really looking at student
engagement strategies in order to achieve that oh I'm next hi hi i'm Liz Leand uh the newest member of this hardworking team nice to meet you i have been watching you guys so I
know welcome thank you same to you given the stress in the lives of young people today and the social academic and even financial pressures they face how can educators in general and the
superintendent in particular have an impact on the emotional well-being of students so um I think as a superintendent um you're responsible for looking at the academic the behavioral and the social
emotional needs and we need to meet all of those and we need to do that in different ways depending on the levels because developmentally it's different for every child um let me give you an example so we've done a lot of training on Castle's competencies and the social
emotional strategies and you can do that through different programs we have a care program when I was at um Peterson we did responsive classroom um when I was at um Gil Monagu we had restorative justice and um PBIS type things but it
really is embedding it every day in your curriculum the new wellness standards have done an incredible job for this state and embedding social emotional standards in there so they're approachable at all levels um I see just like every district that I've been in
you have the the um expectations the posters all around right i think it's our responsibility to communicate to students what the expectations are right and I think it's better to have their peers show what the expectations are let
me explain that even in Petersham the young ones they used to act out what it meant how to walk in the hallway what it meant how to behave in the cafeteria we video recorded that and they shared it with their um colleague with their with
their peers um another thing I think it's our responsibility as a school district to communicate to parents where their um are guardians where their child is um I'm really excited in Hollist right now i'm working with a team of
elementary school teachers and administrators in building a st a new standardsbased report cards the one we had truly was not standardsbased and it was kind of not unified i'll just say that we have built on castle social
emotional compasses we have built a progression from K through fifth grade on what is age appropriate behavior and what the expectations are those are going to be on our report cards um we are going to build a landing page for
parents and having forums for parents about what these expectations are um it's all about building the culture of the school home i mean school is where a student is more than they are pretty much in waking hours we need need to
make it inviting we need to make sure they're physically safe they're emotionally safe and they're academically safe we need to make it um that we do a lot of training with teachers we've done a lot with Desi's MTSSmies on culturally responsive
teaching and making sure that every student feels welcome what does that look like we use it when we do our walkthroughs and we're looking for things is this safe and supportive environment how do we know that we're seeing some of those culturally responsive look fors within the
classroom so I think it's a lot of different things i think it's training staff i think it's training the community um but most of all it's showing that we as a school district want to support the whole child and we're going to do that in so many different ways and kind of educating
people about what that looks like um I think it's my responsibility as a superintendent to get out there and spread the word i think it's through superintendent roundts that people come into the school district it's me walking around classrooms it's me going to I
just went to the softball game out here in Beach tonight um you know I think it's very important that I'm physically seen in the community i carry around a notebook i know I'm old school people come up and talk to me and I write ideas about what their thoughts are and what improvements we could make so I always
want to get feedback can always be better no matter what you're doing um unfortunately I think the world has changed since co and um I've been in education before and after and
um the mental health needs the supports that we need to do we really need to look at a lot of different things in order to help them um I think it involves partnering with a lot of different groups outside of school such as like in Hollist we
partner with mental health organizations we partner with um counseling groups outside we do Sandy Hook um safe um I'm sorry Sandy Hook is um Sandy Hook Promise thank you thank you too many
phrases here too many acronyms um we also are doing um say something help me out here is it say something for the older students i think so say something so we know see something see something say something yes so we're you know it's doing a lot of different strategies and
getting a lot of speakers to come in and know that um we've done a lot of training on that we also in Hollist have um developed something that is called um I'm trying to remember the name of we
landed on we worked with the fire chief and um police among the safety committee and we came up with um a handle with care so you know there are confidential information about students that we can't
share but we can share hey this student is struggling be on the lookout use kid glove type things and that's what you know so we're trying to look at every avenue that we can in order to help and support students thank you
okay uh let's see what do you perceive as a superintendent's role in the community which you did address a little previously i think a lot of different things i think it's to support you um in
information that you are looking for i definitely know my role would know my role as a superintendent um in negotiations i know that I'm there for to give you advice or support or whatever you're asking me to do it's not me speaking during the negotiations i
fully understand that um it's to me also to give you advice you on different policies or different things we need um go to you for support and keep you in the loop about curricular needs um that we have i think for you know it's different needs for different groups
it's for the leadership team to really enable them to be the leaders of their building so it's empower them make sure that I am making I am um giving them the supports they need i'm going to bat for them i'm fighting the good fight um for
staff I'm doing the same thing um for the community it's going out and it doesn't matter if it's a bad budget year or good budget year although I don't know if good budget years are going to exist ever again in Massachusetts but um is going out in the community and really selling the schools to the community um
what do I mean by that so in every community there's a lot of empty nesters who have no um interactions with the school district so it's really selling and marketing what's going on here how do I do that i go out to meetings i publicly speak how do I do that i
publish newsletters that I hope maybe we could put on the website as well as the town website um it's really getting out there in the community it's being at plays it's being at sporting events it's listening to people's concerns um it's going around in my entry plan and
meeting with the different groups meeting with the select board meeting with police meeting with fire um meeting with the principles oneonone and really getting the feel um I think it's also me advocating for our needs out in the
state so um I'm a big proponent um I'm a since I have been assistant principal um and when I was principal I was also on the state level um very involved when I was principal I was the ed policy chair for the Massachusetts School Administrators Association for six years
that we wrote policy paper uh papers trying to really get the word out there what the educational needs are now as assistant superintendent I work my um superintendent is the co-president of the tri county superintendent round table i go to every meeting but we work
with our legislators and legislators and make sure that they know exactly what's going on um I think you know there's a big disconnect sometimes nothing against any uh legislator but hearing what they're talking about but directly how it impacts their local schools and what
their needs are um really advocating for that um it's also going out to the state and bringing back expertise and knowledge that we can use in Graanby and sharing that it's not me owning the knowledge it's me coming back and sharing it with appropriate people to
empower them to use it um I think it's so many different things i think it's a 24-hour job i'm used to that schedule um last week I'll give you an example we had a school committee meeting and I'm
not suggesting you do this until 11:30 at night had a meeting the next morning i had to be present for it for 7:30 in the morning that we had some visitors coming in that's the reality of the job i fully know that um I'm an empty neester i'm in a wonderful stage in my
life i purposely did not become a principal or hire until I my kids were older when I became a principal our youngest was in college and then I knew I can give my all to it my husband owns two businesses he is plenty busy with
his job where I'm busy with my job he's a peach though because he comes along at date nights and goes to sporting events with me and musicals and all that so you would see him there too um but I knew what my expectations are of a
superintendent and I knew I could not do that um until I was at this stage in my life so um I would really go back to all of you teachers community members and school committee members what are your expectations every community that I've
been in has had different needs right no community is the same um it should be your expectation at all the events it should be your expectation that I'm at town events it should be your expectation that I'm at select board meetings you need me there it's that
should be the expectation that is the expectation of myself how you doing okay i am good okay how have you built lines of communication with the various district stakeholders such as your leadership team the faculty community leaders
business interests and families as part of your response would you talk about how you would build a line of communication to the municipal leadership okay so um let me kind of break it down so for I'm just going to go in order here for leadership team
when I was principal I found out um you there's so many hours in a day and you can't make the day longer but you can use it more effectively so the staff was asking me you know we really need professional development or hey we really need to collaborative
collaboratively problem solve this when can we do it and I said "How about if I put all the nuts and bolts in a weekly newsletter to all of you if you promise to read it and I'm telling you if you
tell me what is that I'm going to say it's in the newsletter." We use that time to work on all these things that we have identified as a staff so both places I was principal that's how we ran the faculty meetings so we found time okay so they kept their end I kept my
end I kept them informed about the nuts and bolts so we weren't talking about um you know things you there are one-offs like MCCAST you can't do through a nuts and bolts program you have to do actual training right so there are certain things you cannot do that way but we
found a lot of time um we were able to do professional development that way um the faculty um in both places I was principal um and now not as much but I do some more newsletters it's a platform
to use that you can embed pictures and videos um when I was principal and um I sent out a bimonthly community newsletter which had tons of pictures and videos in people loved it um it went
to the whole community and both towns were able to post it on their town website so everybody could access it um it went really well um businesses did also so as far as um uh families I sent it out on on our
list serves um okay so business and families I did both things so I went out into communities um groups that asked me to speak such as Lions Clubs or something like that um but I also asked to go and
speak in businesses um I've done a lot with going out and this is where my sales comes in handy convincing different businesses to support support our schools either financially um intellectually meaning with their
knowledge that they have to share this is my whole dissertation my doctoral dissertation um and also sharing resources that they might have so it's really looking at going out into the community and
convincing people that it takes a community to to do a good job of educating students and we need everybody's help let me give you some other examples i was able to at Gil Managu I was able to bring in a lot of we brought innovation pathways in and
there were a lot of students that didn't know all the possibilities of different um jobs and so their family situations or who they were living in they really didn't have exposure to those jobs so I brought in a lot of families in like the
community members and spoke to their jobs to see if those students were interested in that i kind of modeled it off another school district doing that so bringing pulling people in Hill Monagu we had a job fair and in in uh Turner Falls there's a lot of people
that have started their own business um and there was one guy really big in NASCAR racing and they brought in information so for our juniors and seniors to go around and practice and ask questions and kind of interview with them it's kind of bringing the whole
community in um uh line of communication to m municipal leadership i would start with the entry plan but then I would ask if we could meet on a regular basis that's what I've done in every single district I've been in right that's the way to
build a relationship with them um is to partner with them what are they looking to do how can I help them how can the school get on board um Peter Sam Gil Monagu and Hollison we were able to move a ton of safety work forward with the partnerships with the
school districts right um it's critically sadly important um in today's world to partner together and to always improve on that so I think that um it's going starting off introducing myself ask when we can meet I would do the
squad analysis with them also asking them what they view Graham's these school districts strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats and then I would come you're going to see a theme I have every place I've worked and kind of prioritize those and ask those partners
to work together to achieve those goals excellent thank you you're welcome ready go ahead okay just wetting my wetting my mouth every once in a while what experience have you had implementing reorganizations or change in organization how did you do this what
were the challenges and regrets um I apologize to all of you because I've now this is like my fourth interview i did not tell you about the literacy um block at Peter Sam correct the fluid literacy block you mentioned that in your opening
statement okay so I gave you that example okay let me think of another example that is one example right because we knew we needed to change right um okay let me give you another example um in
uh Peterson which is a very small ski district that I told you about um we knew that we needed to do a lot of safety improvements so that was uh partnering very closely with Chief Kulie we were really really lucky when I was in Peter Sam chief Kulie would be there
every day at the elementary school greeting the students so it was this really um shared responsibility very dynamic relationship that the students got to know him on a very personal basis in a non-threatening way right he knew all their names knew everything going on
so we really worked closely together to make some changes there um uh challenges were financial um really kind of thinking outside the box to get funding to do something such as
bulletproof glass and things like that um regrets I had no regrets doing that um I think that let me give you another example in um Hollison when I first started my first year I had as you know
in small school districts I'm very used to this you have to wear many hats um underneath your roles and I had no curriculum people underneath me we have about 2,700 students and we knew that we needed to do a much better job in
aligning our curriculum um doing curriculum reviews doing student engagement um really kind of making sure that our students owned and mastered the standards and so my first year I had no
staff underneath me for that my second year we made a structure where I had three people underneath me i had one district unified arts person one district STEM person and one district humanities person
we really found it's very hard to work across four buildings and keep that all together so we shifted for this school year we were um lucky enough to be able to restructure that we had interventionists in our schools but we
have building based people now and I have one district unified art arts person so we have a STEM and the humanities person in each one um we have found that to be much more successful than our old model um they're able to meet more frequently with teachers
they're able to coach teachers now they're able to advise them on the curriculum mapping they were not doing interventions for students before now they're doing tier 2 interventions so it's a lot of different things but there were different iterations that we found
um that we thought would work and then we found this really isn't the best fit for Hollist so we had to rethink what we were doing and kind of reallocate how we were putting our dollars and how effective we were because this is a much more effective model than what we had
before sorry about that so please describe a decision you made that in retrospect you wish you had made differently i mean you can see all those bullets underneath um how did you come
to understand that the the decision needed another look what process did you follow and why what would you do differently and why and what did you learn from the experience mhm um let me
give you uh let's see trying to think of what I have not told you about i told you about uh Gilmanu um and the PD we needed to do um I think that
um Peter Sam uh a lot of the community was very vocal about their wants and if you don't know it's a very um um a community focused on nature and Peter Sam forest is centered there i
mean Harvard forest excuse me Harvard forest is centered there so a lot on nature and um people were asking us for a STEM focused program which is right up my alley that's that's my jam and that's what I taught so when we
first were looking at that we thought it was going to be an afterchool program that was going to have to be funded by parents um I quickly realized that that was going to fall flat and I knew I needed to regroup and figure out something to do differently
um I was able to move around my budget a little bit i was able to get people to donate their services or volunteering i taught a lot of the classes we got very creative we asked for material donations cuz it was all hands-on um
so I knew just from the feedback I was getting from the community I need to needed to do it differently um I wanted to ask them my idea of what they wanted and their idea of what they wanted were two very different things so I knew I specifically had to ask them
"What are you looking for?" Cuz we had a STEM class for every K through sixth grade student every week but I didn't know exactly what they were looking for so that was my first time being a principal i would have asked a heck of a lot sooner than what I did because that
was a lot more work on myself right um I I I learned very quickly especially when it's your time right um what did I do about it because I knew it wasn't going to meet their needs and I knew that I needed to provide that
afterchool care and that after school curricular engagement for the students um going forward um you know just like the entry plan I go in and ask questions before I develop something like that now I do like kind of like a mini version of
an entry plan now if it's a big initiative if it's a big change I go that route now and I've saved myself so many problems um and we get to the result a lot quicker um I'm delivering
on what people want um people are happier all all the way around but I did learn from that first time thank you mhm how would you work with local and municipal officials to generate support and trust for the schools um I think
I've touched upon a few things right but I would start by doing the entry plan with them i would ask them when how often they would like to meet you know I you know would tell them I think it's really important that all of us are showing a uni unified front in Graanby
so I think in order to do that everybody needs to know that they're on the same page and the only way you can do that is meet and have honest conversations I think that um I want to make sure that they understand that every decision that I'm going to make is based on what um is
most effective for the students and the Graanby community and I need to hear from them that input also as well as your input but I think it's um it's meeting regularly it's building trust by being
transparent in communication but then following through on what I say I'm going to do right um nothing's worse than "Yeah yeah yeah I'm going to do that." And then it never gets done you know they're not going to believe me at all um I think it's you know going out
with them for a coffee and just a chat and just having honest conversations as well as all of you what you're looking for um I think once everybody's on the same page and we know um what is best for Graanby Graanby um as we all know uh
you know I in in Hollist we have a substantial budget and it's um 3/4 of our budget is for the um salaries but it's the bulk of the town
but you know districts need to realize you know that we are impacting ing town services right so we need to partner together a school district cannot decimate the fire department or the police department i mean we need to partner together to figure it out and
what does that look like what what are Graanby's needs um I would want to go to the experts meaning the select board chair meeting the police meeting the fire what do they need what do we need everybody puts it on the table and kind of tries to figure it out um I think you
know that as long as everybody knows that everybody's there for the right reasons and um we can agree to disagree as long as it's respectful um I'm all in and they will quickly see that but I'm all in and I want to do
what's best for Green next question about I'm sorry I couldn't hear you about 10 minutes before the meeting so we have two questions in only 10 minutes gotcha okay i'm sorry that fan is going sorry tell me about a meeting in which
you had to tell others something they did not want to hear how did you communicate those ideas to them what was the result of the communication if you could do it again is there anything that you would change in the way you communicated or the way in which you communicated it and why
mhm so we have very specific union agreements um I'm on the monthly meetings with the union um I was a union rep when I was um in a teacher also but some of them I I'm in charge of all the
evaluations and um there have been changes as you all know with DESay requirements for evaluations and so those have changed what we need to do for evaluations so I have had to be the person to communicate that it's not because the
superintendent or myself want to be a pain in their side desi has made changes right and they take it like that right and so why like where is that coming from we're a public school district we need to follow these mandates these are
what the mandates are these are the changes that we need to make these are how we're going to implement them so it's really being forthcoming about the why right nothing's worse than implementing something new if it's just to implement and people have no idea why
people are not going to get behind it people are just going to get up in arms and it's not going to get done so it's really about that transparent communication again it would be done in you know like um in this case I went around to faculty meetings let me give
you an example my first year we had a desi audit on curriculum and one of the findings was that we had uh opportunity for growth in student engagement so I had to be the one to go deliver the news to all four schools and the faculty
meetings that we need to change our student engagement practices so how I started that was I had shared the DESIE report with them prior to that telling them this is not something that Hollist did wrong this is a regular reoccurring
desi audit right so nobody was in trouble but these were their findings so we were very transparent with the findings and then we kind of talked about and we brainstorm together at each level um so we have four schools about what that's going to look like that has
evolved into from those conversations has evolved to having learning walks at the district level having learning walks at the building level and now the building principles are starting to have learning walks with their administrative team and curriculum coaches in the
teachers classroom with the end goal being that like I was in Peter's hand when teachers get to go in other teachers classrooms and observe right but I think that nobody wanted to hear all of the work and improvements that we needed to
make but it helps if you're telling them where that's coming from um fully being transparent you know everybody processes things differently so arming them with information before I came to them so they could read it on their own so they
could have questions for me and I'd be able to answer them so it's really kind of being thoughtful about laying out that process in order for people to digest it intake it and come up with awesome questions that we can brainstorm together next slide
last question how would you describe your leadership style and what particular strengths do you believe you will bring to our school system so again I I told you all already that you know we had to take the quiz about what kind of leader we are really and
I'm one that um I've been lucky enough in my career in my life that people have kind of mentored me and I've kind of f found mentors along the way but I think it's really um a district leader's responsibility to empower others and
give them the right resources so they they can do their job i have found that when you do that they fly and do amazing things that you didn't even come up with and I discovered that when I before I
got into education and I was um volunteering and I told you have a different skill set and this kind of goes to the question too that I'm very comfortable doing fundraisers i was the president of the Junior League of Worcester and in four days this is the 1990s we netted $75,000
another event I did with my husband we netted $34,000 in one night so I'm really comfortable doing that but those were all volunteers and look at what they were able to do so it was me getting out of their way me listening to
what they wanted to do me hearing what their passions were me capitalizing on their interests and their passions and letting them fly um let me give you another example in Peter Sand before I got there i think the STEM teacher was
teaching maybe you know once a month to each grade and I know the value in that and how excited she was i'm like "No let's work it in that you're doing it every week you know and she was phenomenal at it she was having students coding in kindergarten." Um but it's
really empowering those people and tapping into their superpowers um letting them do what they're good at ty we have a couple minutes um anything that you would like to say in closing any additional questions for us um no but I just wanted to point out um I
think over the interview and we've talked about it i really looked at your strategic plan and um this is uncomfortable because I I don't like I've always done things collaboratively and on a team but I feel very strongly that I have a lot to offer you in all
four areas of the strategic plan and I'm very comfortable doing that um high quality instruction I live that and eat that and breathe that every single day and I've done it through all my roles um supportive and and safe learning environment just so you know I team I'm lucky enough on our leadership team i
have a student services director and a director of social emotional learning and equity and the three of us have really partnered about what we need to do collectively for what's best for all students um we came to the conclusion with 30 other people that I ran that
we're concentrating on tier one instruction um really strengthening that for all students and kind of looking at what we do um making sure that everybody's aware of DECAP what they can do within the classroom what services they can provide for students
communication collaboration community engagement i'm very comfortable going out i talked about culture and climate clubs i talked about superintendence chats i talked about going out in the meetings um I talked about partnering um
with schools um and with the the town leaders and then finally um systems and structures very comfortable with budgets um very very comfortable doing that I've been held accountable in Peter Sam we
did things the oldfashioned way I had this huge book I had 99 line items I had to keep justification for each 99 line items and talk about that that has forced me to become a really good person because I keep justification for all of
my lines i operate like they had me do it in Peter Sam which has served me well because I can easily find what I'm looking for and defend why I've made those decisions um so please just think
about the the breadth of experience I provide um I've been a K through 12 administrator i know the behavioral needs the academic needs um the social emotional needs and it's very different as we know for all levels and the
principles at all levels need different support because of the needs of the student so I'm really comfortable doing that and please consider my outside experience in business and fundraising and marketing i think that really composes of what the duties of a
superintendent are in um this decade do you have any um questions for us i do not so you are deliber while other you're deliberating tonight correct yes okay and are you making a decision tonight then depending upon how deliberations go but that is our
ultimate goal okay all right okay um we have a number to reach you if we do um so we can contact you either way yes do you do you have it or um Why don't you just give it to me 508 508 736 736 43 43
81 81 Excellence yep okay okay i would be honored to represent the Graanby public schools so thank you very much thank you so much yes check all missing did you need any more copies of these um
I think I think we're all set okay thank you so much you're welcome thank you yes if you um don't mind telling me how we're behind okay great yeah i think we uh we can have a everyone can have a breather for a minute and we'll um time
you like me to bring Mary Jane can you give us five tell me pleasure of meeting each of you thank you so much thank you very much hi Mary Jane Rickson mary Jane what are you doing here fancy meeting you are you warm no it
must have been freezing i was thinking about you it was freezing and cold they won i checked them before I came over mhm so they were uh I was coming over and they were coming off the field running to their cars so I know it's not super
professional but I need to wear my coat cuz I'm freezing sorry i'm going to take all night to get that chill off for sure [Music] okay we'll let you look at the questions for
a few minutes okay that'd be great no okay you good yeah I think I I'm going to take You got like two more minutes if you want to look take the I'm good okay just want to keep reading i was hoping you would take some more
time i just select that's embarrassing okay i heard some exciting news did you have a baby yet no not yet really you told me this morning i said "What it's happening it's not fast enough." I got panicked
yeah I got panicked there for a minute and go ahead with your opening statement when you're ready great i want to thank you for having me today i'm truly grateful for the opportunity to um be a candidate for superintendent um not only as someone who's had the privilege of serving in this role before but somebody
who really is committed to um being part of the community um I was really um excited to be given this position and being part of the transition i was really um appreciative of the unique opportunity that was given to me um I appreciated the resilience the
dedication and the determination that I saw from the staff this year it had really been remarkable and I was really glad to be part of that um I've had to opportunity to work with teachers families um town officials and um work closely with many of the students so um
I just want to say I witnessed a community that is deeply committed to ensuring that everybody's successful and doing right by its children so I was glad to see that um just want to know what drives me every day is the students every decision I make whether it be
facilities um curriculum um staffing budgeting I say how is this going to impact the students so I try to make sure that the decisions I make and as a school committee I know that is also your vision and your mission so I just want to say that I'd like to continue working um as that as my vision and uh
having that shared priority as as a as a committee um I have a think I'm collaborative um I really listen to my um heart and I'm grounded my decisions are grounded with a respect for the people who make up this district so I
have to say that um I'm it's really excited to continue this journey of giving the opportunity um to build strong lines of communication really work to ensure that those things are happening and looking for ways to strengthen how we do
business here and work with the students to create a vision that supports all of our students so that would be the next statement so we have um 10 total questions we'll go down um we each been assigned one to
ask for you and we have um five minutes to answer um we have someone keeping time okay and so we'll let you know if we're getting near that okay perfect thank you first one what does strong school-based leadership mean to you as
an administrative issue and learning strategy what is the proper balance between schoolbased management central office supervision and school committee policymaking and oversight strong schoolbased leadership means that principles and assistant
principles should be able to have autonomy when making decisions for their students and um they need to make decisions that are aligned with the district priorities and policies um principles know their students principles know their staff they have
the ability to ensure that what's happening in their building is what's best for the building however principles can't operate in a vacuum they need to operate within the district of our strategic plan and our priorities so central office when you work with
central office and schoolbased management I like to think central office is a service-based provider what can we do to support our principles what can we do to support our students what can we do to support what they need would that be professional development would that be resources would that be um
facilities what can we do to support you so that is a tiered approach so um I like to to use that as a as a mantra you know even though we are all here for the same thing we have different roles so they're the deliverers we are the service providers that's kind of how I
use it i don't know if that makes sense but so when it comes to school committee policym oversight my job is to work with you to make sure that I stay a breast of what's happening with policies and um oversight so my job is to work with
um our legal MASC places that have policy developers towns and seeing how can I support that in the district and then if it is a policy decision I need to work with you to create new policy or ensure that the policy is part of our district plan um and then we work
together to make sure that we um that me and the central office work together to institute those policies make sure that we follow the regulations and and the policies we set forth that could be budgeting like we just did the title 9 policy we have to redo that as a group
so we talk about that how do we want to support that and when those um things come up we make sure we review the policy and follow the structures and procedures and practice that we put in place so really I need to remain current bring that information to you folks and then we institute um how that works
moving forward tell us about your experience working in the curriculum area that may that might include identifying a need to revise curriculum implementing a new curriculum or assisting the curricula that is
already in place what did you learn from these experiences and how would you use what you have learned okay I'm going to use an experience I had in Athol we I as the director of curriculum in that particular district I
can honestly say that um it was a great experience we had taken a look at some of our data and we had noticed that there was some gaps within um the grade levels the transition grades specifically between grades six and seven and eight and nine and and at the
uh grades three and four so we take a look we took a look at our curriculum so what we did is we created a curriculum committee and the curriculum committee got together to take a look at the data we have to find out where the deficiencies lie and was it a matter of instruction was it a matter of the
materials we were using was it um the um teacher was it this cohort of students so we really took all that information this was a three-year process that that we uh started so it wasn't a one and done it was a three-year process so there was steps the first year was gathering the data and then at that
point we realized okay we need to take a look at the curriculum in a bowl so what we did is we asked a group of teachers to pilot specific curriculums one um did wonders and I can't think of the other one and somebody did I can't think one
was wonder one was something from a gro so we had them each try different curriculum to see what they liked then in the summertime we we found some money to work with those groups of teachers to take a look at what curriculum did they like the best and we and we talked about
that but the first thing we did after we got that information is let's take a look at the curriculum we're using and we created thematic units so the second grade teachers got to work with the third grade teachers and the third grade teacher said "Hey looks like you guys are missing um writing or in in the case
of math numeracy was an issue." So we really took had those teachers work together to create thematic unions that carried through um horizontally uh with the curriculum so we did that and we created a curriculum it took all year to do this we started in the summer and the teachers got paid through the summer and
entered the year after school and we created a um K through 8 curriculum map so we're able to do that and then what we did is we went back to talk about let's take a look at those curriculums that we piloted those two curriculums that we piloted and where does that fit in with our thematic units and what it
looks like so then we went back and and instituted I believe it was wonders back then um because um so one of the things we made sure that we did is let's follow this curriculum with fidelity to see what our results look like and we did that for a while um the first year but the second year we realized that you
know wonders didn't really have a really strong component of of reading I mean of writing so what we did is we tweaked a little bit to continue that in the third year so by the end of the third year we had a c curriculum that was lined from grades K through grade um eight
vertically aligned and the teachers had a lot of meetings um but again it took a lot of time working with the um collective bargaining unit we had to work with um the administrative staff we had to work with parents we had a lot of meetings with parents to see what this
is going to be like so throughout the year was an ongoing process we reported to the school committee uh periodically the curriculum committee so we really took a time to create a meaningful um and robust curriculum for K through 8 and I had left I I left when it when we were getting to the high school um
curriculum at the at the English language arts which I was really excited to work on but I didn't get the opportunity with that so I learned that things need to go slow and steady you just can't jump at any new item it takes time it takes patience and it
takes perseverance people often times say this is not going to work but we have to support them we have to continue to say you're going to be okay let's try to get through this and see what we need to do to focus on making sure that we're better practitioners and making sure we get the students so we can't be a one and done we have to continue to follow
through continue to hold the teachers accountable continue to go in the classrooms to offer PD and those supports so that was one of my best experiences i really enjoyed it i was very proud of the work that we did during that during that uh three-year period it was a lot of work but it was very rewarding
okay i think you included an answer to the follow-up question so that concludes that question my turn given the stress in the lives of young people today and the social academic and even financial pressures
they face how can educators in general and the superintendent in particular have an impact on the emotional well-being of students i think there's a lot of stresses on young people today as you you are correct um so it's important for the district to to create a the whole child
approach approach we focus on that here in Graanby because we use PBIS second steps and we follow the MTF MTSS which is the multi-tered system of supports for our students um so the whole child approach really focuses on PBIS which is
behavior so we talked about behavior with students we um on a daily basis we track students using our Swiss data data which helps us um perform interventions for the students we're able to look at the students data whether it behavior
academically social emotionally we take a look at that data to provide immediate interventions long-term interventions um whether it be um responding immediately but it's really important for us to have these programs in place because if you want students to be successful in order for them to be successful they have to
feel safe and a sense of belonging and they can't have those sense of belonging that safety unless they feel that they're being supported in those other areas so we have to make sure that we continue to focus on finding opportunities to make students have a voice be part of the conversation um
really become part of the fabric of of the decision-m even you know first grader can make a choice whether they want to walk now or I I don't know whatever they need to do but they don't have to be ginormous decision-m but we do have to give students a choice because I
think that's important for them so really we need to do a good job of making sure that those needs are being met because if we want students to have academic success they have to feel um emotionally um support thank you
what do you perceive as the superintendent's role in the communication i think the superintendent's role is multifaceted um but ultimately it's about um showing a commitment to the students i find the superintendent should be an
ambassador of education that is how I um like to perceive myself my job is to advocate for our students but I can't do that unless I become a part of the community um be part of the fabric of the discussions that are happening at
the town level really um being a steward of public resources so what does that look like i need to advocate for PTO or the booster club or even the town you know what does that look like um we need to I need to create a shared value with
the town and the community you know what do we value in education how do we want to support our students what is our return on investment ultimately any student that stays in the Graanby public schools will probably end up living in the area they become community members so we really need to put invested interest in what we're seeing i know an
ROI is something we talk about with with um business and such but I think a return on investment really would strengthen the Graanby community in itself so taking a look at that um so really being visible
right now I've had some conversations with the cultural council so really taking time to meet with the folks that are out there i just met with the cultural council person last week and we're very excited that the culture council is now going to offer us some funding they're going to give out awards
at um our music and our arts night that we're going to have in the fall in the spring so they've offered to work with us and really um what can we do to be a better community they're interested in creating a better sense of community themselves so I've had a meeting with them they're interested in maybe in the summer creating um an opportunity for us
to put something on the front lawn a statue or some sort of artwork and bring the students on bring in some food trucks really trying to make the school a sense of community again we need to bring that sense of belonging back here so I've worked with the Graanby uh council on that um and it's not bringing
people it's also going out last week a couple weeks ago I mean I do go to some sporting events but most of my things that I go to are outside of the district i went to the art show that was great seeing the students go to the art show i enjoyed seeing that um and things like that i attend I attend you know board
selection meetings when I need to do those things um you know and and after school things I tend with some of the parents I see there so I think really it's being an ambassador a steward and really advocating for the students as best I can and building relationships um
working with the Chamber of Commerce is something I'm also calling right now i've taken the opportunity to reach out to the South Atl you know I'd like to get more involved with that what can I do to to help us with that area so I worked with that um and I do have some communications with the police and fire
department um I meet with um the chiefs of both departments i just had a meeting a couple couple weeks ago i canceled one we had the other day um but we're looking at our emergency response so we're looking to do some reunification for students emergency response so we meet with them um so I'm trying to run
the gamut of meeting lots of folks and I'm done a lot but there's a lot more that I can do for sure thank you how have you built lines of communication with the various district stakeholders such as your leadership
team the faculty community leaders business interests and families as part of your response would you talk about how you would build a line of communication to the municipal leadership in many of my districts is not just doesn't just pertain to Gramby but and I
often times um create um email chains and and I'm going to use mayor for example I had a great relationship with our town administrator and the town uh town in general we had department meetings on a monthly basis so every department in the town went to those
meetings um we had school department the police department fire department um I think it was the parks department so we were all together and we met together as a group so that's one way to have those communication chains um that's not on my end but I'd like to be part of those conversations in some of my other
districts and then I take that information and I bring it back to my um my team so that's one of the things I did and the faculty um creating opportunities with my principles to work with them um we're very fortunate that our principles send out weekly
communications um I try to put my information in those principles communications um if I have a special communication I would certainly put it out on our website and our Facebook page i have an assistant who did an incredible credible incredible job recreating our website and our Facebook
page um she does a nice job with with those type thing and making sure that we stay up to date on that um we push out notifications are pretty pretty good so I'm very happy with that community lead community leaders is as as much is um again I reached out to the culture council the the um chamber of commerce I
worked with the senior center and lots of places I've been to um in the town of Winington I worked for the library department for the library um and we created a program called one book one community so the community and the schools read one book and at the end of
the I want to say five months we brought in the author of the And so we were able to do that to provide funding again with actually that was the culture council library council and the school department we funded together to bring the author back so the
students and the families could meet with this author and discuss his book and it was really a great way to see the generational um intertwining of reading the same book so a different perspective was very very interesting i was really happy to see that so really trying to find interest that everybody's
interested in doing business interests are extraordinarily important um haven't done as much in this district but in some of my past districts I brought businesses into um some of our job fairs and career fairs especially when I worked at Pathfinder we had the opportunity to bring lots of businesses
in to uh talk about what jobs look like and I'd like to do some of that here in Grandi i had some conversations with our guidance director about how can we bring more businesses in here and what can we do to create showcase what their opportunities are out there for students so that is something that I I'm
interested and families you know trying to put out as much news information as I can trying to be as proactive as I can and you do that through newsletters uh via email um I'm one of the things I've tked my principles to um the end of this
year and next year is I'd like to see us put more things into the Sentinel or and the Daily Hampshire Gazette so each month there's going to be a principal tasked with and I've done this in some of my other districts each principal will be tasked with putting some kind of
article or some highlighting of the school i actually did that in um again I did that in May and we um each had something every month we had something in there so we could showcase the school and that's another way for us to be part of the the conversation so media is very
important so I think um social media as well so those are some ways that I would definitely um talk about that and one of the things I'm looking to do is create a communication plan and I'll answer the last part of this in a second i am working on right now a communication plan that incorporates all that
information and I hope to present it during my evaluation at the end of the year so that you can see what that communication plan looks like moving forward and good bad and different to you so I really um important to use that now creating a communication plan with the municipal leadership is something
that I'd like to do um we have a pretty good relationship right now they've been very generous with us this year so I'm very grateful that they were able to do that but I think really taking the opportunity to um get more involved and be part of the conversations at these at these meetings is something I I
definitely would u see myself doing sure thank you what experiences have you had implementing reorganizations or change in organization how did you do this what
were the challenges and regrets well that's a big question um well I've been involved in several reorganizations i'm just trying to pick one that I think would one of the things I'd like to talk about is early on maybe halfway through
my career when I was administrator we realized that our district was not mass compliant which meant you'd have four years of math four years of science four years of language arts and and so on so and so forth so in order for us to do that we had to restructure the schedule um and that included at that time the
district I was was working with had the schedule actually into their contract so we had to negotiate what would that look like with our um collective bargaining unit so it impacted the um prep time it impacted the um lunchtime it impacted
lots of things um impacted time what the classrooms look like it became long block teaching so it impacted professional development had lots of impacts so one of the things we had to do is really take the time and communicate so that was a big undertaking and it took us again all
year to do that um and it organization was not easy it um that time it was a little bit um I want to say um what's the word I'm looking for it was fearful for a lot of the it was a lot of unknowns on everybody's end so we
didn't know how it was going to turn out but we did know that we had to become mask compliant so um some of the challenges I had I think we probably could had a lot more meetings and put a lot more input we did have groups putting together different types of schedules so we had you know five different schedules we said at staff
meetings okay this is the schedule of how this is going to look let's take some vote but I think I probably did it too holistically i think I could have honed in on a couple more things instead of showing everything at the same time I probably should have just sat with our committee and said "Okay let's present just these two instead of all five." But
that was early on in my career and you know those are some things and I also one of my biggest regrets and I think actually I'm going to that's probably the next question i'll answer that one um so I think really taking that and
another um reorganization I had I was actually part of a district that was looking to regionalize i was part of that district and part of that conversation um so because we were finished our feasibility study we were now looking for a partner one of the things that we had in the organization
was trying to to create opportunities so we could meet with these other districts to see you know what we could offer each other and although this wasn't my role to do that it was the um other folks part of the conversation i think if I had um taken more time to create some of
these um shared services early on we probably would have been able to connect with a dis a district differently for example bringing in um PT and OT we could have shared services um and we ended up doing that at one point um and I didn't stay at the district to find out what the what the um organization we
shared a special land director at that time and it was really um kind of a cool a way to do things but uh we weren't able to actually regionalize because um there were other challenges and I think my challenge is I didn't stay in that district and I would have liked to to seen the whole
regionalization come to fruition i think it um because I didn't stay I think some of the the issues became um non-existent so I do regret that i would have liked to seen that through for sure caught me writing my notes um please
describe a decision well this almost ties in so you could keep talking about that um please describe a decision you made in retrospect you wish you had made differently um how did you come to understand that the decision needed
another look what process did you follow and why what would you do differently and why what did you learn from the process or experience you don't have to ask all the wise because you were on a roll there so keep me going well you know what i could have rolled both those
questions in because um they kind of go with each other um they do because this this really resonated with me and I think this is how I became who I am right now um much more thoughtful practitioner and I think that I I blame myself for this
decision I'm going to tell you about i mean it's nothing monumental but I just think it's something I should have certainly done a better job with um in the same district that we were doing the uh mass core with um when we came to the conclusion that we need to start using mascore and change your schedule one of
the things we wanted to talk about was UVD universal backwards design and creating structures for that so in my infinite wisdom because we had this ready to go I thought everybody just knew that now we're going to start doing
UBD so I brought in a This is This is probably the most embarrassing moment of my life i brought in a guest speaker and a person who can um present on UBD my staff gave this woman such a hard time i the woman started to cry in the
middle of the feeding and that was completely totally my fault because I did mention it to the staff but I didn't really roll it out like I should have and literally that was my very first year as a principal so um I learned from that lesson tremendously i had a great
relationship with my staff um um after that I I learned I started meeting with the union pretty regularly we talked about rolling and eventually we did get there but I certainly did not roll it out like I should have did not as I said when I did the uh experience with my
curriculum I think that was a lot better because that was a few more years into my educational career but I I will never forget that day that poor woman said you'll never come back to this district again and I was horrified and my people were great so I really struggled with that and I and I don't blame them one
bit I blame myself it was what I did and they were fabulous people and they would do anything that you anything in the world that you want to know but I think the way The presenter did not come in in such a way that you guys are doing a good job she came in gung-ho you guys are doing a
terrible job this is what we have to do and I don't think it was the right presenter so having those discussions early on really um it was a very problematic um and I would definitely do it differently because I need to communicate better look for I I'm really
cognizant when I bring in presenters now and I often times try to bring people in who are already here because people don't know the people you're bringing in when it comes to your staff doesn't know who you're bringing in and I know when I sit in meetings something like who is this person why is a 10-year-old telling me how to do
something cuz often times they're very young they're very they know what's happening and I think it was some of that you know you get when you get pulled over by the police and the policemen are like nine oh my gosh So do you know what I'm talking about
so so anyway I think that I sorry I went off to talk about that i'm sorry but I think really we have to do a better job when you bring presenters in make sure the person has the cache to present that to the to the staff you just can't bring somebody in and and make sure they have
the knowledge you just can't so I think that was something that I've learned as well um and I've definitely do it i've evolved from there for sure and I did it because I wanted our school to be the best and I know that we were already using mass core and we had long block this is a great way for you guys to start using long block a little bit and
what's really funny is some of the teachers were already using it and some were not so I probably should have targeted certain people so that became and I definitely learned that you know it's okay to make mistakes they didn't hold it against me we had a great relationship they really truly didn't hold it against me um so I was really
grateful that the staff was really good about that um introducing UBD to a veteran staff is never going to be Listen I was new i thought I knew I was I know it's not but you know I didn't know live now you know live and learn i
wouldn't do that to not hindsight's 100% 2020 right but it obviously it resonated with me because it it happened probably 15 years ago and it's still I can still remember that poor lady running out the door i'm like "Oh my god." And I never contacted that company again ever ever
how would you work with local municipal officials to generate support and trust for the schools well you know I'm going to go with um same thing on budget so I'm going to go with this one for for as as how I create a budget and working with local
municipal officials ideally um in many of the districts I've worked in I've worked with a lot of municipalities um we start our budget process in say November and really start working with our principles to see you know what does your wish look like and then we look at our data you know what do we need what
are their halves what are must haves what are maybe what are our dreams what is our vision so those are things we started on our end and then you know I worked with some of the department heads and we met in some of the other districts you know um I know there's a lot of transition and grabbing right now
so I'm using some of my other references from other districts um so we get together and we talk to all the departments and they say "Hey this is what our revenue looks like for next year um the tax base looks like this um we're not seeing the growth we're looking for perhaps you guys when it comes to look at your budget you can
keep this in mind moving forward." And that's kind of how we've operated in the past so whether it be 2% 3% or 1% whatever it may be how can you make that budget work so then I go back to the drawing board with my business manager in my or my whoever is working on at that time and I say hey this is what the
you know what the revenue looks like for the town or um regionals are a little different sometimes you can get different numbers from different town so you have to find a uh kind of a common area so with municipalities is a little different because there's not you know again revenue and growth is not always
equal so trying to work with them to generate support really we need to work together this I want to support our students again talking about a return on investment but we have to be cognizant of our resources i mean we have to be cognizant of our um of the town's
resources we can't just ask for unlimited funding so really trying to have those conversations early and often um and they also you know need to have conversations with us none of us work in silos i know that when I was in another district you know we were talking to the
police department they needed this but the highway department needed this so there was a little bit of give and take departmentally wise you know um school department was also included in that so they say because we're always the biggest part of the budget in in any district the schools are always
probably 54% over what everything else should be so school spending is always more always has been so you know we always have to give and take as well so really having those conversations and generating trust that you're not going to you know overburden the town because
if you they're taxpayers you know we want to make sure that the students are getting the most but we also know that we don't we're not rich we don't have unlimited funding to support everybody so how can we create a dynamic that everybody's feeling respected and ultimately there probably will be cuts every but we have to last year say the
fire department didn't get the fire truck the police department got this school wanted this we couldn't do that so we had to make a lot of different changes so really having those conversations and working together as a as a um as a company as a corporation really we have to see what it looks like so again we're having those discussions
in November December and going back to the drawing board with the admin team and say "Hey this is what it looks like next year you know let's kind of pair down what we need to do." Um and start rolling it out in January February and then so when the town meeting comes everybody's getting what they want
without a lot of arguments because you've already built your trust with each other um and really having those conversations you can't have them in isolation they have to be together as a group um you know I mean we're always going to advocate for each other we're all public servants um and unfortunately
we're all fighting for unlimited not li with limited funds and and trying to create opportunities for all of us we want to make sure public safety is taken care of and our roads are taken care of but we want to make sure our kids are being taken care of so you know and and and I know that uh it's going to it's going to be hard in the next few years
and so creating those opportunities for us to trust each other keep the lines of communication open and really working hard to make sure that you know we are streamlining the best we can on all avenues for sure how you doing okay okay all
right one more time tell me about a meeting in which you had to tell others something they did not want to hear how did you communicate those ideas to them what was the result of that communication if you could do it again is there anything that you would change in the way you communicated or the way
in which you communicated it and why um this actually is about um I had to let invincible go um it was very uncomfortable conversation um because there had to be an
investigation and you know at first you're always saying you know these things we have to somebody's accusing you of something we have to um do our due diligence and I'm going to you know put you out on admin leave and until we investigate the whole situation so I've had a few conversations like this and
these are extraordinarily uncomfortable because you're you really are here to support your staff but ultimately we're here to protect the students so you have to keep that in mind again my core value is protecting the students every student that I've come across in my 35 years of
teaching is my kid every kid that I come across is mine so when I do these types of investigations do I want this person in my child's life no that's how I make my decisions so even though the conversations are difficult I have no problem doing what I have to do because
when push comes to shove these are my babies and you got to stay in my way so one of the it was really hard because I communicate I actually told my school committee because I knew that it was going to impact the community when this happened so this is one way that I did include my school committee in the conversation because ultimately they're
going to say the I'm going to be like Frankenstein and the stakes are going to come out and they're going to be charging me at me because this is a beloved member of the community been principal for a very long time how is it going to impact everybody else it had to be done i explained the situation and we had to just keep those lines of
communication open so the result was I did have some some very difficult conversations with some staff members i had some conversations from staff members who were extraordinarily happy um who that this should have happened a long time ago i had some nasty parent
phone calls i had some nasty parent forum emails i had some um but ultimately there's very few of them i had a lot more um positive impact and you know people saying that was a very courageous thing for you to do and it was not an easy thing to do because I knew that it was
going to cause some anxiety because we left the building without a strong leader because when push comes to shove that person had a building that was under control and I was a little worried that after that person left I didn't want anarchy raining down on the school but it did not so it worked out well so
I just wanted I let the school committee know that you're going to hear this backlash i just need to let you know and you know this is what I need to do and they were very supportive and they said you you you know what you have to do and you've done what you've done your due diligence and we will definitely support you so that was um if I had to do it
again I wouldn't change anything the way the way I communicated it and I left it um really as professional as I possibly could we didn't give out details because again we have to protect our our folks whether they work here or not that is no anybody's business so and again that's
one of the hardest things I do but I also have difficult conversations with staff members you know or even principal though what's your evaluations look like you know listen we we need some support i'm going to put you on an action plan or a self-directed plan and get you the mentoring you need to support so those
are also difficult conversations i've also had to let people go after 90 days um because they just weren't working out so these are some difficult conversations listen in all of our lives we have difficult conversations they're not easy but if you can keep at the core why you're having these conversations
and because it's in the best interest of the district and the students then you have to keep those um those in your mind um and I don't think I would change the way that I communicate cuz I do think with the exception of that particular instance I
am a pretty decent communicator when it comes to telling people what I expect from them as far as their what's happening in their classrooms what my expectations are i rarely um want to give anybody a gotcha i never want to let a teacher go um I want to help that teacher be a better practitioner and I
work with my principles to make that happen as a principal I worked with that to happen um you know in extreme extreme circumstances of getting rid of people but for the most part that is not my role um teachers are a valuable asset people like to be teaching and I I want to support them as much as I can
sometimes as an assistant principal difficult conversation with parents sometimes parents don't want to um believe what their kids did so those are really hard difficult conversations um so and so did this and you know my child wouldn't and you know sometimes well I'm
sorry that you don't feel that way but you know these are the evidence we have so really having difficult conversations is part of our life um you know every day so um and people really sometimes don't want to hear that they're not doing things great even when it comes to
like instruction and and when I talked about earlier you know when having so those conversations in Athel about you know what your instructional practice look like people don't want to hear that they could use a little support there but in the end show them the evidence and the data you should be okay and and
and just be professional and and don't overshare for sure definitely something you don't want to do all right last question sure how would you describe your leadership style what particular strengths do you believe
you'll bring to our school system um I think I'm collaborative um I'm a relationship driven person i think that's important um I like to focus on improvement but
I I like to think of myself as someone who has the ability to bring out the best of people to make people want to be better so I like to think that building that relationship is is what I think i'm really all for developing talent within um what can we
do if I know that somebody is struggling I will often times look for mentors for them i think it's really important that we have a group of folks that who are committed to being here or wherever we are and I want to make sure that they're feeling heard and valued so I'd like to
be a strategic thinker and some long-term goals but I also need to make sure we have immediate needs that are being met so you know I have the ability to well I think I have the ability to let people know that what I'm saying I'm
being genuine um I want to be trustworthy i try to be honest um I try to I I don't try I know that I have integrity and I'm proud of that so often times when I make a decision is based on that and I I will not compromise my
morals in any way for anybody and you know and sometimes it can be challenging because people may not agree with you but in the end you know I'll if it if it's you know something that I need to do I'm definitely going to do it but for the most part I think I'm collaborative
i like to build relationships establish trust establish collegiality um I do think that is one of my strengths um and I use this um because I know that people are going to make mistakes and I know that people
are people i make mistakes every day of my life and we learn from these mistakes um and I will never hold it against you um you know unless it's egregious but for the most part we're we're all here to for the same thing and and one of the things that attracted me to this
district and I said when I first got here is we're going to make mistakes and if we make mistakes it's okay but if they're in the best interest of the students it's perfectly fine um as long as you know nobody gets hurt so I do think that I try to be transparent focused
um and I do what's best for students really i'm student driven that is my why you know why am I here because I want to create a generation of kids and students who are thinkers innovative um and have the ability to think i don't
want kids to leave here with a bad taste in their mouth i just want to be collaborative and helpful and creating better morals from people i know that's nirvana but that's what I'm looking for so I think my leadership style lends itself to that i really try
to be um thoughtful and empathetic i even though I lead with my head my heart is oftenimes there so I try to to keep both of those together and we meet in the middle that's my leadership style um anything that you'd like to add for a
closing statement i just want to say it's really been a pleasure um working in this district for the last eight months i really enjoy it um and I can honestly say that this is one of the few districts that I can hold and say anything negative about honestly I truly truly truly I do not I really enjoy
being here um the staff is so dedicated and they just do so many things they wear so many so many so many hats um and I just the individual instruction the students get um the mentoring that they do with the students and the communication they have with them well
after they graduate I find is um incredibly um rare um and I think that people who are here are generally happy and and I'm generally happy here and I think that our staff stays here not for the money for sure they stay here
because they enjoy being here and I have to say I know that if given the opportunity I will continue to foster that culture of um empathy and understanding and collaboration and uh in a solutions based district because we're definitely
going to have a lot of uh budgetary constraints in the future but if we can come up with solutions ahead of time that'll be helpful for us so that's who I am and I appreciate the time that y'all gave me today do you have any questions for us i don't you're making the decision today that's our plan um
we'll once we conclude here uh we're going to take a short uh recess let everyone stretch and then we'll begin our deliberations and our hope is that we'll be able to reach a a decision tonight and um we have your number so I think you do we'll um be reaching out
one way or the other uh tonight and if we don't make a decision I'll let you know that as well i appreciate the time and uh Thank you so much good evening thank you all right all right so um it is
8:34 if we come back um I don't know do you think 5 minutes is enough uh and then we'll we can begin deliberations yeah perfect excellent okay uh so now um I just want to thank both candidates for coming in
and we will now begin our um deliberations so I'm not sure exactly how you all want to do this i do have some feedback envelopes from um the candidates uh from the visits so I have an envelope from East Meadow the
district leadership team and the high school so just um so one anonymous um feedback says Dr manard only talked about her time as a
principal that tells me she doesn't have enough experience as a superintendent i recently learned that her association did a vote of no confidence on her that's that's I just want to say if you
don't mind me saying that this that's a strategy with I listen I'm a union person i believe in unions i love unions but I think that the no confidence vote is highly overused these days julie noted um this one says "Mary Jane
has been a great interim she has been very visible has had uh has had hard I think has had hard but good conversations with the
association she is I'm going to assume that is transparent she's very transparent not transportation and I would like to continue working with her um Dr menard concerns regarding her actual superintendent experience all
examples of what she did from when she was a principal not sure she has a realistic expectation for what she can do as a super in a small district keeps saying she was in a small district but has nine curriculum people under
her for um Mary Jane has done a good job as interim is willing to listen to ideas and concerns has good ideas regarding curriculum needs and has understanding of what we need uh too many changes in Graanby already
better to keep some consistency would support bringing her on as a super so that we can start moving forward as a district uh Mary Jane has a plan is familiar with Graanby knows she isn't perfect and wants everyone to do their
best for the kids fits right into the group with the teachers relatable has a plan um Dr manard has uh good ideas but didn't share a game plan this one says "Dr manard was
friendly but has a vote of no confidence from past position as uh Liz already mentioned also didn't talk about any experience as a superintendent uh Mary Jane is committed to our district and has a person personality that's kind and approachable
while setting structure and vision for where she wants us to go um Dr um business to teacher has a community focus collaboration thinking outside the box talked a lot about herself does not
seem consistent lots of jobs uh MJ has a plan familiar with students and staff very comfortable and confident professional meaningful development uh good lord pd for Paris I guess yeah PD for
Paris schedule curriculum for science and social studies transparency collaboration with staff um Graanby has been through a lot of changes over the years i think maintaining consistency in the district
will be important and Mary Jane will be able to build on things i'm worried Dr manard hasn't had enough superintendent experience and Grammy needs a more experienced leader in the district that's from the East Meadow envelope this is from the high school
envelope dr bernard experience in the classroom and admin are positives being curriculum super what how would that translate seems open to working for collaboratively dr manard I enjoyed her she presented very well good ideas new
ideas i would hire her dr manard impressive superintendent roundts listening listening tour tour okay supportive supporting staff bringing down angst and
also having fun pd tracks specific PD for special ed teachers parents and content teachers has an entry plan professional demeanor and downto-earth dr manard liked incorporating local businesses bringing in community members dr menard seemed
professional qualified mj has some good ideas now that she has been here for a while and sees what we need uh Mary Jane clearer understanding of what changes are needed and has had a year to understand and evaluate um something about the strategic plan oh
evaluate current strategic plan has made connections across the district has an understanding of needs in the district dr menard love the focus on collaborative leadership and attending and participating in the community student voice focus and how to build
school cultures think the direction of leadership could focus more on communication mj good sense of the business side of things would be a good resource if regionalization were to occur goal keep the elementary kids
in seventh a okay with dual enrollment because the kids stay here in Graanby Arts been looking into grants for those types of things and this one is from the
leadership team uh Mary Jane has been responsive and supportive this year i'd go Mary Jane dr menard I worked with her as an admin in Gil Monagu significant issues with her and the new
superintendent she was somewhat unprofessional and vindictive indecisive i'm not sure what those first three letters are good lord if people if their students wrote like this people we would be having problems would not hire her i4c
issues uh Dr manard spoke a lot about herself to the point we as a leadership could not ask questions she spoke in circles no questions for us no real interest in the district very scripted interview mary Jane current interim super has kept us afloat no significant
changes this year easy to work and talk to communication could be improved visibility could be improved um Mary Jane current interim pros cons one or three year mary Jane Rickson is the right
choice mary Jane has worked well collaborating with admin team this past year she has effectively motivated the team through a well uh welcoming environment i feel comfortable working with her and feel she will provide the stability Grammy
needs mj would be my recommendation dr manard has an impressive background and a lot of experience during your interview with DT she did not entertain questions but used most of the time for her narrative some members later stated that they were concerned about this mary
Jane has the knowledge of the district knows what she needs to do to improve dr menard too wordy found her exhausting she did not want to know about us find it concerning do not want her uh keep Mary
Jane uh Dr menard is not a good fit for the DT hard no on Dr manard dr seminar concerns about professional experience and relationships from prior districts very formulaic scripted interview gave little
detail didn't allow for input mary Jane improvement in communication needed follow through on plans she listens and takes into account people and their opinion wow that's quite a lot i'll leave these here if there's any anybody wants to refer
back to any of those so um we have our templates we also have the applications for both and um Jenny had gone through and or I'm sorry Todd had gone through and compiled information from the
reference checks so we have um two references for both if you guys want to um take a minute and review that or if you want to go you it's your call however you would like to proceed does anyone have any thoughts on how they would like to
um proceed uh I read the materials but I don't want to deprive my colleagues of the opportunity to go over them if they have not done so yet i just want to refresh my It's cold in here i'm just going to say
that I'm freezing it's really We're trying to turn off the fan sometimes if you get or maybe I just haven't warmed up from the game yet [Laughter] have you guys had a chance to go through
yes yes so I'm not really sure i don't want to drive the conversation unnecessarily so if you if do you want to talk about them one at a time do we want to go through and compare and comp contrast i mean I don't how are you
all comfortable with proceeding i um you know before we dive into it I just want to say that I'm very impressed with every candidate that's come in here that I've had the opportunity to to view um interviewing like that in front of the panel in front of the public is a
difficult thing and I haven't seen a bad candidate come through the door since I've been here so hats off to both of them tonight for solid performances for sure george uh much of the same um I haven't been
able to be too involved with the process up until now just scheduling and things like that um it's definitely not necessarily a simple or easy choice looking over just these two candidates so
so I guess if the question is how would you like to proceed um I think we should each maybe just take a stab at what we thought about each candidate check to listen to one another's perspectives i do value um
their perspectives on you all because well you all know Gran a lot better than I do um but that being said it's good to have a fresh perspective that I'm certainly willing to share
sometimes having a steep understanding having fresh eyes is better so who should go first oh great i'll go first well thank you um I guess I would talk about our interim superintendent
first um I think that um Miss Ricken Miss Ricken um has been looking for a home i think she's uh done the interim gig a few times
um and I think if I may be perfectly blunt which I sometimes tend to be each time has been beaten out by a male candidate which we see a lot right Jen
we know that we know the drill um I am absolutely behind her studentdriven attitude um I think that she realizes there's always room for growth and improvement right those are
opportunities um I have heard um in my limited experience here that um communication and visibility could be improved and we heard that again tonight and I will also say that it's very difficult to be an interim superintendent when you know
your expectation is to come in and keep things on sort of where they are and we made that very clear too in her in her when Wow it's getting to that point in the um but we when we asked her to join
us as the interim we kind of said that we weren't looking for any you know just kind of steer the ship is what we wanted we didn't want any you know so it's hard to hold someone accountable for doing exactly in a negative way exactly what we asked them to do that's my point and
then the other thing that I've heard which goes along with what you've said is being an interim is like a year-long job interview yes and so it's um it can be a double-edged sword I think because you're looking to evaluate
them and compare them to someone that comes in fresh for a district but we've also asked this person to be you know drive the ship so I feel quite um blessed that I've had the opportunity to see this done so many times by so many
other committees um and I I guess just to go back to Mary Jane what I heard from her was I mean she answered quickly which is really her style um but she did talk about in all
the cases um particularly about um tell us about an experience working in an area of curriculum well the first thing you do is look at the data to identify the gaps um and you typically do that with your administrative team if you're lucky
to have one that big maybe a fault ditch they might have had enough people to do that um but then the next step is of course to put together a committee of a curriculum committee teachers who are going to be who are working with children to look at that data to decide
at sort of the programs they want to look at um and again then once you've done all that I was impressed that she said that once they had done all that work and looked at three different curriculums
and had an idea of I think she was getting at two that they thought they liked um that the teams then went back and created thematic units and ultimately had a K8 curriculum
at um before deciding you know what do we need to spend on material right you pull apart the data you look at where the gaps are you look at what you have and what's missing um not that I'm an educator or ever would want to be one but that is a
perfect process to follow um and when I look at Miss Manard is it Dr manard Dr minard's um answer i found it a light without real examples um I
heard her say that um you know the whole notion of having curriculum people that worked underneath her she said that twice which resonated with me yeah it's interesting that that came up in the feedback from um one of
the schools as well and um Miss Ricken talks about putting together teams um which I think is always the way you go about the work because there you're these buildings are filled with professional educators right um nobody
has all the right ideas um I loved her talking about giving the students a voice um to ensure that they felt part of the fabric of the school community um to me and I say this to everybody I
have a chance to meet um wonders why I took on a school committee since school committee is all I do um this is where the magic happens in schools um I have a great respect for teachers um and people
who do this for a living um I think that I think that from what I heard from the two candidates tonight if you can judge a person on one hour Mhm i heard one candidate who clearly said folks would be involved in decisionm
um and it would always be a collaborative approach um until the line came where a decision had to be made right i didn't hear a lot of that i did hear I did make notes that the answers were light even though they took up the
full amount of time they were light in terms of content and what I really wanted to hear and I absolutely did not hear enough about students i was just going to say that which is why we're here all of
us um the teachers aren't here for the money or the glory mhm uh neither is the superintendent really um we're here for the kids and to create um a place that they believe is theirs um and to arm
them i don't know if that's the right word to prepare them to prepare them see I raised girls so I wanted to arm them as as young women who were able to go out into the world and really understand that they had a place and they could
speak for themselves um I heard that come through loud and clear um with Miss Rickson and I did not I was not happy that I didn't hear it from Dr manard i think that's just critically
important and if you're interviewing for this kind of a position and you don't put students first um the other thing I would just note and it just tends to be a personal point for me whenever I do this and I go
through lots of these packets none of the references are current or what dr menard if you want to be a superintendent of schools and you're you know putting your best foot forward
have some current preferences thank you George um well it's going to be hard to follow follow that one which is fine sorry um I had the advantage of seeing Donor um which makes it easier for me because I'm
not a big uh talker anyway um but yeah something felt I don't know i couldn't figure out how to word it but as you spoke it it made it more clear in my own notes as far as like the focus on the students and more of the collaborative uh working
aspect with uh for Mary Jane um or Miss Rixen and so yeah I mean all I can she just clarified everything I was trying to process uh reading through my notes and things like that so I I I don't really think I
have anything constructive to add to uh Liz's statement very well played Mike yeah um All right uh I think they were both
solid solid performers i think that uh Mary Jane directly stated that she leads through her heart i think Dr manard is more of a uh cognitive based leader um it's very clear from the way that she was sitting
in her posture and the way that she pres presented herself that I found her to be a very confident and charismatic individual very professional and she very clearly prepared thoroughly for this interview she had been watching uh watching our meetings the handout that
she developed and passed out to all of us was pretty clever and had a lot of current pictures that were not on our website so very clearly she went out there and took those pictures um some of the better things I liked uh in
her in her interview i I I think having a a varied background can be beneficial in terms of bringing uh new approaches or better techniques
to an industry that might not particularly have that idea set so the fact that she came from you know BFI and fundraising and business world and then was inspired to jump and do a second
career was was impressive um let me see uh I agree with a lot of the stuff Liz said her her answers lacked a little bit of depth and a little bit of um
specificity and um you know every leader has regrets and to directly state that you have no regrets is worrisome um things that I
have made decisions on still resonate with me years later and if I was directly asked it would be burning a hole through my heart currently today so uh that was a little worrisome um that being said clearly intelligent clearly
uh wellprepared professional and uh a good option um that being said um scored second on my rubric to Mary Jane um sorry I'm trying to put my thoughts
together you're doing great the uh the heartbased leadership it it really after being working with her for 8 months it it's true um she wears it on her sleeve you there's no subversion whatsoever what's on her mind is directly stated and it came through here in the
interview uh had a real good understanding of um the principles assistant principles having the operational control over each of buildings and the central office doing the planning and strategic
oversight and political aspect and budgeting like that had a lot of specific answers involving not only this district but her time in multiple other districts um liked their quote on ambassador of
education uh thoughts on school providing an ROI and making the school the anchor of the community again they're all it's very clear from the answers that she has a lot of things teed up in her mind to do but is holding
close until given the authority to take those leaps because right now she is interim um let me see what else did I like uh the mass compliance uh the admission of
mistakes um really showed that um she's a humble person and I see my notes here humble and introspective and then um learns from her mistakes uh
implementation of of procedures to eliminate making mistakes twice and then there were a couple uh statements that she made that displayed loyalty as a key value uh to her as a as a person um
which resonated with me um one second almost through you're doing great i know it's late i know everybody wants to get through it but I just want to get my thoughts out i had an excellent understanding of the budget cycle
um yep excellent excellent uh answer to the uh the riff of that particular employee in the past and you can see that it really still affected her personally to do those things but um the
would I let my child be exposed to this really resonated with me and like Liz said that's why we're all here is for the kids that's why I'm here although everybody here is pretty fun to work with but uh I uh I just want to make sure that our kids have the best and um
that is something that can't be faked and was on display tonight so in my opinion um I think Mary Jane is the candidate that I'd like to go with for those reasons so
um Dr bernard um I agree very well um prepared but one of the things that I found is that um her answers were lengthy and verbose even and I found myself drifting like I
was I would lose a thread so I found that I took a lot less notes even though she had a lot more words and Mary Jane was able I felt like I was able to connect with what she was um saying and I I will own it part of
that might be from working with her for 8 months that I understand her cadence of speech and her um her mannerisms and things but I just felt like I was able to connect and stay with her a little bit better personally
um I never felt like Dr manard yes she went to a softball game this afternoon yes she says she's watched some select board meetings but it never felt like any of her answers were directly relatable to Graanby uh you know I didn't hear her talking
about we asked pointed questions like how would you work through with mun you know u municipal leaders and I felt like that was as someone new coming into a district you know making mention Mary Jane did as well like you know there's transition here and I would like to try
to you know I would be new and that I was very impressed with her entry plan I think that that takes a lot of time it was um it was nice to see she did have some things where I was like "Oh that's an interesting point i maybe we could consider doing that." Like the posting
the news the newsletters on the town website you know that's that's a great idea it's not something I had come up with myself we have newsletters that come out of both schools there's no reason we couldn't hyperlink them to the town website so I appreciated that information um I thought Mary Jane
killed it today really I I was super impressed i thought she actually interviewed better tonight than she did I feel than when she was interviewing for um interim i agree with you wholeheartedly Liz that she's looking for a home and I feel like she's making
connections um and I like everyone has said I really loved how she kept bringing it back to the students um she wants to be a steward of the schools advocate for the students the ROI u for the town of Graanby is
amazing and I like how she owned her mistakes in the past kind of bouncing around but was lighthearted about it and kind of joked with us a little bit made us all sort of giggle like light-hearted owning the mistakes acknowledging the mistakes knows that it happened it's
part of who she is and how she's become but hasn't forgotten them right um so you know I agree with Mike i I think Mary Jane did a a really good job uh tonight and I she would be my u my
choice at this point i think um I'd be remiss if I didn't also add that in her closing statements um she talked about how she enjoyed being here and how dedicated um the staff is and how through the
instruction and communication um and interactions with students are is genuine and she felt that to be rare so um at this point it feels are we ready to um to vote or um to say who we
think or any additional discussion where are we all at do you want a motion or do you want to just go down the line um I think for this we'll go down the line and see if we're if we're split in any way or um
you know if we have consensus and then if we have have consensus then we can go for a motion is that acceptable to everyone yes um do you want to go through do you mind doing like a roll call and just kind of going down the line please absolutely
mary Jane Rickson Mr by Mary Jane Rixon Mr dur Mary Jane Rickson Miss Bars Mary Jane Rixon All right I will take the motion so I would make a motion that
um we appoint or offer the position of superintendent of schools to Mary Jane Rexen superintendent of the Grandity Public Schools to Mary Jane Rexen pending um successful contract negotiations
second all those in favor um Jenny can you do a roll call vote please miss Leon yes mr by yes mr hi Miss Barbers i All right so I guess I need to call Do
I call Mary Jane first or do I call Dr manard first mary Jane okie dokie see if she's willing to accept thank you i don't want to get it wrong it is an executive session executive
session maybe i thought I had to I have to call well you can take We can I make a motion to take a brief recess so the chair can reach out to Mary Jane Ricken okay thank you can I have a second a second all those in favor i Okie do
Okay so we have um successfully um reached out to Mary Jane Ricken and offered her the position of the superintendent of Grammy public schools pending um successful negotiations which we will um begin and
um so now we're going to vote to go into executive session under Massachusetts General Law Chapter 3A section 21 part A3 to conduct strategy sessions and preparation for negotiations with nonUN personnel or to conduct collective
bargaining sessions or contract negotiations with non-union personnel the committee will not return to open session jenny Miss Leon um am I going to make that motion no we just we we just vote to go in i just read Oh yeah you're the I'll get
used to it and then non-union personnel just because we should say this is the superintendent right yes it's for to discuss that great yes thank you u Miss Leon yes mr balky i mr dur hi and Miss
Barto i thank you everybody thank you