i see that [Applause] mike you still going to robotics at 1:30 tomorrow yeah i was going to ask do you think it's okay like I know that they probably don't want to do multiple tours but I can't go tomorrow so I was
going to bring Jonas with me after one on Saturday yeah well I would give Brian a heads up because sometimes I'm going tomorrow at 4 because I can't go at 1:30 so I'm just coming in back and forth competition i mean if anyone could make it at four I'm sure that would be fine the other thought would be I'm going to
email them either way i just wanted to ask in case that would be an issue before I do that it is now 6:30 and I'm going to call to order the work session of our April meeting of the Sardel Student School Board thank you for all of our community
members that are here in person as well as any that may be watching online tonight or in the future we appreciate your interest and engagement with our board as well as our school district and with that we will start with our um pledge of
allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay and our first item on the agenda
really our only real agenda item tonight is our schoolboard self-evaluation and we have Gail with us from MSBA virtually so welcome Gail thanks for being here yeah thank you it's good to be here with all of you and we didn't have any interruptions with the weather like I've
had recently with some schools and the sun's actually shining where I'm at today so all is good it looks like the sun's out where you're at too so very good well for those of you that I have not met before my name is Gail Gilman i serve as the director of strategic planning and board leadership with
Minnesota School Boards Association we are so appreciative of your ongoing membership in our association and it's always a pleasure to work with you and serve you as well uh tonight we're going to be reviewing your board self-evaluation and I'll get to that in just a minute i'm going to start with
some resources to set the stage for our discussion and um then we'll we'll take a look at your evaluation which actually this is the second time your group has taken the board self-evaluation i think the last time you might have reviewed the results on your own i don't think
you had a facilitated discussion so so this will be a first and just a nice opportunity for all of you to to learn and grow and now we've got some comparisons too from uh see it was June 24 so just last summer not too many months ago that you took it the last
time so but um as we get started I'm going to do a little bit more introduction of myself and then I'm going to go around the room and get to learn a little bit about you as well so for me I come to Minnesota Schoolboards Association via a long career at the
University of Minnesota my educational background is in family and youth education and I was on the faculty at the U of M working through the college of education for many many years i segueed for a few years and worked with Minnesota Board on Aging which that was
perfect because my mom is uh she's going to be turning 96 and she reminds us of that all the time uh turning 96 in May late May and uh I'm finding I'm really going back and honing in on those skills as well so it's kind of double duty um
my um interest in serving on the school boards association is that like those almost all of you around the table I'm a former school board member i served on the new board of education for two terms over those years I served as the clerk
and also the vice chair and I represented our board on the riverbend education district so I got to learn a lot about special ed and additional services that I really at that time never knew existed um and so I joined
the MSBA staff in uh 2017 so I've been there just a few years so that's a little bit about me let's go around the room if you can tell me who you are how long you've been on the board and then if you want to just share a nugget or two about uh what you do when you're not
a school board member because I know this is a big hat for you but uh you have a life outside of it as well so do we have any volunteers to get started i can start uh I'm Jen Smith this is my third year first term um on the board
and I have four kids that I'm constantly chasing around so wherever they're at usually I try to be at sounds good very good thank you Jen i appreciate that let's just go around the table then i'm Emily Larson um same thing i'm in my third year of my first
term um outside of this I work full-time for a logistics company and I have a 10-year-old son who is in hockey which means life consists of only hockey work and schoolboard and that's
it um as a former hockey mom I feel your pain i also feel your excitement too i had a son and a daughter who both played hockey and uh my daughter also figure skated so don't ask me why but yeah so I know what you what you mean when you say that it's a it's a lifestyle for sure
for a few years and then when it's not there anymore you miss it like that oh I'm going to be so sad i complain about it but I love it it's a lot of fun that's for sure thank you Emily i'm Trisha Muelling and I am serving I start just started my fifth year on my
second term um and what I do around when I'm not here is I also have lots of kids i have five kids and I am um constantly running around chasing or whatever it is that they're interested in and that's okay different C is a different thing
yes absolutely very good thank you Trisha a Gail Natt Mley i'm also starting my second term on the school board um and like you I'm currently our special ed district representative to the Benton Sterns Education District um outside of
school board I have two daughters they're both free sport athletes so we are just as busy as everybody else running running from place to place um I guess I think it's fair to call it I had my own active style midlife crisis this year instead of buying a convertible I
did the Burket binder so that was really fun time very good good for you good for you thank you Matt hi Gil i'm Chelsea Felen and I am the newbie i'm in my first year of my first term on the school board and
outside of that so our uh we have two daughters our oldest was our athlete and she's now off to college so we are exploring what we enjoy doing now that we're not running around at sports events all the time um and then our
youngest is a a junior in high school so um we started getting into puzzles um a lot at home yeah very good thank you Chelsea and welcome as the uh newest board member so you're
you're uh just learning the ropes here you I'm guessing you weren't um appointed you were elected and then did you start in January yes correct so you're new okay very good sounds good last but not least hi Gail mike Herard superintendent here in Sartell St steven
uh I'm in my first year as a superintendent previous to this I was next door um in the St cloud area school district as their assistant superintendent and principal for a long time next door what do I do outside there's a theme this evening i I ref hockey games and do about 100 to 125 a
year for youth hockey all the way up to 14 and 15 year olds so okay very good you haven't dipped your toe into junior college or college games men or women's uh no the the bantams are tough enough to keep up with and the squirts are bad
enough that they take my legs out so um I'm in I'm in my right age it's true okay sounds good very fun very fun great and then I think are we're missing one board member this evening or two just one one board member mike did you want to share oh sure uh
Scott Wesnau is one of our board members he's on his first term uh Scott is also a member of the St cloud Police Department um and what he does for fun I would say he spends a lot of time with his family and his children but besides that I would want him to speak for
himself sounds good and is um Scott gonna be joining us at all this evening he's not he had he had a workrelated issue and we we're going to be missing him okay okay sounds good um and the reason I'm smiling is that when I was on uh the new board and remember I said that I was
vice chair well our chair was a deputy sheriff and so I probably chaired as many meetings as Brian did over the years and um I'm not sure if there's similarities but you know we had to be prepared for anything so uh he was
always good about making sure I was aware of the agenda i needed to be prepared if he sat down called the meeting to order and then his buzzer went or his beeper went off and take over or if he showed up late so we kind of we just made it work and it was always good good conversation so I
certainly respect the the role that law enforcement plays in combined hats that they wear law enforcement and uh also school board so very good good well you can you'll fill him in after words on the discussion as well I'm sure so well
thank you for introducing yourselves and I think some of you I've met before or interacted with but not I don't think everyone so um good to know who you are and now I'm going to keep in mind that love of hockey that we share as well so
as we get started this evening I I first of all want to commend you for taking the time to do the board self evaluation it's uh something that at MSBA we strongly encourage to do this on an annual basis and it can be something as
formal as taking the tool that you took and then having somebody facilitate the discussion or it's taking the tool having the discussion on your own or it's just having a discussion at least once a year about how things are going
and uh or maybe even more often if uh if necessary but just having that conversation so when you do that I think you really set a tone for the staff and for students and for community in saying that we care about what we're doing
together how we work together as a board superintendent team so again hats off to you for doing that and um as we uh are getting started with discussion I wanted to just review a few things that I think should be our agreements for this
evening as we're talking about the results and having conversation and so as I uh think about it remember that the competence is in the group you'll get out of it what you put into it uh don't be afraid to ask questions i want this to be really informal i want to make
sure that you leave here feeling like you've learned a lot and that you've got your questions answered as well um trust your fellow board members that they'll be open and honest and respectful civil conversation uh listen for understanding
so one of the things that one of my former fellow board members Don Powder who had the John Deere implement dealership in New Minnesota he would always say "There's a reason that you have two ears and only one mouth." And
he would say that so many times and we've all heard that before but this is always a good opportunity just to segue that back and and I always respected Don because that was just a good reminder to me remember to elicit so that's one of the the agreements for the evening as
well also I want you to do your best to remain curious i am a very curious person i ask a lot of questions i did that when I was a board member probably drove people nuts and I still do that now but I think it's important to just be curious about asking for more
information um listen for understanding and then um I also want to just say a huge thank you to all of you this is not part of the agreements but a huge thank you for your role and your willingness to put on that school board member hat
it's not easy it was tough when I was on the board and as board members um some of you those uh that have been around um Trisha and Matt I think you got to weather the pandemic years and so these
are times that are are just um they they've had a lot of challenges and a lot of things that you really need to discuss and work on that I've never had to deal with so thank you for that and just know that you are appreciated and then um Superintendent Mike I'm going to say the same thing to you too you know
wearing that hat as superintendent is is a big responsibility and it's kind of your life and a lot of blood sweat and tears so thank you for your commitment to the students in your school district as well very good okay well with that I
am going to start talking about the resources that I sent out um that I believe you just received now this afternoon kind of like if I were there in person and come with my my resources and um and handouts and I believe you
all have copies in front of you so rather than screen sharing them unless you have questions I'm just going to talk you through them and the first one I'm going to take a look at is the five standards of board leadership and what I am going to do is pop it up on the
screen so you can Can you see that right now yes five stages of board yeah okay and I just wanted you to see that that's the page that I'm on right now or the document that I'm sharing and then um if you have anyone from the community watching uh they know what we're talking
about as well so I like to start with this because as boards we're always at different stages and I'm guessing that you might be too you've got you know all of you are kind of in different places chelsea you're brand new and we've got second term we got third years we got
fifth year and so as we think about our work together I always like to reflect on these stages because you usually see yourself in them and so I'm going to start with um it's forming storming norming performing and then deforming or
I like to say that reforming that we go through and so with forming um this is the time that you welcome a new board member or superintendent uh in the the past months a new a new team member and
it's that time of um got lots of questions lots of ideas lots of things that you want to know about lots of things that you need to know about as new team members for those that have been around for a few years it's that time of okay now we got to take a little step back here and we want to make sure
to bring everybody up to speed so it's kind of that orientation phase and then it's not uncommon to move into what we call a storming phase and some of you may have seen yourselves in that i think I went through that when I was on the board and it's kind of that time of um
reality finally hit of what did I get myself into um I'm not sure this is what I thought it was going to be i sometimes you know we might want things to go a lot faster or you know or maybe we want things to slow down at the same time so there might be kind of a just a bit of a
struggle if you will um you know kind of a a challenging time where you're you're just concerned about a lot of things and could be kind of chaotic too then we usually see a norming phase where it's like you know okay I think I can do this
i think I can be a board member i'm prepared for board meetings i think things are kind of fallen into place um kind of have moved from me to we as a team and um coming to agreement on the
work that we do the next stage is performing and that's really where you want to be even though most boards are not always at that point but that's that's the goal for you and that's really that high level of productivity um you have studied things you feel
comfortable in making decisions you may not always agree uh at the same time you are making decisions in the best interest of the students in your school and keeping that focus on student achievement and um then the the last stage is that
deforming reforming transforming and that's when you go through the process of saying goodbye to a team member so you probably went through that i'm not sure who left your board this last year but somebody left in order for Chelsea to be on the board now and so you know
there might have been some sadness from some for some of you uh for some it might have been a time of just reflecting of wow this person was on the board and these are all the things that we experienced together and so do honor
that when you have the transitions and then of course the the cycle the stages start all over again so as you think about those stages let's hear from each of you where do you feel like you're at right now any thoughts on that where do
you see yourself i'll go storming storming okay any other stormings or any other stage i'd agree with that um I'm trying to think into the past couple years where
we've been and I I see the arrows go kind of one way here um I feel like we've even though I agree we're at storming now I think we got into the norming phase for a while and then moved backwards if that's possible and it was not Yeah it was not at the time we got a
new member so it was at a different time okay um that's kind of my 30,000 foot view of it agree and that's that is uh a a very good way of looking at it because we don't stay in the stages all the time there's sometimes a few steps back that
we might take for various reasons so that was a great observation and you're you're normal if that happens just know that how about from the others what do you think where where do you see yourselves i would agree i would say yes storming now and there's been times of
norming and or performing um Okay but yes I would agree storming now okay sounds good everybody else I was say yeah as a group I'd agree with storming i feel like for me there's still a little bit of that forming that feels like it's going on
with being new but Yep storming okay and I would agree with the the group being at storming i think especially the group way I guess like when you were talking about norming and like kind of getting into that routine i would think that a lot of us personally might feel like we're into that normal routine of like knowing what to expect knowing what to
see how to kind of interpret the data maybe even in that performing stage but I do think as a group we are definitely in that storming phase right now okay all right anybody else want to add any comments to that i would just say as a new superintendent you do feel that
you're still in that orientation phase and you accept that that's probably a one-year phase and that if you feel like you're getting if you're moving around the circle too fast then you have to recognize that there's so many new things to learn even having lived here for so long um that I recognize that
orientation um takes a little bit of time absolutely very good so um well great so it kind of feels like storming maybe forming sometimes performing um so is anybody want to make
any comments why why storming right now are there any examples you'd like to toss out anything that comes to your mind that made you choose to dive in with storming the biggest one is um currently
we have Trisha as our acting chair we've had 33 votes thus far this year starting at our or meeting about who should be chair okay so not coming to consensus on a chair this year were you able to get your other officer positions identified
yes yes so Okay and you do you have a vice chair yeah that's me yes and Okay and then you have a clerk okay and a treasurer yep and so Okay and so you're at an impass with chair right now okay um so let's let's hold that
thought and if you want to talk about that a little bit more as we kind of dive into the first section when we get to the um evaluation we can talk about that um and so right now what I'm assuming you've been doing is if you've been at an impass each of your meetings
coming together you probably have put that back on the agenda to to try and take a vote and break that tie yes one of the blessings of six member board right yes yes okay or not yeah okay yes sounds good okay well we can come back
to that one too and talk a little bit more about what's preventing you from from being able to to move off of that and I will just say that you are not the first board that has been in this position i have worked with a number of boards over the years where that's been
the case and sometimes the decision is made pretty pretty quickly and you know the next meeting or so and um sometimes it goes on for a little bit longer so okay anybody want to add anything else about the storming why you this what's
going on that's storming i think over the last year for me personally there's just been um trust that's eroded okay for multiple reasons that have been shared but I don't necessarily want to
keep rehashing the same wounds over and over again but Okay sounds good so looking at the whole issue of trust which we know that's important we also know that can be a challenge with a team as well and then
looking at ways that you can help build that trust develop that trust looking for maybe baby steps or maybe the bigger steps to to move in that direction okay anything else well if something else does come up I'll
kind of keep asking um we'll make sure to to talk about that but for the the trust and the officer position we'll definitely come back to that all right I'm going to move on to the next resource that I shared with you
and that's the board governance model and with the board governance model all of you get to see that for the very first time at phase one i'm going to pop it up on the screen just as a point of
reference um for just a few minutes here and the board governance model is structured in that the board governs so as board members our role and my role when I was a board member we're responsible for setting expectations and
setting parameters and really were at that high level of thinking which I have to tell you when I was a new board member that was like what okay I didn't I didn't really see that as my role i saw it as something else um but really you're there to get that big picture of
what's important uh and your vision for your school district so as you look at the board governance model the items on the top of the circle are your responsibilities as board members um besides expectations and parameters having a strategic plan in
place uh an up-to-date strategic plan or at minimum having goals that are in place and once you have that set in place then you're going to be setting policy approving a budget and approving contracts or in other words hiring staff
and services to meet the goals of your strategic plan the lower part of the circle is the role of your superintendent so for the superintendent he is the one that comes with the education and background and
skills to manage so he provides leadership and supervision and the nice thing is that as board members we get to give those uh expectations and parameters to our superintendent and say you get to go ahead now and develop the plans the procedures get the staff in
the right place make sure things are implemented and set up um opportunities for monitoring those plans and procedures and the center of the circle uh student achievement for all that's the most
important thing that is what we are all about as board members there's a a dotted line across the center and that's and some one of my colleagues Katie Clander calls that the friendly fence so it means that board members are not operating in a vacuum and superintendent
is not either that there's always that communication going back and forth so I wanted to share this as as a reminder to board members and um also check and see if any of you have any questions about it any comments or
questions do you feel like you're able to govern based on the board governance model is that works for you okay so in addition to phase one uh we also share this in phase three our high
performing board um which actually we're just doing that right now virtually and then there's going to be a in person I think on the 11th in St cloud of phase three as well so you get to see it at those and we like to share it also when we're out working with
boards the next document that I am sharing with you this evening is um what we call the school district goal alignment and so this is you know putting a perspective on the work that we do based on our goals so assuming
that you have goals or a strategic plan the district goals that you have are identified in the red box and the messaging behind this diagram is that once you've got those goals identified they now can become the goals
of your superintendent goals of the school board goals of the staff the students and literally the goals of your school community whoever is in your school community um all stakeholders and again with the goal alignment it is all
about student achievement for all so keep that in mind as well and especially if you're at a point where you're needing to work on your strategic plan or need to work on new district goals this is one of the benefits we believe um in having those in place anybody have
any questions about this diagram okay if not I'm going to move to uh I'm getting closer to talking about your evaluation now too these are all just pieces of background information for you um I'm going to talk about the standards
of board leadership and again you get to hear about this at phase one and also at phase three so there are five standards the first one is conduct and ethics second is vision third is structure fourth is
accountability and fifth is advocacy and communication and just to say a little bit more about each of these conduct and ethics is how you as a board superintendent team come together work together make decisions together
communicate with one another respect one another trust one another uh just that whole team atmosphere not saying that you're in agreement all the time but how you are interacting and how you are making
decisions the second standard is vision and that's really the vision that you have based on your goals or your strategic plan it's that highlevel vision of you what is it that we need to provide in education that we probably don't even know we're going to need and
uh right now but tomorrow we probably will so it's being able to look ahead look forward and preparing our students for the future along with that preparing ourselves and our staff to meet those needs the third standard is structure
and with structure we look at the physical structure and the organizational structures of our our school organ physical structures are easy that's our buildings and grounds the organizational structure is having the right staff in place having
curriculum in place and uh the technology so the learning essentials for our students standard four is accountability and that is uh accountable for monitoring the accountability of monitoring all the conditions within our school to make
sure that you are providing um and ensuring student success the fifth standard is advocacy and communication and that's telling your story and communicating your story in your work and how you do that it's kind of like being a cheerleader for your
school district and I always say that if we as board members can't tell the good things that are happening in our school district then you know maybe we're not in the right sitting in the right chair maybe you know we need to step aside so that somebody else can help tell those
great stories so with that in mind uh with each standard you'll notice that there are benchmarks so what you see on the screen right now A through E A through D A through F A through E and A through H and the reason I shared these
with you and I'm going to stop screen sharing again the reason I share these with you is that those benchmarks were the questions on the board self-evaluation so that's what makes this I think such a beautiful tool because you've got the standards and now
you have actually taken a look at each of the benchmarks and ranked yourself or rated yourselves based on that so I'm going to pause for just a second anybody have any questions about the standards
okay then um as we um begin to look at your board self-evaluation and your results I do want to say that while we call it the schoolboard self-evaluation it is more of an assessment than an evaluation sometimes boards will get real nervous about
taking it they'll get nervous about having a discussion like this i've had boards that have said "Well I think we should go into a closed session." Because they equate it with a superintendent evaluation and it's really not like this um it's more
about taking a look at the things that are going really well and you got a lot of great things that are going on within your board superintendent team and within your school community um and then it's also saying that you know none of us are perfect i'm I've never been perfect far from perfect and so it's
looking at what kind of opportunities might be out there for you that you can have a discussion about so based on that there's no pass or fail there is no grading it's just a snapshot of how each of you responded to each of the
benchmarks at the time you took it you'll all remember that it was anonymous so you just put a self-identifier into the the survey when you started because uh at at this point it doesn't matter as much individual
it's more about the team and how you feel and kind of that that um cumulative response and those are the things that we'll be talking about this is also longitudinal too so you can see from your board self-evaluation that you took
it in 2024 in June and uh now again and then if you take it again another year or if you skip a year and take it you'll have those results as well so for me it's always kind of fun to see those how those benchmarks might change just a little bit
um and you'll also notice uh that we had no open-ended questions on this and that was by design uh we really want the open-ended questions to be more than things that come out in the discussion here gail can I ask a question quickly you sure can gail when you look at the
five standards related um to schoolboard effectiveness I see that they were revised in 2017 how how does that work how is there a a group at the MSBA level a representative assembly that reviews the standards every year were they first introduced
originally in 2005 i mean I'm a little bit more curious about how the standards are established and reviewed yeah that's a thank you for that question that's a good question and I haven't had that one for a while either but we periodically will monitor these and just see if these are still meeting
what we believe is the role um the standards for school boards this is actually a tool that is used in other states as well as is this evaluation so what we've come to learn and we have uh work alike groups i just got back from
the national cosma conference and um we have work alike groups that have discussions about the standards as well and you know do we need to move the dial on anything so that's really where that's at that was a good question and I would also say if you see anything on
here that you're thinking I don't think that makes sense anymore let us know i mean we're always open to that feedback too so um from superintendent to board members we we like to hear that but at this point this
is where we've landed and we um on the standards and the benchmarks and we usually take a look at these about once a year okay thank you i also I also had a question Gail just because you were talking about like future future survey taking of the board will we always now
get like that prior data like to look back at or was that something that we're gonna have to pull ourselves you um will always get it so if you take it again then you'll get uh instead of having it say 2024 and 2025 it'll also
say 26 or 2027 whatever year you took it so yep you'll always have the information from previous years doesn't mean that you'll have the same board superintendent team but then that'll be something you can say it's oh yeah that's right that's when we you know these board members were here the superintendent was
here yeah thank you any other questions okay well then I am going to start referencing the board self evaluation i'm going to put it up on the screen again too for
just a little bit here so you have it as a reference and then for anybody who's watching they see too so as you as you uh turn to the let's see if the one to the fourth page the first few pages aren't numbered i'm
not exactly sure why but um it's page four you have uh what I call the or we call the overview report the one page at a glance and what this is showing you is along the left hand side the name of the
standard and just a little description of what that standard is and at the very top when you were asked to take the the evaluation your options for your responses were always most of
the time some of the time never and don't know and this is a horizontal bar graph and you can see that your 24 results are at the bottom and uh of each standard your most
recent results are at the top you'll see a percentage listed [Music] and we calculate the responses by percentage for the overview report because the
number of benchmarks vary when I said um A through D A through E A through H so in order to get an apples to apples view and idea of where you're at percentage-wise we needed to calculate it um a little bit differently and so we
do percentage when we move on to the rest of the questions you'll see that the number of responses for each um option is going to be listed so as you can see um green I always say the always and the
most of the time I I look at them as being pretty similar because what I might say is always uh you know my fellow board member Clark might have said "No that's most of the time." So I always kind of take a look first at the always and the most of the time and of
course that's that's your goal you want to have most of your responses as always or most of the time where you've got responses of some of the time i would say challenge yourselves to question or wonder or think about how can you move
that dial from some of the time up to most of the time or always where there are responses in red and that uh describes never it could be that you truly never do it and those things
will come up we'll talk about those uh as we move ahead it might be that on the board you've never seen it done yet or never had a discussion about it and as we start talking about it um it's going to be on the next agenda or it's going
to be something you'll you'll do or work on you know another in another month or so and then the uh responses in black don't know and that's it's just that whoever responded just didn't know if
that's something that you do or talk about or responsible for and so these are the opportunities to inform this is why it's one of the reasons why this opportunity is so um so helpful because now we can say oh here are some things
that the board may want to learn a little bit more about and uh sometimes superintendents are taking notes on the side of oh I think this would be a good topic of discussion at a study session or at a regular board meeting with board members so again the the goal is to move
away from the never or the don't know dial as well the other thing that I have come to find and I have done a lot of these i think what was the most recent i think we're at about 180 schools that I have worked with on their board
self-evaluation over the past few years and um this is a no-brainer it's not based on any research but um the higher the percentage of always and most of the time generally the higher performing the
board is so again the importance of moving the dial and meaning that you're meeting you're working towards those standards so the higher the percentage of always and most of the time seems to reflect a higher performing board and
I've also come to learn too that if you know kind of the goal I I think is to reach at least 50% of always or most of the time and so you know for for your um team you're you hit the mark on um
structure and you're close in a couple other areas and then there's some areas that that you'll maybe want to work on and it's it reflects I think some of the discussion that we'll have this evening too um comments questions about what you see
in the overview report i guess I would acknowledge I've kind of been staring at these bars here for a couple minutes um I think I'd like to acknowledge that in a majority of these areas we've it's not huge improvement but we've got some
incremental improvement when you look at the green plus the blue um and then in the what is it two areas where we did not improve in that at least the red went down so the never went down so that's something but those were the
things that initially stuck out to me when we're looking at this one as the overview page absolutely any any other comments or observations i don't know if this is accurate Gail but it looks like in 2024
we had six responses well I haven't went through every question but six responses on the ones that I'm seeing and then seven now in 2025 so I'm guessing that additional person weighing in is
probably the cause for some of the increase in our more positive numbers here I would say yep good good observation on that both for both of you too um I was going to make the overall comment that you just
in the six months you've moved the dial in in what I consider a positive direction and then um good observation about the number of responses so if I remember correctly the um the last time that the group took it I think the
agreement was that your super your interim superintendent would not take it i'm pretty sure superintendent Lee didn't take it and so it does reflect board members but not a superintendent response great last time
okay anything else with overview report okay if you think of something we can always go back to it so then we'll start moving into the individual benchmarks and just to set
the stage every page is going to be the same in the sense that you'll see the standard number the standard name like conduct and ethics and it will also provide the benchmark and the benchmarks don't necessarily tie directly in a a
chronological or an in orderly fashion to the benchmarks that you see on the um standards for board leadership but this is the benchmark so it's conducting board and district business in a fair respectful and responsible manner and then um the two benchmarks that tied to
that and the two statements that tied to that benchmark so you can see where your responses are um based on that what I've done is to obviously I reviewed it ahead of time so I have some notes of things that I'd like to talk about if you don't
so um we're going to make sure that you know this is really informal and that you can ask questions or you can make comments i at this point didn't have anything uh that I necessarily wanted to say about these two statements that you
see right now um unless board members have questions okay and other than I can say that you know your number one goal is making decisions on what's best for students so you'll definitely want to make sure the dial gets moved on that
and having that clear and and shared purpose okay i guess I'll make a comment i think it's hard to have a clear and shared purpose when we as our even with Chelsea being new like we as the the five that remained in this new year haven't gone
through any kind of process where we've done a um strategic plan so I think having not gone through that it's hard for us to have that shared vision so I'm excited y I mean I guess I'm not completely set back with seeing this result because I think moving forward
the plan is to start developing a strategic plan together and I think that will help us potentially move this Yeah to a better outcome absolutely and I I would say that's probably going to be one of your big takeaways from this because you'll as this unfolds you'll see that uh this uh
the standards of board leadership and your board governance model are based off of having a strategic plan that's in place up to date and so uh another year from now if you have done the strategic planning process I think things will look a lot different for this group plus
it's a great team building opportunity for you as well good okay well I will continue on with the next set of questions and I think at this point I won't do as much screen sharing because I know you've got
these in front of you so as you take a look at page six and um we are still in conduct and ethics a couple of things that I identified for you is on statement six
it talks about a process for gathering input prior to making critical decisions so as a board what what things come to your mind as being a critical decision i mean I feel like a lot of our
decisions that well since I've been on the board could be considered critical decisions um you know we had to make a decision on uh going to a referendum on big building projects on large spending
large expenditures i mean those all are going to be in my mind critical decisions i think the part where from my perspective I feel like a lot of the decisions that we make should be considered critical because they're all supposed to main goal at the top student
achievement so while it may seem like a small decision at the board table it can have a large effect or a large impact on the district and on student achievement and there's times I think where a lot of these nevers come in on here is feeling like on some of those smaller decisions what appear to be smaller decisions on
paper we aren't getting I I feel that we aren't getting as much information to make informed decisions on those things on the larger ones of course there's just more information flow there but on the smaller things that have a large impact we could definitely use more information
okay my my perspective my opinion yep well that kind of goes back to what the three of us were talking about in policy just getting those updates from the build committees and more information about where are we at with student
achievement more regular updates on that so that we have a clear picture of how are we doing um and that hasn't been consistent over the years and I have complete faith that Dr revard will be able to you know make that a consistent feature for us it just hasn't been up to
this point mhm okay very good good anybody else want to weigh in any comments critical decisions yeah um I don't necessarily disagree with anything I've heard i just look at this question a little differently because it talks about having a defined process for
gathering input and when I hear input I hear community input um and I think there are many times where each of us goes out on our own and gathers data or feedback or whatever from the public but it's never never slash yellow i forget
what I put on this one um it's not really defined it's not a process that we've all come together and agreed this is how we're going to do this so that's what I really focused on when I saw this question was not necessarily what types of decisions we're talking about but
it's whether we've had the discussion of what's our strategy for going out and gathering this input okay that makes sense there's another one um it might even be one of the very last questions that talks about that too in in the area of communication but um
so so good and I think the the takeaway is um number one what's a critical decision and I think you hit the nail on the head Emily with um your referendum your building hiring a superintendent uh staffing you know really the the the
big the budget decisions that you might make those would be things that are critical uh during the pandemic there were a lot of critical decisions that were made there too and one of the takeaways is what is your process and what I would say that your process
shouldn't be because I don't think this is your process but it shouldn't be that you have a regular board meeting and uh the referendum yes or no is on the agenda and you need to make a decision that evening and so that's really simplifying it so what would your
process be to get to those big decisions and it could be on a special meeting or special uh workshop special session where you have a discussion uh or something that you might want to talk about a year from now with
facilities and it could be that during the months you have presentations by experts that can give you some information you might do some community surveys you might do some promotions of it have some listening sessions and so
you you've got a process in place for how you're going to gather information needed to make that critical decision so it's not just showing up and making it you would be surprised once in a while and I hope that's not the case here but I I have run into some schools where uh
big big ticket items suddenly appear on the agenda and the board is being asked to do them make that decision that evening and I don't know that that not saying that's anybody's fault but that's how it's handled so with that bit of explanation any thoughts on that for
your processes that you might use well I think there should also be a process like looking and reflecting back on those critical decisions and are they working and maybe a re-evaluation process um I mean I know since I've been
on the board there's been a community member who has asked to go back and look at COVID decisions and processes and not to place blame but what improvements
might be able to be to be uh used in the future to make better decisions and just being able to reflect and grow from that okay yeah that makes sense to just kind of be prepared for the future and you
know there's things now you can't go back and you can't change it it is what it is but even just the conversation of what are some takeaways and what might we do differently if we were faced with the same decision or the same situation yeah thanks for that
Jen anybody else want to comment one of the things you mentioned was um bringing in experts to explain things to us and I feel like well on one hand I feel like there's still room for improvement in that i do feel like it has improved in my time on the board um
and thinking in the last year year to two um for instance on the project that just got approved on the referendum um we've had quite a bit of consulting with our construction manager with our engineer that type of thing during board
meetings which maybe um was different than when I first started on the board not that we had a big construction project going on then but um when I first started on the board it was a little bit more like you're describing you know you just show up to a meeting and have to make a decision okay without that expert input and I think that's
been a really positive change thus far but um yeah looking for further improvement at the same time okay good good to know on that and good feedback you know I think uh not only do do you do we as board members need that I think
our our community demands that as well they I don't think our communities are looking for a rubber stamp board and I think our communities want to hear us talking and looking at different options the process that you use might be different for different critical
decisions as well so it's not a a boilerplate that you necessarily would use and it's maybe a discussion i would think that your superintendent's probably you know coming to you with uh information ideas and then also being open to saying who else would you like to hear from or you know I'm going to be
asking the you know this is the plan these are the people I'm going to bring in to talk with us um to help you make a decision as well so takeaway on that is uh what are your critical decisions i like the fact that you already know you
you most decisions should be kind of those critical decisions i um I'll just say this one right now i probably would have said it later on but if your critical decisions as a board are the color of the carpet or the types of
wheels on the buses I think you've missed the point and those are real life examples of things that well I was part of a board where we talked a lot about the color of the carpet i didn't talk about the wheels on the buses but um but I worked with other boards so keep that
in mind too as you think about your role as board members as board members our job is to make sure that there's transportation a available and somebody else gets to pick the buses and the types of wheels and you just want to make sure that there are buses and there
are wheels on them that are going the round and round and picking up all your students so uh keep that in mind as you you move forward in your decision making process and addressing critical decisions so okay the um last two statements on that page carry out an
annual assessment and that's exactly what you're doing this evening so hats off to you for doing that and setting goals for your own personal improvement and you'll notice um I mentioned that I had made notes already before this evening and you'll be noticing that I'm taking some notes as well along the the
way because what I will do is uh create a summary of the things that we've talked about i will also uh put together a one or two items that you as a group maybe decide you maybe do want to work
on in this next year that summary I'll send to your superintendent and your board chair and then um between them they can sort out when you'd like to review it at a board meeting um maybe if you've got a work session study session
down the road so that's um those are the statements there and unless there's questions I will move on to the next page to page seven uh so I just was gonna kind of add to Matt i think the other thing that I think about like I I also agree I've seen some really great
improvement um I also feel like the addition of us actually going through and like what we've been doing as of late is we actually go through every single committee so every committee that's met at every meeting I go through and I say has this committee met what is the update what committee is this
because in the past when I first joined the board we didn't I I don't feel like and it's no discredit or you know I I just don't feel like we always got those updates um and or we knew like when those next meetings were going and I feel like that that has been really beneficial to kind of have a have that
opportunity for our committees to then share that information because that is the role of like or one of the ways that we can gather that input and that information for the board to to hear and Gail I kind of got ahead of you in the packet there is a team goals for them to
fill out so if they wanted to jot down notes from our board that they would possibly be able to do that so if you'll see that on your first few pages because I thought that that might end up being something so yep definitely definitely very good so great well as we u move on
to page seven the one benchmark that I wanted to talk about was uh statement 11 using written protocols for your interactions and so I always like to take this opportunity to ask if you do have written protocols uh written
protocols might be in the form of some kind of a document it could be a board handbook and I always say that uh your board handbook or your written protocols should complement your code of ethics policy so it kind of takes it to that
next step it should be those things that um yeah we've just always done it this way you know this is how we've always set up committees or you know this is always how we've addressed one another at board meetings or this is always how our agenda is identified and uh MSBA
finally has a what I think is a very wonderful handbook a template that we created uh we were talking about it for a number of years and finally we had the right mix of staff to get the job done so have you had a chance to see the board handbook that we've created
template yes we did and we actually does anyone remember what month we worked on that as a work november november okay so we worked on it as a full board and kind of went through it at a work work session um and I think it would be very beneficial for us to bring that back
okay perfect um so I think that tool speaks for itself so if you're working your way through that and then I think the um localization that you do are those things that are unique for you to make sure that you've got it written somewhere of how do you select
committees you know is that the board chair's responsibility do you just you know at a meeting say "Okay well I've been on this committee i'm gonna stay on it." And so then Chelsea gets whatever is left over or you know or is there some swapping out that you do and there's no right or
wrong it's just that you've got them documented and uh you know what the protocols are another one I think is how you respond to emails texts calls in-person visits from any of your
stakeholders is uh who gets to speak to legal counsel how do you have that set up in your school oh there's an alarm going off there um the board chair you have the board chair and superintendent can communicate with legal okay sounds
good um and perfect that's that is pretty standard you know obviously your superintendent and then the board chair a lot of times board chair only you know if there's you know usually it's going to be the superintendent and the board chair if there is something that has come up that either the superintendent
can't handle or it might be about the superintendent too sorry about that superintendent on the part but um or um and a business official sometimes too is also designated to contact legal counsel
so um so it sounds like you are well on your way with your handbook and then I think the other parting comment I would make about that is we usually recommend when uh Terry Morrow and I do the organizational meeting that's a good time to while you're reviewing your code
of ethics it's a good time to review your handbook and see if there's any tweaking any changes that need to be made so that you can have agreement from the entire board team on that at the time gail
i think to I mean part of probably a challenge that we've had which we've been able to work through this one majority of the time but the statement that you made of this is how we've always done it you know this is how we always do our agenda well when we have new board members join the dynamic board
changes your personalities change and what what the full board is going to need to be functional might change because there'll be different personalities that might need something a little bit different and there's sometimes just been growing pains with that that's one issue where I feel like we've been able to kind of work through
it but okay to be in that performing stage I I can't say that like there's going to be a uniform this is always going to be the way our board operates because that will change with board membership who's here and how does that group work together in the most functional way and everybody's got to be
kind of moldable to that you know open to those changes a little bit because you know it's reality you're going to get a different group of six people or a different combination of six people um and that it can't be a set in stone
thing um if we want to remain functional No I would agree with you on that your code of ethics and your board handbook are are meant to be somewhat fluid and so you do have to have that agreement as a team if there's something that a board
member can't agree upon or board members you should have a discussion about that and try and come to what that common ground might be and so it would not be unusual to to make a change u or changes in either one of those documents that's
again it's your mode of operating as a team so you want to be comfortable with that any other comments i guess just on the topic of board handbook so you were saying that you and Terry suggest like relooking at that every January would
you think and maybe Chelsea you could even chime in like would that be somewhat overwhelming though for like a new board member so not only you onboarding with MSBA trying to do phase one phase two potentially three and four and now you're going to go through this i mean your guys's example document I can't remember like at least 20 plus
pages long i mean I guess that's like that's my biggest caution i think that's what I mean I I know that's why personally I haven't really brought it back to the table since November because I'm just trying to let Chelsea kind of get her feet wet and understand where everything's going so do you guys still recommend doing that in January or is it
something that you would I guess I'm just looking for more guidance on that because I just Yeah I think that's a great question um Trisha and I what I would suggest and you're not the only board that's got at least one new board member we have board members that you know boards where there are three new board members or four or five what I
would suggest is at minimum have it on your agenda and acknowledge that you do have that handbook and then in the case where you've got you know one or more newer board me uh new board members I would say how about if just what you said you know let's give our newest
board members some time to be you know serve on the board and let's take a look at this in three months or actually I kind of think six months but that would be up to you and so it might be a time that you um have a discussion at one of your study sessions it could be a really
nice onboarding activity for new board members a good review of what has already been learned at phase one phase two and it can be a good conversation for ongoing board members too to just say you know kind of goes back to what Emily said too you know well that's what
we we used to say or used to do but you know I'm wondering if we should change that or revisit that so I think more the takeaway is at least acknowledge that handbook so you all know it's there and the community knows it's there and then if you want to do the deeper dive later
uh it could be that you do the deeper dive in the summer or fall and then you've reviewed it for already for next January and you're ready to just u move ahead with it does that help answer the question well and I guess just answering as a new person I think having a handbook would have been really helpful
i think even talking about what you're saying kind of from protocols and of have like with the absence of not having that coming in as a new person you're like like at the organizational meeting we're going to choose committees how how does that happen or even
instead of kind of like learning as I go through some of these things and I think even in like the phase training or when you look at Robert's rules it talks about looking at also the team's protocols or stuff and and the absence of not having that it's just hard to go into a new team and
know what some of those tendencies or kind of things are even if they're going to change with new people coming on so yeah it's good feedback yeah you know another thing you could do is uh when you knew you when you know you've got
the new board member prior to even the organizational meeting to sit down and go through that handbook with your newest board members and just kind of review it it's still going to be a lot to take in but at least they've got some familiarity with it as well so you've
got options and I would say just sort through what makes sense for your board and what the wishes of the board are okay are you ready to move on to I think we are page eight
on page eight uh statement 12 talks about govern using policies that align with researched best practices the nice thing when you're using MSBA's model proc model policies you are doing just that so while this legislative session
is going on our staff myself included we are monitoring monitoring monitoring all the decisions all the discussions of the legisl legislators and once the legislative session ends we will u move into gear in working on model policies
for you and uh how we do that is we kind of have a think tank of experts we talk through the policies that are created they're definitely under the leadership of someone way more capable than me and that's uh Terry Mororrow our general counsel and then also uh Denise Dietrich
and Kim Lewis our government relations um team members and so the model policies are created and before we send those out to you they also get sent to our legal council for review so all that
happens so that once you get them they come to you in the form of a model policy and you um well you also remember for those of you that have been around some policies you have to adopt as is and others you may adopt and you can uh
adjust or monitor as needed and so that will be spelled out in the policies as well and um I don't know where this legislative session will you know where things will land um but some of you remember was it two years ago was the
weren't there about 60some policies that you needed to review on short notice and um just with all the decisions that were made but at any rate your policies are researchbased so you can feel comfortable with that and then you've got your own legal counsel that you can
consult the um other one I'll comment on is 14 opportunities to collaborate at MSBA we try to provide provide opportunities for you by way of the leadership conference our summer seminar
our phase 1 2 3 and four negotiations seminar officer workshop third Thursdays webinar and our Friday chats and all of those opportunities give you a chance to visit with other board members uh from around the state and just have
conversations and ask questions we also have our coffee and conversations have any of you ever I think some of you have been on coffee and convos haven't you before and um we've got our board chair chat too so with each of those opportunities
there's always um always time even chat room but a lot of times on coffee conversations and board share chat we look for topics to discuss so you're able to then find out how other schools are handling things
and uh gives you some ideas of what you might do as well and by the way committees has been a big topic recently um for whatever reason cell phones have come up as topic of discussion but if you've not participated in those or any
of those I would encourage you to do so i am going to jump to page nine i was going to mention uh statement 17 but I want to also see if there's anything that any of you are looking at that catch your eye that you want to
talk about before I do um 17 is talking about treating everyone with respect board members staff students and community members and so with this one I would just encourage you to move the dial to um because I see
a never on there and some of the time and uh a most of the time but not any always and so I would encourage you to think about how you could move the dial on that i always like to remind boards and I needed to remind myself of that over the
years that the eyes are on you the eyes of your school community you really set the tone for your school district i always think that the um the atmosphere or the tone trickles down so when we
talked about uh even the stages of development you know if you are always in a storming stage that starts to trickle down and pretty soon it becomes the discussion with the staff uh sometimes the students over here becomes
their discussion sometimes parents are involved and I always say what what is that message what is that precedence that you want to set the higher performing the board is the higher performing the rest of the school district will be and it doesn't mean
that you have to agree on everything all the time it's just that atmosphere of civility that you create as you work together so I I don't know that there's any specific answers to that but it sure
is something that you will probably want to think about um in how you're modeling behavior and I guess another thing I always suggest too is as a as a board are we modeling the behavior that we'd like to see with our administrators with our staff and with our
students so and I does anybody have any questions or comments anything you'd like to add to that one i guess I would just say that's probably this is probably the number one question that prompted I mean there's
been multiple people on the board that have said we should do some sort of evaluation or some sort of workshop because our communication has always struggled um and so when you know the question treat all individuals including fellow board members staff students and community members with respect i think
this is mainly pertaining probably the five answers of some of the time in here probably pertaining mainly amongst our the conversation communication amongst the board members we all know we're we live in reality we all know what our communication has been like um and we
haven't really found a great fix for it like like we've said we've had some times where we've been more normalized but uh when things can get difficult our communication and obviously everybody views it the same way it's not some people viewing it as disrespectful and others as not it's across the board
that's how we're all viewing each other and the way we communicate with each other um but what gets difficult is we still have to be able to disagree um and that's you know that's hard um because what ends up it ends up feeling like the only way we're going to be able
to present to the public in a positive manner is if we come to agreement and we're always in agreement on things when that's not reality either we have to be able to disagree amongst board members and still come to consensus at the end of it but do it in a or a compromise at
the end of it but do it in a respectful way and that's been probably our biggest challenge as a board so I think this number is what prompted us to probably do the evaluation in the first place um or yeah look for any type of workshop just to make us more functional in that
way because there's definitely a feeling that the only way that we can present positively to the public is if we're always in agreement and that's just not realistic yeah okay okay thanks for that does anybody else want to comment to add on to what Emily said
i don't know i think sometimes it can be subjective and what one person thinks is respectful another person might not see it the same way because of Okay their own experiences with
an individual an organization you know whatever but okay so I think sometimes the subjectivity can also skew how you feel if you're being respected or not okay so maybe a message
of try not to take it personal would that be a fair statement on based on what you said Jen or I mean we can we can just because we just because you and I don't agree right it's it's not something that I should take personal or you should take personal we just don't
agree on this one and then when we come to the next board meeting we might agree on the next five or six things i is that a way of or the large majority of things we agree on it's been maybe a handful or less of things that we have disagreed on
but there's this narrative that we're always at a split board decision or we're always in chaos or storming but a lot of the time that isn't the case and I think that gets
forgotten by the handful or less times that we aren't in agreement and that's where the hangup okay becomes okay almost an obstacle for certain situations but okay anybody have any thoughts about how to overcome that i
think somebody with Chelsea were you going to comment yeah I just also want to because I think there's you know hearing you say Gail like remembering to not take things personally but I also think that there's importance of hearing each other if someone's feeling
disrespected to not discount that either of you know if someone is feeling that way to to be able to have the conversation or you know reassess maybe how we're discussing something okay well Gail one of the particular
challenges we have right now is that well while well I agree you know most topics that come before the school board like you said just don't take it personal whatever but when the stalemate at the current time is who's going to be our leader at the board table that gets into personal attributes so it's tough
to separate those um so I think that's you know it's just what we're dealing with at the moment so it's just a matter of timing on that issue um but if if we can find a way to get past that perhaps um we can improve on this category but I
think that's holding us back at the moment okay and I feel like so sorry yep go ahead i was say like what I feel like I heard John saying and please correct me if I'm not hearing you properly but I feel like it's not a don't take this personally don't take my disagreement as
a personal attack as you as a person i don't agree with you and that's okay i'm allowed not to agree with you it's that next step of removing the personal feelings and again then also going back to what Chelsea said of you know I also need to be able to fully hear you if you
say or share that something is is causing you to feel disrespected then you know we need to then reevaluate where we're at but I think and again this is like Jen like it's not it's not about the the personal feelings necessarily it's about not taking a disagreement to then to that personal
level is that fair does that resonate Jen or is that Yeah I mean it that but there's also times where things are communicated that something was shared respectfully but it may not have
been in the eye of the beholder it again some feel like it was respectful okay right so and it's not even necessarily just to the board itself it's just communication in general and things that have transpired since
I've been on the board so it's not even necessarily specific to the board chair conversations but just as a whole other things have have So I'm not sure you know who which individuals it doesn't really make
a difference um have individuals had a chance to talk to one another about it so like for me and I'll just use Clark as an example Clark and I we weren't in always in agreement on things and you know have you have so and we would talk about that we would have conversations
like where are you at you know and it's not about board business it's about the board interaction kind of the interpersonal is that something that has worked or would work to have that conversation have there been a like one-on-one conversations you mean one-on-one yes i
I can only speak to myself or for myself and No not for myself so that that might be one thought something to think about um another is to just state it i worked
with a board not so long ago where there were some I would say some very similar uh challenges that you're talking about and finally one of the board members just kind of broke the ice and and
shared that you know this is how I operate this is how I feel and then somebody else shared and another person shared and it was kind of an eyeopener because then board members were like oh I didn't realize that and kind of just
explaining themselves i don't know if that would be something that you feel comfortable doing you know tonight or some at some point in time too i mean you kind of commented not pointing at any person but um you know you some of you have commented that you see this
happening would that be helpful just to have that discussion with the entire group when it comes to the board chair specifically that discussion that discussion has been occurring since the organizational meeting in January
um and even with alternative ideas being thrown out it's just not I mean a co-chair was an was a compromise that I threw out there and that's not
even necessarily anyways i feel like that's not even really being entertained that's kind of a Say that again that's not what it's not what to be entertained it's not even Yeah it doesn't even seem like it's really being entertained it's almost like But that's not how we've ever done it in sense because it isn't
something that we've done it's uncomfortable so I'd rather just stick with for lack of a better word status quo and I don't necessarily think that status
quo in the situation is serving the board to the best ability that we could be serving the board as a whole and our district and our community gotcha okay i I know having a co-chair for a for your
board chair has not been a real popular idea because you do seem to need that one person it gets to be a little complicated because at some point in time you have to delegate who's doing you know am I in charge of this who calls the meetings to order who signs
things so that gets to be a bit cumbersome it's not impossible because you're probably aware that there is one district that is is doing that so it gets to be a little complicated um it could be a little complicated for your superintendent as well when you are you
know trying to work together to set board agendas and things like that so that just food for thought on that um are there and you can ask questions about that if you want and then are there other ways that you can move the dial on the board chair i mean you I I
know that there was one school I worked with every single meeting they had a vote and it was tied for more than a year i don't know that that's a real good thing either i mean you still have a board chair because your acting chair continues as chair your whoever your
chair Trisha you must have been chair last year correct yep okay so then that continues until that tie is broken and that's one of the you know the blessings or not of having a six member board um are there discussions more discussions
that you can have or you'd like to have about moving the dial with the board chair well I have a lack of trust and okay there's been from the votes I've and from the
discussion that's been had there's a loss of confidence so it makes it difficult to continue to move forward in a positive way
okay and is the trust is it because of transparency or is there something more you want to share on that um well the huge thing that I feel like I'm monopolizing so anyone else can jump in but Oh that's okay that's okay for me
personally the big thing that really eroded the trust was um when we had contract discussions last year for uh individual contracts and
I had law enforcement escorting me to and from meetings i had law enforcement surveilling my house um there was intimidation tactics in my opinion that were used to try to sway my
vote um I didn't feel like I was able to move those conver those contracts forward in a manner that I had suggested multiple times which was just looking at them individually um there
was things of what I I mean what I would look at and I know the standard is higher as an elected official but slanderous comments that were made about me um within the district and narratives that were that
were shared that weren't even true and so yeah there's there's a lot of trust that was eroded in a year okay and so first of all I'm going to say I'm very sorry that that happened to
you i will also share that I sat in that same position at one point with the the escorts to and from and a lot of similar things things showing up in mailboxes and so I am sorry that that's happened um so as we think about
that what could build that trust back up at this point and are you and so other board members like would you like to comment you've you've all been a part of a split vote obviously other things that you think could help or things that need
to be addressed as far as the split and also be um with the trust i mean I experience the same things as Jen i really have no desire to rehash all the specifics because we have been doing it for months and it's honestly just kind of exhausting emotionally and
everything in every way um but you know similar things and similar feelings to similar situation to Jen a lot of the same things happened and you know similar feelings to her i think the difficult thing is the reality is is there were trust issues prior to that
happening um okay i don't Yeah I mean I think that's always kind of been in the background amongst the members of the board and uh that just really kind of brought it to a boiling point through that whole situation and made it difficult to move forward um and
I do I in my eyes you know we're seen as a split 33 and we're seen ideologically split as 33 know that honestly the if you looked at how our votes have shook out it's extremely rare that we disagree so I don't think that's entirely accurate but
that's how we're viewed and I think that's sometimes how we view each other and the there somebody has to eventually make a move of trust saying I'm going to you know acquies and allow a change to be made here that is showing that I'm
maybe not entirely comfortable with it but you know to be able to move forward this is my you know olive branch i'm going to say yes to a new thing something different um and we're going to give it a chance and that
just I don't see that happening with the way that the discussions and the votes have been so far um okay but that and that's just reality i mean that's where we're at so that's that's my comment okay other comments from the other other board
members i'm going to go way back to I think one of the things Jen first mentioned in this part of the discussion um I think you shared it was your feeling that the idea of co-chairs just isn't being I don't know what you said maybe it's not being considered or given
it yeah i mean the illusion is there go get the information but the information that gets shared it's like but we've never done it so I'm not really that comfortable with it and I would rather just continue with what happened because I think as you have
shared you thought last year was just fine well I don't remember saying those words specifically but what my point was going to be is on the idea of co-chair i want you to know that I have given it a lot of thought and it's one of those
times and I I think the shoe's been on the other foot on different issues in the past where me not ultimately agreeing doesn't mean I've not taken it seriously given it thought um so yeah I've had conversations with folks I know
just hashing out you know pros and cons of that sort of thing i've given it a lot of time a lot of thought i will say and this is maybe for a different time we don't have to get into the whether it's something we're going to do as a board but I'm just not at the point and I haven't ever reached the point where
I've considered it to be a beneficial thing for our board and our school district so I just wanted to make that very clear that it's not something I'm brushing off i appreciate that any other comments i guess there's throughout the conversation too there's been a lot of
discussion about you know what makes somebody qualified to be board chair um okay being you know a lot of the conversation has revolved around okay who was chair last year and what occurred during that
time and that's you know from my point of view okay well the trust was eroded during that time it's hard to throw my support back into that again for various reasons But then you know the alternative would be okay let's give somebody else an opportunity but okay none of you have
been on the board long enough in theory or in opinion to be qualified to do so although there have been people who like Matt was chair and granted he has said many times he wasn't comfortable going into that position in his going into his third year I think of of his term on the
board wasn't necessarily comfortable it was just it was kind of the only option at that time um right but it's it feels I'm going to use the word feeling and I hate using the word feeling um but it's it feels condescending uh to you know I
put a lot of time into this role and I take it very seriously and uh whatever you know people believe my motivations to be i truly do have you know my intentions are good in this role and so and I and I give up a lot of time to do
it and try to do it well and I just and same with Jen and it's like for the other people who have been on the board for three years to hear well you're just not qualified to do so or my opinion is is you're not because you just haven't been on the board long enough it's like well I don't know that anybody's necessarily ready to
jump into that position but I certainly feel that myself or that Jen have put in the time to be um to be knowledgeable and to to take on that challenge you know and I think that it's hard because you have three board members who have been here for three
years and only two that have been here longer well those two are the two who have been board chair up to this point so for anybody else to have an opportunity well it isn't going to be anybody else on the board if that's the standard because none of us have then been here long enough so it really is
only leaving two options then and those two options have already been in that position before so it is difficult um because I don't necessarily agree um that somebody that is three years into their board term couldn't do a good job
in that position i understand the hesitation but do I understand it to a point that you wouldn't support somebody to to step into that role no you know and so to hear that is it feels condescending and I don't again I don't like using the word feelings because this isn't a feelings type of role but
it it does feel that way it kind of actually kind of is in a sense so that's okay but so I appreciate what you had to say Emily and keep in mind with board chair kind of the messaging from MSBA is any individual board member has the right or
opportunity to be elected board chair some schools may have a protocol going back to that handbook that you know indicates wanting someone who's experienced on the board but not necessarily i don't know that that happens a lot there are situations where
boards have totally turned over and the only option is a brand new board member that kind of makes me go a little bit but it sure has happened and I've talked to and worked with a number of individuals who um got elected and they
were immediately elected as board chair even though there were fellow board members who had been on for much longer um and it was all all of them were for various reasons another criteria is that we always talk about at MSBA is um you
want to make sure it's somebody who is interested and comfortable in being the board chair not everybody wants to be a board chair uh some people are much more comfortable saying "Hey I would rather be the clerk or I would rather be the treasurer but I'm not comfortable being
in charge of a meeting." And you know working with meeting management so sometimes that's a criteria some boards have a rotation that they set up uh MSB doesn't really recommend that either because of what I just said that when it
comes to my turn to be the board chair and I don't really want to be the board chair but yet I'm kind of put in that position um so there's a lot of different things that you can can think about so there you know you don't necessarily have to have the experience
um however on the other hand it can be very helpful too because you you've walked in the you know walked in those shoes for a while and you've got some of that history some of that um institutional knowledge is helpful uh those that transition a lot of times
somebody who's been a chair will say you know I would like to transition out of the board chair position and so for that reason the vice chair is somebody who maybe will become the chair the next year so you get to kind of see things from a different angle um and then I'm
just kind of rambling with different things food for thought and then another comment or another thought that comes to my mind is that the board chair has no more power than any other individual board member your power is when you're all seated here at the board chair the
board chair it ends up putting in I think a lot more time in that role and um it's the one person that the superintendent will kind of go to if your superintendent wants to or needs to bounce an idea off of a board member
before it comes to the entire board just to get kind of an idea of should we be talking about this you know then then that is that person so so I guess where I'm going with this is there is no right or wrong and it doesn't matter if you are at your first meeting and get
elected as a board chair or you're at your you know 10 years um so it just varies so if that helps put things into perspective so Gail you as a a boardman this board used to rotate yearly for
as long as I've watched meetings anyways and this is to my knowledge the first year that there's a stalemate i'm not saying that there hasn't been in the past i haven't ever dug that far back but um so for me it
seems and I'm just going to say it at this point cuz I felt it for a while but it seems like that it has come to the to the other side's turn and because we're viewed as a split board in two different
sides that again these are this is my opinion and my feeling is that now that it's the other side's turn we're not going to give it up because we don't want to relinquish power in setting the agenda or bouncing ideas
from the superintendent to a different board chair gotcha okay so what I heard you say did you have a new chair every single year that's what it has been before i guess
Misha been on the board longer okay that Okay that's that's interesting too a lot of times MSBA will say you maybe don't want to rotate every year you know maybe two or three years just for the fact that there's kind of that continuity you
figure out your role as board chair and then somebody else is new in that position again there's no right or wrong way um I'm not saying how do you go ahead i'm not saying I agree with the rotation of chair i would I do think
continuity is important um but I am sharing my honest opinion at this point and what has been in the back of my mind for some time now is because
it would flip again to the other side there's a power struggle okay okay so it's interesting when you talk about on the sides also because I I was writing notes and I heard you say earlier and the the group can correct me
if I'm wrong on this but it sounds like most of your decisions you're able to make a decision they're either you know you're it's a unanimous vote or it's you know a 5-1 or something like that and so you're able to do
that feels like at some point you would be able to identify a board chair too where you could could move off of the split vote just thinking about that um
any anybody else have any comments or thoughts on making a making a move i was just going to give my best shot at answering your question i think you said sure is there always been a rotation um my first year on the board was
2021 and that year the board chair was the same as the year prior that was Jeremy Snowberger um then the following year 2022 was a board member who then was up for re-election at the end of that year
and chose not to run that was the year I was vice chair and I became board chair for the next year with Trisha as my vice chair um okay and then last year was Trisha as chair um and then I became her vice chair i've held that role now for Okay last year and now this year so far
so that's as far back as I'm willing to say because I I know so Chelsea's seat previously had a gentleman named Jason Nie um he was a tenure member of the board he was the chair I believe prior to Jeremy but I don't know if he served
more than one year it was either one or two so at least wanted to just put out who's been chair and what sort of So there's been and and there's also been some movement too of it's not always been the same person it sounds
like based on what you shared all I can tell you as far as whether there's been a pre-established rotation i'm not aware of that ever occurring um I think it's just been yeartoear who's interested in being chair um so
okay so any other thoughts on how you move the dial to make a decision or is it something that is going to obstruct your working together during the this coming year if you're
not able to make a decision i think it's a bad look i don't think that it's fair to our new superintendent that we're at an impass i think it's not good to our district it's not good to our community um and one of the reasons
why I had suggested the co-chair is because it would allow for both sides to unify and come together and they're it would in my mind it would offer an ability
to try to work through things and overcome impasses and really be able to have conversations when it comes to setting agendas and you know bouncing ideas off and getting those perspectives
because I think that's important for our community to start mending some rifts that have happened and I think that's what's best for our district but so that's where I was coming from
with that is being able to settle the 33 and not have it viewed as a 33 to have it something that every every meeting that you come to you start by having a vote on board chair and then kind of set maybe it sets a tone that
you don't want to have set at your board meetings possibly no I don't like having to come to a meeting and start the meeting with a three-3 split i I vote it's not It It isn't a good look and when we talk about what we're supposed
to be doing as a Wii and not a me it's Yeah it's not ideal but it's at least a compromise i hear you on that so here's another thing too if there's specific activities that the board chair is
um responsible for i heard you talk about it setting agendas and things like that is there a workaround in that respect where as a board you can set expectations for feedback on agendas or expectations
and agreements on the information that you receive that maybe you're not receiving would that be a step at least in the right direction we kind of have more informed we kind of have that fix in place and we have for a couple years um okay the year I became
chair um three of the six members were brand new so in the first few months because the you know going back to your wheel um we were in a storming phase to start out that year and we put into
place a system where even though it's just the board chair and superintendent setting the agenda at each work session we have and we have it on our agenda tonight we have a section where everybody gets to go around the table and suggest topics that they'd like to
see on an agenda in the future whether it be a work session or a regular meeting so everybody's got a voice um in what goes on the agenda so I I I would see that as being an answer to your question of you know is there a a
workaround for that and that's been in place now for a couple years so you've got that in place okay another option um with the board in the similar situation is that uh when the board chair and the superintendent need to
work on agendas one other board member is invited in just to sit in on the discussion listen and learn would that and if you choose like if I say no I'm not interested um that's okay but you know then fellow board member Mary is
interested and and she does would that help open up at least change of lines of communication that be helpful in any way shape or form would it also be a way of helping people understand the role of the board
chair it might that's an idea I've given any thought to but yeah something to consider and it wouldn't necessarily have to be the same person each time no I I'm thinking it would be you know
everybody would have an option to do it and so you could just do a rotation so it would be your superintendent your current board chair and then Jen and then the next time it would be Emily and then it would be Matt then it would be Chelsea then it would be Scott something like that and again if um I'll just pick
on Scott because he's not here today if Scott says "Nope I'm not interested." Then the rotation could just continue around and go back through i mean that that might be something that that might help i'm not sure it would depend on who's in the chair
position to be honest well actually I'm thinking given your the fact that you've got you do have a chair right now an acting chair and so while you're in the process of voting have that opportunity so when the current chair and your superintendent meet then each
board member would have an opportunity to be a part of that discussion and setting up the agenda and I'm going to apologize to your superintendent and board chair if you have some other protocol that you're using but it you know if there's something we can come up with to move the dial a little bit so I
think it'd be more about the awareness of what actually happens and uh in those discussions and what the you role of board chair is some some might attend and say I don't think I ever want to be board chair and others might say you know what I never thought I wanted to be board chair but I really am interested
in it now something to think about but if somebody's really interested in it now and they're not given the opportunity because they don't have the experience or the number of years under their belt are they ever going to be given
that opportunity i think you're going to have to come to agreement on that and it's kind of a rhetorical question i mean in some ways but I just I just want to clarify quick on the years of service so one of the things that I've promoted
as why I'm voting for Trisha is because of her experience that does not mean that I'm not voting for you because you don't have experience i am choosing to try to focus on the positive things as to why I'm voting for someone but I'm
just clarifying like it's not because of lack of time on the board that I'm you know that that I'm it's more so why I'm choosing to vote for Trisha not a reason to not vote for someone else okay that's that's helpful too thanks
Chelsea any other So my Oh go ahead i think that just came up the lack of experience has just come up in our discussions multiple times that we've had in the months leading up um as to
you know what would an obstacle be to having Jen in that role or even myself somebody that is three years into their board term right that right you know that's just one obstacle that some members are that seems to have
difficulty with yeah and I guess in my eyes there's compromises that we can make it i would like to see again I think for me it goes back to somebody has to extend an olive branch of trust somewhere along the way um
and I don't know who that will be to but to somebody new in the position I guess and it will be uncomfortable probably no matter what because it might be somebody with less experience it might be somebody you're not as comfortable with but I don't know how we
move forward if there isn't a kind of a leap of faith given somewhere along the way that we're just we're going to give somebody an opportunity that you know maybe maybe there you know isn't 100% confidence or maybe I have questions about but we have to be able to move
forward and I really really don't believe it's healthy to continue to split a vote at the beginning of every meeting so right to be able to move beyond that who who can we give an opportunity to that hasn't been in that position before
that we're it's it's we're showing that we're willing to put blind trust here um and grow and move forward that's my two cents what I'm hear Thanks for that so I guess I just
want to comment off of Chelsea i'm hearing and I guess it's based off of Chelsea and what you just shared but also I'm hearing a lot of people throwing the word of trust out and I think the thing to remember is I also have been really trying to stay very positive with my comments and my thought
processes um but I think it's really something that we need to remember is trust goes both ways so I know some people have shared that they don't feel trust for certain people but I don't know that that could be that I mean I think the same could be said for me there's some trust that I don't feel um
and I don't want to go to that negative place but I think for anyone in this entire board to heal I think the trust is going to have to be healed from both sides it can't just be one side conceding or compromising it's going to have to be
um from both sides and I don't know that you can place blame on the side of or one person i think it's the group um I I don't know i just like I I feel really poorly and really badly for some of the things that happened in June
specifically for both of you and Scott um but I don't know that I would and I I don't know that I hear you guys saying that it's all my fault but in our discussions in January February and March I do feel that a lot of that blame has been solely placed on me as your board chair um I know and I don't want
to pick on Scott because he's not here but he said that you know I made a media circus and I think that's really unfair to say that that was all my fault i think there was six of us in at that table and there were six of us that were making decisions whether they were decisions of the full board or divisions decisions that were made individually we
all played a role and there might be a side that you know I see the the role that I played but I think we need to see all of us looking at the differences like I've really tried myself to see what what happened from the eyes of
another person and like really listen to the other version or the other the other viewpoint and just like it's been shared that um we need to maybe have that opportunity to have that conversation like have we really stopped and listened or asked like okay so I understand how
it was for me in June or I understand how it was for me in January February or March but how was it for Matt or maybe how was it for Jason how was it for for Jen how was it for like I mean I just think some of that conversation and some of that thought process needs to be also
trying to put yourself into that other that other person's shoes and really understanding like you know you might I might feel this way but then the other person might feel completely different and then really trying to to give that understanding yeah thank you appreciate the comments
too because we we do all internalize everything differently and Yeah and see it in different ways as well so again going back to one of the comments I made when we landed on this particular statement of you know
remember that the eyes are on you from your community and the ext the examples that you set and how you model behavior i don't know if there's any thoughts on what you can do to move ahead um you
definitely have an option to do a one-on-one i mean a lot of you have shared all all of you actually have shared your feelings at this point um I think you could take some opportunities to have a one-on-one discussion as well and just kind of hash it out a little
bit that may or may not work i'm not sure if the idea of having another board member join when the board chair and the superintendent work on the agenda if that would be helpful uh could be eye opening and it could also be an
opportunity to learn the role of board chair for an upcoming election as well um are you are you prepared to have a tide boat all year or do you feel like at some point you just come to a decision to
either make a change or keep it keep your current board chair it's to it's I can't tell you what to do it's totally up to you so I'm going to go back to your first comment um would one-on-one conversations help i
would think they would um I had them on the phone with our three new members multiple times in the first few months of me being board chair and I think it did help we talked through a lot of issues there were some issues that came up came up where there was very strong disagreement at the start and we worked
through it and it wasn't like you said you don't talk necessarily about the board business itself you talk about right how you plan to communicate things y to the community um when there are you know differences at the board table and that sort of thing so I thought it'd help work through things like that um so
I'd encourage anybody who's vocalized you know a lack of trust or difficult relationships with other board members to reach out get in touch that's Can I say something though sure when you were acting or when you were board chair
you also took the time to reach out as chair it wasn't just me having to call you all the time yeah and that sure of course it goes both ways yeah and and that's why I've pointed out in the past too like you and I have disagreed and
yet have worked through things and have found common ground and that is something that I did appreciate when you were chair that's helpful to know i that reminds me I know of at least one other board chair that uh does meet for coffee with each
board member individually just to get an idea of how things are going again not board business but just in general um any concerns i don't know if that's a possibility to do something like that um and this board chair actually does
this why did she tell me i think three time at least three times a year or if there's been a board meeting where you know it's obvious that another board member fellow board member is upset frustrated about something they've had a conversation about that afterwards as
well um so I mean those would all be things that you could you could try i would also make myself available if you wanted to have the conversation and just have me there to kind of listen and provide feedback could do it via virtual via Zoom call um that would be another
option there might be somebody else that's a non-board member that could sit in that would you know be there to visit i think there's some options um and look this is not easy stuff you're new into your year i mean the the election just
happened in January and we're just starting April at this point um the other option is to just give it a try um see how things pan out in the next couple of months or
so i don't know anything make sense to the group i my fear is that the messaging that you might be sending to your school community and what I think is great is that you're able to make so many decisions and this is one thing that's definitely holding you up and I know it's a big decision so I don't want
to demean it at all i think it's really difficult to and again I'm just not going to rehash all of it but there's so much context behind so many of the things even beyond just last year there's a lot
of context that's missing from the discussion and that's by choice i mean we don't need to get into everything but right you know those one-on-one conversations would have been extremely helpful when we were in the midst of many of the difficult things and they
didn't happen which led to the more erosion of trust and to the point where now it just feels like you know that's part of part of the erosion of trust is the fact that there wasn't any of that there was none of that
communication so it it makes it harder to move past that i mean and in general in reality there's a there there is a lot of just feelings involved there's a lot of hurt I would say probably amongst people and
um I mean it was really scary of a time for me and my family i had to take my child out of town one day because I wasn't sure if people were coming to my house based on the threats that I had gotten i mean very deep stuff that was very difficult to go through for months
and it's really hard to say it's just extremely hard to say I like for myself I could move forward in that same setup again and and even feel good about myself making a vote like that because of what occurred and the
things that occurred to me and my family i I think that would be you know you talk about voting against your or voting your conscious i mean that would be absolutely not I I could not make that vote and feel good on my conscious
because it was an it was pretty traumatic um and there's a lot of hurt involved there but also just that was very real it was very real and difficult thing for us to go through and it didn't need to get to that point either that's
the other part that's hard to reconcile with is that it was allowed to build and that was that was multiple things that went into that there was multiple variables that went into that but it was allowed to build to that point and uh it's just hard to reconcile with that
and I I don't know that I ever could um which is why I say I think that at a certain point there's there has to be a change i you know maybe we can find a compromise on what that change is i don't know but
that's just where I'm at yep okay well thank you thanks for sharing that any other comments and obviously another option is you just come to each meeting and have a
vote and see where things land um and keep doing it until a decision is made or brings you through the year and I think it's really up to you if that's what you want to do all year i'm
not sure if it is well that that all year could end up being two years i mean that's just the reality and it that it's just beyond frustrating because it makes us look silly
i think short term Gail you have given us multiple ideas that we should discuss because we're gonna no matter what happens here tonight we're going to start the next meeting by opening with that vote so we'll have new things to discuss new ideas and hopefully be able to hash okay hash out a way forward
that's not just what we've experienced thus far okay well yeah thanks thanks for kind of bringing summary to that i do think you've got some options to consider right now it feels like there is too much hurt in um in with some situations
where the one-on-one may not be helpful and you know not now maybe maybe down the road i don't know again you know I'm certainly available even just to talk with any of you one on- one to talk through things or if you want me to help
facilitate a discussion with two people together I am not opposed to doing that so keep that in mind um but yeah think about some of the things that we talked about there's some ways of helping you make a decision and
if not you'll probably have it on the agenda and um keep voting throughout the year at the same time I would say remember the things that are going well with the decisions that you have been able to make and move forward with and
um earlier I think Jen it was you that said there is a perception now in the community of um you can't make decisions somehow figure out how you can communicate even though there's one thing you've not been able to come to agreement on um figure out ways that you
can communicate to staff and to the community in general the decisions that the board is making um that are whether they're unanimous you know or a 51 or a 42 so that that perception kind of melts away um for the time being i think that
that would serve you well and maybe that's the starting point that you want to work on is just building that because at the end of the day it's that that tone that you're setting and it's that modeling that you're doing well I think the the biggest thing that
we did collectively and that was hiring Dr reard who is very calm and brings calm to to our storm um
and to his credit he actually has invited board members and the board chair to come in on on meetings with him as well so good good i'm glad you mentioned that because at some point I was going to say that this evening too
that I do know that you were a united board when you hired your superintendent and that spoke very highly of you as a team and I'm sure for Dr revard to come in that was a message for him too because uh it I'm not sure um how many
people like to take a position a new position when it's a split board so so congrats on that i mean that was a big decision that you made where you could come together so maybe capitalize on that as well i think we've had a lot of You want
ahead i think we've had a lot of really positive things come from the difficult decision i mean again we agree on 97% of the votes that we make here i mean rarely are we not in agreement the ones that we've had disagreement on of course
those stand out but whatever our our consensus has been or even in the event of hiring Dr there's been really good things that have come even from the difficult votes that we've had i mean we had we struggled through our building project and we had some issues at the
beginning of our term and good things have come from every one of those things they've been difficult uh to deal with but I think we've had a positive result so I mean we can I absolutely believe that and I think that needs to get messaged more often that our disagreements haven't actually landed us
in a in a a bad position sometimes we've maybe even ended up in a better spot just working through things so it's not always bad for us when we're not in full agreement um and I guess that that's kind of what I was saying earlier is doesn't always have to be viewed as a
negative if we're not unanimous uh and and maybe if we split a vote and it's a no vote then because of that on our first try that's okay we're going to come back we're going to have more discussions we will come to an end result eventually and we maybe just need more time
yep absolutely well said well excuse me well said so you have a lot of positives and um sometimes just time time together will make a difference as well because that's a piece of how you do build up trust again okay I'm going to move us
along to page 10 which is the last set of statements related to conduct and ethics and uh I think my comments here were 19 professional development remember it's okay to invest in yourselves in your own professional
development as well because it does set a precedence and sends a message just as you provide professional development for staff and um that that you're taking an interest in your job and taking it seriously
and uh 21 talks about orientation of new board members and I think I've heard a number of things with um Chelsea's role sounds like you've been to the face trainings and do you have a mentor Chelsea
yes has you Okay yep sounds good so you have somebody that's a mentor because we always like to see that too um so that walked us through the conduct and ethics section anything else as a board team
that you'd like to talk about we hit the two things that you talked about at the beginning the the trust and the uh chair position the the trust part I think is going to be something that just will have to unfold um as you move
forward okay just looking at the time um I the rest of these sections I think we can address rather quickly it seems like you probably had your your um important discussion here at the beginning and
that's okay are you all okay to continue on are you all doing okay i'm fine i wouldn't mind getting water i drink all my water do we take five yeah but I did wanted I just wanted I wanted to give some thoughts on this
last page i guess I look at like Q21 and I I would have liked to have seen us in a better place with like you know no nevers but I also think the work that we've done that we started in November that we can bring back to the board in
our board handbook i think we'll be able to set ourselves up for better success moving forward i think unfortunately when did the handbook come out was it like August September i just I don't think August is when we launched it at summer seminar yeah i don't think the Thursday web the way it worked out with
what we had going on with our referendum and some of the other things not to put excuses but I just think the way that that it worked out for our board the the the closest we got to getting to starting it was November it just didn't really feel like we had that time to get it to where we wanted to give it to a new board member so I do apologize for
that but like I do think that we are going to be able to to make some really great progress towards making these look much better the next time we take this with or especially with our work in the handbook i don't know if you guys or anyone agrees disagrees but I'm hopeful that our board handbook will really help
with some of some of these last pages good and it's good it's good that you have it not all boards do and so that's why we suggest it so you're steps ahead in that respect so um you want to take five minutes and then we'll come back together and keep moving ahead
okay okay yeah I don't need to get freezing yeah kindergarten assessment test or whatever yeah i don't know if that was like the last year or
I mean they had changed it pretty shortly after I think he had gone through there sure middle school preschool this is where we assessments for this year that would have been 2020 was in preschool
year when Emma who was in third grade she did her first year here in her second year i'm missing your superintendent it looks like huh yes so did anybody actually shovel their driveway are we all protesting no I
drove over it over it over it enough times to pack it down yeah my tire tracks have melted but I did shovel it to the bus so Sawyer could get off the bus and walk on ah yeah makes sense we don't get sun on the
driveway at all either it's just that angle right there so it will now that I've packed it down it'll be iced for quite a while we were talking about shoveling driveways i just drove over mine over and over
stacked up over and over protest i saw that on on our neighborhood post i was like "Oh no." Next morning really the back of Waters Church underneath the scaff oh no how did you find him over there one of the pastors called that
morning cuz it was Sunday morning wow that's really lucky i We were driving home we came home that night from Florida and I'm like "Look for a little dog just while you're driving Nate make sure you're really checking for a little dog somewhere."
I still have the cough from Yeah yeah looking all night we're looking all late to 10:30 or 11 then there's an organization called the Retrievers of Minnesota even give you advice on just you need to stop because dogs get into fight or flight and they
don't understand even as they they don't hear your the tone they don't recognize your voice anymore right they just stand well looks like everybody's back are you ready to start up again with the
discussion we um we'll talk about vision remember that's that big picture that you have for your school district and usually it's tied to having a strategic plan in place or having goals in place the um so we're on page 11 the set of
questions that are listed here all talk about student learning i don't have any comments about any of those statements unless the group does as you take a look at this and usually this will be reflected
in your strategic plan on page 12 under vision the um statement 25 talks about including stakeholders as you create that vision for your school district during your strategic planning
process i'm going to keep moving on uh third page 13 these three statements all talk about having a strategic plan in place and then having um the goals and outcomes goals and objectives for your strategic plan and then knowing that
once that strategic plan is in place that a lot of your work uh policy development and your decision making and budgeting will tie to your goals in your strategic plan and talks about do you monitor those goals and or the strategic
plan on page 14 the two statements there all tie into student achievement and having those expectations for your student achievement and again with a strategic plan in place that would likely be your
number one priority because that's what you're all about interestingly enough in both um last summer last June when the group took it and this time structure or vision let's see vision was one of your
higher think I looked at that yeah last time it was your number one area and this time it's number three so I'm not sure what changed on the dial and then as we move into structure that's actually been number one this time and was number two last time um but vision I
went through really quickly and do you have is there anything that caught your eye that you wanted to talk about i think those statements for division i think it was back to a comment that I had made that we were discussing in policy and just making sure that we're getting those updates more regularly as
far as what built specifically has for their goals in the buildings and then bringing it to the board just so we're aware and how that's tying into our strategic plan yep absolutely and I think that's a
that's a a good request to make and um you know you're a high performing board when board members are asking for those kinds of that kind of feedback so I've duly noted that and I'm going to guess your superintendent has as well as far as agenda items in the future okay
anybody else any comments about vision i guess the the thing that's just quickly looking through all of this is we've had we had a year with an interim superintendent and now we've had you know not even quite a year with our new superintendent so I do think that some
of this will become easier for us to be able to actually gauge as he understands what our expectations are and knows what we're looking for and then also like we can get back to because I feel like and maybe I'm wrong i feel like Dr doctor
Jeff Ryver Ry Hoover thank you sorry all I could think of was Shrever uh Ry Hoover did a pretty good job of actually updating us on where we were at on our goals and I I would imagine that you'll get to that same place maybe you'll do it a little bit differently but you're still just trying to kind of like what
you said i'm just still trying to like see that full full picture see all that stuff so I guess like I see this and I I'm not incredibly worried or nervous but like I'm also reassured knowing that I know that we're in the right direction and I feel like we're going to be able
to get to the place that we're all hopefully all going to feel really comfortable with with at least this with our strategic plan and having a superintendent that's going to be here hopefully for more than one or two years i think Gail one of the goals for me were making sure that we were putting
together and having stakeholders involvement in actualizing a strategic plan the going through that process and I think for this current board the amount of input and participation they might have had at the beginning of that process not the approval of it or
being part of it right um I would like to make sure I expand that opportunity and then also making sure we have stakeholders that are involved um outside because our board members they hear from our stakeholders they hear from our parents and to make sure that they're part of the whole process of strategic planning in a robust way as a
goal for this fall so okay good to know and I'm not sure you know where exactly where you're at but do keep in mind that I do strategic planning and so if I can assist you have a conversation give you some guidance um
you know facilitate the process don't please don't be shy that's what I do and I think I've done over a hundred of them now um since I've been working at MSBA so happy to help you out in any way so we'll leave it at that um okay so yeah
so I think you know your takeaway from vision is once you've gone through that strategic planning process I think it you know it's going to really build your team and I also think that you will have a focus for your team that will move you
forward and your responses on this evaluation will look a lot different when you get through that as well so good uh I'm going to move on to structure then structure is the organizational and physical structures and of your school district and so you're going to see kind of a hodgepodge
of questions that have been asked here and as I um looking at starting on page 15 um just talking about facilities I I don't really have any comments you're this again is one of your strength areas
um where there's a lot of agreement so I don't know that there's a lot to say other than like with statement 32 and 33 uh the responsibility of making sure this happens is the superintendence the board wants to ensure that um these things are
happening so this means that probably updates to the board i see some don't knows or nevers and it might just mean that the board needs to be informed if they haven't or maybe it's on the docket it hasn't come up this year yet i'm not sure on that on
page 16 the takeaway that I always like to share with boards is that with hiring and retention with evaluating staff and with staff development the superintendent is
responsible for all of those items however you as board members I believe should ensure that they are happening and again if this means updates at a board meeting um you know follow-up reports in in a very general way I think
that that is fair uh just as an example the evaluation of staff it's not that board members are going to hear about individual staff members evaluation it's more that big picture of this is a process and that was something I was
always really curious as a board member because in all my professional years I've been evaluated i was just curious how does that happen when does that happen you know what's the criteria that's used so if that's something you're curious about as board members um and it might um be reflected in your
responses I think that would be a great topic at a a study session that um your superintendent and or other staff could lead for you as I look at page 17 the takeaway here are the learning
essentials the curriculum the technology and the facilities that help students learn and that's really what these statements are all about the uh one statement uh 40 that talks about community and parent involvement and
it's worded um selecting curriculum so with the the world what we used to know as the world's best workforce now it's striving for comprehensive achievement and civic readiness it's a new name it's still the world best world's best workforce uh goals and objectives um and
that requires parent involvement big picture is what are the opportunities that you provide to have parent involvement and it might be in your school it might be a PTA you might have PTA PTO or might be some advisory
committees did are there things that come to your mind that are opportunities for parent and community involvement i mean I would like to see grandparents day come back i think I've said that a couple times just getting people back in
the buildings covid pushed everybody out and I think sometimes sending out reminders that you are welcome in the buildings and let's bring the community back in such as um we've got open gym going on
now and we have a community that wants to be involved i think they just need to be reminded that they are welcome to be involved okay and I think that's a good point the majority of uh your taxpayers do not have any kids in school so keep that in
mind when you're you're trying to build those bridges and um having the open gyms things like that so just in general looking for ways that you can have the community and parent involvement I think will serve you very very well well and
this is an idea I just happened to think about when I heard Jen speaking but like taking it a step further we we give out really great ideas of like we don't allow food as a birthday celebration in our buildings but like maybe as another included thing we could say like you know there's a lot of parents maybe I
shouldn't say a lot there are a few parents that know that they are allowed to come in but like throwing that in on that birthday celebration note saying like you can come in and have lunch with your son or daughter or like some other opportunities like and it doesn't have to be their birthday but That's a great idea of like another opportunity for you
to come in so that because I don't know that people are aware like I think people were much more aware before COVID and I think it happened a lot more frequently but I don't know that to kind of the same point like I just don't think people know that it's back to being okay
as far as that like this question how it's worded have a process that includes community and parent involvement in selecting curriculum I've been on the world's best workforce committee as a community
member and parent and as a board member now both and it there are a lot of there are parents involved there are there are parents on there I can't say that I know of many ways in which the parents are actually involved in selecting
curriculum and maybe it's because I just don't know that that's happening um but I know that's not like what's necessarily the purpose of the caser committee it's not like we're there going through curriculum a lot of the time or having input on selecting any of
it so I I think Dr riverard that's maybe something that you could you know speak to more on what exists if anything for that and if the answer truly is nothing then we certainly have room for growth for opportunities there mhm i I think there's always going to be room for growth in that area especially as you
look at how curriculum is vetted and the the steps in vetting curriculum is is a there's a science to it there's actually protocols that you can go through when we're making those decisions and a lot of those excuse me the the curriculum choices that have happened in the past
sadly you know it's not an excuse but I wasn't involved in how they did it so I probably want to learn a little bit more about what the parents involvement was in those previous discussions um but what I'm used to is having I don't want to say the salespeople but the people who are going
to bring you curriculums to consider um they're doing presentations and having parents be part of those presentations and learning and being there sometimes is just um someone who's giving advice because for parents is curriculum is not their expertise area there's people who
have doctorates in curriculum um but it doesn't diminish the role that parents and community members can have and give them feedback on what they're hearing if that makes sense i don't know what our process has been in the past but yeah I would want to as we move forward have a robust conversation with lots of
different stakeholders being part of that yeah I think that's I think there's been a question too of well a lot of staff members are also parents but that's not necessarily the the spirit
behind this that this is for a parent who isn't a employee or a staff member in the building this is for an outside parent who may not have that you know inside view all the time and this gives them the opportunity to have that and there yes they're not experts parents
you know I'm not an expert on curriculum but you know that outside perspective from somebody who is going to be assisting in helping their child with curriculum can sometimes be beneficial too so I think it'd be good to look at who is act if we have these opportunities too are these parents that
are from outside that aren't associated with the school in any other way except being a parent you know not an employee as well but yeah and I think oftentimes school districts are known for kind of pointing the direction of PTO's and utilizing some of those parents because they they've already showed a level of
wanting to have involvement but we also then diminish ideas and the possibility of different questions because that's also the usefulness of even if you're not a curriculum expert you can ask questions that can help elicit ideas or responses to a group of people who are
making a decision that you wouldn't necessarily think right yeah I'd agree well I think maybe even just explaining the process of selecting curriculum and how that looks and um if there are changes to
curriculums where are we at with that or what does that look like what does that process look like and um and bringing that more to the board table as a
discussion just to be able to show people like this is part of the work this is how you can be involved this is what it goes into and or what goes into it and kind of the I don't know just the whole process
overall and being more involved i know we did that with we had those presentations at the board table from Megan i know when we selected uh amplify yeah uh for the reading and that was actually extremely interesting and that was
obviously a major change and had to do with legislation but we make changes in curriculum all the time you know and so it's like it would be interesting to see that in other subject in other areas too on how we landed on X whatever that is you know well and I think at minimum having a better understanding as I learn
more about our board processes of what the curriculum review cycle is where we're at in the curriculum review cycle for each of our content areas um that would be something that I would as a as a board member want to have some knowledge on you don't have to be able to recall them you know standards for
certain subject areas or content areas are changing in 2028 but you will know then if we can give you that information that this is where we're at on the cycles this is what's coming up in the next year because we're not doing all content areas next year but there's specific ones we'll do next year there's specific ones we'll do the following
year and I think that's good information for school boards to have oh yeah yeah well one thing with the the CLA curriculum it was the energy that Megan was able to provide when she was explaining it and going through the
process and just the excitement it was nice to be able to share in that because for me as a parent with children who struggle with reading it was exciting to be able to be a part of that and now hopefully to be able to go back and reflect on those changes and see the
growth that we are hopefully making so and I think as a board we did a really good job of even showing the the questions i feel like we had some pretty high level questions that I don't remember if it was Megan or other other moments in our in our meetings but like
I feel like we also as just the board of six who are not educators by trade have shown that we have some really great questions and great insights that you know although I'm not the expert like I think of things in a different way come at it from a different angle and then I remember maybe not even myself but I
remember moments where like oh I never thought about it from that way so like if we can give that opportunity for more more involvement I think the only thing that we can potentially see or hopefully see is positive outcomes good good discussion about that i sounds
like it could be a continued discussion at another meeting and then again just explore opportunities for the parent involvement in general and um other community involvement too on page 18 still under structure
talking about evaluation of curriculum which is you kind of just did took care of that and then um evaluating updating technology and your long-term facilities plan and again leadership for that is the superintendent's responsibility but as board members you want to ensure that
that's happening and and have an expectation that there'll be some updates that will be provided for you at board meetings page 19 talks about the learning environment expectations in the classroom with instructional practices
so your staff and um evaluating those learning environments and then on page 20 um talks about your budget so a budget that aligns with the goals that you have the goals uh of your strategic plan and
it seems as if from your responses that you must have a fair number of conversations about this and are keeping this in the forefront 47 where it talks about seeking public input your responses are no different than any other school that I work with that's a
tough one and you know you've got your um truth and taxation meeting and not too many school districts have a big turnout for that at the same time if there are opportunities that you can explore down the road for helping folks
understand school finance or educate them about it just a little bit uh some schools have created a finance committee of finance experts within their school communities so business officials you may have had that or have
thought about that where it's it's actually a support to you in that now you've got yet another group who is equally as informed about school finance as you as board members are and they can be out in the community and answering questions and explaining the buckets of
money that you have to work with and um the parameters that are set so food for thought on that and it looks like page 21 is the last page there's one question or one statement on there and monitoring the fiscal status and you obviously are
doing that on on a pretty regular basis I'm guessing based on your responses so that takes us through structure what questions anything catch your eye on that that you wanted to comment on um when you talk about providing
evaluations for learning environments would that be like surveying staff or what I guess what are Yeah that's a good question and it could be uh it could be that getting their feedback it could also be their evaluation as well
that staff are providing that environment that is conducive to learning and and helps um create student success i guess sure i guess when I see like on page 18 and it was mentioned throughout all of
this but like 18 they saw it right away policies like I think policy and I think that that means that our board has to have it written in policy is that what that was meant to mean or is it more like we should have a procedure because I think that's where I feel like I think we did pretty well in structure like you had said but I do think that that is
kind of the hiccup that I'm wondering if that was what caused us to have even 16 yeah that's that's a a really good observation and I should have mentioned that earlier with some of the other statements too so the word policy or procedures or protocols can kind of
be interchanged and so we started with policies obviously I don't know that you would have policies on every single thing that's here so if you just take it um in that uh you know context of you know are we doing something do we have a procedure do we have a protocol in some
cases you will have a policy like when I talked about staff development i think you do have um that might be in your 600 series possibly with staff development so yeah that would be how to read read that and you're right that could have made a difference in how some people
responded to those statements other questions about structure just I guess a question on question number 47 uhu um because you've talked you kind of talked about examples of having like
public education about finances and stuff but to me it's very different than asking for their input on our budget um and so I guess my just general question is is that would that be the
general expectation of that the public should have input during our budget process so a couple of ways to answer that I think again having like a finance committee who just has an understanding and they can be a sounding board and
they can help tell the story that you as board members tell um is one option and then I think if you have opportunities to get that feedback on the budget and it might not be it might be more in the the context of um we are exploring the
opportunity of you know facility or curriculum or some other initiative and maybe getting feedback that way of just you know would you prefer that would that be something that
you would support um just a general community survey so I think that's how you would gather that information and I has that something that your school has ever done so well I was just about to say one example of getting public input on this was a number of years ago before
any of us were on the board um we had a pretty significant budget deficit so there were listening sessions and that sort of thing to get input because there was cuts to many programs um so they wanted public input on what types of programs should be prioriti prioritized
and that sort of thing so that's the last real concrete example I can think of where the public as a group was invited in to the budgeting process it's you know in years where it's not so much of red flag everywhere with budget cuts
and whatever well that's what I was talking about like yeah it's probably easier when it's like hey we have this excess and where would we like to see this money go towards but in times where it's like uh we have to make some hard decisions
i think that's an appropriate time to be asking questions too you know finding out priorities getting some some general feedback um is very helpful gil would it be beneficial just because there's been legislative changes in the past couple
years that have certainly put financial more financial burden on the districts that have that have changed you know what we are having to do each year and um changes we're having to make to the budget would it be beneficial to have listening sessions just simply to explain
um why the changes would be happening because we're a small community and people are going to talk um and it's not you know it's not mismanagement of money or anything it's these were changes that came without any you know control of local school boards but we are having to
react to those changes that are now implemented in law so would it be beneficial it wouldn't necessarily be input coming the other way although they could certainly have the opportunity to speak but it gives us an opportunity to explain to the public in general why they may hear you know throughout the
community about changes that have happened or things that are happening within the schools i think that's an excellent idea so it could be just that where you have the the opportunities to share it could be in the form of of a listening session of sorts too you know learn more about
school finance provide us with some feedback type of thing um and that could be done at also you know your community groups your organizations your service groups opportunities to go and speak there to get the word out could be done um building by building in your school
where parents are invited in it could be one tied into some other activity that you have so you could really be creative in how you get that word out and it could also be followed up with you know a small flyer info sheet that just talks about some of the impacts of legislative
decisions too just to create that awareness i just think I think those would be we hear from I mean staff member you know people within the school school system that aren't even aware of a lot of these legislative changes that have had a big financial impact on us i
can't imagine that the majority of the community knows or understands any of them either you know so I just think it would be when we're going through times like these it seems proactive I guess to try to explain a little bit about you know what has occurred and and give
people a better picture because if we don't that void gets filled with plenty of negative things a lot of the time that may or may not be true right and and misinformation so the more that you can take charge of the narrative and this the story and the
message and the information the facts I think the better off you'll be and this this coming well we I mean there's just a lot of changes as we know in um state and federal legislation uh so now might be a good time to be thinking about that
to communicate that information good any other things under structure okay we'll shift to talk about standard 4 accountability so the first uh page of accountability is page
22 and the items that are listed there all tie to a strategic plan and we've kind of talked about that already having that timely review um the coherence between your strategic plan and your school improvement plans or basically
the goals that you have and then reviewing and making recommendations for your strategic plan so those are kind of the key takeaways on that set of questions on page 23 it talks about
evaluation of your superintendent um having the goals and eva evaluating annually so what process do you use in your school district for evaluating your superintendent is it annual or how is
that set up so we just I mean last year we didn't evaluate a superintendent because he was an interim superintendent um and this year we chose to go with the MSBA model and we had Barb Dorne since we had used MSBA to to hire Mike we utilized that service through MSBA
okay perfect so you have that in place and then I will um just kind of add to it a few things that I always like to share um channeling Barb door now too so you usually the chair is the person that takes the lead to get that performance
evaluation set up um make sure as a board that you do it you schedule it doesn't matter what time of year you do it you've got a tool that you're using um we always say take advantage of uh the closed session because there's not too many times where a board can close
go into close session so take advantage of being able to do that and then um Barb's message to you probably was make sure that you have at least one uh but no more than three goals for your superintendent
and Gail then always adds when you've got your strategic plan the goals should be tied directly to the goals of your strategic plan so that model that I showed earlier with district goal alignment uh you goals of your strategic
plan and whatever the priorities are for this upcoming year would be the priorities for your superintendent and then we always say add in a professional development goal if that's something your superintendent has requested so sound sounds like you're in in good
shape with um moving forward with that any anything you want to talk about though as long as I am here i guess just feedback for you in general like when I look at Q55 like if we don't have a written specific goal for our
superintendent like I don't about specific outcomes for student learning then that I mean I don't I don't know how you're going to score that other than just having I feel like maybe it should be more having specific specific goals written down like because I I would I would say
that we have that we don't have specific goals about student learning that was one of that wasn't one of the pillars that we chose to focus on for Mike's first year and I think that okay that that's reflected here and and so then that's a good point and so then obviously you're going to base it off of
the pillars that you did identify that you're looking up so Okay yeah i very good when I read that question I kind of went in my mind to well they must be talking about something like world's best workforce report which puts out you know your improvement goals very
specific numbers that sort of thing but yeah it's it's tough when it's not one of the things we've chosen to focus on primarily and I think part of that is one of our philosophies with strategic plan is that
your number one focus area is going to be student achievement or student success or academic success and so technically you'd have that in place in a strategic plan which would then tie into the um outcomes for student
learning and kind of mentioned broadly loosely so that that it will tie together but it will be a goal that comes from your strategic plan okay on the next page the set of questions here are all
talking about academic progress and um a messaging for these is I always say obsess on results this kind of goes back to your comments earlier on having a little bit more um information on maybe
student data and and um monitoring data and so obsess on results and you kind of know you've arrived if that's your number one question as board members because that's really what you're all about and it's just being inquisitive having a variety of um presenters
sharing information in in different ways in addition to the test scores and I I know that you all know test scores is just one measure measure of student success okay that is accountability i'll give you a second just to take a look at
that and see if there's any anything else you want to ask about and I will move on to advocacy and communication but if something does come up where you'd like to go back we can sure do that so with advocacy and communication on statement 62 remember
that MSBA does a lot of promotion advocating for you on your behalf with our government relations team um Friday chats are my most favorite time of the week and tomorrow morning at 9:00 Kim and Denise will do a
Friday chat and they give us that 30 first 30 minutes is um just an overview of what's happened this past week and then since it's the first Friday of the month they do Friday chat plus so the second half hour is doing a little bit deeper dive and having more of a conversation about what's been happening
at the legislature so that is really built in for you but then I'm guessing that you have some of your own practices in reaching and visiting with your local decision your local state federal decision makers with uh 65 i always like to
mention that as well um 65 is talking about how you respond to emails questions comments do you have uh thinking back to your board handbook again too do you have a past practice in how you handle emails that come to the
board if they're emails to the full board the board chair responds and BC's the response to all board members okay okay and if just an individual board member gets a email
we would just I practice is we I would respond to that email if it just came to me okay i don't know that we agreed on a protocol but my practice is to CC the board chair on my response just so they know somebody responded assuming
I don't know there's many scenarios that come up sometimes it's an email that the whole board receives but it's directed to certain people in that case I tend to at least copy in the board chair with my response so they know somebody got back to them i guess if it's a direct email
depends on the situation i think with the individual emails it it may also be fair game and this is something that you can discuss with your superintendent but um it might be fair game to CC your superintendent also and a lot of times you know we'll we'll mention that um if
you know if I get an email and it's from Katie and so I'll say "Katie thanks so much for your message i've CCD our superintendent Dr revard on this message." And he'll respond so if there's times when that's appropriate but again you can talk about that um your superintendent can share with you
if that's something that that you prefer um it's I think it's good communication style too and then that way um the messaging is always the same so you've got but it sounds like with the group emails you've got a good process in
place and then you can kind of sort through individual if there if it's somebody that emails you and they're like do we have a spring concert coming up do you know what the day of it is you know then I I don't know that you need to that you need to CC your superintendent um but you certainly
could and I like the idea of uh including the board chair too lines of communication i think it's just situational i for me I think it's situational i will typically my rule of thumb is if I'm mentioning somebody's name I CC them so they know that I
mentioned their name but I mean that's in general practice for me as well so okay I think we don't have our individual emails on the website either granted you could common sense it and say "Well if this person's email is this
this you know mine is probably Emily or E Larson whatever." You know you could probably come to that conclusion but uh so I don't we don't really get a lot of individual email for that reason most come to the full board so okay interesting yeah and there are a number
of boards that have a kind of a general email on their website so if you have a question for board member and then it's board at whatever and maybe the chair or you know monitors it so there's a variety of ways to to do that i've been
an advocate you're not getting a lot of email that's a good thing i've been an advocate for having our individual emails on there i think we talked about this at our last uh technology I didn't realize our individual emails weren't on there until our last um technology committee meeting i did advocate for
individual emails to be on there just because some people are more com you know maybe they're more maybe they know me outside of the board and they'd be more comfortable just asking me a question where they wouldn't send it to the full board or something so I think it's okay or if people are not happy
with me individually they can certainly then have a direct line to me you know whatever the case may be but that's just my opinion throwing it out there yeah well and I I think that's um good feedback Emily it's because I think what you want to avoid is so I so I you know
not I don't know you but so I let's say I know you I'm a constituent who knows you and I know your personal email address and then suddenly you're starting to get board questions on your personal email address and you don't necessarily want to be doing that either you like I think you as board members
you want to keep that separate so y food for thought something to think about okay on page 26 uh 66 talks about uh the board making sure everybody understands their roles
and responsibilities a lot of that comes in having kind of that elevator speech of what your role is you know as governance and vision when I do my summary from this workshop I will put some examples in there of what you might
use and if it's something that's helpful use it and if not that's okay let's see on page 27 it talks about um just opportunities for communicating and I think my
takeaway for you is the more ways that you can communicate the facts in a a short concise manner the better um keeping everybody informed and the last page 28 two
statements there and they kind of complement one another I think um first one talks about seeking input from community and staff and sometimes that's in a formal way and sometimes it even happens is somebody approaches you in the grocery store or at the hockey games
and you know want to tell you something and uh share something with you and you can say yeah you know provide me with your input and then I'll take it back to the board so really you seek the input you can't as board members make a commitment obviously of what you're going to say or do or how you're going
to vote because your power is at the board table but in 71 it talks about bringing that information back to the board table and then carefully considering uh any feedback that you've gotten as you're making a decision so again sometimes this happens in a very
structured way maybe in your strategic planning process and it also happens in a very informal way as well so just keeping that in mind um that's advocacy and communication so as you look at the statements is there anything that you want to go back to or
ask questions about in that within that standard i think one thing that I would like to highlight and I know I've done it a couple of times but when it comes to advocating and communication I do think Dr revard is really good about wanting
to seek that input and wanting to be available um I think as a board from a board perspective um I don't know any of us that aren't willing to have conversations with people and I think that you know we're all open to that but
I do I do really feel like you have gone above and beyond in just making yourself available and wanting to have those conversations and and having that open door policy so it it does go noticed so thank you
good to know that is there anything else as you think back to all the standards all the statements anything else you want to go back to to talk about ask questions i guess the thing that I would I would
add that I agree with what John just said wholeheartedly i think you've been doing a really great job Dr word but I think one of the things that I when I think about communication I think there's an assumption and I don't know that I necessarily have this but I think there's an assumption when you're on a at a board at the board table that
people are watching our meetings and that's going to be one of I don't assume that because I sometimes they get very long case in point tonight and so I think when I think about our communication I just wonder like yes we we do all the things that are mandated by the state and federal laws of like we
have to put this in our minutes and do all these things but like is there a better way and maybe Gail you can speak to this like because you've talked to many other boards but like what other things could we be doing as a board to communicate like for example like I mean maybe not tonight but like how what was talked about tonight maybe in a little bit more detail give like a synopsis
like is there other things that other boards are doing to communicate that out that maybe we could think about because I do think we could be doing a better job of of sharing out those those good things that we're doing but also even just like factual information so people don't have to watch a three-hour meeting
or whatever that is right i think I think there's a lot of different options out there it that would also be a good study session conversation at some point for you to just say what what are some things we're currently doing um are they working are
there other things that we might do so we know that your superintendent has a is is doing a great job we've got you've got that as a basis and then as board members is there any messaging that you want to do is there anything like the three takeaways from the board meeting
that you want pushed out and that might be something that you as a board talk about as your last agenda item before you adjourn at any given meeting you know here's three key takeaways and uh how that impacts you or what difference
will that make i I think something like that and that message I think short sweet consistent throughout and I'm not sure if you use um social media or how you use it that might be a way just to get the positives out there as well it
might be the time to say you know uh board if you want to go even as deep as a board vote you know so board voted to move ahead with XYZ you know some of those kinds of things as well things that can can help you as a board at the
same time get the message out so those would just be a few things do you have somebody a staff person who's got dedicated time to communications we do we do by chance you do yeah okay and when I when I bring that up I guess I don't think of our board communication
necessarily as the falling under her personally as her responsibilities i think I look at it as more of like what could we as a board like and I I don't know about anybody else but I do kind of like the three takeaways as like something that we would put out i don't know where we would put it i don't like we'd have to kind of talk through that i
think that's a great starting point but I just how could we be doing a better job the six of us of communicating that out not putting that on someone else i mean someone else might actually ultimately post it somewhere but like the six of us deciding like whatever that is what that communication is um
how can we be more proactive in that respect is that something that can go on your district Facebook page though is there a reason why that couldn't get shared in that way if it's already determined what the three takeaways are as a board we've decided on that and we
can just basically pass along what the post will be and then is that something I think that would be appropriate if you're all in favor of that yeah so it could be the three takeaways it could be the hot topic of the the meeting you know I mean you can think of things way
more clever than I can of how you phrase that or frame it but um yeah I don't think there's a problem with doing that i think the more you can tell your story uh if you know there's something that might be controversial something that might be concerning big budget cuts you know
frame that and put that message out there um in a non-threatening way and in really kind of a neutral way I think as well so you probably just want to come to some agreement on what you do and how you do it
i think it's an interesting concept because we know Mayor Lee does a beautiful job of our minutes but to Trisha's point watching a three-hour meeting or two and a half hour meeting is not really up to get information anymore we get information
quickly like that and if we had something posted that would that that's an interesting idea yeah i don't know what you do with the comments though Gail i'm just I'm like playing this all out in my head i you know y you leave if you're putting it out on social media you're accepting
what social media is at that point and it is open then it's free game for for uh comments and I guess that's just part of the deal but I don't know if that's something that has come up as a reason not to do it because it
can lead to that i don't I don't know i I think if you craft your your your three takeaways let's just keep using that as an example we all know that you're going to get comments some are going to be the thumbs up some are going to be the thumbs down and some are going to be you know neutral or or you don't
even know where the person's coming from and so either you just simply choose not to respond or you quickly restate the statement again just to put it back out there this was the takeaway and make
sure that you just kind of uh push that message out there so it especially if you get the negative feedback and you've got is Mary Lee the one that's doing the communications for you she does she does our she does our
minutes we have a communication specialist um that works so yeah and so your communication specialist I bet would give you some ideas on that as well and help you with that does communications and technology have a meeting coming up we have that thing
scheduled right now but we do have one for this one scheduling one soon end of April yes maybe bring it up there and then bring proposals back yeah well even like even if the first step was just adding including that in our minutes like something that people know
to look for a more concise way like these are the three things that our board really wanted us to take away from their meeting and here it is on the minutes because the minutes are posted on our website the next day right i I feel like you're really fast with them usually after they're after they're approved true so much for the newspapers
do you think they would give us a little spot like just a corner where we could put the three takeaways in a more graphic and a pretty thing because the minutes are long and they're minutes and people aren't going to read them in the newsletter but you know just a little we pay a lot of money for that spot in the newspaper could they give us a little
graphic where we put our three take points well Mike how how often do you put a column in the paper every two weeks as my availability i can't say I always meet that goal but since we've been having a
referendum I' been pretty close maybe every other one of those or maybe that's Yes yes we could certainly include it in there for sure because we would just time it with the regular board meeting because I I think we could make it part of that area or well I suppose it could be part of a work
session too key points that came out of I'm just trying to think of the ways to reach the public as a whole we can have a whole conversation about how best to reach our parents and students because we have all kinds of communication with them but yeah maybe this is for a different time well I I do think talking a little bit about it at the committee
level because we could probably talk with and analyze some of the data about how much our Facebook has interactions with it um because it's a lot it's percentage- wise it's more so than what a lot of districts have however to Matt's point that doesn't mean it's reaching out all demographic groups
right good point you another thing you could do too I know that you have email addresses for all parents and guardians you could put that out too push that out and just say you know sharing the the three takeaways from recent board meeting or something just an FYI and um
for people like me I would read it and I'd be like "Oh okay." Some people will just be "Nah I don't I don't care." But that's okay at least you pushed it out so I think you'll probably be very creative if you come up with if you have um have a discussion at one of your
study sessions about that okay um as we wind down here you've been troopers to hang in this long too by the way so as you think about the things we've talked about this evening um what's a takeaway i'm going to ask
each of you to share one takeaway yourself these could be some of your starts to the takeaways and I'll just open it up to anybody who would like to share i think we've made some growth you know it might be baby steps in some of these
areas but it is definitely growth and yet there's still opportunity to grow and get better my takeaway would be I think a lot of not all of it but a lot of the areas are reflective of having a lack of
consistency in leadership uh over the past few years um in a superintendent there's been you know changes over the past three years there and I think the improvements truly have probably come mostly from having Dr regard be here be involved be consistent and we'll start
to see more consistent positive results in the future due to that but I think that a lot of the things that we see where there's nevers or I don't knows I think is just a reflection of not having consistent leadership in that position
over the past three years very good thank you i think one of my takeaways is um you know I think there's been some common themes with what like things that we've agreed on that we would like to hear more about like specifically with
student achievement um and I think that this is like it it was interesting and helpful to go through and to see like most of the questions or answers have kind of like that um tiered range of answers and then there's a you know a couple questions that are a bit more
like stark differences to be able to help us go back and be like okay there's some of us that you know we answered very differently in this so what can we do to help use you know to communicate more to spend more time on this topic
um to kind of bring those scores closer together okay good thanks Chelsea you're ready well I'm like torn so I I do feel like
we with with hiring Mike and having some leadership that's going to be continuous and I think that is going to show us to have some really great um positive effects on a lot of this and even our board makeup but I think I also my biggest takeaway is that we really need to bring our board handbook back to our
board table and we need to get that finalized so that we are all on that same page i think that'll also be very helpful in the process of um bringing us together and and bringing some of that um unity back to the board
okay thanks Trisha um as we've gone through this I've kind of made notes of you know Mike mentioned we've got a page in here for team goals so I've kind of made notes of the areas where we have the most room for improvement what might be a team goal
and I'm looking at them now and I think the common denominator is communication um and it covers all kinds of different subjects it's you know communicating with the public about curriculum it's communicating with the public about budgeting it's um
communicating with board members it and the discussion we just had three takeaways you know just clearer communication basically from a PR standpoint marketing standpoint how how do we keep the public engaged and informed in a positive manner um so yeah
and it really reflects kind of the four years of experience I have on this board that's probably one of the biggest realizations I've come to in my time on the board is how important communication is in all aspects so this kind of reaffirmed that and reaffirmed the fact that you know while we're making
improvements and I agree we are i'm glad about that um we've still got improvements to make so okay i look forward to having to do the hard work i think for me Gail it's that
realization and I' I've had it having been in education for so long is the importance of um there's never too much information that I can make sure that the board members have so that they can feel like they're doing their job effectively so I really have heard that loud and clear this evening that it's
not only about building processes to make sure that that's available to them but it's really on district administration to make sure we're setting that up so that they can strategically absorb it so they help make their decisions as they go through a school year a fiscal year all those
things that play an impact on you know all of these um areas in the framework that they have to do and feel like they can do successfully so I I have a longer to-do list than when I started this morning but that's always a good thing
so Yep absolutely very good great well thank you for those takeaways i am going to add um to the list that you had an extremely frank and candid canvas conversation earlier on on conduct and ethics and I appreciated that those are
the tough conversations to have i'm not sure that you I I should say you have a lot of different options that you can consider moving forward in building trust and then your conversation related to making a decision with your board
chair so um I I think I'm confident that you can sort that out as a group and figure out where you need to go how that's going to happen um one other thought resource is the Braver Angels have you done Braver Angels we tried we
tried we tried okay i don't What happened it did and did did it work or wait did we No no no we tried to get them to come and help us yes we were not successful in getting them to come to help yeah that started at least a year ago because our interim superintendent
um had started looking into it so yeah okay okay all right uh they are going to do a workshop again not for just you but for any school board members and I don't have that date I know um my colleague
Katie Kandrew talked about that so we'll be promoting that and it might be such where some or all of you participate in that i think I've done Brave Angels at least three times every time I learn something new and different and helpful
as a takeaway so um food for thought on that i wanted to make sure to say that um and then just as we wind down also I want to just remind you if I can assist in any way with your strategic plan do not be shy about that if I can uh assist
with one- on-one visits if any of you want to ever talk individually or if you know two people talking and I'm there to help you work through whatever struggles challenges I am more than happy to do that so please don't be shy as um as I
said earlier I will create a summary of the things that we've talked about this evening including your takeaways i'll add those into my summary as well so that you'll have that so you can go back and take a look at it and then I just want to say thank you so much thank you
for um taking the time to do what I think is very important work i think this is a good team building activity so we'll have to tell Scott that we're sorry he missed us or missed out this evening but I think you'll be able to give him an update on the discussion plus you'll have the summary um so I
wish you the best and if there's again anything I can do to help you out please don't hesitate to reach out so anything else before I say goodbye thank you yeah thank you very much you're very very welcome and um you were great
troopers and staying this is a a pretty long evening for you so anyway enjoy the rest of your evening what's left of it thank you yep take care bye bye so our next agenda item is future topics so we still currently have our strategic
plan and Mike I probably could have asked you this earlier but do we have a date or an idea of when we're going to be able to do the law enforcement close session i know you were working on it with May is what he would like to be able to do okay and that will that be at our May work session or either is okay with him um it
was directly related to when the May school city council meeting was and now that's not as big of an issue i'm going to guess we're going to go with the Thursday work session um but I'll I talked to him a few times today i'll solidify that tomorrow because we have
to circle back on each other thing um and then I'll just go around the table so Jen do you have a uh Yeah i'd like to bring proficiency grading conversations back on a more regular basis just from the
PD um I guess before you go on like can you just like how frequently were you looking like were you just thinking like Dr rogalt would come in like or like somebody from the district would come and kind of give us an update on what's going on or is I think to be more conversations we have parents that don't
they just don't understand and there's a lot of things that need to be brought up to speed with that and in the professional development it was discussed that parents should be at the forefront and I don't think that is what has happened with rolling it out you've
done a good job of slowing it down to you know bring everybody up to speed but I think there's a lot of conversations that can be had and probably should be had so there's a better understanding at the board table and in the community so maybe at the work session what if
we instead of it just being just a board discussion about whatever current professional development we can do that but what if we also kind of made a plan as a board during that work session on how we would like to see the information relayed to the public or some ideas a
brainstorming session on how we can better relay information to the public about changes that they may or may not see I guess but well and at that we would probably want to have our communication specialist then
to help i'm throwing ideas out and then learning and teaching be there principles i mean dialogue yeah a lot of dialogue would be I think that piece of what I don't want to gloss over the idea
that um we can share information out because that is really important but I I do think it's that dialogue piece of how that helps us learn more when we can ask the questions when we can reflect on the answers when we can think it through um because sometimes I think when we just
put things out in long narratives explaining things is kind of what we were talking about before that's not how we usually get our information anymore we get our information hopefully through conversations like this but also through smaller snippets of things um and I
think we got to make sure that we're offering opportunities for both yeah and maybe even somehow collecting questions from staff and community members and being able to share those and provide answers
to that and I mean for me the first time it was presented to us I left very confused and not super confident i had conversations with other superintendents from other districts and
then I had I went to the professional development that was at the high school just to gain a lot more knowledge and being able to relate it to me personally helped and I think that's what it's going to take is just that dialogue and
being able to individualize it well and like I I was actually going to say like I think like a question answer like giving parents the opportunity to maybe even like submit questions for for people to answer at the boardroom or even like kind of like what we did with Riverview commonly asked questions about
this like could there be a space on the website that people that we could answer those although I'm scared that depending on how long it is it might get too overwhelming in those snippets but I mean still at least a place people could go i think if we made because it's still in
such an infant stage i mean if if we could put out some more targeted messaging at some point or or come up with at least a better targeted you know idea of what we're trying to convey to the public about it and then once they receive that then if they still have
questions which of course people will they can ask it otherwise I think if we go for question and answer before we even really provide a whole lot of information i mean I was talking to Mike about this in our one-on-one that the broad spectrum of proficiency based grading it is massive and you can do
very little or all of it and it's like this you know crazy spectrum of things and so people you know parents might read an article about I think it was Armstrong uh district or something in the Star Tribune where they took away letter grades at the high school level and the students have now started to
come forward and be like I don't want this you know but if that's the information that parents are seeing that's all the questions are going to be like well what are you going to do if you take away letter grades so you know kind of putting some more parameters about how we would be implementing like what are the things that we will do on this broad spectrum first and then they
can ask questions otherwise I just think we're going to get a lot of wild and and rightfully so it it's a very very broad idea so well an implementation is key and that is even what Tom Shimmer had said is you can implement something and
it can completely blow up in your face and you have to also acknowledge that it's okay to change your mind and that you can change it and adapt it because that's how he had to do it as well but the the implementation of how we
roll this out is going to be very important and the more conversations we can have the better it will be for everybody great thank you for clarifying that and sharing all that information emily did you have another topic i I really didn't no okay um I think I'm just going to say
handbook so that we can put that out there is that correct no did you have anything else um well just another thing that came up tonight obviously is the like a three takeaways idea or some sort of a schoolboard meeting synopsis to communicate to the public but maybe that
request is more for like we discussed the communications committee first instead of bringing it straight to the board table i think it would be really good for us to do it at the communication committee but then I think it's very important for us to like especially if we're going to be meeting soon to then bring that back to the
board because I think it's something that we could really benefit from as a board to be able to be doing something to that level chelsea did you have any No nothing that hasn't been said jen do you have any second ideas or just want to make sure
um yeah but I think I'd want to talk to Mike about it first okay versus throwing it out there publicly creating a potential mess that doesn't need to be created so one-on-one
schedules will go on tomorrow no we Marilyn and I talked about it today so I I'm not surprising her he already knew when we met this morning that that was one of our to-dos so make mine extra long cuz I was about to cut short you choose two sessions well and one I guess I I personally do have one
more emily did you said you didn't have anything before I I mean my brain is pretty fried okay so I'm going to go with no for now well one of the things and I kind of was thinking that it might come up in the conversation tonight but just something that I guess I personally
am have been questioning um is I would like to to have a discussion of like protocol for what is expected because I think we've been doing a really good job of reporting on committees and like I mean kind of what when I was talking to get like when I said about what we did versus what we
used to do for our committee updates but I think it'd be really beneficial like I would like to know like what is the expectation when we're giving those updates like do we want to be saying who was present do we want to be saying uh like I mean what are the touch points that we want to be making sure that
we're getting shared I guess is where I'm like and then also like what is our protocol or what do we want to be saying like if a board member is absent like is there something that we want to be saying as a board um I mean clearly we we did share that Scott wasn't here tonight but like is there anything else
like is there information that we want to share is there information that we don't want to share we piggyback that into our handbook okay and we should put both of those into our handbook because that would be helpful handbook information too so I guess maybe just like put those side by side okay perfect
hey Matt do you have anything else um well on my list from what Gail was saying this isn't a discussion item but if anybody gets information on that Bravery Angels workshop can they be shared with the schoolboard members please in case it doesn't come to all of our
inboxes I can follow up on that tomorrow thank you okay well then otherwise it is my watch is saying it's my bedtime it is 9:55 and we will call our meeting