Okay. Uh good evening, Hollist, and welcome to the uh January 29th uh meeting of the Holl School Committee. We are pleased to present uh Dr. Jennifer Parson tonight. Um she is a finalist for
the role of superintendent of schools for Hollist. Um and we're thrilled to have you here. So I think we will start by introducing ourselves and then we'll let you introduce yourself. >> So Frank Agora uh second year on school
committee um no kids in the district. I have a three and a half year old and a one-mon-old. >> I'm Hillary Fresnan, also my second year um on the school committee and I have two children in the district. >> Tracy Flecker. I am the newest member of the school committee from last a uh May
and I have five children in the district. and Don Nagorski. Um I have five children, four of which have graduated um from the district and this is my third term on school committee. Welcome >> Dan Alfred. Nice to see you again. Um I'm in my third year. I spent 11 years
on the finance committee before that. I have two children, seventh grader and nth grader. Um and I'm the chair of the budget. >> Hi, I'm Joe Peru. Uh this is my second year on the committee elected with Frank and Hillary. Um, I'm the father of a
crazy 5-year-old and uh I am the uh superintendent evaluation subcommittee chairman. So, uh should you get this position, I'm sure we'll see a lot of each other. >> Sounds good. Thank you. And I'm Sarah
Fitzgerald, chair of the committee and um got three kids. I've got an eighth grader and a senior and a freshman in college. Y welcome and um why don't you start by we can have you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself and what
brought you into education. >> Sure. So I'm Jen Parson and it's definitely a pleasure to be here. I appreciate everyone's time and hospitality today. It's been a long day. It's been a very good day. Um I feel like I have a much better sense even
though I'm your kind of neighbor in um Milford next door. I feel like I learned a lot about the schools, about the people in the schools, about the families who support the schools and your town partners. Um, I learned a lot more about that today than I would have as just a bystander who who drives
through. Uh, so I've been education for the majority of my career. I started as a classroom teacher. My very first teaching position was in the Atlanta, Georgia public schools. I am from this area, but um, at the time there were no jobs around here and everybody said, "Go
down south. there are lots of jobs and I got hired on the spot and was a fourth grade teacher um for one year until I decided I really am more of a New England person and um ended up returning here. So since that time I've um done
multiple jobs within um the confines of public education. I've been a classroom teacher at the elementary level and at the middle school level. I have served as an assistant principal, a principal, um assistant superintendent, and currently I'm the superintendent of the
Planeville public schools. Um the job I held, um most recently before this position, and I'm in my fourth year in Planeville, was as the assistant superintendent in the Hopkin public schools, so your neighbor on one of the other sides. And um it was during that
time that was my first entree. as someone who has very much an elementary background, that was really my first entree into secondary ed and I I really grew to love it and enjoy um kind of what happens in areas where I never had the opportunity to sit in a classroom.
Um also during that time and over the course of my career, I have been a sitting member of the Milford school committee. I joined that committee. I was elected when my kids were in the fifth grade and second grade and I thought I'll do school committee someday when my kids are older and I have more
time and somebody said to me no you should do it now when your kids are there and you can make a difference and I had said to someone earlier today my kids would say mom you know can you be the room parent can you go on the field trips and given the type of career that
I had no I couldn't do either of those things but I knew I could make a difference um if I served on the school committee and in the hopes that I had something to offer to our community. And um that was a great learning experience for me. It prepared me probably better in some ways than any of the formal
education that you know I I also bring to the table. So I wasn't necessarily looking people say why Hollist and I wasn't necessarily looking for a position but I did see this um open up. I saw the posting and I
decided that it might be the right time and the right situation especially because as I've grown in the position that I have, I have really felt the missing link for me, the missing piece professionally has been the secondary ed
um end of things. And um part of that I I really didn't anticipate actually. You know, when you reflect and you learn things about yourself, I didn't realize I was going to feel that way. But um so part of that comes actually from my own children and watching their trajectory
and watching them with their friends and watching them move through secondary and big decisions and um next steps. And what I've learned is there's a lot that I can also share and contribute to kids at that end of the spectrum um in
addition to younger students. So, when this position opened up, it seemed to me like it might be the perfect opportunity in a town that I'm familiar with, um, close to my home, but also one that I know has, um, a very solid, strong, um,
reputation regionally and within our state. So, it was appealing to me for a lot of different reasons. >> Okay. [clears throat] So we often receive feedback that the district needs to improve in the areas of communication and transparency.
How would you ensure effective communication and transparency with the district, educators, and the Hollist community as a whole? What strategies have you employed in your career to build trust and open lines of communications with key stakeholders? So I am the daughter of a journalist and
um so in my world growing up the um the idea of communication has always been at the forefront. I lived in a household where written communication, verbal communication that was always valued and um very important. And um for me having
gone through a number of positions over the course of my career, I've had the chance to see things that have gone well. I've had the chance to see things that haven't gone well. And I think at the end of the day, when you want to start looking at where where do we run into trouble in any organization, it
always comes down to communication. Communication, if it's not um if if it's not done properly, is going to impede your ability to have trusting relationships, to have people um feel like they can depend on you to do what you say you're going to do. And I don't
think it's possible to overcommunicate. Um I did mention in one of the um sessions I was in today that you also have to be mindful that um families get a lot of communication. So if you think about the family piece and so I do try to be mindful when one principal sending
something out, another principal is sending something out, the director of wellness is sending, you know, how do you kind of try to be thoughtful and mindful about not flooding people? Because when you do that, then you might as well send nothing because you you've done too much. In terms of my role as a leader, [snorts] I really do feel and I've said
this a few times today too. I feel like that this is who I am, who you see tonight is um I do feel that I try to be as authentic as I can. I try to be upfront with people. Um I do try to be careful in my words. I try to think
about how will my message be received by people. And so sometimes I do try to take that extra minute um to think about my verbal articulation and written word as well. So, I do um value communicating with people by being in their presence
in the schools. It's really important. People want to see the leaders. They want to know the leader cares about their classrooms. They want to know that, you know, we have a sense of what they're working through and dealing with. I heard from students today that they absolutely want to see their schools leaders and administrators
around them um at their activities in their classrooms. And uh you know, I I feel that I heard the same from staff today. One thing that I do try to do is in communications, um, sometimes I do think I'm a little wordy and people will say, you know, try to pare down the
words. And so I think about that. Um, but also one of the ways that I try to connect with people in my written communications is through personal anecdotes. And so if I see something that I think might be appealing to family is because I came across an article or I came across a thought that
I think is relevant, I will share that. And I will do the same with staff. And that's another way of building relationships. And it's the relationships that bring the trust and help to bring organizations forward. How do you intentionally build and
sustain a safe, positive, and inclusive district culture for all students, staff, and families, particularly those from marginalized groups, immigrant communities, or who may experience prejudice or bullying? Can you share specific examples of policies, practices
or initiatives you have implemented in the past and explain how you would evaluate whether those efforts are having a meaningful and measurable impact on school climate and student well-being? I can repeat any part of that. I know [laughter] >> let me think. Um
the first part um can you just repeat the actual very first part of it? How do you intentionally build and sustain a positive, safe, and inclusive district culture for all students, staff, and families, particularly those from marginalized groups, immigrant communities, or who may experience prejudice or bullying.
>> Okay. So, at the end of the day, I think it comes down to your core values and what do you believe in and what do you hold to be true? And you know, our core values have to be more than words on a piece of paper. They have to be things and
actions that we take and that we live. And we need to make sure that in our schools we are um very mindful of what those core values are. [snorts] And they really need to be integrated in every aspect of what we do. And I've walked around your schools and I see some of
your core values cares. I've seen that all over this district. And in our district, we have an acronym of heart which stands for some of the things that we believe in. And I know your town actually uses that um that that phrase also. Um when you think about how that
translates into kind of the day-to-day, you do need to be aware of and I need to be aware if I were to be in this role of who who are our clientele, who are our students, and it's easy to look at the whole. It's more challenging to look at
the parts that make up the whole. And um through a lot of the work that I've done both through my doctoral degree and work that I've done through the Mass Association of Superintendent um I have had a focus on equity and a focus on access. And it is our historically marginalized populations
that tend to be those who have the greatest challenges accessing what it is we have to offer for lots of different reasons. And we have to understand through the way that we look at our students, through our student um I'm not sure what you call it here, the student
study teams um that we call the best in my district. Um when we start to really think about um what does our data show us? Who are our students that aren't succeeding in the manner that we um would hope? And we need to start to drill down and understand the reasons
why. And is it because they have some core issues that we haven't resolved yet? Is it because they're lacking some basic needs that um they may need resources that the schools can help them with? And at the end of the day, all of those subgroups and cohorts um they they
all need our attention because if we just paint everything with the same brush, we're not going to dig down into um understanding the core reasons um for in some cases students not succeeding. And we're also not celebrating some of the differences that our students bring
to us. So um when we look at our students, we should also be thinking about um what is important to them. What is their personal identity? What is important to their families? Are we making sure that when we walk through the halls of our buildings? We see um things on [clears throat] our walls that
reflect our students. We see literature in our classrooms that reflect a wide and diverse um variety of um individuals that children can relate to. And when we think about um a a statement that I've said many times is all means all and
there are our kids all of our kids are our kids and our the way that we approach them needs to be inclusive and um those those are areas I would allege are um difficult and can be tricky because we don't
always um give our kids the opportunity to share with us some of the important information that they hold that will help us do a better job. Um, so some of the things that I've done in my work as an assistant superintendent and now superintendent is run professional
learning sessions for our faculty and staff. So one of the books that we used for a book study was called We Got This um by Cornelius Niner and that is a book that focuses on one teacher and his journey to help bring an equitable opport an equitable situation to
students. Um Zoretta Hammond is an author that has um culturally responsive teaching in the brain that a lot of our educators I'm sure a lot in Planeville have I mean in um Hollist have accessed um to really think about how are our kids the way they are and how does their
own culture play into how they present to us and how can we capitalize on the strengths rather than looking at deficits. So, I think that's it's definitely an area that's important to me um that I would want to partner with people on continuing to do better because we always can.
>> Can you share specific examples of policies, practice or initiatives? I know you shared some, but specifically on the ones that had an impact. Um so, that brought meaningful and measurable impact on school climate and student well-being. >> So, I I guess I would say um in that
regard, a couple of things. Um, one of the things that we focused on this year, um, had to do with students who come to us with some challenging behaviors and we brought in a guest speaker for the first day of school, Jessica Minhan, to kick off the year with our faculty and
staff and um, the purpose of that was to think about students behavior as a form of communication. So, um, we allowed our staff to, um, have access to some of her, um, philosophies, some of her approaches, and that was something that
we did for all teachers. We also knowing that we had several challenging individual situations, we brought her back and we had her meet with specific teams and we had um teams of teachers bring um certain student cases almost like a case consult and we implemented
strategies that she shared with us, but also brought those things um into kind of a a template that could be shared for other situations. Um, the other thing that we do in our district is what we're calling a whole child review. And that
affords us the opportunity to look at children as a whole. We're not just going to look at a child and say, um, he's really struggling in math and that's the end of the story. It's here's how they are as a whole. Um, these are the the gaps that we're seeing. These
are some reasons that we might be able to attribute and some potential strategies and interventions that we want to share with our students. So I think in terms of our um some when you talked about practices and policies another piece of that um it's not a
specific policy but it's a practice and we've um been very committed to the practice of including our students um to the greatest extent possible as often as possible. So we would struggle previously with well what are we going to do because this curriculum is really hard and these kids are really
struggling and these are complex texts and we we we don't think these kids are there so we should pull them out somewhere and instruct them with lesser material. So, we have moved away from that and we have moved to a far more inclusive um expectation set of
expectations for our students where um we know they can learn and we're going to make adjustments and amendments to um help kids access what we know they should and and what they're entitled to. Um I'm not touching on bullying and all
that, but we do we have those if those are the kinds of things that you're talking about and processes for that. Um, and I don't know if you'll touch on that in future questions, but um, we do when we think about kids coming and saying, um, this doesn't feel good to me. I don't, you know, or sometimes the
the, um, concern will come from a parent. And so we do have a very thorough process where we listen to what our students are telling us or their parents. We um, conduct investigations. We are very thorough and um I I feel
that our principles are very good about collaborating um in consulting. So we make sure that we don't miss anything in these investigations and that if there is a situation to be resolved that we're going to be on that because we we aren't in the business of allowing kids to come to school to a place where they don't feel safe because that's going to
prevent them um from learning and that that's just not the way we can operate. Um, so how do you balance supporting struggling students while also challenging advanced learners to ensure a rigorous education for all?
>> Can you share concrete examples and um kind of along that with that, how do you ensure that student voice meaningfully informs district decisions and that students feel heard and valued? So in terms of um the differentiating
your curriculum, uh we look at our curriculum and work in partnership with um in some cases classrooms have support systems already in place. So you might have a special educator, you might have a par
profofessional, you might be uh working alongside a reading specialist or a reading tutor. >> [snorts] >> and we think about ways that we can say okay um we have some kids who as I said earlier aren't going to access we have a very rigorous um set of expectations in
our English language arts program for example and we know that kids need to have the content so what are we going to do we're going to look at what what does our data tell us that our students either are missing or that our students have already mastered and we can move
them forward so things where we can make uh adjustments would be looking at some of the foundational skills and this is more of an elementary example right now and make sure that we design intervention groups. So we look at common skills. We um pull students into
groups. We make sure that we are actually tapping into any of their need or um kind of gap areas and at the same time um making sure that we're finding ways whether it's they have a book read to them, they have um a summary
presented to them of the content rather than the full text. um they have a partner that they work with to help kind of get through situations um with higher level curriculum and text. And for our upper level students, they you always
have to think about how can we stretch these kids? And um one one of my pet peeves is if I go in a classroom and I see, you know, everybody doing one problem at a time because you're losing kids um who you're losing kids who um
can move forward and are ready for more. And sometimes in those situations, you're losing kids who aren't getting it because they're just kind of following along um with everybody. So a lot of that takes, I would say, a discerning eye on the part of the educators to have a sense of what's going on in the
classroom and who needs more. And um at the secondary level, it's sometimes it's putting classes into levels where certain levels of classes have um the opportunity to move either at a faster pace um or to stretch more or to offer
students more opportunities for independent um access to topics and and exploration. And the same way um breaking things down for kids, it doesn't matter what level you're at. There are some situations where students
just simply need scaffolding and they need additional supports to get to the same place and that that really is a skill uh that teachers develop over time and it's not easy uh because you're asking people to individualize and personalize and that takes time. It
takes collaboration with colleagues. It takes professional learning and sometimes it takes starting in chunks. So, it may not be that you're going to make an individual plan for 20some children, but maybe we start by saying, um, we're going to have several different options today, and I'm going
to help you students decide which option is going to be the just right one for you today. Um, there might have been a second part to your question. Um, >> just um talking a little bit about student voice and how do you make sure that students feel seen and heard and valued.
>> Yeah. And I think there are ways that we do that s system systematically. So for example, the Metro West adolescent health survey is one way that we try to um solicit student voice. things like student councils, things like um student
um like a principal's cabinet or a superintendent's cabinet. Opportunities that we u create for kids within the fabric of our schools um are critical because if we don't know what our students are thinking, then we're not
going to be able to uh meet their needs. And the the challenge today is that the needs of students are really outpacing in some ways our ability to meet their needs. So we we also have to be um thoughtful and pay attention to things.
So in a previous district where I worked, we um started to notice that kids were posting things on one of the social media sites that um thank you for that. that um were unfavorable and that sent us a message that they were not
feeling um safe and supported in their school environment. And so that was um on us to follow up and support them and try to get solutions for them. >> Thank you. Um managing controversy and navigating conflict among stakeholders
including school committee administrators, staff, families, and the broader community is a core responsibility of the superintendent. Please describe a situation in which you addressed an issue involving strongly differing viewpoints. How did you balance ethical leadership,
transparency, and respect for diverse perspectives while working toward a positive resolution? And then finally, what strategies did you use to build trust and secure consensus? the the situation that comes to mind was
several years ago over Labor Day weekend I received a phone call from our town administrator and in the phone call he informed me that um two hotels in our town were going to be used as emergency shelters for u newcomers to the United
States and you know as you know my school district is very small we don't have extra room we don't have classes that aren't filled essentially to capacity and we had a very small population of English language learners,
multilingual learners and therefore we had a very small um cadre of staff to support those students. Um so almost overnight we had two dozen students who were going to be coming into our school district and needing everything um from
food resources to clothing to um English language supports help for families to understand um United States education because for many of those families they had never been exposed to school in the US. So um
that that became both um a challenge and it became an opportunity and I would say that um clearly there were very different perspectives on how people received our newcomers and our job and
what I will always say my job is is we are a public school. We served the students who were in our community and at that point in time those students became our community members as did their families and our job was to bring them in and get them what they needed. So um we
we kind of rallied the troops and um pulled things together in a way that I'm really still not sure how it all happened, but we pulled together a team. We went to the hotel. We conducted the registrations. We had our phones. We were Google translating. We were trying to gather documentation for people who
didn't have a whole lot. Uh our nurses were trying to gather um immunization records and we were also trying to do this without a whole lot of uh multilingual supports. So at the end of the day we um held an orientation for the students and their families. We
secured school buses. We got them in. We provided food. We helped the families to see our schools so they would know like where are my children going tomorrow because I don't have a car. I don't have access to to much of anything here and
they were depending on us and so we um we welcomed our students and at the same time we hired people to support us. So I um by the grace of God, we found a triilingual um person who wanted to come in and be our family liaison. And so she
was a kind of our conduit between the school and the hotel and some of the social workers and other people who were involved. And we um we just kind of batten down the hatches with what's most important with these for these students. How are we going to begin to acclimate
them to school? How are we going to begin to get them English [snorts] language? we had to um we had to get an Uber account because we didn't have a way to transport sick children home, things like that. So, the other interesting thing that happened in that situation was because the town was
really nervous and we were really nervous. I mean, that was just the reality. was um it was a lot for our schools to absorb and um through some of my calls with um Desi, we ended up having a visit from the commissioner of education and um it so we had the town
administrator there, school committee members and I felt that my job at the same time while welcoming those students and working with our team, it was certainly wasn't just me um it was lots and lots of people but I felt strongly that my job was to advocate with the
state to say this is um a major hardship in some ways for a very tiny school district. And the commissioner said to me, "Well, when I used to work in Lawrence, we'd call this Wednesday, Jen." And um he said, "I can understand how in your district, this is not just
any other Wednesday." And um that helped us develop a partnership with um Desi. We had um the students remained with us for in totality, although the kids themselves changed for um two school years. And we are much better for it.
Our district is better for it. Our educators are better for it. We have far more of an awareness of who our students and families are. Even though those exact families may not be with us today, we still have students and families who are living in precarious positions or at
the very least newcomers who need our attention and our um when we talk about belongingness and inclusivity. What are we going to do to make all of our families feel welcomed and and most especially our students? >> Thank you. >> You're welcome.
>> Can you please share some specific examples of how you have addressed achievement gaps among various student groups? Whether looking at anything from test scores to absenteeism data in your previous roles? What data has informed your decisions? And how did you ensure
equitable access to highquality instruction and supports? and how would you apply those strategies to advance equity and student outcomes in Hollist? >> When I came to Planeville, one of the um most pressing challenges that I encountered uh was the fact that we
didn't have in all content areas a defined general curriculum. So in education, we would call that a tier one curriculum. And if you don't have the basics and you don't have kind of that foundational um anchor for students,
that's a huge problem because you're not going to be able to decipher whether your problem if students aren't achieving is it a curriculum problem, is it a student problem, what have you. So, one of the first things that um I did with our team was um very quickly
conduct some curriculum reviews and work with Desi through some of the grants that they were offering um to especially focus on English language arts as an area of need. And we were able to populate purchase um with support from our town. Our town administrator found
some grant money that really helped us contribute to the the DESIE portion of the grant. And so it's always starting with what do you have and making sure that we are um we're positioning ourselves for success for students. Um the second thing is
there are um I don't know a million at least data points that we can use. Um, so for example, we have MCCAST data and um, we have one of the things that I noticed when we got to when I got to Planeville was that some of our data, not MCCAST, uh, we we were using a
program that assessed students three times a year inhouse, but it didn't have any way to measure student growth. So we would see a score at the beginning of the year and then a score in the middle of the year and a score at the end of the year. But we didn't have any way of really drilling down into that to
understand what do those scores mean and are our kids growing. So we made a shift in the assessment model that we used and we replaced the current assessment system with a new one and felt that we had more information um to
support our our decision- making around students. So, um, at the upper levels, you know, some of the things that I would look at are when you talk about equity, um, and I'm going to try to hit all the pieces and so some of it will probably feel a little choppy, but um,
what what does our attendance data look like and where are we in the quest to reduce um, situations of chronic absenteeism and at one point we accessed some DESI grant funding. they had a chronic absenteeism um grant and we we
took that money to create programming for students either at the beginning of the day or at the end of the day to help inspire students to say, "Oh, today's the day that I get to have extra basketball in the morning or I get to do something different." Um I would be interested to look at the secondary
level in this town and I haven't done this yet to see what is uh what what what do the students look like? What's what is the demographic of students who are enrolled in our AP classes? What is the demographic of our student who who are taking some of those pathways that
the the school um team is putting into place? And do we have a situation where we're seeing that some of our perhaps um more marginalized students are not taking advantage of some of the more rigorous opportunities that we offer here because maybe they don't think
those classes are for them and maybe they don't think that they would belong there and maybe they think it they wouldn't be successful and I think sometimes kids make up their minds and if we don't do our due diligence to encourage them and um really kind of
explain the benefits of some of these things. That's on us. And um in terms of the data piece, it it's very important for us to continually use multiple data points and drill down into our student subgroups. So, um what does it look like
for our lowes kids? What does the data look like for um males versus females? What does the data look like for um children who um do not have English as their first language? What does our special education population look like? and are they showing growth? So, those
are the kinds of things that I think are applicable no matter where you work, no matter what your town demographic may be. And that is background um that I think I could bring to Hollist and share with the educators. I'm confident they're doing plenty of this already. Uh
sometimes a different voice and a different approach um might might be helpful. Um yesterday we had an early release day and the topic of that early release day was how do we use the open architects platform which I know is used in this district to begin to um
consolidate data points and turn um turn student need into interventions that um teachers can start to use right away in their classrooms with their students. Can you please describe your philosophy regarding social and emotional learning and its role in student success? What
qualitative and quantitative data have you used to assess student well-being and school climate for both students and staff? And how have you led or supported initiatives to strengthen and overall wellness at the school and district level? >> That's really it's almost all we talk
about anymore. uh you know of course we talk about academics but it um this is really the challenge that we are facing in our schools. We have kids coming into us that are not emotionally regulated that um have in some cases especially
when we start looking at kids in grade five and up that have had a disjointed early foundational um school career due to co and all of that and um it it is part of our work and I think there are cases where people will say well that
school shouldn't be doing that school should just be teaching you know the all the content and all of that other stuff needs to be um dealt with at home, but that's that's really not our situation anymore. And a lot of what our kids are involved in um is also on their devices
and that stuff trickles into the school setting. So our job is to think about what are our core values. What do we think um are the um things that we hold most dear that we think are most important in terms of helping students
be prepared to work with others to um be successful in the face of adversity to handle um losing with grace. All of those things are um critically important. And so um at the elementary level there are multitude of um programs
that we use. So in our district we use second step and we use um some teacher creative materials to think about how do we best go through our values. So when we have um our acron acronym of heart, we talk about you know empathy and we
talk about honesty and we talk um about respect and so we focus um at certain periods of time on skills skill development in those areas and celebrating um when we see those core values come to life. So, um, you know,
the other things that we tap into are, you know, the castle standards, which is kind of the gold standard for social emotional, um, well-being. I'm lacking a better way to say it right now. Um, our reporting system to families um, focuses
on some of those, you know, how do you how do you manage yourself? How do you work respectfully with others? and um it's our job to share that information both with our students in real time and with their families. Um the other thing that is really important for us and this
is definitely a shift from the state of Massachusetts and I I agree with it um helping students to resolve issues in a fair and um dignified way. So, a lot of districts, including ours, have gone to
more of a restorative practices kind of model where it's not that, you know, we're going to suspend you for two days because such and such happened. Not that that may not happen, but um those kinds of approaches have not been found through research to be effective in
terms of affecting change with students. And we need to use strategies that help kids reflect, help kids think, help kids take ownership. um and that um have consequences that are authentic. Um the other piece kind of to all of this is we
really do need to push um the professional learning with our staff about seal about trauma um types of situations that many of our students have experienced and we may not even know it. Um, it's something that I I
actually talked about with the police chief in the meeting with him today about the quote handle with care approach, which sounds like you're familiar with that, making sure that we have a good line of communication if they're aware of things that may be helpful to us. Um, the other thing that
we've done a lot in our district with the help of our regional wellness director, and I think that you have some of the same programs here, is focusing on how do we get supports for kids who need those supports and families. So, Care Solace is one of the um support organizations that we work with. And one
of the things that we like about them is they offer supportive counseling to students and also families because to work with a student in isolation without involving parents and family um is not always going to be as successful as you
would hope. So I think we we go with our expectation that we have schools that are safe where where we are respectful of one another and then we start to add in proactive measures and reactive responsive measures when needed.
>> All right. Well, this is a a little long >> compared to the other ones, [laughter] right? >> Yes. We tried to fit everything into each one. Um, and then I have a quick followup, but uh, so leading meaningful change often requires challenging
long-standing practices, especially if data no longer supports the past practices. Can you please describe a time when you encountered resistance to change from staff or other stakeholders, and how you successfully led the organization forward? What strategies did you use to
maintain trust, morale, and momentum? How would you work with union leadership to overcome any initial concerns or object or objections regarding proposed changes? >> We talked about this a little bit in one of the um sessions I was in earlier today. So I'll talk about two things um
because the first one has to do with resistance and um when I referred earlier to a change in English language arts um one of the challenges that we faced and if you've um oh gosh I can't think of the name of the podcast that everybody about reading um
sold a story sold a story was that anyway um for years and years and years teachers have been teaching reading in one specific way and it's through a model that was put together by two educators out of Leslie University and that was
the gold standard for teaching. And um th those I remember earlier on in my career as a principal the curriculum would come packaged in boxes and each color um box would represent a reading level. And so I'd have reading teachers
running around going, "When am I going to get the teal box? When am I going to get the orange? I need the next box of books." and they were very very expensive on top of everything. And then research is now telling us that um all of the eggs that we put into that basket
uh were ineffective and um leaving us to a place where nationwide you you can look at the the nation's report card which is based on annual national testing of students in grades four and eight and our kids aren't learning how to read and how can that be? So, um,
when I arrived in Planeville, I started receiving questions almost immediately about how do you feel about the science of reading and do you think we should be switching and you know, what are we going to do? And, um, we very quickly had to turn things around and, um, like I said earlier, capitalize on some
funding and bring in some new curriculum. And what happens with that is you always have people who are early adopters who say, "Yeah, I really uh, want to move in this direction." And then you get people who say, "But no, I really just want to hold on to this piece and this piece and and this piece
because I like it and the kids like the books and um and then you get the people who you kind of have to pull really really pull them in." And uh the way that we did that in this district was by finding a curriculum that we felt met a lot of our needs in
terms of diversifying our curricular materials of bringing that very very heavily um weighted knowledge base which is what this curriculum is dependent upon and then adding to that with some of the foundational skills that kids
needed in the areas of um phonics and phmic awareness. And after all of that, we recognized that this program, like many programs, is not a standalone. And often one program, no matter how many hundreds of thousands of dollars you put
into it, doesn't have every single thing you need. And so this year, we've recognized that this program isn't teaching kids how to write. And so when we look at our data, we notice that we're not getting the points on the written component of the MCCAST. And when we look at kids writing, we're not
seeing what we want. So um we identified another um writing curriculum which I was aware of through my work in Hopkin that's been very successful called Think SRSD and we built capacity on the part of our teachers starting with our um English language arts committee and we
were able to provide training for everyone on that committee and we were able to help um help them become teacher leaders and they were informal leaders but um they fit the bill for what we needed And um we're at the point right now where two of those teachers who took
that um that training just completed a course that they taught to their colleagues. So we offered an in-house graduate class taught by a third grade teacher and a fourth grade teacher and we had 19 teachers take that class and some of them don't teach reading and writing. Some of them were sixth grade
teachers who teach math and science because we're starting to help people understand that writing and reading and literacy is it it permeates every content area. And um we did that with people originally saying why in the
world would you make us do this when we just bought this new curriculum and we just got used to this and now you're bringing in something else. And I think we were able to use our research. we were able to use authentic student work samples um to help people actually see
it for themselves. And so I think sometimes it's that like seeing is believing and you have to start small and we started this incrementally with a couple of early adopters and um we still have people that aren't aren't all there yet and we're going to keep moving um
because we we feel that that it's that critical and important. >> Okay. Um, and then just uh as a quick aside, what would you uh what do you believe I guess is is the most powerful powerful word in the English language?
[panting] I Well, I don't know if I'll I'll be able to tell you I think it's the most powerful, but um I don't know. Maybe I'll say I'll go with potential. And I think that because that that's our job. Our job is to tap into potential.
It's the potential of students. It's the potential of our staff. It's the potential of um what happens when we take these children and we move them through elementary. And we get them into um a middle school and a high school. And we start to think about their potential as contributing members of of
our nation. And we really need right now more than ever solid, thoughtful, reflective um human beings. So that'll be my word of the day. >> You're welcome. >> Advancing diversity, equity, inclusion,
and belonging requires both courageous leadership and meaningful collaboration. Can you describe a time uh a genuine commit what sorry, can you describe what a genuine commitment to DEIB looks like in your leadership practice? Can you share some specific examples of how
you've advanced DEIB in your current or prior roles? um and how you've supported staff learning, aligned systems and policies, and engage stakeholders in this area. How would you continue and deepen this work in our district? At a certain point in time when I was
working in Hawington and we were out for COVID, um we had another situation that happened nationally with George Floyd and we had a bunch of high school kids and teachers who I mean the little guys aren't going to take figure that out
yet, but um we had a lot of um discontent and a lot of worry at the upper levels and so there was partnership with our high school principal, with me um with other district administrators to um think
about what are we going to do and how how are we going to reach out to these teenagers and help them help them navigate through this. And so we partnered with um a a consulting firm called Ideas and we brought in some of
their consultants to help us um and our high school teachers think [snorts] about ways that we can address some of these challenges with our students um as a means of yes, this is where we are. This is what's happened and this is how we're going to continue to you know you
asked earlier about an opportunity for student voice. These are some of the things that we're going to be doing to make sure that we hear you and we're uh we're cognizant of what is going on. And sometimes I think kids need to know that
we're listening. We don't always have the answers. So after that we I worked with that same at that same time period we needed to hire a director of English language learners in Hopkin. And um instead of just doing that, I worked
with the superintendent to rename that position. And so we renamed it's a ridiculously long name, but it was the director of English language acquisition, equity, and access. So um that is a mouthful. and we we gave her a yon's task of, you know, how are we
going to move this work forward in a district where we were experiencing demographic changes in that town? And we were seeing um more brown and black students than white students and that was a significant change and there were
tensions that we really needed to address. And [snorts] so we um worked together um and especially I'll give a lot of the credit to the high school administration, but we created a course of studies for our freshmen to um we did
a couple things, but one thing was this course that we put into I think here they call it a some kind of a block, DBS block or dice study block. Um, and we had something similar um, in Hopkin where it was a block where the kids met with a counselor. Um, I can't remember
what it was called now, but we identified a certain number of those um, those periods where we brought in a series of speakers to meet with our students and to start addressing some of these issues of identity, marginalized
populations. So, we brought in um someone who represented people who um have a disability. We brought in um a woman of color um Kis Warham who does a lot of public speaking engagements about DEI um around the state of
Massachusetts. And we found a really um a a really polished speaker. His name was Grant High Totower. And um he was also a man of color. And it's, you know, it's hard when you look at a district where it's very very difficult to to attract and retain um a diverse
candidate pool because they're they're not always in existence and especially when you're looking at like little small suburban um towns. So, we felt it was important to find experts who had a lived experience who could share some of that beyond what we we could share with
our own lived experience. And um Grant especially was um very communicative with our high school kids. And we also tapped into him to do some teaching with our eighth graders on topics like what is a microaggression? How do you handle something like that? What does bias
mean? And um he really did an extraordinary job with our students. And one of the stories that he told us that stuck with me, and this relates to what I said about kids need to know we're listening to them. He told us um an anecdote about a time when he was in school and a classmate called him um a
racial slur and he said this happened right in front of the teacher and he said I was so angry um that I I lost my cool in the classroom and he said I went to the teacher and said aren't you going to do something about this? You heard it. The teacher said well I didn't hear
anything. And so his next move was to turn a desk upside down. And so you can imagine that um that did not bode well for him. And I go back and I I appreciate that example that he shared because it does go to show how important it is for us to listen to our kids even
if we can't solve it. Even if it's not a perfect scenario because there isn't always a solution, but there is always and should always be someone who can listen to our kids and help them navigate. And I I said in um one of the other meetings today, I I feel that I've
heard from the staff here that people are interested in supporting students in that manner. There is a position in this district that is dedicated to that. But I also really believe that it can't be one person in one position um that's responsible for that. This is a
collective effort to make all kids feel included and welcomed. So, as you're probably well aware, anti-semitism is on the rise nationwide, and Hollist has not been totally immune from its own incidents. As superintendent, what actions would you
take to address and prevent anti-Semitic incidents and acts of hate more generally? >> It's funny. Um, we we talk a lot about when we talk about the concept of bullying and we say, "Oh, we're going to teach anti-bullying and we're going to I don't want to talk about the anti-
stuff, I want to talk about the proactive measures." So, situations like that um that come from a place of hate and um they it's not that we can teach kids not to
do that. We have to think about who we are and what we value and how we um address human differences and how we celebrate different identities. And that needs to be done organically through our
instruction. And um no matter however and and so that would be through literature, that would be through if you're doing a curriculum review. um there are methods and procedures that help educators and leaders assess
curriculum for areas of bias. So when we start to really look at how do we do our business, it's to think about how do we set up a a situation where we're always moving with the thought of being u positive and inclusive and all of those
things. Um, and you can do that until you turn blue, but situations are going to happen and that's real. And so when those situations happen, that's when um it would be my job if I were here to um
demonstrate thoughtful leadership, which number one is to denounce um any kind of act of hatred. Anything that has to do with disparaging an individual, a group, um a historically marginalized group, a
group that has um endured that over and over and over. And um there are times when and we we do think about this as superintendent, you know, when do you make the statement? So if something happens in a another country or another part of the um part of the nation, how
many times does a superintendent or a leader send a message out to the community? But there are times when you have to. And um that would be one of the times when we would need to revisit our um the things that we feel um are our
core values and um denigrating one group of people. It's it's unacceptable in every possible way. And where I think people get into difficulties is when they try to either um shove it under the radar or um in a
recent situation in Rhode Island where a team had some anti-semitic activities and there was an athletic component to that and that's where you have to lean into um where are you going to make a stand and I think there are a lot of things in these jobs where we say what
are you going to go to the mat for and what I'm going to go to the Met for is that I don't stand for um incidents of hate and there's no place for that in our schools. That um contributes to an unsafe environment and the minute that you allow that then you're allowing
something else and something else and you're tearing apart the core fabric of your community and you're not helping people feel safe. And when those kind of tragic things happen, um they're scary and they're off-putting and um they
bring up a lot of emotions for people. And when those things happen, I think what people are looking at their leaders for is a sense of calm and a sense of um outrage, but that outrage can't be, you know, you got to do it in a way that
people are going to listen. So, um I think it's really important that those things are addressed headon and then we go back and we reflect and we ask, you know, if it was a student who made that kind of a situation, you know, how are we going to what what kind of um
sensitivity training are we going to provide? What type of reparations are we going to um put together so our student community and their families feel safe and that um anyone who has gone to those measures has an opportunity to learn and
um and hopefully to grow. Recruiting, hiring, and retaining a high quality professional teaching and support staff is critical to the success of our schools and students. As superintendent, describe for us your approach to attracting and retaining new
staff, including diverse staff, and supporting the ongoing growth of all teachers and par professionals in the schools. What is your role in that process as superintendent? Additionally, what programs have you had success with that you could bring to Hollist teachers, par professionals, and staff to uh aid in retention?
um finding staff right now it is a challenge and especially you know if any of you have kids at the secondary level if you think it's easy to find you know a chemistry teacher an AP bio teacher um a world language teacher student
services special education there there is a darth of candidates they're not out there [snorts] so um you know what do you do you you tap into every resource that's available. So, for example, you get your jobs out on all of the typical
um school spring and all of those things. Uh, one of the things that we have started looking into this year is Handshake, which is the um the recruiting or um job board that a lot of the colleges use. So when we think
about, oh, we it's a December hire, you know, maybe there's a kid who just graduated and so we're in the process of getting ourselves onto the Handshake um system so kids who are looking can see things that we have available. [snorts] A couple of years ago, this was back
when I was in Hopkin, I partnered with probably Holliston was part of this with some of the Metro West area um superintendents and assistant supers to run a Metro West area job fair and we held it actually at Hopkin High School and we opened it up to anybody who was
interested in coming. any any jobs that we had in education, we so we all had our little booths and little chachkis and cookies that you you hand away um with the hopes of really promoting um who we are as districts and that was a
nice um kind of local collaborative way of looking at that. Um the other thing that I've done this year because I really feel committed to this is I've reached out to a couple of the area universities to ask um how can I be helpful to you in terms of helping um to
prepare our um graduating seniors for job interviews and for um how to put their packets together in a way that is going to be attractive to a school district. Now, that's educ education related. Um, because what I'm finding is
kids come with resumes that have some missing pieces and I find things that are in their packets that maybe philosophically not current and I am hoping to get a a stab at um talking to some of these kids. So, I got myself on
a panel at Stonehill University that will be or college that'll be this spring. And in the process of doing this, I also made a connection with Framingham State University and they invited me to be part of their advisory board, which is made up of area educators and superintendent. And I
think the secondary level, making those partnerships with the colleges and universities. Um that's number one I hope to see changes in the way educator preparation programs um are going and two try to make partnerships and make
whatever district I'm working in um feel attractive and like a really interesting place to prospective employees. Um, in terms of the retention, that's also hard because right now, especially in and honestly, finding a a
good kindergarten teacher is really hard. You know, you might think it's not, but um that's a different skill set that you don't always finding a music teacher is hard. So, um, what we really need to do is focus on our mentoring programs and making sure that we're
providing our first, second, and third year educators with the, um, the supports, the skills through, um, a solid mentoring program. And I haven't explored yet what what it looks like in Hollist. Um but one of the things I am interested in if I were to um be
fortunate enough to be here is some regional collaborations and some of my colleagues for example in Milford they run their mentoring program in concert with I think Ashland and Mendineupton. So you have three different school districts partnering
together to provide a really strong opportunity where teachers can network with each other and they can network with with their colleagues and um things like that where we can um because teaching it's that mentoring program is so important because there's I don't know if you've seen any of the graphs
but kind of the trajectory of a new teacher and it's oh this is going great this is going great oh now now I'm up on this peak in December and it's like wow this is really my job and I have to come here every day and this is really hard and Then, you know, you hope that a teacher will get to the end of the year and say, "Oh, wow. Okay, I made it.
Renewal time. It's it it's going to be okay." But we have to we have to give them the structures and the and the supports and we have to give them the flexibility to make mistakes without feeling that oh my god, the world has ended. >> Okay. So, budget question. Um
um so obviously budgets are challenged across the state, the country. >> Um and while we're uh you know we're we're mainly here to educate, we can't do that without uh you know a strong budget. Um can you please describe your role in financial planning and and fiscal management in your current or
previous districts, however you want to do it. Um how have you balanced strategic investment in in district priorities with responsible stewardship of taxpayer resources? um how have you ensured that financial decisions align with the district's mission? Uh
strategic strategic plan and and student needs and then uh has there ever been a time when you needed to balance sort of school committee and admin uh priorities if they've differed, you know, even within kind of the the district's priority needs. >> So in the district where I am right now,
we have a little central office where I work. And so I'm in one office and right next door to me is the business administrator and the assistant to the business administrator and the my secretary who also doubles as HR. So there's the majority of our central
office. And because I entered this district um and inherited a budget that was put together in a very um a very rough way and it was put together in a rough way because the town was experiencing financial challenges and
there was a commitment on the part of the current school committee and the town partners to make something work and it wasn't going to be great and we were going to get through it. Um so we had you know kind of a reasonable budget to get through the year. it didn't we had
no growth. We had, you know, some different ways of looking at some extraordinary expenses like out of district tuitions and some some things like that that really did impact um our overall dollars that we had. [snorts] But what what came of that was a very
very um a lot of focus on that budget in my first year. And so I was learning the superintendency. I also had a finance person who was in her first year. So the two of us were kind of doing this together and learning along the way. And
um with that we met monthly with the town administrator and the town finance director. And we conferred very frequently with our school committee and especially our budget subcommittee to make sure that we were doing our part to
um responsibly navigate the budget that we had been given and to make sure that we were looking um forward at how are we going to try to start building back things that had been um eliminated because of drastic budget cuts. So, I
was fortunate enough to have a really strong coach for the new superintendent program. And her words of advice to me were, "Get to know your budget. Get to know your budget." And I I would say at this point, I know the budget intimately. And I remember at the very beginning saying to the business
administrator, "Why do you need that money in that account?" And then we'd go through all of the backup sheets and yep, sure enough, there's and one of the challenges was, and I'm sure this is the same way in every town, um, schools take up a lot of the budget and there's sometimes a feeling that the school has
extra money. And so we were kind of put in this place where we really needed to demonstrate um, and make a case for the money that is in that budget is really the money that we need and there was no extra or fluff. And so um you know at
this point in time I've partnered with the business administrator. we she's since switched to a new person but um I have been very much involved in developing the bud budget presentations sharing the bud bud sorry budget presentations um to the school committee to the
finance committee to our liaison to the finance committee um to the select board where needed to our faculty and staff to make sure that they have an understanding and um it is a balance because I also have to be respectful we in planeville are
trying to build back from five years ago or six years ago a really significant budget cut, but so are other departments of town. And so when we say, you know, we're trying to build the schools back, one of our big challenges is some of the other extraordinary things that are out
of our control. So um the state funding formulas, I think we've talked about this in some of the other meetings I was in today. And uh so one of the things that I do think is part of my job as a superintendent is to participate in the activities of Mass Association of School Superintendent to
participate in the superintendent roundt which um is represented by many of the Metro West towns. um to go to advocacy sessions, which I did this fall when we were asked to um we were given the opportunity to go and um testify on
chapter 70 funding, on circuit breaker funding. And those are the drivers when we we sit and we look at our budget and we like tease out why are we asking for x% over last year in a um a level
service budget because lots and lots of things are going up out of our really out of our control. Um and we can't get in a position where we're putting two entities from our school department against each other. And um that's that's
kind of where we're left because of the funding structures. So, I feel obligated to the taxpayers, like you said, because um no one has extra tax dollars and we want to make sure we're using them responsibly. And that also ties into the strategic plan because when we build
that budget, we need to know what are our priorities, where are our dollars going, and so I'll I will say right now the budget that we're presenting, which is a um level service budget, we have we're now calling it the level service budget with an asterisk because um we
have our administrative team has decided that we desperately need more facilities support. we don't have enough boots on the ground right now to maintain our 20 plus year old buildings and that is something that we have been very vocal about um that we we need it and um it's
extra money but we actually think that's a good use of our taxpayers revenue because it's everybody owns these buildings you were saying but just quickly uh how have you incorporated data enrollment trends and program evaluations as you
you know work on your budget >> I mean those are always parts of things. So, we always um we haven't some districts will contract with NASDAQ and they provide you with projections. Where I am right now, that hasn't been um necessary based on the size of the
district. But what we do do is we tap into the town census. So, we have um one of our secretaries begins that work of digging in and looking at who are our incoming students, what are their birth dates, what do we project for kindergarten. Um, so for example, for
the upcoming year, we have had to already make the decision to eliminate a kindergarten classroom, not because of budget wos, but because we don't think we're going to have enough kids to, um, take those the class spots that we have right now. So, um, we look carefully at
rolling up our kids from one grade to the next. And we do not have a class- size cap in my district right now, but we have a goal of 18 to 22 students per class. We try to be reasonable. Um and
so we we bear those things in mind as we build. U we look at things like our um we've had fluctuation in our multilingual learners. So we had a small number, the number was growing, then we had newcomers and the number really grew. And now next year we're moving
back towards baseline. So that's an area that we have to look at to um kind of see where does that all shake out for the upcoming year. uh we have to look at um our students who are in some of our specialized programs within the district and look at
um cohorts of kids to f to decide do we need to build another program, do we need to amend some of the specialized programs that we currently have. So all of those things um we kind of go into play as we think about what do we require for the the upcoming year. It's never just that we had this and now we
we need this again. It's what do we need now to support the kids that are in front of us? >> Very good. >> You're welcome. >> Okay. Um, as you may be aware, in December, the MSBA invited us to the eligibility period for potential
renovation or replacement of our 56-year-old high school building. As our new superintendent, you will be intimately involved in this process, working closely with our town officials, as well as planning for new and innovative instructional spaces with the
school committee staff and families. Um, so please describe your experiences with capital building projects such as construction of a new building or school and share with us some of the vision and opportunity that you see in creating this brand new and innovative learning space. And then also how would you
include the voices of administrators, faculty, staff, and families in that whole decision-making process? When I was um looking at some of your documents for preparation for today, I did watch the school committee meeting where you had one of your select persons
here and it was I think right it might have been the night before MSBA was officially saying that um that this was happening and um it was very exciting to watch that meeting and to see the um enthusiasm on the part of the town for
the potential for this project. So I think right away that gives me a clue about how this town is going to be um considering and approaching this really exciting project. Um so yes, I have been part of MSBA projects. When I was hired
as the principal of the Lincoln Street School in North Bro, the superintendent said, "This is so great that you're here because now we're about to start a building project and um this is going to be, you know, really good experience." And it sure was. uh they were at the
point where we were hiring the architect the and the um owner's project manager. So I was really in on the ground floor of all of the planning and execution of the project and um it was a complicated project. It was a relatively small
elementary school, but the school it was a 1960s something and it required um what we ended up deciding on was a full renovation with an addition while occupied. So we had to um lease um 10
modular classrooms. So over the summer before construction started we had um the company came in, they um erected the the new wing. We had to move one wing of the school into the modular wing knowing that halfway through the year we were
going to flip. And so those classes that were in the modulars were going to move to a brand new renovated wing of the building while others were going to move elsewhere. Uh we had construction people on site all the time. Uh we had fields
that were dug up for to make room for the new gym that was added. Uh we had a lot of family communications because [clears throat] we had a lot going on. We had a lot of um work with our project manager because we had safety obvious
the obvious safety concerns making sure that everybody who came on site was Corey cleared and you know all of that stuff that you don't have to think about if you're building a building over there. Uh a lot of work with our um fire police. Uh we even had voting in schools at that time. So, we had to figure out
how to how to get voters into the modular classrooms and it there there were a lot of moving parts and um there were a lot of meetings. There were weekly meetings. I attended pretty much all of them. Um I still serve um as a
reference for the project management company and the architect and I I remember our town manager saying we just we've wrapped up a project and everyone is still speaking together, speaking to each other. And that's really um you know you want to talk about a measure
that that's a really great measure of how successful a building project was and it was a lot of work and it was um it was well worth it and our students had this really beautiful amazing environment and to your other question uh one of the things about the MSBA is
they are experts in this work and the um the vendors who come in your architect your project managers they're all used to working with the MSBA go there are so many meetings. There are so many opportunities for voice and um
right down to did you like those triangular shaped desks or do you like the octagonal shaped desks? Do you like this? Do you like that? Um food service director coming in, you know, what do you think about how you want to run food out of this building and um drop off and pickup and what do your what are your
traffic patterns look like? All of those pieces. Um I I'm not sure there was a stone unturned. Um kids got involved and um we made a time capsule of things and we I don't know it's buried there somewhere now. But so we you know to the greatest
extent we um we encouraged all of that involvement and we really also needed our family involvement because it all required votes. So, you know, we needed a vote at town meeting, we needed a vote at the ballots, and we had an extraordinary um group of families and
um community members who understood the importance of this, and they got it done. >> Right. How do you I'll break this into two because it is another long one. Uh let's train this tonight. Um, how do you
define leadership and how do you demonstrate that with your leadership style? What particular strengths do you believe you'll bring to our school system? There's a phrase called servant leadership. And as I look at that, I
really think that that um that matches what I what I think these jobs are. So my job is not to run around here or anywhere else and tell people you do this, you do this, you do this, you do this. Um, sometimes you have to, but for the most part, my job is to serve. My
job is to serve a community. My job is to serve students. Um, my job is to make sure that we have a school district that all of you and the community members and the taxpayers can feel proud of. And, um, my job is to help inspire um, people
to all row in the same direction or at least to have conversations when we're not. And um my job is to help other people do their jobs. And I think that um we there are so many there are so
many different people who make up a school district. And I said this in one of the other meetings today that I feel like you can equate it to an orchestra. And when you have music that you need to make, you have a conductor who helps kind of send signals. and that conductor might give people um training and some
instruction, but at the end of the day, you need every single one of those pieces of that orchestra to come together to make um really to make the magic happen. And I do feel that um in leadership, if you want to move in that way, you need to be a person who's
humble. You need to be a person who's reflective. Um you need to be someone who's willing to listen. And sometimes you don't like what you hear, but you have to be able to take it in and think about it. And um I really do think about how
it it really comes down to honestly as simple as the golden rule. And when people come in my office and excuse me, they ask me a question, I think all the time about how would I want to be treated if it was me going and asking a
question or messing up. You know that I hear that a lot from people. Oh my god, this went wrong. This is terrible. You're going to be upset. No, we're I mean, barring the obvious like terrible, horrific things which don't usually happen. So I think was the other question. How
do I inspire? What are particular strengths you believe you'll bring to our school system? >> I think that that answer I've probably already um touched on. You just have to be a real person and I think people really respond to someone
who demonstrates humanity and um one thing that I do think I'm pretty good at is reflecting on myself and my own actions and decisions and owning what I think I could have done better. So, I think those are those are the things that have helped me and I've been
doing this for a little while now and I think it's it's proved for the most part successful. You're not always going to make everybody happy and that does eat away at me because a lot of us in education are people pleasers. But, um, at the end of the day, if you're honest
with people and you demonstrate that bit of humility, um, I think it goes a long way. >> Is that third part to that question? >> Oh, [laughter] I can't talk anymore. I'm sorry, Frank. >> All good. It's along the line, so keep this short, but how would you adapt your
leadership approach or adapt new skills you or what new skills would you need to develop when moving from a K through six district to Holliston, which has 2650 students across four schools with specialized programs like French immersion and monastery? Mhm.
I think what I've learned over time is that if you have the basic skills and you have the basic relationships with people, you figure it out. >> [snorts] >> And um I am being entirely genuine when I say
a big part of the reason for why I'm interviewing for this job here tonight is because of we are what I think I can do to help support our upper level learners. And no, it's not. You know, your high school teachers will say she never taught a high school class. And I
can't dispute that. But I do think that the work that I have done in for example Hopkin where I was the primary evaluator for a number of the department heads uh world language um science and
engineering, music and art. Um I spent an inordinate amount of time um learning about that level, hearing the needs, adapting to what people need and and partnering with them. We we planned programs together and um those things
I'm thinking specifically about a summer where we did we did a a program for students who were at risk of not graduating from high school and we did a program for students who needed a lot of credit recovery and I am not the person who's going to be
teaching them a high school level math but I tapped into our math leader who was extraordinary and um so a lot of it is just being able to assess the situation and analyze needs
>> and you raised your hand so I think I might be out of time. Okay. [laughter] Um, could you please share how you work with your administrators, staff, and the school committee to develop a vision, long-range plans, and annual goals that build trust, strengthen relationships, and bring the community together around
the success of students? And how do you report progress toward reaching such goals and measuring their outcomes? And how do you think the school committee should evaluate you on that uh uh progress? So strategy and plans, reporting progress and evaluation by school committee.
>> So um part of the new superintendent induction program is working to develop your strategic plan. And I was really fortunate to have a coach in the new super program who one of her specialty areas was planning for success which is
the DESIE model for strategic planning. and um she offered to do this work with me and for our district in partnership. So, in my first year, we made a one-year plan and we focused on the big big boulders that we knew had to be
addressed um right away. And then, um we moved into part two, which was the multi-year strategic plan. And that was a group that um included all kinds of stakeholders um you know from the community from our
schools, teachers, administrators, parents. Um we didn't have kids on it, but it it didn't it wasn't really appropriate for for our age group, but I would have if it was secondary. And our work was to start with envisioning the future. And if we look out into the
future, what how do how do we want to see the Planeville public schools? if it was here, how do we want to see the Hollist public schools? And we went through a a multitude of steps to talk about what are our strengths, what are our weaknesses, what are um you know, what are the things that are going to
hold us uh back, what are our opportunities, and um how are we going to capture that? And then begin to um take what we found and turn um our findings into goals. And so we came up with a plan that isn't all that
dissimilar from the plan that you have here. And the plan was full of measurable goals. So we had goals about um teaching and learning, social emotional, um professional learning, operations and management. And there there was also a lot of
overlap between some of the areas, but each area has its own set of measurable goals and timelines. So our job and my job as kind of the leader of our administrative group is to manage and monitor our progress on the goals in
that plan. So we will use a number of our administrative meetings to say we're going to pull out that strategic plan again and everyone goes, "Yay! Can't wait." Um but that's that's what we need to do. We need to look at where are we? And the more that we do that, um, we're
keeping ourselves true to our commitments. And the commitment is to get us to the goals that we as a collective, many stakeholders decided, um, that were important. So mid year, I take all of the information after we've
done our check-in and I put it into a digestible format and bring that to the school committee where we say, "Okay," and that's actually coming up at our next meeting. Um, where are we? What did we accomplish? what are we still working on? And that will all be part of my evaluation. It's not the only thing I'm
evaluated on, but because it is our it's our roadmap and it's also the road map that our buildings um use as their kind of northstar when they build their um school improvement plans. And we we refer a lot to well that's in our
strategic plan. And and so we kind of talk about that and when we're in meetings with teachers and we talk about well this mass tiered um you know tiered system of supports that's a big you know a big area in our plan um health and wellness curriculum
that's a big area in our plan and um among other things and so um I would say those are big parts of how I am evaluated and how I present evidence to the school committee. when you're the person who gets to put
all that together. >> Okay. Well, I think we can say thank you for answering our questions. Um we really appreciate this has been a long day and but we are thrilled that you were able to be with us and just thank you for coming to our district. Um, is
there anything kind of in closing to that you'd like to share with us in support of your candidacy? >> One thing I don't know if I remember to say to this group was about the interactions I had with the students at the middle and high. Did I talk about that with this group? Um, I did. I think
you touched on it. >> Um yeah, I just wanted to reiterate that um the time with the high school kids and the middle school kids um they were extraordinary and I think you know you should be really proud of the types of questions that they asked, the
responses, their ability to interact. There were zero um devices in the area and they asked questions of me like you know what was important to me and who am I and um where would I be during the day? would I be in their classrooms?
Would I be in an office? And uh they they were very free with sharing things that they really liked. And um it was it was really refreshing. And so they they represented all of you and all of your educators and their families
really well. And um I feel like this was a really productive day. And it was yeah, it was a long day and there was a lot. But um I am grateful for this opportunity and um being able to connect with different constituencies and stakeholders
was very valuable and you have an amazing district here and I appreciate that you have areas for growth because we all do. Uh but there's a lot of there's there's a reason why I knew this was going to be an interesting place and a special place to to consider and um I
I found that to be validated today. So, I thank you all for that. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> All right. >> We're all set. >> Motion to adjurnn. >> Motion to adjourn. >> Um by Don [laughter] Motion.
>> Second by Don and >> All in favor? Yes. All right. Good night. Good night, Alison. Thank you. And thank you