Today is April 23rd, 2025 and the time is 5:30 p.m. I will now call the special meeting of the ISD 191 Board of Education to order to plan and prepare for the superintendent interview process. The purpose of this meeting is to review the superintendent search timeline and process. Review and discuss protocol and process for superintendent position interviews. Review and discuss the stakeholder report. Develop first round interview questions, interview schedule and interview procedures. And finally to discuss, decide and schedule the steps necessary for the rest of the hiring process. Um, Director Anderson, will you lead us in the pledge of allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Is there a motion to approve tonight's agenda? So moved. Moved by director Chester. Second. Second by director Alt. Is there any discussion? All those in favor say I. I. Opposed. Nay. The motion carries unanimously. First item under new business is to consider adjusting the special meeting start times for April 30th and May 1st, 2025. I will be presenting this recommendation today. As many of you know, the District 191 feather ceremony, a ceremony honoring our indigenous senior students, has been scheduled for April 30th, 2025. Many of our board members would like to attend this important ceremony. So, I would like to make a recommendation that we switch the times currently scheduled for our two interview days. Um, instead of holding um um let's see, instead of holding interviews from 4 to 9:00 pm on April 30th and 7 to 9:00 p.m. on May 1st, we would hold interviews on April 30th from 7 to 900 p.m. and May f on April 30th from I'm sorry, on April 30th from 7 to 9:00 p.m. in May 1st from 4 to 900 p.m. The change would free up time for us to attend the feather ceremony. However, I just wanted to make some clarifications because um Sarah, I thought that you'd put out information regarding the dinner not being until 6:30. Dinner at 5:30 and the um presentations begin at 6:30. 6:30. So, I don't know if they would be expected to be done by seven. There's 12 people potentially, but they have not all RSVPd. So, I don't have I don't think they'll know the exact time. And where is that held? In room 180. So, even if it's done at seven, you wouldn't be able to be here by seven. be very difficult and with traffic and construction, right? What about May 2nd? I'm sorry. Um, we might need to look pull out our candle calendars again. Um, change because the itself is on Saturday the 3, correct? Yep. Is there anything going on May 2nd? I can't be here May 2nd. Oh, that's that's what it was. Okay. What was going on the 29th? I'm not available. Oh. [Music] Um and what was was there an issue with doing anything earlier on the 30th? Is anybody I thought the 30th was when the what? I thought the 30th was when the ceremony is. Yeah. But what if we could do earlier? Oh, so like go from like four to six instead of seven to nine. I'm talking about four four like three to three to five. Five. I don't know that I could do three. I'm not sure if I can do three either, but Oh, I No, I can't. Um, but I could do like 3:30. Yeah, I wouldn't be able to get off work. I wouldn't be able to in the afternoon. 1:30 at 4:30. We're wanting to do two interviews that first day. What time you said? It's the ceremony's at 6:30. Could we do four to We can't do four to six that day. I know. You You missed the first You just wouldn't be able to You miss the dinner, but you'd be there for the ceremony, right? Okay. I mean, I mean, yeah, because we don't we don't 7:30 to 9:30. Or 7:30 to 9:30. That would probably give you enough time to stay for the ceremony and get here by 7:30 and at least see I mean you can't see all of it at least right the majority it's I mean okay traffic permitting it's 5 minutes away 10 minutes away okay so 7:30 to 9:30 on the 30th 30th what would it be preferential to do before the feather swimmer starts you know like not doing dinner going to the dinner party Just curious. You can do four to six. Is that enough time? I can two hours. Okay. So 7:30 I think 7:30 to 9 would be better on the 30th. And just so the interviews are an hour each. Yeah. Well, we need time in between. Like if we're going from 7 to 9, that doesn't give us any time in between the two interviews. They were 50 minutes each, right? So, I mean, we should just know that we're going to actually be done at like 9:45 or 10 if if we're going to go a full hour for each interview and want at least 15 minutes in between each interview. And we're assuming we're going to have six candidates who are going to come in for interviews. Well, that's the other thing. We don't know how many we're actually going to have yet, but we I I would assume we're going to have two that first night though if we're going to and then that's the the longer night that I would recommend we make shorter if possible. Or I mean, if we only have four people to interview, maybe we don't even need the 30th. That's where I would that's what I would recommend. But do we need to decide on an end time as part of this motion, I guess. Or do we decide that later on? Yeah, that's fine then. Understood. make make a decision on the times for each day knowing the start times knowing that we may may or may not need both. Right. And I think later on when we get to round one and two interview schedules, we can have the rest of the conversation about Y timings. I'm fine with 7:30 on whatever day that is, Wednesday. Me, too. 7:30 and then 4 to 9 on Thursday. Um 4:15 4:30 would actually be better for me on Thursday. I can do whatever. Yeah, I can. 4:30 on May 1st. May 1st. Yep. 4:30. 4:30. Thank you guys. 7:30. Okay. So, we're adjusting by half hour as well. So, 7:30 on the 30th and 4:30 on May 1st. Okay, you have that Sarah. 7:30 April 30th will be the start time for the special meeting and May 1st start time of 4:30. Yes. Okay. Yep. Yep. Why did I have 7 o'clock on April 30th? Did I mishar that? I'm sorry. Oh, we're April 30th. April 30th. 7:30. 7:30. Mhm. Sorry. Okay. We just changed it like two seconds ago. You didn't mess it up by much. Actually, we haven't formally changed it yet. Exactly. That's too. Yes. 7:30 on 30th, 4:30 on the 1st. Yes. Perfect. Okay. So, at this time, I move to approve adjusting the special meeting start time for April 20th and May 1st, 2025. Is there a second? Second. Second by uh director Ol or Anderson. I'm sorry. I don't know why I want to call you. Is there any [Music] discussion? All those in favor say I. I. I. All oppose say nay. The motion carries unanimously. Up next on our agenda is to receive the public survey report and stakeholder input from Barb Dorne with the Minnesota School Board Association. Welcome, Barb. Thank you very much. It's nice to see everyone again. Appreciate the opportunity to be here. So, um, will these mics pick me up if or do I need to sit directly in front of one? I think they'll pick food over. You're good. We'll just use general direction. So, um, really looking forward to tonight's meeting. There's a lot of information to share with you after which you're going to make decisions about next steps in the superintendent search process. We've always talked about the pre uh the fact that this process unfolds once you have information, you make the next decision and then you get information and you make the next decision. So it's not prescribed in advance. You're making decisions that are more informed because you're waiting for information to come in upon which to base those decisions. So before I walk you through um some highlevel uh points of your survey, I do want to congratulate you on the response to the position being posted for Burnsville Egan Savage. If you have been into Rellis, I hope you have. If you have not yet, contact Shelby. She's great at it. If you have been in, you see that there are 23 applications uh in there waiting for you to review. We've begun our review. We are already additionally vetting candidates we feel best align with both your information and the public survey. We're about ready to go through. Um I'll tell you real quick though that it seems to be a very strong pool. Of the 23 applications, 16 of them have assistant superintendent or superintendent experience. So 16 of 23 is a very high number of people who have been in that chair, assistant or superintendent. And also there are um let's see, I think I think they came from seven different states, six or seven. And I'm going to drill down deeper before next week's meeting. Uh and also 16 of them have their doctorate and one is in process. So a very diverse pool, very interesting group of people for you to review. at your convenience. And just a reminder that those names are private data. So, please be very careful where you review that information. Don't download or screen share any of it. Um, just look at it and log out and log back in when you want to look at it again. Okay? I will be sending you a list probably on Saturday this weekend, what I call the highlighted list, which is the list of 23 people in random order by alphabet identifier. and I'll highlight the ones we're going to present to you as our recommended semi-finalist next week, Monday evening I believe, right? Already on Monday. So I will let you know in advance which we are going to be recommending. You then if you want to can contact me individually with a phone call to ask me about our recommendations or you don't. It's certainly not required. Obviously, you can't talk to each other about our recommendations, but I'm happy to discuss before Monday night why or why not some of the candidates in our eyes best fit 191, but that's up to you. If it's one-on-one, that's okay. Um, and you would then have Saturday, I'm probably going to be booked most of the day. Um, but Sunday and all day Monday. Uh, call me on Sunday if you want to. I certainly don't want to make you feel like you have to do it Monday during the day. Um, so we can certainly visit about that, but again, we think you have some outstanding people to consider. So, we're really excited about finishing our vetting process. I did mention that one of the things we're comparing your applicant pool to is the public survey report results, which is what we're going to go through next. You have this electronically, but I also gave you a hard copy there. So, just a couple of points as we go through here. Uh you'll see that it was open and um we had 489 people take the time to fill this out. Uh that's a little lower than we might have expected from a district your size. However, keep in mind the entire first week was spring break. And the other thing that we often tell people is if the number isn't quite where it might have been, it indicates oftentimes satisfaction with what the school board is doing. We have um extraordinarily high responses from districts where people are frustrated with the direction of the district and perhaps share many many negative comments. So, it's not a bad thing to have less than the average number. It could indicate alignment with what you are already doing and the direction you're taking this district. Of those 489, the vast majority were in English. Not surprising. 481 uh zero were completed in Somali and eight were completed in Spanish. That doesn't mean that those folks whose language first language is Somali or Spanish didn't take this. However, very often we found that they take the survey in English on their own or with assistance from their family, their kid, um someone in the district, a neighbor, they sometimes really truly prefer taking it in English. So, don't feel as though you didn't reach those um Somalian Spanish speaking families. I think you did. They just chose perhaps to do it in English. Uh let's see. I do want to cover the quantitative information first. And if you look down to self-identifiers, you'll see that 45% of the people who completed this were staff members. The next largest group was 30% parents, caregivers, and uh guardians. And you had over 17% of the respondents were students. Those are uh three really great groups to be hearing from. It's not unusual that staff and parents are the largest groups. That is typical. It is unusual that students are the third largest group. So, congratulations to those in your district that work to get student voice as a part of this survey. Uh that's very refreshing and it's uh not always the case. So, we love hearing from the students. About 5% were community members and just over 1% selected business owner or district partner. and about um just over 1% said other and that could be grandparent, taxpayer, uh school board member, something like that. They could have put themselves in any category. So, uh very good response and um as far as the question self-identify with race, you'll see that a couple of things here. Uh about 63% selected white. Um almost 15% chose I prefer not to disclose. 7% black or African-American, 6 and a half% Hispanic Latino, uh 3% 3 and a half% selected Asian, 3% selected multi-racial, and almost 2% said other and almost 1% said American Indian or indigenous. Again, this was an optin survey and I always want to remind people that we do not tie these to responses in any way whatsoever. But as um a board, we wanted you to see who at least racially speaking took the survey. And I know you have a very diverse district. And so I hope this indicates you did reach people um perhaps outside of the white majority in the communities here. So I appreciate people taking the time to answer that. Uh let's see here. We did ask about other identities that are important to you and we had eight people share their answers to that. It was just a mix of ethnicities was the most common uh that they chose. Sometimes it was their occupation. Uh sometimes a different race identifier, but eight out of the 489 took the opportunity to answer that question as well. We do feel like you did reach people in your community with the survey. And I know you've done a lot of surveys and I've talked to your director of communications and Sarah about that. You do a lot of surveys and sometimes survey fatigue sets in. It's also tough in the spring sometimes to do this because people have so many other things on their radar. Uh spring fever being one and also that spring break, but we feel like you reached a good mix of people. So congratulations to you and thanks to those folks. When you look at the additional results, the areas of expertise, this is in the aggregate. So we're going to go through the individual categories here in a moment. But you see that the collaborative leadership, budget and finance, and diversity, equity, inclusion were your top three. And this is in the whole the 400 plus people 489 people. Um also strategic planning curriculum and social and emotional support services. So when we break them up by category I think you're going to start to see some other trends as well. You also had a really interesting response to should they have been a superintendent previously just over 50%. Okay. 55% said yes and 45% said no. So people were open. That's not a statistically significant difference. About 10% maybe. that there's always margin of error. People are comfortable of someone perhaps who's not been in the seat of a superintendent before. Uh but the majority did indicate that that was important to them and the board discussed this as well at the planning meeting. So we had that conversation with you. You can see the top six specialized skills at the bottom of page two. That becomes real interesting when we break it out by respondent category. So I'm going to bypass that for the moment and talk a little bit more um in depth later. Similarly, the personal characteristics, those are your top six. People are looking for someone who is honest and ethical. Um, a good effective communicator, a problem solver. That often is not in our top six, but a problem solver. Uh, someone who is also transparent, consistent, and empathetic. So, some of the soft skills rose to the top for your community staff, students, and parents as well. You can see here um the numbers of people that completed it. I gave you percentages earlier, but for example, 218 staff members filled this out, 147 parents, etc., and 85 students, 23 community members, six who identified as other, and six district partners or business owners. When you look at previous experience required, um, it was interesting in that your staff members, it was a 60-40 split. Yes, staff was 6040. your parents and students were flat out 5050. Just toss a coin for parents and students as well. Community members 6040 said yes. Um and then the other category 50% again. And then anyone who identified as a district partner or business owner did say yes definitely they wanted someone who was formerly a superintendent. Are there any questions? I'm just going to keep talking but if you have questions please interrupt me. Okay. Okay. Uh when you look at the top six areas of expertise, this is where we broke it out by category and a couple of things in here really struck me. Uh first and foremost, the top three on the left side, collaborative leadership, budget and finance, diversity, equity, and inclusion. All three of those showed up in all six top six categories. That make sense? So all of your self-identified categories put collaborative leadership, budget and finance, diversity, equity, inclusion in their top six. That consistency is really, really good to see. Strategic planning was in five of those six. The only group that didn't have strategic planning in their top six was the uh business owner and district partner. But five out of six, again, clear majority. The next couple here are interesting. the social emotional support services. That was in two, your staff and your students. Staff and students prioritize social emotional support services. Perhaps not surprising to members of the board. But those are the two of the six categories that have prioritized that. And then that one contract administration and negotiations was in the top six for staff. It was not in any of the other five. Also not surprising. they are the closest to that and it really is important to them. Uh so there was one group that prioritized contract administration negotiations in their top six. The next big sort of aha moment though was you look at curriculum development and evaluation being very important to parents, guardians and caregivers. It's also important to your students and your community members. those three categories or excuse me those three uh groups agree that curriculum development and evaluation should be important. We don't know why or what they mean by curriculum development evaluation it might be very different for students than it is for parents but those three groups did identify that as being important. Are there any questions on this list? Okay. Okay. I thought it was very interesting that your students really align again with some of the other larger groups. Um that's not always the case. Sometimes students are thinking in an entirely different direction, but in this case they do they do fit with personal characteristics. Similarities again and I think there were 17 choices. So a top six out of 17. Honest and ethical is in every single one. Um effective communicator is in all six in their top six. uh transparent is in I think three uh but it is in the largest group staff member parents guardian and caregivers that is there the problem solver rose up in terms of uh staff members wanting a problem solver and also students and community members and other and district partner six do all six oh parents and guardians have it as well and business owners six problem solver as um a top priority for all six. That is unusual. Uh so they're looking for someone who can problem solve and think creatively, I think. Um and consistency is in staff members and students and community members. Uh so consistency is also very important and empathy. It's rare from my perspective when I look at surveys like this to see someone who's empathetic that soft skill again being in the top by that much. Um, so that maybe speaks to the kind of community that you have here and the sense of belonging that you're building with your staff and your students and your parents. So empathetic is in there as well. We do see students more often than most look for someone who has a sense of humor. Um, that one that one bubbles up right there. Um, and confident students gravitate towards confidence as well. So those I think in their category was also really interesting. The next page is the apples to apples comparison. It is based upon the exact same survey that you took with the hiring criteria. Everyone in the survey that took this that answered that also identified this. So your leadership profile up top was built from what you selected individually. Um out of 27 choices, you each got to pick six. And so from that came this leaders leadership profile. Your top seven are on the left side in the middle of this page. And the public report top seven are on the right side. This is really good. You'll see that you align on four of the seven directly. Um the honesty and ethics, the trust and working collaboratively, the strong communicator, someone who is visible and accessible. And that that is great because those are reflected up above in the leadership profile. Also on the right side, the public input. So, one of the things you'll see when we get to interview questions is there are um some areas that the public prioritized in their top seven that didn't necessarily rise up for the board. So, we've crafted some interview questions around those things. Um directing a leadership team internally, someone who's good at that. Uh strategic plan or educational priorities and strategic plan did rise up to the top as you saw as well. So, we have questions on that. And then I think the mediating uh differences, accommodating different perspectives, valuing teamwork that ties really closely to collaborative leadership which you did prioritize in your leadership profile. So um if you look down below in the public survey also collaborative leadership and diversity, equity, and inclusion were in their top which you built into your leadership profile. The budget and finance rose up for them. So we do have the option for you to include questions or a question on budget and finance since they said that's a priority for them. And then you can see how the the superintendent experience was split. You were 4357, they were 5545 in the same ballpark. It's not 9010 and 10 to 90. You know, it's it's close. It's close. And one thing that I thought was interesting was um the the perspective that the board has working with the superintendent versus the community and staff. And so looking at delegates authority while maintaining accountability in my mind given your approach from your personal position that kind of aligns with develops and directs an effective leadership team. It's just a different way of looking at it. Absolutely. From the top down versus bottom up. Yeah. The direction you're looking at. Thank you for pointing that out. That's great. So, in adding that two and three align in my perspective, but I'd like to turn it over to the board to see what you think. The board has done a really good job with your leadership profile because it is supported by what the public has told us. There's just one or two other areas that we can weave into the questions, but otherwise it feels like your constituents voices are in here because you represented them really well when you crafted this in the first place. So, I'll turn back over to the board just for a moment. See if there's additional comments on this page, the direct comparison. It was reassuring to see the the alignment and kind of thinking through like that last comparison that we really are kind of mostly on the same page with, you know, between community and board and the similarities with just all of our different stakeholders that it doesn't seem like there's a lot of different opinions or perspectives or or priorities that even just, you know, all of the people that we're trying to represent and are are very similar in what they're wanting and looking for and expecting. Some of that might be due to the clarity in your district around your strategic roadmap. Also, you've developed a lot of things I believe around that and people have seen that and it's been quite at the forefront at least from my understanding of 191 and so they're reflecting that back at you um in terms of this is what we we want and this is what we have. So I think that's really really great. Um actually to that point about the groups themselves on page six you can see that um this compares the six groups and their top six out of the list of 27. So since I was stuck in traffic there um all six groups did the acts with honesty in an ethical manner. All of them. The develops and directs an effective leadership team. One, two, three. Delegates authority. That one's similar. Your three largest groups put develops and directs an effective leadership team. That is community member also four to community member had that also. Okay. Thank you. uh developing trust looks like it is in the first five groups I think. Yeah. Yeah. Develops trust and works collaboratively with that. Um and visibility and accessibility was in the top. It is driven primarily I think by staff members because that was in their top six. Uh didn't necessarily pop up in the top six for the next largest group um or the next largest group. But I think the amount of staff who responded um wanting someone to be visible and approachable is important. And then the collaborative leadership, different perspectives, teamwork, etc. I think that is in all of these one, two, three, four, yeah, five, five. The strategic plan again came to the top for your staff. Um, and I think that's just something that they are used to looking at that guiding star. So, having that in their top six is not surprising either. Okay. Any other trends someone notices on this? Your students have visionary, creative thinker in their top six. And out of 27, it's hard for that one to break into the top six very often, but your business owners are also looking for that. And so, that was one I think that your students are tuned in with those folks. Okay, if there aren't any other questions, we'll get into the qualitative and I'm not going to read all of this to you because it is a lot of stuff. Um, it's unusual that 350 out of 489 took the time to do that. We usually have less than half the amount of people who fill out a survey actually take time to do something in terms of open-ended question, but 350 out of 489, that's really good that people did take time to look at um those questions. You see the four questions listed here and I will probably just read out loud the um bolded information and not the quotes. There's a lot of quotes that are in here but some of the good things currently taking place in your district. Uh the first highest one was that your survey responses feel you offer a wide range of academic and extracurricular opportunities that support student success. There was particular praise for the district-wide implementation of the pathways program, access to college credit in high school, your strong arts and music programs, and the inclusive activities that engage many different student interests. That was the most common. You can see almost 160 people pointed to that as one of the really good things happening here. Close behind though uh was the fact that it was noted you are widely recognized for fostering an inclusive welcoming environment that celebrates the district's rich diversity and prioritizes equity through strong DEI initiatives culture culturally responsive practices and a commitment to meeting the needs of all students and families and again a lot of really great quotes in here that we felt represented the diversity of people who are answering these questions. So those two things were strengths and in addition your staff was cited as being a strength for the district. Um they were praised as being exceptional, dedicated and caring individuals who go above and beyond to support student success, build strong relationships and collaborate effectively despite limited resources. So people are very proud of the staff as well. The next question is where things get a little more interesting because we ask about the challenges that might lie ahead over the next five years and you have a number of them that did rise to the top in the open-ended responses here. Um the most common one uh was related to declining student enrollment and the fact that many families are choosing to open enroll in neighboring districts. This is raising concerns about competitiveness, student retention, and the long-term sustainability of your district program. Not surprising to the school board at all, I'm certain. Similarly, there were challenges mentioned about how to improve academic achievement to address the uh persistent achievement gaps and ensure that students are prepared for life after high school. This is especially acute amid concerns about low test scores, special education needs, and the effectiveness of instructional practices. Keep in mind again, the largest group that responded were your staff followed closely by parents. So, those were the first two areas of challenges with lots of quotes up here in here as well. Tied to the first one though is the third theme, which was financial. Um, another key challenge will be navigating significant financial pressures as declining enrollment and insufficient funding threaten your ability to sustain your current programs and services. Always something that the board is looking at, I am certain, as are your administrators. You can see how many times people mentioned the words funding, budget, or finance. Um, that was quite a bit. Uh then it switches gears a little bit to a challenge that respondents felt you're going to face. Recruiting and retaining qualified staff uh due to issues such as burnout, rising workloads, uncompetitive salaries, and the need for stronger administrative support. I want to rest uh have you rest assured this is not something that you are alone in. We see this as a challenge in every survey we have done this year. Recruiting and retaining staff is a challenge. So it is not only Burnsville, Egan, Savage facing that, but it is something people are concerned about in terms of how they responded to the survey. There was then another bucket of responses that talked about uh growing concerns around student behavior, including discipline issues, bullying, phone use, and low attendance. And many respondents expressed the need for clearer expectations, stronger accountability, and more support for both mental health and classroom management assistance. If I'm going too fast, stop me. But again, this is available. Um, you have it electronically. I know you've read it, and I'm going to encourage you to put it on the district website on the landing page for the search as well. Uh, there was also concern in the open-ended responses about federal policy and the fact that federal policy may affect the district along with political instability and potential reductions in federal funding. All of that could impact your educational programs, equity efforts, and the availability of overall district resources. Also, something that's not unique. People are very concerned about that as well in other districts. And finally, the last challenge that was identified by people that answered the questions uh says, "You may face the ongoing challenge of effectively supporting a diverse student population, particularly your multilingual learners and students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. You'll need to do this while balancing the differing community perspectives on equity, inclusion, and on academic expectations. Any questions on the challenges? any surprises for the board in the challenges that your survey responses showed? Yeah, I didn't think there would be. You're very much in tune with that. So then the third question that was open-ended was what uh should the next superintendent know about the history of the school district and communities in order to succeed here? A couple of themes. Um many survey respondents felt that the next superintendent must understand that you are a resilient community oriented district with a rich history of growing diversity among shifting socioeconomic demographics and you can read the comments about that as well. But they think that would be helpful for someone stepping into these shoes to really understand. Uh constituents also want the next superintendent to be a visible and ideally long-term leader who builds authentic relationships, communicates with transparency and compassion, values the district's diversity, and balances thoughtful change with a deep understanding of the community's needs and strengths. So, a couple of things in here. Ideally, a long-term leader. Um, everyone seems to want that. And yet, you are limited to three-year contracts. That is simply a rule in Minnesota that other states don't have. So after three years, there's sometimes turnover that you would perhaps not expect. But of course, people would like someone who can uh stay long term. And um things like visible um transparency, etc., and thoughtful change, those are all open to interpretation. How visible? How transparent? How um thoughtful about change? Those again are things in the soft skills area that if someone has the skills to manage that I think they'll be okay because this doesn't you don't have any metrics around what you could do in terms of um visibility and and authenticity in relationships. But that was something that they are looking for and think it would be helpful to know. Also on page 23 there's a couple more things people wanted the next superintendent to know. They really want the next superintendent to understand diversity, equity, and inclusion. um that those are core values here in 191 and that those core values are viewed by many as the district's greatest strength and are essential to fostering a supportive, respectful environment where all students and staff can thrive. The prioritization of that was important to the survey respondents. on the next page 24. Uh we're also told that the next superintendent should be very aware of the district's history um including its past successes, challenges, and how it has changed over time in order that they can build on what has worked in the past and avoid repeating mistakes. And so, um there are sometimes people who say, "I don't want them to know anything about the history. This is a fresh, clean slate. Move forward." And yet the majority of folks do seem to think sometimes looking back can be useful to learn from what has occurred in the district previously. And that is what more people said in this case than did not. They also want someone um to understand that the prioritization with the district's uh dedicated and hardworking staff will be important for this person to succeed. Uh that they can work on rebuilding trust with educators, valuing their input, and providing meaningful support amid ongoing challenges and limited resources. And limited resources again is something we hear in every single district. Staff understand that and yet it is harder to do the job when you have fewer tools at your disposal. And I know hard decisions sometimes do cause frustration, but they recognize that resources are limited. And then last open-ended question. Uh there's one theme that emerged. What else do you need to tell us is always what we end with? And one theme emerged. Um overall uh those who took this survey are seeking a leader who is visible, compassionate, and forwardinking. To succeed in Burnsville Egan Savage, it is desired to find someone who builds trust through open communication, value staff, embraces the district's diversity, and brings fresh ideas to support students, retain quality educators, and foster a culture of excellence and accountability. If there's one way to sum up what the open-ended questions um what their responses told us, I believe it is that closing statement in terms of that theme from the last question. So, that is all I'm going to say about it. I know it's a big report. It's 27 pages, so it's a lot to digest, but I'm happy to take any questions you may have about this report. Um, and also what we're going to do with it next. So, first I'll say, are there questions on the report? I have one. Does MSBA track the average tenure of a superintendent? I know that there were several comments about wanting someone here for the long haul or similar types of comments. And you know, thinking about it, the last two superintendents we've had retired and the one before that did leave us for a larger district. But I mean, it's it's not like we've had a lot of churn. So, I'm just curious what the average like what are people thinking is the ideal for how long a superintendent should be versus the reality of how long they typically stay. I'm going to give you it depends because it depends largely on the region of the state. It also depends on the relationships that administrators have with the school board. Now, a year and a half ago, two years, we work with MASA on this because yes, we do try to track it and it's a moving target. Um, but a year and a half, two years ago, it was 5.2 two years was average tenure. I think it's less than that now. Um there are some that's statewide. That's what statewide. Statewide. Yes, statewide. Um right now, I think in southeast Minnesota, it's probably under three years. There's been quite a bit of churn in that area. Um and sometimes in northwest Minnesota, people stay a long time. So that affects the the statewide average. Sure. But I think it's been 18 to 20 years now since the legislature changed uh the rules around how long your contracts could be and implemented no more than three years. And so that does give an opportunity to both boards and superintendents to start looking in year two. And I think that's contributed to the shorter time frames as some superintendents do retire who've been in their positions 15 to 20 years. You know, they made it made it through COVID, they decided to stay, but they're looking to retire soon. their tenure sort of skews it because they have been there a long time. There's a couple of 20-year superintendents in the state. So, when they retire, I think the new tenure is going to be much shorter. Just things change faster. People are moving around. Well, and it's not just superintendent. It's every level of society. People change jobs more than they used to. So, yeah. Yeah. Very, very true. Thanks for asking that. That's a really good question. Other questions? Okay. So, I have a couple questions for you. Um, can we put this on the superintendent search landing page of your website? We always want to make sure the board says it's okay. I can't imagine why you wouldn't. However, I want to make sure you're okay with that. Okay. Didn't seem like there's any personally identifiable information in the correct. So, yeah, I'm fine. Yes. And and there there is comments when it's anonymous that are always inappropriate. We wouldn't want to put those on the website and sometimes private data is revealed in here. So, we always screen those out and only include ones that won't get the district in any hot water. Um, but your constituents really like to read this because they want to feel heard. They want to make sure that their voice is in here. So, that's one reason we do it. But the other reason is, uh, your candidates are interested in this. They know of you. 23 of them threw their hat in the ring. They're going to want to read this and understand your community and your staff and students and parents even better. So, thank you for that. And I know Sarah was thinking that while you were going through it that if I was applying, I would want to read this before my interview. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Well, and I think it's I think it's um we should be proud of the fact of that alignment that we have with our with our community based on this response. I mean, it's I think we're in a good place. Definitely. The last question I have for you then ties to that question is when you read this, do you hear the voices of your constituents in this? because you were elected perhaps by different people, different groups, the people who reach out to you by email, by phone, by text. Do you hear their voices in here or are we missing something? If we're missing something, then I want to speak to that next. I hear a multitude of voices. Yeah. that, you know, I mean, there's there are definitely themes and I can also recognize certain groups that, you know, that I've met with, talked with, heard from over the years that, you know, Yep. I have completely heard that in in person. Good. Nodding. Okay. Wonderful. That's that's good to know because we want to make sure we captured the voices that were in the survey. So, next we're going to talk about public input during the interview process. And I know you have this electronic So based on we've now seen in these are options that are included in MSP's um search services, we can certainly look at doing some other things if you'd like. Um see here we go. And so I'm going to review these for you briefly and then turn it back over to the board to discuss and decide what we might want to do for the second round of interviews. If you're going to have any public input, it is recommended it's in round two when you're down to two or three people. uh round one might have five or six and you're asking people to give up nine hours or 10 hours of their life to provide input. So it does tend to be only in round two. So the first option that boards have is to rely on that public summary report to represent the constituents in your district and your community. Um we just went through it. It's something that we advise you to keep close at hand while you are reviewing applications as well as during the interviews themselves. and we will revisit this during deliberations as needed to remind you of what people said and what priorities they set. So that's one option. Another option is to create interview committees and you could have a group of parents, a group of staff, group of community members, students actually interview your finalists in addition to the interview with the board on May 7th. So it would occur on that same day but earlier in the day. And so that is a second option. The one thing I want to point out is we don't want to call them hiring committees. That gives them unfair expectations. You are the hiring committee and you are the only ones that have the authority to do that. So we want to be careful that people are aware that they're their process would be advisory only and you may not necessarily do what they want you to do after they've interviewed that person. So just be real careful with expectations about interview committees. Um another option is to have representative groups send someone to watch your interview. Of course, it's open so people can come and watch your interview. However, there might be some people that have a laptop and they can provide input on strengths and weaknesses of the two or three finalists and then that information comes to MSBA through a form. We collate it and give it to you to read before you begin your own deliberations. So, those are the three at this point that you can discuss and see uh what might fit 191 best. Um, and I'm happy to answer questions about the pros and cons of any of these because of course they all do. Okay, I'll turn it back over to you, chair. We're um, so you said we that was something we would decide later though. We don't have to choose any of that right now. I would prefer you decide today because if you choose options two or three, we have a lot of work to do before May 7th. Oh, okay. Okay. So, again, refresher for the people who are in this process before. What did you guys do and did you think it would, you know, did not what worked well? What didn't? and if it's something you could apply to like any of these that you think would be better or different this time around cuz I know there was something about you've mentioned something about a Q&A or something. Um do you think something like um the interview committee or um having somebody you know some representatives observe and then present um their observations? I mean, do any of those options seem like what? I'm just looking for thoughts. I think um I've given this a lot of thought cuz I know how we handled it in the past and I do have concerns about access and representation. Um people are able to come to our meetings and join in person um in a variety of ways and with a variety of restrictions. So, I think we would want to be mindful of that. I personally I like the idea of using the public survey summary report because that's probably the most accessible way of getting information from our community without setting um expectations within the committees of what their participation might mean. And I guess hearing from you the some of the the um the cons of each of two and three might be helpful. Okay. Um, yes. So, I would say that option two is the way it's always been done previously. I'd say five or 10 years ago, it was just exed that interview committees would be held. It was just there was no other way of doing that. And I think we talked during my original with you about how the pandemic really changed things and sped things up and access did become a focal point because we realized that not everyone can come to those things in person and they may not even participate if it's online. So it did become clear that the barriers dropped when you had a survey available to everyone in the languages for two or three weeks in hard copy and online. So then you heard from a broader voice of um more people at the same volume. there weren't some voices elevated and others weren't able to be here because of shift work or languages or you know child care things like that. So we did see um in the last three years a significant drop in the number of groups um boards selecting interview committees. In our last three years I think we've had one district choose to do interview committees. The biggest con for that has been expectations because if particularly staff want to tell you who they feel is the best leader. I mean I'd love to interview my boss too before and decide that expectation goes well if you end up hiring the person that they tell you is the best person. It has caused difficulty four and five years ago because sometimes boards went in a different direction and then that resentment set in because you didn't listen to us and we told you that this person would be better than that person. So that that's the risk of the interview committees. You can temper that risk though by getting um feedback from them in a way that doesn't give them the impression that you're asking to be told who to hire. You could ask them for strengths and weaknesses. Um the challenge however that both two and three have is who gets to be on the interview committee. That tends to be the biggest concern is do you because you can't have too many people. You can't you know have 50 people on an interview committee. So how do you decide who gets to be a part of interview committees or even providing you feedback on strengths and weaknesses? Who gets to be a representative constituent group person? So that's why two and three have become less common. again one I think interview committee in the last three years. Um the representative groups we've probably done 10 of those in the last three years and that's about 85 searches. So there are still districts doing that as some people call it a compromise. Well we can still get input from each bargaining unit and from a parent or you know someone is on that group. It has always been just the challenge of who speaks for the parents and who speaks for the different groups in the community and do you try to include foundation members or higher education or donors. I mean who gets to be a part of it is why two and three are continuing to slide in terms of popularity. Um, the pros are you do get more feedback from additional groups on your specific people because the report the feedback is on a profile of who you're looking for. It's not Jane and John and I'm telling you what I like about Jane and what I don't and what I like about John and what I don't. So, it's it's general versus be specific if it was if it was the round two interviews. So, that's one of the things people like about that. Um, it's just a matter again of being clear about your expectations. That's a long answer. Was that helpful? Okay. Mhm. I mean, I'd say I am leaning more towards the first option just because um we're in such alignment with the public, you know, with the our community and feeling that um of the questions for things that might have percolated that weren't in ours can still be addressed in the interview process through our questions. I think that we'd be representing them. Well, yeah, I would say that I think the interview committee is a a lot of work that has to be undertaken for the in all likelihood something that's going to be very limited in what it adds to the process and the ultimate outcome. That's kind of what I was thinking is seems like like you said a lot of logistical work and time involved and do we get how do we get much more of a benefit from having an interview committee compared to the 30 pages of survey feedback we just reviewed. So I guess I find myself at this moment kind of been going back and forth but leaning towards the first option. I'm just curious with option number three as far as when interviews with the finalists would be available. I think it'd be in the room while we're doing the interview because they're open meetings, right? Yes. But I mean, as far as for say people who couldn't necessarily, you know, make it there or, you know, because as far as for option number three, um, they'd have to commit to coming. They want to be part of that because we're not live streaming it where it won't the video will be out later, right? I mean later but you know I mean is it that we'd have to get number three immediately like that same day? Yes, it has to be and and each of those groups would have to identify one representative to represent them as a group, right? And then it's well like we have districtwide affinity groups. It's per school, right? So like then who how do you choose between you know it's and that's absolutely my concern with with number three is you know that who you can we really say you know would members of the community say well nobody on that represents me you know is part of my group um and that's where you know it it yeah I wish there was an opportunity to almost you know do another survey Yeah, you know, candidates for those two three that they can, you know, watch listen. But of course, that's just um this what I like about the survey for what we're looking for in a candidate that's general. It's that's taking out of taking away people's biases once they've seen a person, once they've heard them talk, once they've, you know, because then we we start to have our implicit or explicit biases. Um and so we're removing that from this large group of people, right? So that way these are the qualities and we're going to you've elected us you're trusting us to look for those qualities and the logistics having gone through that in part the logistics of that trying to get the community input and the board to review it with fidelity in time to then make a decision that same night. Yeah. Yeah. just yeah I don't I absolutely agree that that same night is not realistic if we're talking right the interview committee is on whatever day Tuesday or the second interview is on whatever Tuesday or Wednesday and that's not enough time for us to be able to appropriately review the input by that evening yeah agreements I I feel like you know the the survey is the opportunity for the the community, staff, families to put provide their input of, you know, telling, giving the feedback to the board. Here's what we want you to look for. That's their opportunity. Um, we have that information. We're going into these interviews with what they've given us. Um, they need to put their trust in us to to utilize the information they've given us to make our best judgment call. um when when conducting those interviews, I don't think it's feasible to allow everybody because you know it's they're not interviewing for through the you know they're not interviewing with the community. They're interviewing with the board. So we are representative of the community. Um the the community and staff and families, they need to put their trust in us to make the decision based on the feedback they've given us. if if they're particularly passionate about someone, whether it's positive or negative, there's nothing stopping them from contacting us. So, yes. I mean, yeah. And obviously, if you know, they watch a recording of a video or of an interview and want to send us an email. Yeah. They they have the right to do that. So, option one. Option one. Yeah. Option one. Yeah. Sounds like it. And and you will get feedback as soon as the names go public next Monday night. You will start getting feedback in I suppose. Yeah. The other thing I think that is um a consideration is that people who watch an interview see someone for an hour. You see the interview and you see all of their materials. You see 100 pages on each of these people. So your frame of reference is much larger. So you are able to make a much more informed decision than someone who is interviewing them for an hour. And some candidates interview really really well. Sure. And their materials just don't you there's no substance underneath or vice versa. Sometimes people don't interview well because they're so nervous and you've seen their stuff and you've read their letters of recommendation and you've seen transcripts. So it's you can balance that which I think is good. So I've I've circled rely on the public summary report as the voice of constituents for round two and round one for that matter. So okay, thank you. I did hand out that other sheet just because there's a question about how do we decide or who and how fast and we would we would get going on it immediately. But I've had I bet eight out of 10 times when a board says we want to do option two or option three most often like great. Okay, you're going to do option three. Here's a list of groups that you want to consider inviting to be a part of that process. Eight out of 10 after they start debating who decide not to do it anymore. It's becomes a can of worms because you're giving access to some and not to others. and some groups get to be a part and some don't get to be a part. So, I handed it out just for reference because I thought it might help you feel um more informed. Great. Thank you very much. That is all we have for the public some uh survey report and decisions to be made. We'll do interview training next which is this big thick packet you have in front of you. And again, there's three of you that were in the search on the search last time, right? Okay. So, this will not feel new to you. Um although a couple things might have changed. So, I'll make sure that you're comfortable with what's going to happen here. The first few pages are just um your brochure again and your timeline. In the timeline, I will update that on my end. I'll update it on well, the brochure is still the same, the 30th and the 1st. The specific times will get updated on the landing page. We'll also put some kind of written update on the Q&A session that says, "Note times for interviews as discussed in this Q&A have changed. On this day, it's this and on this day it's that." So we'll try to preempt anyone who watches the Q&A between now and those dates to get the right the right time there. So we'll go past those pieces of information that are specific to 191. We're going to talk about relevant law first. Um because you know the open meeting law and the government data practices act are a big part of the search. We've talked about that a lot. So I do want to talk more about protected classes first of all tonight in that you are an EEOC district. You have a policy around equal employment opportunities. were an EEOC search firm. So, you have to be very careful around protected categories and not ask about these things nor consider them as part of your hiring decision. I always think it's a lot of common sense and yet we always want to remind people that this is something that is very, very important. We do get asked sometimes, well, what if we really just need to know some of those things? There's a couple of pages of permissible to ask. You can't ask this, but you can ask that if it's really important to you to understand that about them. My suggestion is always you have far more important things to look for in a superintendent as to whether or not um what are some of the other how can I get around it? Uh whether or not what their age are, what their age is. You could say, "What are your long-term career goals?" And if someone says, "Well, I plan to retire in five years." You've kind of hit on age, but you've skirted around it. I don't think that's productive and constructive part of the process, but we include it in here because sometimes people are curious. Could I ask if I wanted to? Well, I suppose I just don't recommend it. We have much better questions for you. But protected classes matter. Okay. And we'll make sure that they are not in your interview questions. I know this board is not going to veer into that territory during your deliberations. And if you do, I'll say something, but you're not going to. Um, I completely trust you with that. There are a lot of policies in here. The first policy is the EEOC policy. Um, it's only pages seven and eight in this packet. So, just a reminder that you have adopted policy 401 in your district. Model policy 406, public and private personnel data. So, I'm going to have you for just a minute jump ahead to page 11. And this is actually really good timing because you have access to applications now. So I'm going to remind you once again never see in highlighted yellow the names of applicants are private data except when applicants are considered by the school board to be finalists for public employment. So their names are private except when they're considered by the school board to be finalists for public employment. So what determines a finalist back on the front page? A finalist page nine is individual who selected to be interviewed by the schoolboard for a position. That's a finalist. So on Monday, once you've decided to interview candidates B, C, and L, at the end of that meeting, I'll read those names out loud. Now, technically, they are semi-finalists because it's round one, but statute uses the word finalist. So, we're going to call them finalist for that purpose, but they're semi- finalists. Those names go public and every other name stays private forever. Candidates might be telling people they've applied for this position. That's great. That's their prerogative. You, if asked, if so and so applied because they told me they did, you should say no comment. That's private data. I can't discuss the names of these applicants. Similarly, on Monday night, my answers to your questions will be very vague because I'm not able to talk about them in any identifying way. If you ask me, why aren't you recommending candidate D? I'm going to have to give you a real high level reason why not. Because if I talk about their experience, their background, any anything that might identify them, I get in trouble, too. So, I have to keep it real vague. Which is why if you want to talk to me one-on- ones on your Monday, you certainly can do that. um because there are reasons why some people are not as equipped to lead your district as others um based upon the review that we are already doing in fact but their names go public the rest stay private forever so even 5 years from now if someone says hey did so and so apply for that 5 years ago no comment okay even if you are no longer on the board at that point be sure that you're careful with that can I just clarify remember five years ago yeah can I clarify when are you writing the recommendations of the people the highlighted list probably on Saturday Saturday. Oh, we have time to contact you Sunday or Monday before. Okay. Before Monday evening. Okay. I just want to make sure. You can try to reach me Saturday, but um my son and his wife are having a shower for their baby that they're having in a month. So, I'm involved in going to be duties on Saturday. Very important. I think we can leave you alone on Saturday. Yes. You can leave a message or you could text and I'll call you back on Sunday. Okay. So, do that. So, I'm just hypothetically like so somebody we like so we I'm sure we're all going to be like using all these applications and the person like there's somebody that we're like well I really like this person but they're not somebody that you're recommending what do we what what happens caller Sunday well or just bring it up on Monday that we I want to interview this person I would expect since we're the ones making the ultimate decision correct me if on if there's somebody that sent some of us agree is a strong candidate and was not on the initial list that it's our prerogative to add them. Right. Correct. That's why we let you all those applications because this isn't dissert like a oneoff though like one of us goes hey you know we would have to all agree. Yes. Yes. Right. And then we bring the sticker dots on other question. So cuz um I think what might help me understand is cuz if if you're screening like what are the parameters of your screening that maybe helps educate us to know that that's why they were selected. Is that feasible or Okay. Yes. We met um yesterday yesterday morning uh my team met our service providers that review all of your applications. We all met yesterday morning and we are taking a closer look at uh at this time 8 to 10 people and so we are doing um some phone calls to talk to them and ask them a lot more questions. Um depending upon how that that pre-in goes we then dig deeper and look at their references and call references. We can't go outside of that because their name is private. So we're not going to out them to someone by calling them about them. Um we also do a social media sweep. We look at what pops up when you Google them and sometimes there's more than one side to a story. So we don't believe everything we read online. Uh we do investigate it though if it's something that might be concerning to you as the board or your community when they Google people. Uh we look at their own posts going back maybe 6 months. You know we don't look back a year or two or three years. We just want to know what generally is their presence on social media. So if there are concerns, sometimes people that we decide we want to learn more about, we decide to pull back a little bit depending upon what we've learned and who we've talked to. And we always talk to them about it, of course. And if there's an opportunity to clarify something that's in the media, we give them that chance to also submit an addendum to the application explaining all this brewhaha over something that their name pops up. So we would make sure they have an opportunity to do that. Also, you may also choose not to interview the people that we recommend because you may know more of them than we do and you might choose, you know, based on what we know or I know, I don't think I'm interested in candidate B or something like that. Um, the one thing I want to keep in mind for you though is we guarantee our searches and we guarantee uh the people that we're recommending to you. If you choose to interview someone that we're not recommending, if that person leaves within that first year of their employment here, we will not redo the search for free. We would if it was a person on our list, but if it's not and they leave within a year, which this year happened a couple times where it just wasn't a fit with the board and they decided to part ways. Um, if they're on our recommended list, we do another whole search with absolutely no other cost. If they're not on our list, if you want us to do another search, you pay for that. And then part of the screening of like all the documentation their their actual you know written application that was like the initial thing before based off of our Yes. profile and then you're those rows to the top that would you kind of filtered those out to then have more conversations and do more conductive research. Yes. The the profile and this y once we got this done. We emailed this to everybody two days ago and said read this before our meeting so you know what the constituents are looking for. Got it. Um, so yes, and I'm sorry I didn't answer that part of your question, but yes, we use those as the two guiding forces. Um, we also have people who are very connected within the Minnesota administrators in particular. We have a national recruiter that knows people nationally. So we ask each of them to go through the applications and rate them on a fivepoint scale. You know, yes, maybe, yes, maybe, maybe, no, no. And then every single person gets that kind of score and then we get an average score. But it's not written in stone because we want to have a conversation with our service providers about those folks because sometimes someone wants to advocate for an administrator that other service providers didn't rate as high because they know something or they are aware of something that makes this person a really good fit. So it's fluid and we at the end of the meeting we met for over two hours yesterday trying to get your list winnowed down from 23. Um there's good people in this pool. So, I also want to let you know, don't get overwhelmed if you've started trying to go through this. It's a lot. So, I would say if I were in your shoes, you don't have to read everything cover to cover. Trust the process that we're doing our homework. We're looking at the granular stuff like licenses. You don't have to figure out if they have a license or not because we know that and we know if they can get one by July one or not and we understand the reciprocity that we don't have with other states. So, we we do that. But you could, if I were in your shoes, look at their resume and their cover letter. It's always good to look at a resume and cover letter. Um, read their letters of reference. Look at who their references are also. And read their answers to your questions. You came up with three very specific questions for 191. So, their answers to that are sometimes really insightful. That's the big stuff. I think the resume covers work history, but you don't have to go through rebellis and read every bit of work history and all that kind of thing. So get out of the weeds a little bit and look at the big stuff and keep your own list. Yes, no, maybe. And then you'll find out when you see my list on Friday or Saturday. Hey, we aligned on three or six or something or wow, I'm looking at this differently because none of those people are on my list more to talk about individually or on Monday night. So do it the way that works for you, but don't get discouraged with the volume of information you're looking at. It's a lot. And a question on the number of and I tell me if this is premature if we're going to talk a bit talk about it later, but the number of applicants that are interviewed. Totally up to you. Okay. I could see four to six right now in your first round for this district, but that's pending the calls that are being made by my service providers right now. But I think four to six for sure. Okay, thank you. Anything else? Great. Thank you. So then in the next policy that we have in here, open and close meetings. It's in here only to remind you that we want people coming in and watching you conduct your business in the public. It's not a public meeting. It is a meeting in the public of the board. And obviously you are doing that in adherence with the open meeting law for every step of the superintendent search process, including discussing private data in a public meeting. That's when it gets a little dicey Monday. Okay? but I know you can do it. So, page 25 in this packet is um search considerations relative to statute. So, there's a couple of things to point out. If you look at this list of 23 people and you realize you're related to some of them or even one of them, please let me know so that we can decide whether you are related to the fourth degree or not. Because if it's fourth degree or less, that's a special voting circumstance for your school board. And it does happen. Education is kind of a small world. there are people that um just this year I've had two boards have someone in their pool that they are related to by blood or marriage and so it makes it a unique situation. So in that case the full board needs to vote and it needs to be unanimous if you want to hire that person. Okay? If you're related to that person you cannot abstain. You are required to vote and if someone is sick the night you're taking the vote and only six of you are going to vote you can't vote if you want to hire that person. So if that person is related to any of you and you want them to be your superintendent, you all have to be here and it has to be a unanimous vote. 61 will not hire that person. Okay. Um in that case it's like a teacher because you see the same thing here. Superintendent is defined as a teacher in that regard. Um and also the second highlight at the bottom there. A teacher shall not be a superintendent shall not be required to reside within the employing district as a condition of employment or continued employment. Just like a teacher, they do not have to live within your boundary in order to be your superintendent. Okay? People want them to they want them to move to the communities and I understand that. It's just legally you cannot require it and if they offer it up in their interview and they might they're planning to move here, you can't consider it. You kind of have to strike that from your head because it's not legal to use that as a basis. Okay? You might put it in your contract, I suppose, as an incentive. I did have a district offer a superintendent $10,000 if they moved to the community as a bonus. That's their prerogative and their legal counsel can tell them if that's a good idea or not, but it was an idea that they had u because it was so important to have them in the community. And then the contract on the bottom, I won't go through that. It's just that you're required to have a superintendent. You may or may not at your own discretion renew a contract. Um and you can start negotiating that contract within the 365 days of the last year. So, if you have a three-year contract on July 1 of that third year, you can start trying to lock them in for July 1st of the next year. You have a whole year to uh negotiate that contract with them. Okay. Next page is the special school board guidelines for special voting circumstances. It's just the first one. The only one applicable really in terms of the search is 122A for subdivision 3. Unanimous vote of the full board. if you're related. Any questions on that? Our statute. Okay. Uh page 28 is common interview mistakes. And you will not make any of these, but we always want to at least walk through them briefly. Um you have really excellent hiring criteria. You have a clear leadership profile. You have a strategic roadmap that's in the brochure. You have alignment with your stakeholders. Um so that's great. You're not going to do one. You will not make a bad impression because you understand it's a two-way street. um this is something that they are looking to want to work for you as much as you may want them to work for you. So, it'll be important that you conduct yourselves accordingly, that you're wanting to make good impressions on them. And I know this board, you will not have an issue with that. The don't ask list, don't worry about it because you're going to talk about questions here in a moment. We won't do that. Uh vague answers, you can ask for clarification if you don't understand something they've said. So, I don't know how your last search went, but generally, let's say you have 12 questions. You ask the 12 questions of each candidate in the same order, and the same board member asks the same question of all six candidates, right? Does that sound familiar? Follow-up questions and very conversational interviews are not really appropriate for the public sector. So, you ask that. You can, though, say, I have a follow-up question. Can you clarify what you mean by, you know, an acronym that you're not familiar with? So, if you clarify something, that's okay, but don't ask them to tell you more. Tell me more about the work you did in special education as a 10th grader. You know, you can't follow up and ask and probe because you're not giving the same opportunity to each candidate. So, whatever they answer is their answer. But if you didn't understand something they said, you can ask for clarification. Sounds like our listening sessions little bit. Got it. That sounds familiar. Uh it's a big picture of course you know that um um motivation and passion for the job. I think that's going to come into play with some of the questions we are suggesting you ask. But you of course can create your own questions if you don't like the ones we're suggesting. And I think I've got 30 questions or 35. Try to get them down to that 12 to 15. No more than maybe 18. We have boards do nine or 10. We had a board do 20. That was a lot in an hour. But you'll pick what you want to ask in enough to answer all the questions. Took us an hour to get through six questions for Tyler. Correct. Yep. They all yes or no questions. Let's see. It's a two-way street. Oh, notes number eight. We talked about your notes. So, this applies to your notes on your applications as well. I'm sure you're jotting down notes about these people to remember who they are. Correct. Um, you'll do that during the interviews also because if you do interview for five or six, that's a lot of stuff to store up here and you're doing it in two nights. So, jot down what you need to write down to remember. You will need to turn those in. Did we talk about what to do with board notes at the end? Okay. You want to turn them in to your HR because they need to be kept in accordance with any data retention policies around private personnel data. So because your notes will be turned in, please keep them appropriate and professional and don't write down anything about a protected class. So can we have like note like sheets made up then for for us and handed out like so that you we can like collect them then because I'd rather have that than like having to tear sheets out of a notepad. I will I will give you the questions. So say you have 12 questions on our EMD form which is exceeds meets disappoints is kind of our rating for did you like their answer? Did it exceed expectations meet it or were you disappointed? You'll have like that much space to write your notes under each question. Okay. So the interview notes will all get turned in and they're a form and they're the same. Okay. So you provide hard copies or if we had if we had six interviews for correct correct so you'll have hard copies of that evaluation form your notes that you might be taking on the applications that's up to you how you want to do it if you even take notes. Some people just look at look at them kind of write down AB C and D and then they wait to see what MSBA recommends. So some people don't write down a lot of notes during the application review. Everyone's different, you know, but we could use we could use the um uh whatever the platform is to take revel notes during the meeting. Yes, you could you could put your notes and nobody else sees those. No one else sees your notes that you might put in revel if there's an area to type notes in. Yeah. No one else sees those other than the administrator at MSBA that does Revelis overview. She could Is there a character limit? Because the box is pretty small. So, I was cur I haven't typed enough yet to know, but okay. I'm not sure. That's a great question. I don't type notes in there, so I'm not I'll let you know if I run into one. Thank you. Thank you very much. Um, so don't write down anything about their age or gender or race or if they're wearing a crucif, you know, don't write down anything that reminds you about them if it's based upon a protected class. Just because data requests can be made for boardnotes. I haven't seen it in six years, but someone might say, I wonder why I didn't get hired in 191. I'm going to ask for all the board notes about my interview. So, be careful what you write down. Okay. Um, don't make a quick decision. Don't settle. We've talked about that. If this is not the right person, we'll do another search for free next year and we'll help you find an interim. So, do not feel like you have to make a quick decision or feel rushed. Uh, don't accept the wrong fit. Again, this is a a big job. It's your only person, your only employee, excuse me, that you hire and oversee. So, make sure it's a good fit for this board. And then bias. We do want to talk about um bias for just a minute because it is a mistake to not recognize bias and I heard you talking about it already. So I know this board is in tune with bias. So very briefly the next page we do want to recognize bias can crop up during the interviews as well. Um and it might crop up with the uh applicants because you're looking at applicant information. You see their names. You can Google them. You can see what they look like. Just check it at the door that you're being careful that that doesn't enter in. I'll tell you a couple of quick stories about actual interviews where bias played a role. Um first one was a board about four years ago. Two candidates at the end, both extremely qualified. And after the um interviews were done, they were deliberating who they wanted to make an offer to. And a board member said, "I really liked John. John was a very direct communicator." Um direct communicator. um got right to the point. I think he'd fit in really well in our commun community. I could see him as our superintendent and they nodded and talked. The next candidates's opportunity to talk about that person came up and it happened to be a woman and he said, "You know, Sue is a really direct communicator." She got right to the point, straight shooter. I don't think she's going to fit in in this community. Exact same comments for the two candidates. One was good, one was bad. So that bias would be what? Yeah. gender gender bias gender bias. So, it's all about leadership and what you're looking for. And similarly, um people expect sometimes a female superintendent to be warm and nurturing. And when they're not and they interview differently and they're not warm and nurturing, they are direct and they are very proud of holding people accountable, it's not viewed positively. and a man who's really warm and nurturing and caring in their interview is not scored as well sometimes because people want that person to be direct and hold people accountable. So the bias one um in gender crops up the most I think age though also crops in. We've had boards that want someone who's really savvy on social media. And I'll never forget the one where it was three finalists, but there were two people in particular they they wanted to hire and someone said, "I think Tom is going to be a really great social media person. My gosh, he must be on Twitter all the time. I know that we'll be able to build our social media presence if Tom is here. I don't think Art would quite do that, you know. Well, Art was like 50, 55 and Tom was 35, 40 age bias. And the joke was on them because Art was a prolific tweeter. Boy, was he into technology. It was crazy. But they didn't ask a question about social media. So, he didn't talk about it. Tom didn't even have a Facebook page. So, the assumption about technology and age, you know, crept into that conversation. And this was before we started to do bias training. You know, we started adding this three years ago because we saw this all too often. Um there's also a geographic bias, metro, rural, if there's a candidate in greater Minnesota that sounds like a great fit here, don't make assumptions about that person because of what greater Minnesota might mean to you. You know, the bio cabinet in your head. And vice versa, when we're working with greater Minnesota districts, we want to make sure they're not biased against metro candidates. It happens, though. It happens. That one in the last two years has happened more often than I care to to think, but it does geographic. And then there's also a familiarity bias, which is most common. If it's an internal candidate or someone from a neighboring district that you know or you're familiar with, it's both good and bad that you know this person. It can work for them and it can work against them. And there's nothing you can do about that other than just recognize it because you do sometimes really know the people that are in the pool. And so you just want to be careful that you give everyone a fair shot whether it's a positive or a negative for them that you know them. Um so that's what we talk about in terms of bias, but I'm sure you've done this bias training before. The fact that it came up in your conversation tells me you understand this and it's not going to be a concern for us. Um but if you hear someone on the board saying something during deliberations that in the back of your mind you think, you know what, that's an assumption. I don't know that that's the case. feel free to quietly bring up maybe that's not the case with this person because I heard you say and I wonder if kind of um work together on that. I'm not going to wave a flag and say bias flag. I'm not ever going to do that to anybody, but just know yourself and know your conversation and feel comfortable maybe saying, you know what, I don't know that that's that's the case. So during deliberations, we'll see how that goes. Any questions on bias? Okay, thanks for letting me talk through that. I think it's important deliberation scenarios. Um, they usually go well and these are specifically in round two because round one, um, well, Monday is fun because everything's possibilities and there's going to be two or three or six or eight rock stars that you all want to talk to. And then after round one, you have to take those four to six people maybe and get it down to two or three. And it's a little tougher. That last decision sometimes is really tough, especially if you've got two or three really good people. That's when it gets sticky because um you have choices. If there was one clear rockstar and you all agreed this would go quick. I think with your pool, you're going to have a couple of really strong people in round two that might make it tough. So, if you are deadlocked, I would say a couple of words of advice. In anticipation of perhaps mixed feelings on the board about who's the better of the two or three because they're different. Everyone's different. They all have different strengths. Please don't just dig in your heels. Try to keep the open mind and listen to what other people are saying. Um, don't make assumptions. Assumptions here, the example is of age. One way to manage that discussion would be to go back to this. This is why I say keep this close. What's most important to the people in our community and in our buildings and to open up uh the leadership profile of your brochure. If you're deadlocked, sometimes what we recommend is you go back and say, "Okay, we've got two incredible people. Who is stronger on each of our bullet points, Jane or John?" And you almost have to score it. you almost have to use some sort of metric, right, to identify who because it's just too close to call. So, you could do that. Let's go back to those two documents. They're really, really important. Um, the second one doesn't happen too often, but it does in today's day and age. There are boards that are quite divided and um comments are made that are personal between board members or there's a history or an issue that is not in the past and they they're using the superintendent uh deliberations as an opportunity to argue. Um if it becomes personal, the very best way to keep the discussion professional and collaborative is to call a recess. And anyone on the board can call it. It doesn't have to be the chair. It often is. I would just say if it gets uncomfortable and you can tell that it's just not healthy and people are starting to say things they shouldn't say in an open meeting, take a 10-minute recess. Just go for a quick walk, get a drink of water, wait and see. Come back and it might have all settled down. Don't talk to each other out in the hallway, but just come back with a clearer head and you could go outside since you're in the spring and and take that opportunity to reset a little bit with that one. The last one is um boy, you will get lobbyed and when it comes down to your final two or three, you you will hear things from people about that person that are perhaps not true. Um please don't come to that final deliberation and say, "Well, I heard this person is a horrible person in this way, or I heard they were let go from their last position." Call me if you have something that's really concerning you because you will get lobbyed and you will be concerned probably. Maybe probably uh because people are very comfortable telling you what they think these days and you will get anonymous information. We've had anonymous letters mailed to board members um we've had anonymous letters mailed to the editor of the paper um full of misinformation and untruths about these people. Um, you might get spammed with email from people that have a concerted effort to discredit a candidate. Um, that's happened a couple times this year and it's really, really unfortunate. Don't bring it to the open meeting. Please bring it to me. We will look into it. I'll guarantee you we already know about it, but we will look further into it and I'll let you know where things stand because we don't want you being blindsided by an investigation that nobody knew about. Um, but that can happen sometimes. An investigation is launched a day after our social media sweep is done. That actually happened this year, too. And it's like, oh, we didn't know that, but it was before names went public. So, we were able to pull back our recommendation of someone based upon that new news. But don't bring it to the open meeting and don't share hearsay or gossip or assumptions at the deliberation table because these people's careers are on the line and we want to be really, really respectful of that. It's a professional courtesy. Keep it positive if you can. And if it's really negative, talk to me first and I'll share with you how to bring that forth. Deliberation questions. It might be so easy, but I just want to make sure we've had the conversation if it isn't easy that you are prepared. All of these questions we're going to go past because I've got other ones for you to look at here in a minute. These are just examples because there's like way too many of them. If we had to go through all of the Let's pick six. Is it 17? Yeah, 178 questions is a lot. You are welcome to look at those though and if you really like a question in here, let me know and I'll add it to the suggestion. Or even today if someone's had a chance to look through this and you don't like all of the questions that we're suggesting, you could say, you know what, I like question 112. You could look real quick and decide if you want that question. The downside with that is that these are on your website. So people who watch this later because you're recording this and you will put it up. People might go, "Oh, question 112." I do actually like question 112. I know. Now I got to go look at it. I totally pulled that out thin air. I have to look. Okay. Wonderful. Curious. Maybe it's on your list, but Oh, yeah. We have similar ones. I'm sure. Very similar ones. However, so those questions are there if you just want to look for additional ideas, and you're welcome to do that. So before we get to the final part of the evening, which is the questions, um candidates turn page 38. I'm hoping that the candidates will leave time in their interview to ask you questions. Did they do that the last time? Did they ask you questions at the end of I'm sure they did. I it'll be within their hour and I'll be sitting somewhere close to hold up signs so that they know and you know when there's 30 minutes left and 15 and five. But I'm hoping that they answer and they'll copy the questions in front of them. They answer succinctly enough to ask you some questions. They are getting smarter and smarter about questions that they ask you. It used to be some of these really benign traditional questions. What are the strengths of your school district? They're not that benign anymore. They are now asking some really tough questions of school boards. So, I want you to think about a couple of things. One is which areas of the district are you most passionate about? because we'd love each of you to at least answer one question from them so that they can see you you know as a board and sometimes um you know the chair would probably facilitate if the board if someone says you know does the district have any problems of which I should be aware it usually starts with the chair not that you answer every question in fact that's not good you might say boy that's a good question who here might want to answer that one or you say I'll start with that I think we have a challenge in this area. Anyone else? Because if you build upon each other, it really makes a great impression. They can see you working together. They can see that you like each other, that you have respectful dialogue, even if there's differences of opinion. Um, so kind of think about what areas you're really excited about and that might be a question you could answer. Um, the other thing, the one question I think that has been very interesting, and I've seen it more than once this year, I don't think this is going to be a problem for you, but there are some boards that have a reputation of micromanaging their superintendent and getting in the weeds and trying to manage everything that they do. So, someone might say, you know, I just have a question. Um, what's your position on? And they ask a very technical question that is clearly managementoriented. They want to see if you answer it. I don't know what would you do in that situation. It was it was fascinating to see it because um there are some boards that answer with minutia or even if it's one or two board members, they know way too much about the minutia of running the district and so they're not letting the superintendent do their job as the CEO, right? So the boards that said, you know, that's an interesting question. We don't know that because we're a governing board and we trust our administrators to make those decisions and come to us when they need direction. And you can see the candidate go that kind of question is more common than it used to be. It's no longer the super simple things. Um but they also might run out of time and not get to ask you questions, but that's when it's more free flowing back and forth and you do get to know each other better. It's not as rigid as the questions. Um, so I always encourage candidates to leave some time and ask you questions and then please answer. If it's complete quiet and crickets and nobody says anything, that's not cool. You just want them to know that you're excited about this district and that you love what you do as as board members. So there uh reference checks. I know we talked about this at the first meeting and do I remember correctly? Did Abigail volunteer to make some reference check calls between round one and round two or did we not talk about that? I thought that's I might be misremembering that but here between round one and round two board conducts reference checks. Did I? So after round one and before round two, so between May 1st and May 7th, one or two people on the board should make a couple of calls about your two or three finalists. Do I remember that wrong? Did you volunteer? I don't. I genuinely don't. I think it probably talked about it. I don't think we elected anybody. It sounds like something you would say. If somebody else went to Well, and two of you could do it if you want. We just want you asking the same questions of the references for all three people. Okay. Awesome. Should I continue to put your name down, Abigail, for that? And Scott, you can put those down. That's great. So, I have um some information I will share with you after round one that gives you some suggested questions. The great thing about those reference check calls is you're not bound by their application. You can talk to anybody because their name is public. So, some people call um a board member for each of the two finalists or you call the mayor in the communities of the two finalists or something like that. Consistency is good, but they will tell you things that they do not tell the search firm. board members making reference check calls, they just share with you what they really think. Obviously, it's off the record. Um, you're not going to report back and say exactly who said what. And I also have a sheet that kind of explains your verbal report after round two should include these things, but it's pretty brief. Same thing is if you run into concerns, please let me know so we can look deeper because if someone's telling you something off the record, we want to be able to look into that, too, because we probably haven't found it through our avenues. So, okay. Thank you. So, here's some information on reference checks, but we'll talk about that a lot more after round one with the two of you. Lastly, deliberating in public. Um, it's that last step on May 7th. If you think there's someone in the pool that you want to make an offer to, we ask you to keep it positive if possible. And I'm actually going to come back to the next meeting with sort of an outline of how to deliberate. You can talk about each candidate. and each of you says one strength you noticed about this person, we prefer that you not point out things that didn't go well or things that you were not impressed with. Um, because it's this public meeting and it is their career and it is going to be recorded. Your deliberations are recorded, focus on the positives and if you don't have a lot to say that's positive, that sends a message that other candidates had more strengths. But do keep it positive if you can. Um, if you get stuck, we'll go through some of the exercises about how to talk about folks in a way that is honest without um, dragging them through the dirt in a public meeting. You know, because we've had candidates so nervous that they just they're mopping their brow, they're so nervous, they're constantly sweating, and you don't want to point that out in the interview because everybody noticed it. Um, but not everyone interviews smoothly, and so we don't want to draw attention to that. So, they have strengths. If they make it all the way to round one for you based upon your review and ours, these are good people. So, they're going to have a lot of good things to talk about in your deliberations. And then once you decide to open it up, I'll talk with you um on Monday night about how to make the decision that night. Sometimes it happens organically. If there's too many people after round one you want to bring back, if you want to bring back four people for round two, that's a lot. Um we could do a straw poll if you want us to, but you don't have to. Sometimes someone says, "Well, I'm I'm leaning toward bringing back, you know, Tom and Sue." And someone else says, "Yeah, me too. Although I'd also I want to bring back Andrea." So, it kind of happens through conversation. It doesn't need to be a real formal process till you actually make the motion and take a vote. That does need to be formal and it does need to be a majority vote. Doesn't have to be unanimous. At the end in round two, if you found someone that you want to make an offer to, we recommend a unanimous vote. doesn't have to be. Again, a majority vote will hire someone. Um, we've had candidates turn down offers from split boards because they don't want to walk into a 4-3 or even a 5-2 board. Sure. Um, again, if you're related to them, it's required to be unanimous. But generally speaking, we encourage you to state your piece. If you are someone in the minority for a candidate that the majority of the board doesn't want to hire, you can certainly say, "I support this person." and for the good of the district, I will vote for this person so that it is a 70 vote. You don't have to do that. It makes a very good impression though on the candidates and it makes a good impression on um the district. Uh but you don't have to. Okay, any questions on that? Okay. My favorite story about that was from two years ago where we had a a divided board 52 passionately divided and it was a very very very long and late night like two people wanted this person five wanted this person. So after much deliberation and nobody's budging, one of these two people said, "I'll make a motion." And everybody kind of went, "I'll make a motion to make an offer position of superintendent to." And they named the other person and the person that was in the minority with them seconded it. I get goosebumps even thinking about it, but it was beautiful. It was a 70 vote and the two in the minority were the ones that made the motion and seconded it. I haven't ever seen that before, but it was really impactful. Um, and it brought that board closer together because they were having some some challenges. So, all right, enough of story time from Barb. Here's the contract. Um, how are you working on the contract to have one ready to go on May 8th? Remind me of what you decided to do relative to what's in here. Um, our um, operations director Stacy Sovine is working on drawing that up. Okay. Right. Is that based on um language that we currently have? I believe so. Okay. Mhm. And so that will probably be brought back to the board before May 7th for you just to look at so that it's an okay template to move forward because you have a board designate beginning negotiations. Was it going to be the chair? Uh yes. Okay. Mhm. So, you want to make sure that that um contract as a starting point is okay with the board and then the the uh the board chair can go and say, "Hey, here's our our contract. What do you think?" And then they go back and maybe you're working with Stacy on that also. Sometimes there's a team administrator and a board chair talking to the candidate to walk through some of the nuances of those contracts, but whatever works for you is what you should do. Okay, that's all I have for interview training. There was a lot. I know. Are you still hanging in there? We're almost done. Okay, I don't know if this is the time to bring this up, but we had something unique as part of um Dr. Battle's contract that was an ad, the communications protocols. That was something that was that in the contract. It was it was written in it was not the protocols themselves but the existence of the protocols. Was that negotiated with her when she Yes, it was. Okay. So then but it'd be in the contract language of the contract though. And I guess my question is just do we still want that? Right. Yeah. I mean I guess that's once Stacy draws it up, we can read it, take a look. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know why we'd put it in there if it was something specific to Dr. Battle. Why was it specific? I think because she requested clarity around, if I'm remembering communications protocols, which we just reviewed that document, what a month ago? Yeah. So, I guess from my perspective, I feel like it's a good thing that we've had and I would I would like to see it continued with the new superintendent. is just part of the expectation whether it's in the contract or just an expectation on on how they're working. Okay. So, it was specific to operate something operational. I thought it was something and Okay. I'm I think she requested that we create the document that we have periodically reviewed where one-on- ones how often like how we get emails. Exactly. Yeah. I don't Oh, I don't think that's a negative thing to have in the contract. I think I don't think they I thought you meant it was something like something else. No, I I think it I I think it was a great addition. Personally, I guess I had forgotten that that wasn't I mean it was the first contract we had when joined the board. So, yeah, I didn't know that wasn't stand or I didn't remember that wasn't standard. Then I you know just asked Stacy to make sure that that's in there. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Good. Okay. All right. I'm going to distribute the draft schedules which have changed because of the um start time on it. What that means here. Okay. Six candidates. Again, you might have three or four. seriously. I mean, honestly, during this break time is getting So, in looking at this, I did the math real quick here. And um on Wednesday, April 30th, the school board meeting would be called to order at 7:30. Correct. 7:30. Yes. That's what we talking about. 15 minutes to kind of get you ready for how the process is going to work, to walk through the EMD form, to talk about deliberations, all of that. So the first candidate would interview at 7:45. You'd be done at 8:45 up to a 15-minute break. Candidate 2 would start at 9. You'd be out of here at 10:00. At 10:00, it would you would continue the meeting to Thursday, May 1st at 4:30 p.m. It's not a separate meeting. This is one long meeting over two days. So you call to um call to order once on Wednesday, you continue it to Thursday and on Thursday you adjourn. Mhm. Got it. Okay. We just have a very long break. Very long recess. A very long break overnight recess. Correct. So let me think here. I'm I have to do this in my head. So Thursday, May 1st, if you do four people then on Thursday, you would start at 4:30. You'd continue the meeting and then right away your candidate could begin at 4:35. Oh. because we don't have anything to do that time. So 4:35, they'd finish at 5:35. So you would then interview the next candidate at 5:50. They go to 6:50. You could take a break at 6:50 for supper. Do you think you want a half hour for food built into that second night if you start at 4:30? Yes. Maybe. Okay. Would be hungry. Yes, please. Especially if the conversation continues after four interviews that night. Yeah, it does. Yes, it does. So 6:50 would be your break and you could Well, why don't we start the next interview then at 7:15, right? Do we want to bring something in like a like some sandwiches or something? Sarah, I can take care of that. Okay. 6:15. 6:50 break. 7:15 will be the next candidate to 8:15 and the last interview would begin at 9:30. 7:15 8 No, I'm sorry. 8:40 8:30. Gosh, Barb. 8:30. 8:30 to 9:30. And the last interview would begin at 9:45, done at 10:45. Wait, aren't we doing four? Well, that's backwards. three. We're only doing four dinner after dinner. Yeah, I think 8:30 is the fourth interview. Oh, 8:30 is the fourth interview. Yeah, but we don't know. 4:30, 5:50, 7:15, and 8:30. Okay. Phew. Relief, huh? If you do Okay, so a 9:30 break. um 9:30 break and it takes us about 20 minutes to tabulate your EMD form. Your exceeds meets disappoints. We do that electronically. I get it in a PDF. I ask Sarah to print it and you can look at that as part of your deliberations. So I would think by 10:00 you're deliberating who you want to bring back for round two. I'm going to put 10 p.m. school board deliberates and decides on round two finalist question schedules and reference checks. That might start at 10:00. Remember this is if you have six candidates changes if we have more or less. Right. Right. Um so once you've named and it sometimes it happens really quickly. You'd be surprised if you do interview six there might be a top three pretty quickly and your deliberations don't take very long or it might get bogged down because you have you know five really strong people and you can't decide who to move forward. So it just depends. But you're not done once you name your finalists. We still need you to decide your questions and I'm going to bring proposed questions that I'll give you to go through and choose while I'm out in the hallway talking to the candidates about round two and making congratulations calls to the folks you want to bring back. The schedule won't take very long and then I'll meet for maybe 5 minutes with Abigail and Scott about reference checking. So, you have a little bit of homework that night after you've named your finalists. Okay. I will update this though and get it to you so you can see what it looks like in real life versus all my chicken scratches. All interviews would be held where? All of them are here, right? Mhm. So, what would that be called? What would be the words I'd put in here? All room and Diamond Head Education Center. So, you mean? Yes. Yeah. The Burnsville room. The Burnsville room. I feel like I heard this. I can give you the exact There's also a number with it. Okay. um isn't it on this other paper that they gave us? So Sarah will send me the right language for held in the room at the blank and are open to the public. I can remove the italics on the next part to ensure a level playing field for all candidates. The interviews will not be live streamed. Now you are recording the interviews. Was that correct? Yes. Okay. So I'm going to remove or recorded but we'll place on here that they're not being live streamed. Did you decide that or think that was probably the route to go? We did. Yep, it does. not being live streamed. Not being live streamed. Did you have something else with Scott? Well, I was just thinking the hypotheticals if we get to the end of May the 1st and we are in that position where none of the candidates we could decide that night. Yep. We're done. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yep. Good point. Yep. You also could decide the one person that we want is here. Let's hire them after one round. You could do that, too. I mean, I suppose technically we could decide on Monday we're done, but like we're just not going to interview anybody. But Yep. Right. We can decide at any point in the process is really my point. Correct. So many options. So many options. The room set up. I see so many. Yeah, that was something that we had wanted to talk about was the room setup because um are we sitting at the dis? Are we sitting down below eye to eye with our shoe? Are we doing it like we did when we interviewed for the board seat for time? We did not sit at the dis last time. No, we didn't. We were down there both times. Mhm. I do like this chair. I don't know that I have a I don't have a strong opinion on The only the only difference is the recording how it gets recorded. Oh, right. Right. But we can't use these. They were might be a better recording for later if we're here. And the microphones is the room set up for that. Yeah. Although they brought the microphones down. They did. They did. It's more the cameras. I think when we're not in this spot, there's like a camera and it just kind of locked the whole time. Yeah. It's a broad It's a broad, right? So, is there some sort of negative to having it set up as an interview with us sitting up here? Is it intimidating? Just a different feel, right? Like got to get used to this presenting sitting there and presenting speaking to this group is too intimidating. They're probably not the right candidate. True. True. True. That's true. So maybe we do it at the dis and make Aaron's life a lot easier if we Yeah. Well, then I think if our community is watching then it's probably better viewing if we are here. Exactly. Yep. Yeah. Okay. Cool. I'm okay with that. And chairs are nicer. So typical board set up for all the Okay. Then like if the public I mean I think it's nice that good set space if the public if anybody does come then there are seats there also. That's a good point. Yep. I like that. Okay. We might want to have more chairs. Yeah. Are ready and available or ready or at least ready. Yeah. Right. Mhm. not knowing. So, just if I'm asked um hypothetically, you have six interviews in round one. Will you put all six online? And if so, for how long? And in round two, if you have three, will you put all three online? And if so, for how long? Oh, good questions. So, I I'll tell you how um I think sometimes as a professional courtesy Candidates don't want a bad interview online forever. True. Because they just can't shake it and they keep trying to get another job, but people say, "Hey, go watch their interview in 191 from last year." That's I've not always done well in interviews and I wouldn't want it out there forever and ever and ever. So, you decide what you do, but there's also precedent set with your recordings. So, they can have you do things differently. But generally, what boards do if they record them because you are creating a data point also by virtue of recording them. So, anyone can ask for them at any point. Yeah. So, um if you have six, if you move three forward, what some districts do is put all three of those online and leave those up through the second round of interviews. Mhm. And then record those three and put the one online of the finalist and leave it up for two or three months or longer if you know it's the one person, the person who hired the one you hire. Maybe you leave it up forever the person you hire, but that's your prerogative to do what you want to do. Something to think about because candidates might say, "Are they recording and are they going to put them online?" And I have to have some sort of answer for them and you don't have to decide tonight, but it's something to think about. Well, I was going to say because the second set would be done the evening of the May 1st and then the next set isn't until May 7th. Mhm. You could post them online on the second cuz the main point of why we're doing this is so that the people interviewing wouldn't see the the first set of questions. So we could technically put them up until the 6th and then take them down. I mean because honestly six or just the three or how who are I don't know. I mean, we're not let So, here's my this is my opinion, and you can take it or leave it. The public's not being allowed to put in their input. I think they would at least like to see all the pe people being interviewed. That's my thought. Well, and in that those guidelines that we updated, um, it does say we're going to post them. Yeah. So, we have to post them at least for a period of time. Yeah. Right. Doesn't say for how long, right? That's what I was going to say, but it does say. Well, and I and I and I would agree that it should be just the the time span from the ending of one interview to the start of the next. Yep. Right. So, like we finished the interviews on Thursday, late Thursday night, so on Friday the the second post them the interviewed. We'll just say three the three final final finalists or all of them. All of them. Mhm. That's fine. And then a similar process when we and then we would just have the final final. I was going have to do the all three at some point after the second interviews. I keep saying three, but whatever the number is of true finalists. So then the the first round interviews would be up for making this, you know, just just a week. They'd come down, we'd do the second round, and then we'd post the second round and then take them down after we make a decision. and take them the decision. Yeah. Until the contract is signed. Maybe they stay for a week also. Exactly. Until the contract contract is signed. Contract. Oh, that's good. There you go. I like that. Okay. Right. But signed and approved by the board. Right. Yeah. And then though our meeting our deliberations would need to be like separate and stay up as like any other of our meetings are I would say so. Yeah. Yeah. It's the interviews that are so it's like just right editing work editing. Film editing. Yes. Well, and we meet the next night. Yes, we do. Of course we do on the eth. May the eth, right? We like to meet every night. And that's a meeting I can't attend for work. It's your Yeah. The 7th is when we're hoping to make a I'll be there the seventh decision. I just be there. there first, right? I have to all the important stuff. Yes. Just to clarify the I have the first the six finalists will be posted May 2nd and kept up for a week. When we have the second round interviews on May 7th, those will be pulled off. And then we will post the second round of interviews on May 8th. And we will keep up until the board has approved the contract. Approve keep up until And then one more clarification the um we should be taping them in individually. Correct. So that then that Oh yes. Because then you can easily edit them to add one and start the next. Right. Yeah. Un well because we also want Well, do we want to have assuming if we were to to select somebody um have that person's interviews available period? I think the person we select, yes, I would like to see their interviews to remain on the YouTube channel or somewhere accessible for the public. after the new person is in place. But the others we can take down, I think. Oh, yeah. Okay, Sarah, you have everything you need. I'll have to confirm with Aaron how how that works in terms of recording, but I'll let him know what we're looking for. I think the biggest part is the call to order at the beginning and the adjournments at the end with those breaks long spaces might be right uh hard but I'll see what's best. I if I can do that kind of editing on my cell phone Aaron can handle it. That'll be all right. I was just realizing these are not issues we had the last time we hired a superintendent who were not live streaming our meetings yet. No, okay. Thank you for talking that through and on behalf of candidates also, thank you. That's very kind of you to recognize it's not always great to have your interview up forever. Um, so for bringing that point up. Yeah, all right. The last thing we have is uh to talk through some ideas around questions and Sarah had printed these for me because I was stuck in Are they here? Thank you. So, I'm going to hand these out. Um, I'm going to collect them back when we're done. I'll take them back to the table and shred them. These are just some suggestions from our so we can we can scribble on them. Scribble on. Please do. Please scribble on these. And um I'm going give you maybe five minutes, 10 minutes to do a couple of things individually on here. My short one. I think I made seven. Sorry. print it and run it. I can share with her in the meantime. If you want to go ahead and get it yet each of you, what I'd like you to do on here. Thank you, Sarah. Yep. Um, when you read through it, it has an open question as I understand. You don't have to ask it, but you certainly can. And then there are questions under each of your leadership profile bullet points that relate to that. Now, some of your bullet points also, they overlap a little bit. There's, you know, communication and collaboration, that stuff overlaps. However, they are a little bit different. So, I asked each of you as individuals to pick two in each category that you liked the best and then we're going to do a quick tally. How many of your questions two through eight, how many liked two? And we'll at least narrow it down a little bit. We'll try not to read these questions out loud because you are recording this meeting and we don't want to give an advantage to someone who watches this meeting and knows exactly what you're going to ask because we talked and we're smoothed as a group. So, it's going to feel a little vague, but however, we can modify and change things. You're also not limited to these questions. If there's others you'd rather ask, please do. I'm sorry. Um, you can add them. If there's areas that you want to ask about, you can email me a question and I can forward it to the board for consideration. Now, at the very end of that packet, there's a yellow highlighted that says, "Additional questions based upon your public survey report." So, there are some additional areas that we thought you could ask about. And in that case, I only want you to pick one from each of those areas. Then, I think you'll have like a total of 15 questions, but we're going to we're going to talk it through here in just a minute and come up with, like I said, 10 to 15 probably for round one. Some of these you might really like, but you like them better for round two. That's great. Um, I'll have a similar list for you after round one to look at for your round two questions. So, any questions about your work in the next five minutes as individuals? Okay, thank you very much. I will be back shortly. Mhm. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] Carefully. [Music] Okay. Maybe give you another minute or so and then we'll do a quick tally. I like this one, too. Is everyone done? Good enough. All right. So, um, does anyone want not want to ask question one? It's a softball. You don't have to ask it. Are we good? All right. We'll ask question one. Next category. Question two through eight. You can pick two. So, please raise your hand if it's in your top two. How many chose question two in your top two? None. Question three. One. Question four. None. Uh, did you have question four? Okay. So, one person at question four. Question five. If it's in your top two. One. Question six in your top two. One, two, three, four, five. Question seven. One, two, three, four. And question eight. One. two. Okay, we'll come back to all of these. Next category, second leadership profile. Questions 9 through 13. You can pick two of these. How many had question nine in the top two? One. Question 10. 1 2 3 4 5. Question 11. 1 2 3. Question 12. 1 2 13. 1 2 3. Okay, next category. 15 to 14 to 19, I'm sorry. How many you liked? Question 14 in your top two. One 15. One, two, three. Uh, 16. None. 17. One, two, 18. One, two, three, four, five. 19. One, two, three. Okay. And section 20 to 25, how many had 20 in your top two? None. 21 1 2 3 4 5 22 None. 23 6 24 2 1 All right. Uh the next section 26 to 30. How many had 26? 1 2 27 1 2 1 2 3 4 5 29 1 2 3 4 30 1 2 And the closing question kind of a standard. You okay with that one? All right. If we move on to the questions from the public survey report, If you only got to pick one questions one through four like two for each take a second to choose your favorite. Let me know when you're ready because I don't want to rush anybody. I'll go with my gumb by how many other hands are exactly. Okay. How many preferred question one? None. Question two. One. Question three, one, two, three, four. And question four, two. All right. Section five through eight. If you picked one of these, would it be five, six, three? Question seven, three. And question eight. One. All right. 9 through 12. Who chose nine as your favorites? None. 10. None. One. One on 10. Okay. 11. Two. And 12. Four. We have one. Got it. And lastly, questions 13 to 16. I didn't even choose one yet. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. Anything money? Are we talking 9 through 12, Leslie? No. 13 through 16. Oh, okay. I'll let you choose one. No. No. Go ahead. All right. How many liked 13 the best? None. 14. 1 15 1 2 3 and 16. 1 2 3 clearly the board asked. See how many of those we got in the first section. Um section six and six had five votes. Seven had four votes. These would not be in this order either during the interview. We split them up. kind of keep. Okay, good. Is everyone okay if we ask six and seven or is there someone that wants to advocate for any of the other questions? Eight had two votes. Otherwise, it was one a piece. Is there anything you want to rephrase about six or seven? What I liked and eight is covered in seven, so I'm good with seven. I was one of the ones who voted for eight. Okay. You okay with seven, though? Yeah. Me, too. Okay. Six and seven. Can I just Yep. point out that those two questions are similar topics than some of the other questions. Like that's why I chose a different question than because number three has a different topic than number like six and seven are similar there's they have similar That's a great point. So I'm saying you're kind of asking two similar questions. I think those two are also covered in the human relations section too. sort of. Okay. Anyway, I mean, because we could like with seven, we could we could blend six and seven. Yep. I think Yeah. In favor of six and seven, they're sort of two sides of the same coin, so it's getting at both parts of Mhm. Yep. that I was wondering. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Um well one is also so one asks for examples also well one is asking for so one is a question and one ask asks for examples I don't know yeah well yeah one asks to explain from the question I could combine six and seven pretty easily I think into just a a little longer question yeah I I think I think probably using the the verbs like as an and Yep. How do you and Yep. How do you conjunction and got it function? And then the second sentence of six could be a closing statement. So the first sentence of six, comma, and then question seven. Do you want to include the second part of question six or not? That could be like the end of that combined question. I like that one. Yeah. Okay. So that last part of question six will be the end of our new question. Correct. I get it. Got it. And then I'm advocating for question three. [Music] You can choose two in this whole category and and you're absolutely right. That's this is a big category. I actually I'm so glad you pointed that out. As an indecisive person, I had like three I liked and so and three was one of the ones I liked too. So, um and I think it connects with some of the community input. I think it does too. Yeah. Should we ask question three? Okay. So, in that category, question three and a combined six and seven. Okay, great. Um, in the next category, question 10 had five votes. So, I think we'll ask question 10 if everyone's okay with that. And then it was really evenly split between 11, 12, and 13. 11 had three votes, 12 had two votes, and 13 had three. So, how would you like to move forward? 11's pretty close to 10. Yeah, I like that it's close to 10. 12 kind of rolls into number three that we just added, which is a little more narrow. Mhm. But also 13 is like it's unique. Well, what I what it gets me is like it's this should be like a leading question, right? Like you you know what the whether whether it's true that you're going to do it or not, you know the right answer that's going to make us happy for 13, right? Like Well, I don't know. Not necessarily. I don't know. I think there are lots of different ways to I don't know. I think the answer to 13 would say a lot about somebody. I agree. That's why that's why I voted for it. And it would may turn out that Ann Marie is right and we get the same answer from everybody we interview. But you don't know if you don't ask. And if they say something completely opposed to asking it, it's just my wild that could be very telling also. Yeah. Maybe the word usage might be different. Okay. For example. Mhm. We would replace disagrees with challenges. Okay. Ah, that's a good Yeah. Yep. changes could really change the answer for challenges because it's demonstrating accountability accountability. I like that change. So if we ask 13 by replacing disagrees with with the word challenges then we're going to ask 10 and 13. Yeah. Yes. Okay. Great. Thank you. And the next category um 18 had the most that five votes for 18. if it's okay if we ask that. Mhm. Okay. You you said 18. 18. Sorry. Um 15 and 19 had three, 17 had two, 14 had one. So what solution do you see here? Well, I was one of the two that voted for 15 and I'd switch to 19 happily. [Music] What was the other one? There was three of them. I feel pretty strongly about 19. I do too. See, I had that I had that say that I did three choices between 18 and 19 as far as Mhm. you know, what groups do we want to right address? you know, because that's where I kind of thought the, you know, and and that's why I went with 19 was that was the one that I thought was most but but yet I I liked 18 in terms of because it did cover a very specific well I mean it just covered you know a from different ends of the spectrum first we might it would be interesting to see what they said but you know come 19 later for specifics. I think the only reason why I didn't have 19 is because I felt like by the time I got to that last one, I was like, "Oh, I already it was already covered in all these other questions that I liked." So, I'm fine with 19 as well. I guess to say, is this another one where we kind of combine 18 and 19 a bit? I don't think so. Not in this case. So, we ask 19 first. Yep. Okay. 18 and 19. and 19 is the first one in the order and 18 will be later between those two. Okay, great. Thank you. 18 and 19. Next section 21 had five votes. 23 had six votes. It's okay to ask those two. Yeah, I think so. Do you agree? Those are the two I voted for. So, I'm good with that. Otherwise, 24 had two votes and 25 had one. 21 23. Yeah. Mhm. 21 23 are okay. Yep. All right. Great. Thank you. And then this category um 28 had five and 29 had four and then uh 26 and 30 each had two, 27 had one. Do 28 and 29 get you where you're wanting to go? Yeah. Do you think they're too similar? Not different enough? I had voted for 27, but I don't think there's a huge difference between 27 and 29. So, I'm totally fine with 28 and 29. I think they're kind of 29 gets it a slightly different um you know perspective. Yeah. Work balance. Yeah. Yeah. 28 and 29. Okay. And then question 31. Yep. We'll come back to that. So then based on the public survey report in these categories, um the first area, question three had the most, question three had four votes and there were two people on question four and one person on question two. Um question three is a little excuse me, question four is a little similar to one I think you already picked earlier based on your leadership profile. So I don't know if you need to ask question four. I think you're right. Yeah, question three is different enough perhaps that you could ask that one and get it something different. I think that's a good one to ask. I like that one. Question three is going to be asked. Um then this section, six got three and seven got three. Eight got one. They were the two I liked. Anyway, question seven is a little similar to the combined question six and seven. Yeah, a little bit. That was the one I was thinking. Yeah. question is six is more specific and different. I like six. I like six. Yeah. Yeah. I'd say six. Six. Okay. It's fine. All right. I know. I think that's uh then the last two areas. Boy, is this close. Um 12 got four votes, 11 got two, and 10 got one. Which one got the most? You said 12 got four votes. Oh, good. [Laughter] Does anyone want to advocate for 10 or 11 or can we go with 12? I think we can go with TW. I voted for 11, but I think we should go with 12. Yeah, they're kind of alike. Well, and and quite honestly, 11 a lots, you know. Yeah, there's a lot in place already, right? Yeah. I want to know how you're going to implement what we already have. Yeah. I mean, thing. Yeah. Yeah. And and I was kind of I mean just to kind of mention I think I told 12 like when I voted for 10 it was because we may thinking about the types of experiences that the candidates have that 10 I thought could is something that with a breadth of experience levels, you know, and and superintendent experience or not that that 10 would be very applicable. Um but I'm I'm cool with 12. But I just wanted to throw out why. Good point. I thought 10 was okay. And in the last category, 15 and 16 each got three. 14 got one. I'm sorry. Could you repeat what numbers? Um 15 and 16 each got three votes. Okay. And 14 got one vote. I I like 15 because I I feel like it the answer can include what's in 16, but it also is broad enough that it doesn't have to include that. So that was why I I chose 15 over 16. Yeah. It I mean 15 allows for insight. Mhm. Exactly. And and I think where's the other question? I I think it also helps with um like question number 15. Question number 15 that kind of right that's interesting. Which one? Which 15 and 15? So the first 15, not the second 15. The first 15 could show up in the second 15 if there's depending on what the person think about. They have the opportunity to elaborate bring that out, right? Are you talking about this 15? Yeah. Oh. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. But I I felt like 15 would just get a better insight about their experience in that I agree area. I agree too. I get you. So, are we talking 15 on this? Yeah. Yes. 15 on that last one. We can only vote one for the other 15. I will read to you um what I circled and then we'll see if you need final items before we call it a night. So, I'm back at the very beginning. These are the questions I circled for you. Question 1 3 combining six and seven 10 13 and we changed two words to one in there. 10 13 18 19 would be asked earlier in the interview. 21 23 28 29 31 and also 3 6 12 and 15. So that brings you to 16 questions. Okay. Just less than 18, you're good. Okay. So unless you want to pair it down and bring some of these for round two instead and have 14 or 15. It's up to you. Oh, you're going to give me options. I'm never good with options. So 16 is good. I think we're good. Yes. Okay. Yes, we're good. Questions. 16 for one per candidate. Yeah, that seems like a lot. 16 hours. That's a lot. Three minutes per They're usually 18. We did give them time to question and then most people aren't going to talk with they might, but then the student gives them 12 minutes at the end to ask questions. Wow, you did that so fast. Or you could your interviews an hour and 15 minutes long. Or that for round one, you'd be here pretty late night. Do that. You want to cut one or two of these or more and put them in the second round instead? See, I don't do quarter without cut down to 13 or 14 instead. I have to think harder. Um Oh, you mean so instead of two questions section, we choose one and then move on to the second interview. You said these are additional potential questions. Potential questions. That was based on Okay, maybe we just take maybe two. Mhm. You can do that too. Let's take two questions from the addition. Save the other two for the second Peter. Yeah. Yeah, let's do that. I'm fully in support. Um 16 first round. 16. You mean on the on the last page under the ones where we could only choose one? Decide on 15. Oh, sorry. 15 section. Whatever we landed on. I see how it is. I think that is a round two question or round one. He said round one. I think that's a round. I think it's a round one. That was that was pretty high on our community list. Yeah. And I I also think number eight. Number six. I'm sorry. Number I'm sorry. Six. Sorry. Yeah. I was trying to sneak in my question. No. No. Did we What did we land on on the Was it We did land on six under that category. Yes. Yes. You think that should be a round one? Yes. Okay. I do too. So, are we perhaps asking three and 12 and second in round two? Yeah, I think so. I would like for them to be asked if I'm doing three will be in round two and 12 will be in round two. Okay. So that brings you down to 14 questions. Will we need to have a similar like what's the thought on now that we're talking about round two, creating questions for the round two interview? Yes. If you have some that you really want to want to ask, please send them to me within the next week because I'll be crafting the round two questions next week. Okay. I have to have them ready to go for round one interviews because that night you pick round two questions. They do tend to be fewer. I'd say maybe ask eight to 10 in round two because they will ask people to go deeper. Sometimes there's scenario questions that are asked in round two. We'll do some version of this exercise on the second night of that's what I wasn't sure about. Thank you. Okay. They're just they'll be a little bit more um it's like a funnel. You know, the application questions were this, round one is this, round two is this. Real more specific. And um because you're aligned with your stakeholders so well, I don't think you have to worry about adding up a lot more of those. But um some districts you could think about them presenting a 100 day plan or an entry plan to you. Some boards like to make them an hour and 15 minutes in the second round and the first 15 minutes is them presenting an entry plan or 100 day plan to you. You can ask them questions about it and then you go into the interview questions. So that could be something for round two that plug the monitors helps some boards know what to expect from someone's first 100 days. Well, and having fewer candidates Mhm. makes that easy, I would imagine. Yeah. So, you could think about longer than 1 hour for your second round and you could include something like that. Um, sometimes a board wants to send a couple of questions in advance before round two, you know, very specific based on our student test scores, what would be your recommendation relative to this? And they send it to them 24 hours in advance. Well, I sent it to them 24 hours in advance, so they come in really prepared to give you a very deep answer versus a off-the- cuff impromptu answer. So, you could choose one or two questions that they see the day before. Um, or you could do all of it when you sit down as first time they see them. I did have a board this year ask me to give questions to them 15 minutes before I meet them out there and give them the questions and give them 15 minutes to kind of think about it and then come in. Uh, but you don't have to do that either. That's nice when they're really long for those of us who are not good at, you know, hearing all those words. Some people, you processors, they want to they want to process it and think about it. And so you can repeat that. I could give it to them 5, 10, 15 minutes before their interview as long as everyone gets that same chance and it's identical how long they have them. Not opposed. No, not opposed to that. Okay. Okay. Well, those decisions you can make on um round one on May 1st. That's all I have for you. I know it was two hours and a half hour, two and a half hours. So, thank you for holding court with me for as long as you did. It was a lot and I think you're going to be a little tired tonight, but you made some um great decisions tonight. I'm excited for Monday. I will send you our recommendations on Friday or Saturday so you know. Um, and please don't don't print that list either because that will have everybody's names on it. So don't print that list. Just keep it electronically and call me if you want to talk. Just post them on Facebook. Sure. So the doodle poll do you want us to pass these around? These I like to collect those. Can't I know? When I said scribble, I literally meant Oh, you did. I guess I gave it to you to close out the meeting. We're not just getting up and walking away. Don't leave yet. Okay. Don't leave. Okay. All right. Well, thank you. Uh, thank you, Barb. That was very informative and we appreciate all the hard work and everything you put together. Uh, it was a great conversation. So um the time is now 8:08 and having no further agenda items I now call to adjoin this meeting of the board of education. The end. The end.