I can wait. I have it. Is it working? It should be refreshed. I have it. >> Yeah, it's live. Okay, thanks. Thank you for checking. Yep. Okay, so we're good? Yep. All right, thank you very much for confirming that. Uh so I I always think it's a little ironic when a summary needs a table of contents, but you had so many people respond to the survey that we have a summary in your summary table of contents. Anyway, so it's just a little ironic. So you can see that we've split out the quantitative data um by category of respondent. Now I'll go through that first. The qualitative data, because you had so many students participate in the survey, which is really exciting, we have a summary of the qualitative data, which were the open-ended questions. We have that in a separate addendum here at the end. So we are going to cover um both of those. Again, highlight all of the trends. So on page three, this is the public engagement summary report, and I will zoom in here as well. Maybe that's Oop. Goes so fast. There we go. No. All right, so the survey was open from February 18th to March 15th, and in that same time period, uh we did hold um focus groups as well, which is wonderful. I think we had eight or nine focus groups. So you ended up with uh between that time period 1,221 people or touch points to the responses in the survey and to the focus groups. I think that's a phenomenal turnout, shows a lot of interest in the Hopkins superintendent search. We have an average number, and I think we talked about this long ago, but for a district your size with about 7,000 students, we were expecting just over 840 responses. So to have 840 be your average and have 1221 actually participate is really great. I'm excited for that turnout and the people that are involved and invested in this process. It was opt-in. People did need to do it voluntarily. There's no requirements. Um and I think that the act of participation again shows a tremendous amount of interest. The self-identifiers that were utilized, I'm going to try and do this without screaming too far. Okay, there we go. Who are you when you take this survey? Everyone has a lens they're using when they take the survey. And in looking at the responses that people did select, we had about 53% identify as parents or caregivers. The next nearest group were staff members at 21% and then students came in a strong third at just over 14% of total respondents. So, um that's great. This is also typical except for the students being so involved. Typically, we do see parents and caregivers being the largest group to respond to survey followed by staff. So, this is also something that did not surprise us. In terms of areas of expertise, this is a high-level overview. These are the top six areas that people identified as being most important to them out of about 17 choices, I believe. So, you can see that budget and finance was top followed by curriculum development and evaluation, collaborative leadership, strategic planning, student testing results and achievement, and personnel management. These are broken out in the next few pages by respondent group, which which is really where you see to start to see some of the most interesting information. As far as previous experience on the next page, it was a completely split, basically 50/50, between is it important the next superintendent have experience as a superintendent. What is it? 49.86 to 50.14. I am not a statistician, but I know that's too close to call. If you're talking statistically significant, this is a this is a tie. So, that was really interesting to see. The specialized skills, we're going to talk a lot more about that here in just a moment, but these are the top six areas. These are also the hiring criteria. They're going to look familiar to board members because it's what you took way back in the beginning of the search to identify what hiring criteria were most important to you and from that we built the leadership profile with you, which is what's been published in your brochure. So, these are the top six that overall those 1,200 people actually identified and I'm going to get to the other information here in a moment. Personal characteristics, there's many different adjectives to describe a leader and these were the six that rose to the top as well. Effective communicator, transparent, ethical, a problem solver, consistent, and resourceful. I will walk through how that has been sliced and diced by category here in just a moment. So, here are the numbers. Earlier I gave you percentages, but when you look at how many people identified, you had 594 people select parent or caregiver, 238 said staff member, 161 were students, 94 selected community member, 26 said other, and that typically might be taxpayer, grandparent, former board member, parent and staff member, but that's the other category that they self-selected. 11 respondents said business owner or district partner, and four people skipped that question. When you look at the previous experience required at the bottom of page four here, what I think is most interesting to me when I first look at this is um staff members generally say yes. So, your staff, at least 56 57% not overwhelmingly, but it's enough of an increase to say your staff would prefer someone who's been a superintendent before. And then also if you look over at the other category, 73% and 80% of your business owners said yes. So, those are the folks that are looking for that. Now, your parents and caregivers a little bit leaning toward no with 54.37 um 54% .37 saying not necessary to have superintendent experience. And um the students in the same category are looking at about 54% said no. Um and I think sometimes it's indicative of whether you're inside the school walls or outside of the school walls. And staff members inside may see a need for that greater than folks who are outside of the walls. Um however, students tend to not be noticing that when they're in the schools, so whether or someone's been a superintendent before or not. Are there any questions along this way? I'm just going to keep going, but I want you to interrupt me. I just had a quick um question about how people could identify themselves, cuz I know that we have a lot of parents who are also teachers. Yes. And staff. So, were they able to select more than one? They were able to select it from two different computers, so two devices. So, if they took it as a staff person from their work computer, and then they felt they needed um to share thoughts as a parent that might be different through a different lens, they could take it from a home computer, for example. So, yes, people could have done that. Thanks. >> Okay. Thanks for asking. Chair Anderson, I have a quick question. Yeah. Um do you is there um for the other category, is there were there like some specific type of identification that they may have had? I'm just thinking of who would identify as other beyond like the business owners and the community members and students and staff members. Just a curious thought. I can pull that up for you, but I want my computer not to share it, cuz I'll go into the survey and find that for you. >> totally fine. Yeah. >> Okay. I read through it and it um it was sometimes people who had two things. They would say staff and parent. Several were grandparents. Um there were a few that say taxpayer. And so, their lenses were just they didn't quite feel they fit into one of these. Um I had a couple I think former board members um as well. But, I can certainly get that for you before we're done, too. Oh, thank you. >> Okay. Yeah, thanks for asking. Chair Anderson. Yes. Yes, hi. Uh hi, Barb. Uh I noticed that the Spanish and Somali were very very low, like extremely low. Is that normal? Thank you for asking about that. I did mean to address that. So, that is very typical and it surprises people even in communities where half the student body, for example, speak Spanish, which we just completed a survey, the number of people filling out the survey in Spanish is minuscule. Um especially I think Somali with it being in large part of spoken perhaps more. Someone shared with me that the language is spoken more than people fill them out. Um but what someone told me once is uh very often people for whom English is not their first language, they want to take the survey in English and will do so with the assistance of a cultural liaison, um their student, a neighbor, um a friend will help them take it in English. I do think your district did a really nice job of getting these surveys out to folks. Um the hard copies were distributed pretty aggressively um to the Somali population. Someone picked up like 100 surveys and dropped them off at mosques and encouraged people to fill them out. Not surprised to see them not coming back, however. It is typical. So, I don't want people to think because that's what the numbers were, that you didn't reach those groups. I believe you did, not however in the numbers of the folks that filled it out in English. Thank you. Thank you for clarifying that. I meant to explain that further. I'm Chair Andreason. Yes. One thing that I would just like to reiterate is that um I mean the board, which is of course elected by our community, but like very directly out of six picked three in almost the exact same spaces that as far as the the hiring criteria priorities, three exactly the same and a fourth nearly exactly the same. And so, I think that that does reflect well on kind of the board's thoughts uh representing our community and I am really grateful and kind of proud of the numbers of responses that Hopkins and out. Yeah, we noticed that as well. I'm going to go through some very specifics and tell you what we noticed cuz this is unusual for this amount of alignment. It really is great. So, uh if we're going to go down to page five next. So, now this isn't moving. There we go. Okay. So, these are the areas of expertise. Um and again, all of these were out of 17. So, for the fact to have some consistency out of 17 choices is great. Budget and finance was in all six categories. If you look across all of these groups from parent caregiver to business owner district partner, all six had budget and finance in their top six, right? Curriculum development and evaluation was in top five for everybody except staff members. Also not surprising because staff members typically think differently about curriculum than folks outside the school walls. So, every group except staff did have uh curriculum development and evaluation in their top six, but this is not unusual at all. Collaborative leadership was in five of all these categories. The only group without that was your students. Um and again, they aren't looking for collaborative leadership in the way sometimes that adults are. Uh so, that had five out of six. Strategic planning, interestingly enough, was in the top six for four of these groups. Parents and caregivers, staff members, uh community members, and business owner district partners. So, strategic planning rose to the top for both parents and caregivers and staff members, your two biggest respondent groups. And so, I think that bumped it up into the top overall because those two groups were in agreement about that as well as about collaborative leadership as well as about budget and finance. Student testing and results is where those two largest respondent groups did um diverge apart a little bit. Uh student testing results and achievement are in the categories for four. Parent caregivers, and then community members, other, and business owner district partner. So, student testing results and achievement did not rise to the top six for staff members and students. Okay, also not necessarily surprising, but that is a priority for the folks outside the building walls. And then personnel management um is in five of six. The only group that it's not in is the business owner district partner. So, personnel management to be in the top six for five out of six groups is a trend. I think that's something significant to pay some attention to. A few other things I noticed when I looked at this um alignment between staff members and students. And so, your uh students and staff members had cultural competency in their top six, and only those two groups had those in their top six. Also, educational equity was in the staff member, and it was number one for your students. So, staff and students definitely feel strongly about educational equity and cultural competency. Um they were the two groups and the only two groups that did have that in their top six. And then you'll notice students had social emotional support service. So, they are they are asking the board to notice that students need social and emotional support services. The other group that identified that was the other category as well, but otherwise those were the two groups that had those in their priority. And then the business owner and district partners noted special education in their top six. I also want to make sure that I tell folks that just because it's not in the top six doesn't mean that it's not important for those people. It's very difficult to choose from 17 extremely important things and try and figure out what the priorities are um because they're all priorities. But for the next leader to come in, we need to know what's the highest of these high priorities. So, this is what these groups did. But I don't want anyone to think that the fact that parents and caregivers, for example, didn't cite educational equity and cultural competency, it doesn't mean it's not important to those people at all. Um it's just how the the bubbling up occurred between the different groups. Any questions on areas of expertise? Okay. The next category, we're going to keep going, the top six personal characteristics. So, a lot of consistency here, too. Um effective communicator, everybody wants that. All six groups had that in their top six. Also, uh being transparent was very important. The only group that didn't note that was students. Again, I don't think they are as dialed in to the issue of transparency as much perhaps as adults might be, but all of the other groups said transparent is going to be important. A problem solver being important. Um again, the only group not mentioning problem solver was the students. But that will be important. Um ethical. Five groups had that, including students. So, this is one that I want to point out, business owners and district partner did not mention ethics in their top six. However, that group very often says, "Well, it's a given. I'm not going to quote waste a vote on something that's a given. I expect a leader of a district to be ethical." So, the fact that it's not in their top six doesn't mean it's not important. It's probably that they assume that's a huge priority and aren't going to uh sort of count it. Resourcefulness. Interesting term. Parents and caregivers have resourceful, as do community members. Those were the only two groups that chose resourceful out of 17 choices. But consistency was consistent across all six. So, consistency, every group, including students. And then the other things I do want to point out are again with staff members and students being the second and third largest respondent groups, some soft skills in leadership mattered to those groups a lot. So, for example, inclusive to staff members and to students, empathetic, personable, and creative are what those folks in the buildings are looking for. And then in the other category, um they identified flexibility. And business owners look for are also looking for creative along with uh the students. And again though, it's it's hard to define who is a good leader, what is a good leader made up of? It's made up of some of these things, but generally what we're finding the trends the last few years in particular is soft skills are emerging as a more important skill set sometimes than hard skills. Hard skills can be learned. Soft skills are very often how you're built or how you're designed for some of those things like empathy, uh creativity, um consistency, and so on and so forth. Okay? So, the next page is where the rubber meets the road. This is like my favorite page. The colorful page. At the very top it shows you what your leadership profile is made up of. And again, that leadership profile is what um we're going to look when we do our vetting um against this profile for your applications. Interview questions will be created around these areas as well. But the color coding means we tied it to the hiring criteria survey which you all took way back when. So, down below you can see Hopkins hiring criteria and public input survey. This is the apples-to-apples. It's the exact same page. So, page two of the survey that had 26 choices is the exact same one you took with 26 choices at that time. So, when you look at this out of the top six of 26 choices one two three and four are identical between you and all of the constituents that took the survey, okay? Which is terrific. So, you match with them very well. And then if you go down to the areas of expertise, you'll see that collaborative leadership is another match for what we consider the board choosing develops trust and works collaboratively. So, that's great. Now, one of the things I think that's interesting is that at least in the top six, number two specialized skills by your public is experience in school finance. And it's mirrored by the budget and finance being the number one area that they are interested in. So, that's something that we'll include as we go through the applications because that's a trend. That's a trend that emerged from the survey. And then also that they're looking for someone with a strong academic background with experience in curriculum. I don't think I've ever seen the top six match exactly between a school board and the community and staff and students at all. It's too difficult when there's so many other choices, but the fact that you really are so aligned bodes well for your search. I think as elected representatives, to echo the earlier comment, this is a good sign that you are in tune with what people are seeking, at least all of those who participated in the survey. At the very bottom of this page also, you'll you'll look at the input. Now, originally when the board took that survey, you had that same question about experience. And the board members, 29% of you said yes, 71% said no. And then when your community came in, it came in at 50/50. So, what that would say is perhaps we'd um lean a little more toward folks who've been superintendents before or have that experience, but again, it's not as though it's overwhelmingly important to the people that took this survey. It is, however, something that they identified as a higher priority than originally the board did several months ago. So, this page I'm going to pull out repeatedly. Um I'm not going to do it today, but I have it like this and I have it ready to go. So, when the time comes for this board to select your semi-finalists, I'm going to give you all a copy of this so that you have this in front of you while you are debating and discussing who to bring in for interviews. We will be recommending uh candidates for you. However, you will be seeing all the applications. So, you will come in potentially with your own list of people to interview that might differ from our list. Um but this is something that we use as a real guiding light for us in doing that work. Any questions on that so far? That is the end of the Oh, no, it's not. It's not the end of the qualitative. This great colored page we talked more about right here. Top six specialized skills. Okay. So, this is where we can see exactly who you most aligned with, okay? So, for example, the first one, leads with honesty in an ethical manner, five of the six groups chose that. Um the only group that didn't mention that was students. And I think for students they just assume that the adults in the room and the superintendent in particular will lead with honesty in a and ethical manner. So, everyone had that. Again, experience in school finance, all six groups had this out of 26. So, even students had um school finance as their sixth most important out of 26 choices. Also, directing and developing an effective leadership team was across-the-board important to all six, again including students, which is unusual for them to be uh paying that much attention to leadership teams. So, six groups had that. The strategic plan in this case, you know, it rose into the top for the overall numbers, but in this case it was in two groups. Um the parents and caregivers identified it and community members. Um the other four groups didn't have it in their top six. Again, doesn't mean that it wasn't important to them, but the community members and parents and caregivers are the reason, especially the number of parents and caregivers, that that one has been bumped up in the overall numbers. And then using curriculum data and other resources to improve scores, that was in three, parents and caregivers, community members, and other um had that exact same thing about curriculum data and other resources. Right below it though for parents there's another very similar one. So, sometimes these might feel a little interchangeable. Um possesses a strong academic background with experience in curriculum. And so, that was in three groups as well. Again, parents and caregivers. That one was in staff members. So staff members, even though perhaps use this curriculum and data to improve test scores, staff members do feel that the next superintendent should have a strong academic background with experience in curriculum. So the two largest groups prioritized that. Um, uh, could I ask, um, what does strong academic background mean? Like, were they a teacher? Were they PhD? I mean, what what what does that mean? >> It's a great question. I would say it means different things to different people. For a lot of people it means, um, instructional leadership skills and that they've served in a classroom. That's probably the most common definition when they say strong academic background, that they've been a classroom teacher. They understand what it's like, but that's not the only definition of it. Sometimes it means they have a doctorate in instructional practices or curriculum in education. So, uh, different things to different folks, but generally I think classroom experience might be one of the biggest. Are there any former teachers on the board here? I'm higher ed. I'm sorry. Higher ed? Yeah, I'm a yeah, I've been a professor in higher ed. Well, I would just and I mean it's a different landscape a little bit because, um, in higher ed you can have EDDs or folks who have come from business, but I will just say as an academic, uh, I respect people who understand academics. And and I would think that would resonate for teachers that knowing someone who understands what you're experiencing in the classroom, um, and what you're facing and also has instruction and is an expert and can support and advocate for you. I think I would want, um, just talking to teachers. That seems important, but I will not speak for all of you. So thank you for sharing here. Yeah. Okay. Other questions? Yes, I just have, uh, two questions. One, the the Hopkins superintendent search, um, the the colorful sheet is just a little hard to read. Um, it's just kind of like blurred. Uh, would you be able to send They told me I was getting old. I know, I did. He asked me, he like, "Am I getting old? It's hard to read." I said, "You're getting old." I believe you. Um I was just wondering >> Transparency. if you if there's a way for you just to send it to us maybe via email so we could just um read it. It's cuz I don't know if it's just mine, but my words are just like >> We have both. You talked about the top one? Yeah. Just our printout of all of them. Is the printout easier to read? Oh, it's easier. Oh, it might be easier to read. Oh, good. Okay. Then we're good. >> Digital is easy Okay. Yeah, the digital's much easier to read. Okay, yes. Okay, good. And then also, was any of this data um disaggregated by like race, age? Like was any of that in the survey? No. Okay. Yep. We did not ask race, age, race, age, or ethnicity. >> Okay. Thank And I just as we're in this moment, too, I just wanted to again, I'm so impressed and proud of our students and our whole district that this many students like I already think Hopkins is the best um but I just wanted to thank our teachers and students for engaging and it means a lot and we want to ensure we're listening and hearing you. Absolutely. One other thing I thought was really interesting when you look at this larger breakdown of this page is if you look at your students, their number one that they identified is delegates authority while maintaining accountability. We don't usually hear that from students. That is really interesting. It's a very mature outlook on leadership and what that means. So, delegating authority while maintaining accountability, two groups said that. It's students and other that had it in their top six out of 26. So, again, awesome awesome job, students. Also here similarly again, you'll see that um develops trust and works collaboratively with diverse groups and community are in staff members and students. Okay? They both have that. And then students alone had experience in implementing practices that support student safety and mental health. Again, your students are asking for that for that background and for that support in the next leader, which I think is really great. Um they also effectively or has knowledge with equity leadership challenges and opportunities. That was only in your students um group as well. And then accommodating different perspectives was in the other, which is also important, I think. So um staff members finally had the sixth one. Staff members are the only ones that identified visibility and accessibility in their top six. So I think they want someone that they will see in their buildings. Staff wants someone who's going to be accessible, especially in a district your size, that can be difficult to do. And everyone understands that, and yet visibility and accessibility from staff to your superintendent is important, also. Okay, that is the end of the quantitative information slicing and dicing of data. Uh the next many pages I'm not going to go through in detail other than we put a sort of a summary statement at the beginning with these qualitative questions. So um we had on average 800 people out of 1128 that took the survey who took the time to answer at least one open-ended question. Some people answered all four. And so that's unusual, too, because people tend to say top six, top six, and they didn't have to answer all of the questions to be counted. A few people just answered one or two questions and they were done. And if they hit submit, their answers are in here. So it doesn't mean that an incomplete survey is not counted. However many questions you answered, if it was submitted, you are in here. So we want to make sure of that. But to have 800 people generally speaking take time to type or handwrite answers to open-ended questions is phenomenal. Uh so, student responses are summarized later on page 45, but for for this group, um the four questions, what are some of the good things taking place here? What challenges do you see ahead over the next 5 years? What does the next superintendent need to know about the history of the school district and community in order to succeed? And additional comments, what else do you want to share with us? So, these themes that I'm going to share with you right now on the next page are from um the groups that were parents and caregivers, staff members, community members, business owners and district partners, and the other category. Those are the folks that we're going to walk through here. All right, good things taking place in the district. I think summary statements are helpful when you have this many responses. So, all the good things taking place, there were five themes that did emerge. Uh the the most was the dedicated and caring staff. That was what people most commonly commented on in terms of the good things happening here. People also acknowledge the wide range of student opportunities in Hopkins Public Schools. And they spoke to the inclusive and supportive school culture that exists here. The fourth theme that emerged was your district's strong commitment to equity and belonging. And the last theme from open-ended responses again are the growing focus on academic rigor and achievement. So, each of these five areas are broken out in more detail um later in the report, and that I'm not going to go through because there's so much information there, but each of these areas has representative quotes under each of them as well. So, the next category in the open-ended questions was what are the challenges you're going to see over the next 5 years? And it was money. You know, financial strain and budget priorities. Um I doubt any of these are surprise to the school board, again because you showed so much alignment with your community and your staff and stakeholders and students. Um, but financial strain was top of mind in the responses. Next in line was declining enrollment and family retention. Keeping families here, um, that are resident families. There was a third trend of a challenge around academic rigor and uh, direction of the district. While it was also cited as a strength, which is unusual. People saw it in both ways, correct? Um, student achievement and academic outcomes ties to that question, I believe, of academics. That was a a fourth trend. And the last trend that really emerged was the staffing and workforce stability. Uh, you are not alone in that. I think every report we've done this year in all the searches, we are hearing about staff overload and budget cuts and uh, and burnout. So, you're not alone, but that doesn't make it okay. What the next superintendent needs to know in order to be successful here. Uh, people really want people to under- uh, the new superintendent to understand that diversity and academic expectations go hand in hand here. Um, it is a both and, not an either or. And also, the second thing that folks pointed to, there were six themes here, is that trust, transparency, and communication matter very deeply. The third trend on the next page is they want the next leader to know how close-knit and how highly diverse this community is. And I heard a lot about that in the focus groups. When I'm able to talk to folks in person and say, "Tell me more about that." or "What do you mean by that?" They always point to this and they're so proud of the diversity in this district and in the students in particular. It just It was really It was great. It was great to hear that. Um, another uh, thing they think someone should know is that the reputation of the district matters as well. And, um, another trend that staff relationships are going to be central to the district's success. And I think ultimately the success of the superintendent. The last trend here was that leadership style will shape confidence moving forward. And increasing visibility is always important, collaboration is important or important, um, data as a an information point is important, um, respectful of institutional knowledge. There's a history here and it matters. And people don't want a change maker to come in and change everything that's wonderful about Hopkins Public Schools and about the community. They need to understand it, however. And then the additional comments, what else do you want to tell us? Uh, there were comments really on a theme about moving forward, um, with transparency in the direction of the district. And so that was the only theme that really emerged for that. I won't go through all of these pages other than I'm just going to let folks know that if you want more detailed information, for example, here, what are the good things taking place in Hopkins, it is broken out by those five themes. The wording might be slightly differently, but the first one, for example, talks about your dedicated, caring, and highly skilled teachers, staff, and school leaders. On the right side, you can see how many responses were tagged with that theme or how many people it arose for. So, it is in order of priority. And so this was the highest one and then you'll find all these comments down here about how wonderful the staff are in the buildings, um, and across the district. So, I won't go through it all, but then you can see the next theme here about the wide range of academic, arts, language, and extracurricular and academics is 217 responses. So, for those who want to take a really deep dive into this, I'd encourage you to go over this and read comments as well. But I'm going to jump ahead right now to page 45 just to review the student responses at a high level with you. Page 45. >> Andreason. Yeah, just Barb, as you're You don't have to look at me, keep scrolling. Um, but just to say as I was reviewing these, it one of those word map of like what word appears the most kind of popped into my head cuz it just kept being like teachers, teachers, teach you know, and so it was just really lovely to see. So, if someone wants to take time to review these, it's sometimes I think such a good practice to be reminded of who we are and what makes um who we are beautiful. And so, seeing teachers and the music and these sorts of things just pop from actual comments was really beautiful and I had this lovely map in my head as I reviewed it. So, thank you for sharing some of this. Yeah. Absolutely. It was really fun in the student focus group as well cuz students aren't always the most verbose and they don't know me, they don't know who I am. So, they're just not going to immediately start talking but that first question, but what are some of the good things happening here? What do you really like about going to school in Hopkins? Oh my gosh, teachers, staff, coaches. That was an easy answer for the students in that group. So, it was really wonderful to see that coming from them directly. So, uh the student focus group and the student survey, you want to notice a little bit of a change in language. I know I talked about this in our interview as well but our student survey, it's the exact same survey but it's in plain language. And so, you know, what are some of the things you like? What challenges are you going to face? You know, what do they need to know in order to do a good job? So, it's just simpler language for the teen brain and I think that contributes to more students perhaps being willing to take the whole survey cuz it can be a little long for them sometimes. But their input here is separated out. Again, this is from open-ended question questions. What they like about their school and or the district really were in three areas. Um, number one, that it's welcoming and inclusive. They're really proud, really proud of the diversity of the student body and they just acknowledge that. That was the main thing they talked about. Um, in the survey then they also talked about caring teachers, staff, um, having go-to people that they trust, that they know care about them, and they also really like the variety of classes and activities that are available that to them here in Hopkins Public Schools. That being said, they saw some challenges, and for them, funding and budget was also at the top. I think they're not unaware of the challenges you have with school funding here in the state of Minnesota and in your district. So, they did say that that's something that concerns them. They also said there's going to be a challenge around academic rigor and preparation. Advanced learning options, preparation for their futures, etc. They did point to that as something that they wanted to highlight and might be a challenge for the next leader. And staffing shortages and teacher shortages. Um that again is not unusual, but it is unusual, I think, for students to be aware of it, as aware as they are here in Hopkins, so. What does the next superintendent need to know in order to do a good job? They want them to be kind, fair, and respectful. Uh again, sort of those soft skills are emerging from them because they were also looking for empathy and creativity and all of that. They also want the superintendent to know that this is a very diverse and very welcoming community. And that their voices matter. So, student voice and student connections matter, and they want the superintendent to consider that. That is it, other than the detailed survey summary. And if you want to really um feel great about this district, so I think you already have cuz you've looked at this for a while, but if you want to just read student comments about what they like about this district and the things that matter to them, it's just really refreshing, and it's a it's a beautiful thing to see what they say about going to school in Hopkins. So, that is all I'm going to cover because again, it's 53 or so pages of a lot of information, but I'm going to pause and first of all, just see if you have questions, and I appreciate you asking questions as we went through it, also. I just had a question, and and I may have missed if you mentioned it, but do we have a percentage of the students that um completed the open-ended questions? Like, were there there less of them? Kind of like the community members. I believe so. Okay. >> do the data crunching, but I don't think it was the 800 out of 1120 that the adults had. I do think it was fewer than that. Okay. Um but I don't have the exact number. Sorry. Thanks. >> Okay. Any other questions? Chair, turn recent. Yes. >> Yes. Hi, Barb. So, thanks for the report. This is awesome. Um and this maybe segues a little bit into the interview, but is it reasonable to ask the next person, be like, "Hey, you know, have you reviewed this report? What do you think? Like, what would you do?" I mean, Mhm. is that like Do you Are people going to read it and like almost be expected to answer? Mhm. Okay. Uh candidates who want this job will read this report. >> Okay. Some of them will read it five or six times at a minimum. Okay. Mhm. And I think you'll be able to tell from the answers they're giving you whether they have or not. Right. Uh you certainly could still ask, "Have you read the report and what do you think about it?" That would certainly be an option for you to think about. Going to say they would probably reference it. Okay. We like supers that do their homework. Mhm. Yeah. Okay. That's fair enough. Uh do you hear the voices of your constituents in here? You know, I noticed the alignment between the board and the people that elected you to your position. Do you hear those voices in here, or do you think we're missing groups of folks that didn't participate with what's in here? Um Okay. I saw some nodding, so I think that's a good sign. Is there anyone who has thoughts on that? Um I do hear our voices, certainly, and I wish, like, one of the only things that I wish is knowing for sure that we captured some of our quieter voices. Um and I understand kind of the constraints of the survey and time. Um But you know, we know how large and how many people the uh our community really is. And these are very strong numbers, which I am glad to see. And we kind of don't really know that. Mhm. I will say that I agree with um Treasurer Hartland. That's why I asked about the the demographics or the disaggregated data in these questions, just because I do these are very strong answers and I um appreciate all of the data that is had given us like throughout the answers. Um and it is like the it feels like, you know, it's like the um what we have been hearing over the past few years. Um just want to make sure that we did capture some of the more vulnerable voices in the in the survey. So, um yeah, so I would say that I think we may have missed a little bit of the community here. Though I'm confident that the number of people who um turned out to do the survey may have represented some of those voices. So, Thank you for asking that. And I should share that um 2 years ago we had uh two districts where we asked race and ethnicity. We didn't ask age, but race and ethnicity were in the survey. And what we learned after the fact is it um gave respondents pause. Why are you asking that? And are my answers going to be tied to my race or tied to my ethnicity? And so there was some suspicion around why we were asking it and what we were going to do with the data. Um so we haven't offered it again since because it seemed to raise more questions and create some angst perhaps among folks that were wondering about it. But um we didn't ask it in this case. You're correct. Oh, yeah. And the And the only reason why I asked about age was just because I wanted sometimes I see that there's just like this generational gap of understanding. So sometimes like our older generation have a different perception of you know, public schools and our younger students may have like different like there's just like a different perceptions of public education and that's the only reason I had asked. Just wanted to see some of those trends. That was it. Have you done a survey with any of the large market research firms in the last couple years where they really truly it's not opt-in it's the by zip code and by age and demographics they they will get targeted feedback for you on things. Have you done one of those lately in Hopkins? >> Yeah, we had one when we were preparing for our referendum. Okay. Yep. Yep, Morris Leatherman. Um my my second question besides that is um can this go on the website? Can you put it on the superintendent search landing page? I always want to check it with the board but I would highly recommend that it be placed there for candidates and for community members and staff to read but I always want to talk to the board first. Awesome. Yeah, I think that that makes sense to me. Is that consensus of the board? I see nods all around. Yeah. Okay, great. Um well um or can you send it to our director interim director of communications to Yes. to do that. >> Yes. And I I included her on the email Friday when I sent it to all of you as well. So I'll just send her a quick note or a text and let let her know to place it on the website. So that's great and I know candidates will be excited to see it, too. Yeah. So then that does lead to the conversation about um what might be next as far as uh public input in the interview process. And so you've got uh the information in front of you that does say options one, two, and three. And so there's a couple of ways to look at it. I don't have it in front of me. I guess I handed them all out. But um typically we will say this is up to you, board. What do you want to do next? And there are pros and cons to all three of the options that you have in front of you there. So, one option is to rely on the stakeholder summary report. Thank you so much. To rely on the stakeholder summary report as the voice of stakeholders um throughout the interview process. And that colored sheet, this colored sheet, is your summary statement of this report, and I'll make sure you have that next to you during all of the interviews and all of the deliberation. So, that is one option. Another option is to create interview committees, and those committees would interview most likely the finalists in round two, which would be two or three people. The reason we'd recommend if you do that it be done in the second round is you're asking a lot of time from stakeholders to interview six people. Um it's just exhausting. And so, the board might interview six people, or seven, or five, we don't know yet. Uh but generally speaking, when it's two or three, it's a little more doable for people to take time out of their busy lives to participate in interviews separate from the board. The third option is where representative groups um rather than interviewing candidates separately, they would have someone, you know, you'll have public People will be sitting here during the interviews, it's public. They are in, you know, public sector jobs, but uh people in the audience might be providing you feedback on a form about the strengths and weaknesses of the two or three people that you interview. So, it's feedback on the school board's interview, not feedback from a separate interview that those groups have conducted. So, those are the three most common processes. Um we could come up with something in addition to this or in place of this. Most districts the last 3 years have gone with option one. There's been a general movement away from separate interview committees. It doesn't mean you couldn't do it, and it's still not a great idea. But traditionally, you know, in back when So, we we've always done it, there were always committees that interviewed um candidates in addition to the board. I think that's slid out of favor a little bit as boards um coming out of the pandemic tried to sort of reclaim their decision-making authority because there was so much pushback and so many people wanted to tell board members what you had to do that the superintendent search since it's your only employee was an area that board members could say this is our decision. We have to sit with this. This is our employee. We will oversee them. And so it it moved in that direction, I think as a result of some of the pendulum swinging back after the pandemic. Um another reason is that on occasion if there are interviews of finalists groups you may end up hiring someone that didn't interview very well with a different group. So for example, if there's a parent group and the parents interviewed Jane Doe and John Doe. Well, let's say that Jane Doe knocks it out of the park with the parents and they come they're so excited about her after their interview and then John Doe fell flat. And then you come into the board interviews and it's opposite. And Jane Doe does not do well in the board interview and John Doe knocks it out of the park with you. There is some risk of frustration that you ask people for their input and you didn't do what they told you that you should do. So managing expectations if you do have interview committees is going to be really really important. We'll talk about the fact that they're in an advisory capacity only. You never use the word hiring committee. That's an unfair expectation cuz you seven are the hiring committee and that's it. Uh but they could be interview committees and they could provide input. I don't think they should rank the candidates and tell you one, two, and three who they think is the best. They could be invited to provide an overall view of strengths and weaknesses. Um and you could do the same kind of thing with the audience input form on that on number three. Asking people to provide feedback. We have a form they could use to provide um strengths and then areas of growth that they think the two or three people would have. Um aside from this sometimes there's um meet and greets where it's there's no feedback, no formalized feedback, but candidates sort of meet with different stakeholder groups, just coffee and cookies or something like that. Uh you could do a large group interview, you know, 20, 30, 40 people um get to sit in a room with candidates one at a time, and I moderate and ask questions of the candidates, and people get to listen to the answers and provide feedback. Um you could really do anything. We just want you to be very aware of the the ripples that'll occur from any decision you make about additional input from public uh the public in your selection process. So, I turn it back over to Chair Andresen to facilitate your conversation around what you might want to do. I do need direction tonight though, if it's something that you want to include, because your second round of interviews will be here before we know it, and we need to start planning for it. Thank you for that. Um I did have a clarifying question. Um So, right now we're just talking about the public input during the interview process, if we wanted to include in, you know, our final three um process, tours of the school, interactions with staff, students, community members, that could still be an add-on. Absolutely, and I think >> Regardless of which of these three we select, correct? Tours are always expected by the final round of candidates. So, tours Building tours, and sometimes you make the building tours longer, so during the day they can meet with people in each building, staff, >> Yep. food service. You could just kind of make the tour. The difference I think is between um interaction and input. So, interaction with the candidates is more I won't say it's simpler, but it's yeah, it's the it it is the wandering around the building, it's meeting people, it's making eye contact, shaking hands, having a cup of coffee. That's interaction. Input, which is what this is, is do you want formal input from groups or group about your finalists versus just a chance to interact with them. And if they're just interacting with people, you will still get feedback, right? You'll each get different feedback from different people via text, via phone calls, emails. You'll You'll hear from folks. Um this is a formalized process, though. Thank you for letting me clarify that. I appreciate it. >> I just wanted to make sure that we weren't um by choosing one of these saying no to that. So, just make that clear. Um so, yeah, I would invite What are What are some thoughts, initial reactions of everyone on the different options? >> Chair Andreason. Yes. Director Thompson. Th- Thanks for laying this out, Barb. I think um obviously, I'm kind of inclined one and three kind of jump out to me. One question I had about number three, when you mention an audience input form, is there ever a time where that's open to anybody who watched the interviews or or would that be limited to representatives from different groups if we're pursuing option three? Yes. Uh you certainly can make it open to anyone for that matter. Um I will be encouraging you not to live stream your interviews. >> Oh, right. Okay. >> Because it gives a significant advantage to that second third person. Because they'll watch the first one possibly, right? >> Yeah. So, people watching it live online and providing input does unlevel the playing field for the last second second or third person. But, you could still live stream them. I'm just going to recommend you don't, but you could. And then you could have a uh a form online that says, "Hey, fill out this form." We've seen that done. The challenge you risk is it can be orchestrated. There will be potentially um campaigns organized for or against the two or three finalists. Cuz by now, the names are long public, right? And so, there could be groups that would say, "We have to do everything we can to make sure the board hires her." And so, they could organize 300 people to put positive comments in there. Um similarly, there'll be people that are not a fan of one or two of your finalists, and they'll orchestrate a smear campaign. Um we did have a search where we had more than 700 responses come in, and I had cautioned the board that this could happen. And of those 700, I would say there was probably 80 that were legitimate, and the rest it was clearly an unfair attempt to influence your decision. So, the data was useless. We threw it out. But, you could do it. >> Okay. That doesn't sound appealing. >> could do it. Just be be aware of the risk, I guess. By doing that, you you do allow, right? It's unfortunate, but Yeah. Chair Endresen. Yes. I think one of the things we could do, um Director Thompson, and forgive me if I don't fully understand the process, but we can invite people to send emails, right, to the board if they watch the interviews, right? Like they can people could will still likely send feedback regardless of whether we um collect formal input or not. The evening you announce your semi-finalists, uh you will start getting emails because the names are public, and people will share personal experiences, and they'll do Google searches, and they will tell you what they think based on that and that alone. So, yes, you will hear. You certainly will hear. Yes. Any other thoughts? Yes. Uh Chair Endresen, I Barb, thank you again for all of this. I I think as it relates to uh option three, uh which I am a one and three-er, and take wisdom from prior experience that you were sharing with us, Barb. When it says invite representative groups, what are the representative groups that you might suggest or like Well, you're welcome for having accidentally thrown you a nice soft ball to give us now this handout. >> segue. Thank you so much. >> You're welcome. Anytime. If there's interest in doing that, those are some groups to consider. So, genuine question. So, I didn't know that. So, I'm just I I'll just continue then and throw this out there. You know, one of the things I think we have been naming is wanting to be intentional about really having this be a community-centric, community-led process even as we're the folks who will be making this final hiring decision. And I am I'm so grateful and pleased to see the resonance with folks who have been engaging. And I'm especially again so heartened by our students and I want to take incredibly seriously what staff and teachers are saying, etc. So, I think what my wonder right now and my leaning in that would be toward number three and trying to be intentional about really having disparate um representatives from across our community be present and help us, you know, to be to have a formal cuz again I recognize we'll hear from folks, but I think even to the question of who's quieter, who's louder, um to be in intentional conversation and hearing from like what are our executives I'm just looking at this executive assistants. What are some of our coaches saying? What are elementary or early childhood folks uh teachers or staff saying? What are or of our parents saying? What are you know, a few of our um like from our we have different Senate districts or city leaders, you know, just trying to get a smattering of folks who care about our schools um to bring what their their input uh to be able to come and hear with us. Uh I for sure I will just say I for sure feel very uncomfortable with with option two from just uh I want everyone to be able to be in the room um to be able to hear and respond to the same experience um of a person and would want to make sure however we decide the input if we did go with option three, we made sure students were included in that as well. Um so that's just I'm not that's not a like we will do three, but I that's my leaning is where I would say I am right now. Thank you. Any other Yes. Yeah, I I I especially think teachers and staff Um would be a key focus for me. Um I think they I mean, we represent just by definition a lot of community, right? So and we're as we kind of talked about we're relatively aligned, so and we're all parents here anyways. Um but you know, I I think teachers especially um they're going to have to uh be subject to the person's leadership and so very interested to hear you know, this you know, not just teachers, but all the staff. I think I'd lean that direction. Director Nelson. Yes. Um thank you. I uh tend to agree, but I I wobble a little bit on three. Um My concern with three while I'm thinking, we could do kind of what's what um Director Shaw mentioned. Which treasure? Director? Director. Director Gel mentioned. Um and limit it to internal groups like staff, teachers, and whatnot. I get concerned with opening it super wide to community because I don't know how it's even physically possible to ensure that someone is going to say, "Well, I wasn't invited." Or I wasn't heard. Um it's how would we choose a representative of community? Um it just seems a little bit arbitrary in that sense. And I view the, you know, the public the input survey as the community's opportunity to speak. And so the community at large generally to speak. And so the possibilities include list here. Um I think it would make sense to perhaps have um leaders of the different departments perhaps attend the interviews and provide feedback. So your recommendation would be yes, three if we limit it to only internal people. Yeah, like the cabinet. Like someone from each cabinet department or something like that. Um anyone else have thoughts? Chair Endresen. Yes. I can completely appreciate that problem of like how do we pick a representative, but feel like it's an opportunity to be really intentional about some voices that we don't necessarily um at least know that we hear from and would be interested in getting a parent representative from various parent affinity groups. And we could potentially issue the invitation to the leader of the parent affinity group and like have them make that decision. I might also I mean, what we said about teachers um and staff, they are important voices and I would welcome them here. I see an ideal size group is 7 to 10 people. Personally, I feel like the teachers and staff also had an opportunity to weigh in on this and would also look for um staff a staff member from building and grounds and a paraprofessional and just voices that we know can hear. And so, I I'm kind of curious about this ideal group size. So, like what these people would come, they would be they don't make public comment, right, during interviews. So, people would come here and then after the interviews, we'll get something from from you, Barb, and then they'll give us feedback in either like answering kind of wrote questions or open-ended questions. Is that what will happen? Correct. Thanks for asking about that. So, the reason the group size is what it is is because um if you have Let's say there's 10 people providing up to three strengths and up to three weaknesses on three candidates. That's a lot. >> do math in their head that fast? Um each person 60 comments, correct? If each person 10 people and they each provide six thoughts, that's 60 thoughts. That's if there's 10 people and you having to absorb 60 thoughts, maybe 30 strengths and 30 You can do that and you take as much time as you need. But if it starts to get to 15 or 20 people for you to absorb that raw data and process it prior to your deliberations, it can take a really long time. Um or you could put your deliberations off by a day and give yourselves that evening to review all of the input if you want the raw data cuz we could also take all of the comments that come in. Uh we could run it through AI and come up with the themes for you and you could look at the themes but not the specific raw data and comments that people are sharing. So it's more or less an efficiency so that you're not bogged down with 15 pages of you know, single spaced comments that you need to try to read through and aid in your decision-making. But you you could do whatever you want. This is ideal. If you want to have 20 or 30 people doing that, yes, you could do that as well. It's an electronic link. I would have the email addresses. They'd need to be identified in advance so I could reach out to them and talk about the expectations. They need to be here. I'm going to say three. Maybe you'll have two. But they have to commit to being here for all three interviews and provide feedback on all three finalists. They can't just do it on one or two people and then walk away. So they have to be committed to spending a great deal of time and energy on it. But if they can do that, I also send them a a form in advance to practice with so they know how to use the audience input form where they click this candidate up to three strengths. You can only you can enter one of each, one strength, one opportunity for growth if you wanted, but most people put three cuz that's what they notice. Uh we can make it anonymous or we can ask for their names. Um that's up to you, but the volume of information that we get from this feedback is why we suggest a smaller group, but you could do whatever works. You could do 50 people and then deliberate the day after the interviews if you want to do that and not make a decision that same night. So did that answer the question? Yes, and to clarify then, the real burden then would be on us and it is quantity of information. >> Correct. And that is the way. Mhm. I hear that and still want 10 parents and 10 staff members and >> Mhm. I do. I feel like it's like the one opportunity to do this. Mhm. Um and I might be alone in that and well, of course I'm just a single vote, but So, you're saying you want a group of You want seven groups of 10 people? Not seven groups of 10 people, but I I mean I there's a lot of people on this possibilities like Chamber of Commerce representatives. No, not them. Um Sorry, Chamber of Commerce representatives. Um someone's sad. I'm sorry listening to me. I very much value your input into our communities. Um but yes, a lot of people from our various bargaining groups and some of our departments and um multiple groups of parents, particularly you know, groups of parents of students with disabilities, um of our Spanish-speaking group, our LGBTQ group. I think that that is I don't know. It just feels like the single opportunity that we have. Yeah. To get that kind of input. >> what I like about the description up here is that um it's it's recommended or it's an option to have the group select someone from their membership, which I like instead of just going only to the leadership. Um and I also heard you say Barb that this is a significant commitment. So, what we may find is that we invite 20 people and we only get 10 people able to commit to the full process. I mean, that might be what happens. We shouldn't count on that. We should be ready and able to process all of, you know, the full 20 input if that's what we choose to go with, but odds are we probably will not get full representation of who we invite are my thoughts. Yeah. Chair Andresen, um just to ask clarifying questions. So, we have second round interviews scheduled April 20th starting at 4:30, correct? And so, and how how long did we let's say there were three, how how long do we ballpark that we're sitting here for those? >> Usually the second round of interviews are an hour and 15 minutes each. Maybe an hour and a half. And is there a break in the middle or With a 15-minute break between. So, if you started at 4:30 and you had three people and did an hour and 15-minute interviews, you would be done at 8:45. And then you wouldn't be able to start deliberations till 9:15 at the earliest because we need some time to tabulate your input on our our EMD rubric. And if people put provide their input at 8:45 to 9:00, 9:15, we'll get it back to you by 9:30 or 10:00 and then you've got to review all of it in time to then make your decisions and your deliberations. Rachel, I'm excited. >> are the deliberations closed or is that that's open? All open. Okay. Mhm. And so, will community members be here while we're deliberating? The who who'll be here? Like will Like will they could be. Okay. >> Oh, yeah. People will hang out to listen to you. Usually the candidates don't hang out here and listen. Even if you're not live streaming your interviews, you could choose to live stream your deliberations if you'd like to do that and that's a conversation we'll have it next board meeting about this. But yeah, people will be here. I I've had people in the audience sitting and listening to boards deliberate at 2:00 or 2:30 in the morning waiting for the board to make a decision on who they're going to hire. That happens. I hope we get a big thing of coffee. And then Chairwoman Jason, we also have a school board meeting the next day on the 21st. So, is it possible we could deliberate the next day? >> Like all the way through the night? If we get the 4,000 inputs that Treasure Heartland wants us to have, we will be here all the way through. You're welcome in advance. I'll bring snacks. Chairwoman Jason, to just um, to Director Thompson, is it an option for us, like you if I'm understanding you correctly to say, can we do all the interviews, receive input, have that be gathered on Monday night, and then we come back for our already scheduled board meeting on Tuesday, and do our deliberations having not stayed here until 2:00 a.m., um, but leaving at 10:00 or 9:30 or something the night before and do deliberations either as an earlier workshop kind of space where we do the deliberation or as part of our board meeting? I I would be cautious about that because we would have a hard stop in deliberations to do our board meeting. Okay. Um, that would be my only hes- hesitation with that. Um, Can we Yeah. Cuz we have to come to some sort of con- conclusion, correct? Whether it's yes, this individual or no, none. Um, and we would have to stop if we hadn't gotten there to conduct our board meeting. >> If we did it as a Could we do it as a part of our board business during the board meeting? Um we could. You could add it in there. Obviously, it just needs to be posted in the agenda with the 3 days notice that you're going to be deliberating as a part of your regular meeting on the 21st. You could certainly do that. Some Some boards, I guess you could also at a regular meeting amend the agenda at a regular We could. Correct. You could add it to the agenda that evening. Cuz it wouldn't be a special I'm used to special meetings where you can't amend the agenda, but a regular meeting you could that night amend it to include deliberations on the Georgia Um I'm wondering, are we So, we're solving for a problem that we're worried that getting the additional feedback, we would need more time to include that. So, we would want to deliberate the next day instead of deliberating after the interviews. Is that what we're considering? Was that your intent behind your question, Clerk? I mean, Director Thompson. Yeah, that's kind of where my mind was going. Mhm. Thoughts? I think that would be a good idea cuz it also gives us enough time to like go home and just like really think about it without feeling forced to give an answer cuz I think after the round of interviews, you know, I don't want to us to feel like we have to rush through the interviews cuz it's getting late and we have to work in the morning or something. So, um I think it would be good if we could amend the agenda for us to have that um to have that deliberation there. Um but then quickly also, I was just wondering too like would it be possible if we can maybe add or invite one of our government members or partners to attend something like a city council member maybe be a part of it because I think about like for example through transportation they had to read you know answer to some of those highway 7 questions and so we utilize them as partners when we make decisions at times so I think they may have some type of good input into maybe who they would want to work with at a district level. How does having them be one of the Yeah. people here? Mhm. Um my one hesitation and I I would look to you um Barb to tell me if this is a consideration is if we do um break after the interviews for deliberations the following day would there be a concern of transparency and undue influence happening um after we break before we deliberate. That's where my mind goes. There there is always the risk that if you break and come back the next day that there are people who might assume that board members are speaking to one another off outside of the board table about what you're going to do that evening. And crafting a plan to come in on the evening of the 21st with a decision versus hashing it out at the table in real time. And also >> I don't mean that you're doing that by any means but there are people that might start that and >> also community members or outside influence feeling like they can come to us and have discussions that would have Yeah right that would have influence on our deliberations. That's a risk. That's what I worry about. It's just so weird like if I do an interview for one of my staff I don't finish the interview and offer right away. I I have to think about it Right? So, there's pluses and minuses, but if we have to make a snap decision, I don't know. It seems less fruitful than rumors, right? Yeah, I mean the the process that I went through at 287 is it's not a snap decision. Um it takes a long time. Um and I think that um because these this process has to be open um and transparent that it does create that idea if you decide not to do it that way. People do start talking. Could we make a statement like that we all agree to? We'll be handing in our cell phones and we don't Like they do for jury duty? Board devices? Leave locked here? >> We could put them in the bags. The high school can give it to them. Yeah. Yes. And just remember this would this if we don't do deliberations we'll be deliberating over two max three finalists. So, it's not like we're have to go through a list of six people. We'll we'll have already narrowed the field down a substantial amount and so really there will either be option A, ideally option A or option B or C. Um which I think makes deliberations seem less overwhelming. Another idea I had was could the input be part of the first round interviews? Yes. Input from these different groups and different representatives. Yes, the challenge would be we'd want them to watch all six in order to provide feedback on everybody instead of just their favorites or their least favorite. It has to be as level as possible. So, the time commitment for those folks, I mean that's probably an 8 to 9 hour day to include six people. >> And And we're doing that during a work >> Work day. Yeah. And so, that would severely limit who could participate. But they could Oh, sorry. They could watch the video, but I I hear what you're saying. That's like an 8-hour commitment. I don't know anyone that has that kind of extra time to do so. Uh So, multiple things. One is I do my best work between 11:00 and 1:00. So, I'm I just wanted to at least explore what I It seemed like you you were naming. Um uh And the wonder about if we should look at a two-night. And I could go either way in terms of timing. I think for me just the the two things that keep coming back to me where um related to point three. One is Director Hyman, I want to take seriously what you named about again, what is so beautiful about what we have heard from our community where there is so much resonance between you know, what we already were bringing forward as board members who are listening uh to our community. And so, that's wonderful. And I think then um there's the particularity of who's in the room as our finalists. And that's where it's like a next phase of a more representative group of our community because I know there are always things where having diverse voices helps me to see things that I just might not have focused on or might not have heard a particular word. Um and it and it might have hit that person in a way that all of a sudden I I'm expanded in my thinking. Um I'm given that what we do know from just it's true, like the next leader matters. And I want our community to feel that this was as collaborative and I want them to feel as positive as possible. So, that's where I'm more prone to not inviting the entire every single human, which would be my inclination and impossible. Um but I really do appreciate like you uh highlighted to us um Sharon Driessen about approaching the various bargaining units or groups and as you had named Treasure Heartland to um particularly affinity groups, students to say, "Hey, can you identify someone who you would like to as a representative of your your voice and your community constituency uh to be able to give us input. And so, I I do think if we can incorporate that um I'm willing to metabolize quickly uh and to stay in the space and I appreciate you highlighting again it is only two or three as opposed to six or seven people that we're going to metabolize and I'm hopeful as often happens in these spaces that if we're hearing echoes from let alone this table, but then the input like I think that there's going to be some probably deep resonance again and clarity. And then we can all leave that night at 2:00 a.m. feeling confident or 10:30. I'm okay with that just to say. Um um that we could feel confident. So, I'd be interested in that and um Mhm. Do we want to do uh I first of all, appreciate all the input. I think it's really good um and do we just want to do like around the table quick? Um one, two, or three. What are you like give your vote. So, Director Hyman. I'd say three and be very mindful of the representatives and groups we choose to ensure there are diverse voices in the room. Director Gao. Uh, three with teacher focus. Or staff focus. Vice Chair Roper. LSC, three. Um, I will say three as well. Treasurer Heartland. Three. Three. Three. Wow, it's unanimous. Look at us. All right, so three and then I think that um, do we need to make a decision tonight about what our representative groups look like. I like your smile. It would It would be great. Um, however, your timeline does allow a little extra time because round two is April 20th, correct? Is that April 20th? >> Yes. So, it's about three and a half weeks. If you could decide this within a week, Mhm. the internal coordination is what takes a while and I probably need to work with Natalia or Dr. Mary Perry Reed to get the groups and an invitation sent to them that says, "Please send one person's name and email address to Natalia by this deadline." And once she collects all of those names and and emails, then she turns them over to me and then I need at least a week to work with them on what to expect on April 20th and thank them for participating and send them the practice links. So, I think if that can happen within a week or so, week and a half, um, that'll be okay cuz it's not as if your round two interviews are in two weeks. Mhm. Right? We have a little time. So, if that helps, you can think about it and as a group figure out something in the next um, next week and a half. I think it's great it was unanimous for number three. Yeah. That's not always the case, so that's really great. The The what you're going to do is the easy part, the how you're going to do it is the tough as evidenced by this conversation, correct? >> Yes. So, the how just needs to be figured out. Yeah. Okay. >> Um, question Oh, sorry. Yeah, you can go ahead. Is there ever an an ever a rare moment where there is like two candidates that are just so good the board cannot decide that they have to do like third round interviews? Yes. Okay. >> I got let's hope that's the That would be awesome. >> That would be a very good people that are so amazing that we can't decide. Okay. If you're down to two people, uh first thing we'll try if you're really, really torn. You can't decide. The first thing we'll do is we'll go to your leadership profile and go line item by line item and talk about each of them in terms of every single thing you're looking for. Who's stronger, who's not. And then we'll go to this sheet and talk about your stakeholders input and what they're looking for item by item by item. And you start to maybe see something on those two documents that sways you more toward one than the other. If you're still stuck, the third option and I I don't like it when it does, but it sometimes you have to go to deficits and who has less experience in some areas. We try to keep the conversation conversation at the board table strength-based. So, you're talking about positive things in terms of these people who have just shared with you their time, their energy, and the enormous amount of work it takes to apply for a superintendent position that we try to be very respectful and not point out any areas that they maybe could grow in or you've heard concerns about. But we could go there if we need to. We just try to avoid it at all costs and keep it on the positive side. There's good people out there though. I I sometimes feel badly for boards that you can't hire co-superintendents. Um, they're they're just that that good and it's tough to make that decision. But you have been elected to do it. So, congratulations board. Thank you. You get to do it. Mhm. Um, so what I would recommend is um why don't we take the rest of this week to think about who on this list we um would want to be part of this group. And um you can send that to me and then we can see what trends emerge. Does that sound good? And then I can email back to all of you kind of the top We'll do 10. Um or 15. Let's do 15 cuz it should not exceed 15. Um I'll do the top 15 and let's use this possibilities list as what we're working from. So we at least have a Did you have a question? >> No. Just thinking. Um so that we then have something something in common that we're working from. Does that sound good? Uh Chair Chair Endriesen, um is there a concern about open meeting laws? Does this count as a serial meeting if we all email you? That's what my brain was thinking. I was just It's not in yet. Or could go to Barb. >> Nick. Oh, or could it go to you, Barb? It could go to me. Is that what the suggestion is? Have the results come to me? Send it to you and then the top 15 you send back to the board and we can Yep. I can certainly do that. >> Yay or nay? Chair Endriesen. Uh thank you and thanks for entertaining this conversation and process. I just wanted to ask regarding the interview um training and preparation section, how long is that section before I ask my potential question? Um the interview training might take a half hour. Okay. Half hour, 40 minutes and then choosing the interview questions for round two, I'd like to give it at least 20 minutes if not more. I think just my wonder is if we might surface for even you know, 5 minutes you know, what are just the initial thoughts so that that way the community can get a sense of what we might be initially thinking and then um see if there's just any general resonance and then we forward it our own as we think this week to Barb that you then gather, but just wondering if we want to name here for a few minutes. Okay, let's all um and we can start with you. >> Sure. Um name like what our top five >> Great. >> that we're thinking? Great. Um and and we'll go around the table so that everyone gets Yes. Can I ask a quick question first of possibly you, but possibly Dr. Lightfoot, too. How many bargaining groups are there and does that count our principals in there? Yeah. Um Education Association, Clerical Association, SEIU Local 284 para- professionals. Um Community Education. There are two Community Education groups. Um our administrative group, which is our principals. Um custodial representatives. I think that covers all of them. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 7 >> 7 Cuz I do not want us to have the super- >> Nutrition, sorry. Okay. 8 So, what I don't want to do is cut off one bargaining group or one parent group in order to meet this number of 15. And so then maybe Vice Chair Roper Mhm. could you help us quick then just say what the parent affinity groups are? Just like Mhm. so we know. So, I believe that and um I may be off a little bit, but I know there's like the Hopkins Coalition for Black Scholar Success. I know there is the there's APAC. There is the LGBTQIA parent affinity group. There was a Somali parent group. I'm not sure if they're still active, but I think that was them. And then I believe directors out I don't maybe you can support, but is there an like an Asian or like a specific parent group that exists like even with like Chinese immersion? Uh not officially, no. That I'm aware of. Okay. And then I know there's a Latino parent group and we can also reach out to the cultural liaisons to confirm that, but from my understanding that's what currently exists in the district. I know there used to be a Hmong Oh. group. I think that was student though not necessarily parents caregivers. So we'd want to verify that. What about SEEK? Yeah. Yeah, special education advisory. >> we mention it? Yeah. Um No, we didn't mention it. >> There we're talking about student groups too. There's a Black Student Union and the BSU that's at the high school. Yeah, we'll have to decide about students cuz I think like I'm open to that of course if the group wants that. Um so if we include so if there is a Spanish speaking parents group and potentially that covers the Juntos, then potentially we want a Chinese immersion rep parent rep as well. And so then that just what we've named including SEEK with parents of students with disabilities, that's eight bargaining groups. 9 10 11 12 13 14 15. That's 15 people right there. And we don't have students yet. >> And that's no students. In fact, maybe that's eight. It's weird though because like we have one person to represent. I mean, even Xing Xing is not a monolith, right? Like I'm I'm a Xing Xing parent and like okay, like but I don't speak for everybody. And so how how are we going to have our people do that? I mean, that certainly is a problem that assumes like to not do it Yeah. assumes that not having them is the better option, right? So that would be I would advocate for the board not choosing at all, issuing an invitation to each of these groups and it's up to the membership to decide and to say other members can come. Like the the right cuz we said the meeting is open. But that these are the people who are going to receive the input from them that will be Yeah, who will be specifically invited to provide input. And they'll be given this like dead this time frame immediately after the interviews in which to do it. I I mean, I certainly see what your talking about. And so then I just balance that against is it better than to not have that? And I don't think so, but This I I feel like inherently in voting for three, we made that decision that we are that there's going to be one person representing a group, which doesn't feel good. Yeah. No, yeah, and what I mean is like if it's like a very specific thing, right? Like if it's our janitors, right? Like you know, I think there's a lot of shared experience and you know, they are probably more aligned on like what it means to manage a a janitorial service well versus like parent like okay, like we're all parents on this board, right? So I don't know. It's just very to the point I mean, we've talked a little bit about it, but like you know, whose voice and why and now now suddenly somebody's magnified maybe not exponentially but quite a bit, right? And like who made that decision? And was it made with good intent or bad and like it's just very messy that Yeah, I Chair Anderson. Yes. Just to add to the messiness cuz I mean I think about other groups we didn't even name yet, you know, sports, academic or sports, academics, fine arts, like there's other sort of affinity areas, too, and it's like how would we whittle this down to 15? So I I agree it's tough. Um I don't feel strongly about whittling. Yeah, Chair Anderson. Yes. I um just want to name what everyone is saying that we want to hear from so many people and I think everyone at this table wants this to be a real community decision. Um which I think is so great and that's what our community really wants from us. I also want to name that I believe our community members elected us to the board table to represent their interests and we are in tune with those community members and we may not be in tune so much with the bargaining units or the internal groups. Staff, teachers, um janitors, Community Ed. >> Community Ed. Custodial. Custodial, the Yeah. Z, you wrote the whole list down. Um and so I think from the I would love every affinity group and every club and everyone to have an appointed person to come provide feedback because that would be incredible. We would also take a week to make a decision. I worry. Um, so I think what I'm suggesting or proposing is some sort of middle of the road where we intentionally limit who we pick to you know, internal stakeholders or some something like that, so it's there's no um, community kind of outrage or backlash. Uh, yeah, I can hear that and I think it helps narrow down the group and at the same time I don't feel comfortable prioritizing one group of people that have been able to give input over another. And I feel like that's what that does is it elevates um, staff over the rest of the people who contributed to the um, the what the survey. And I would say if staff hadn't had an opportunity to already have their voice heard through the surveys and through the focus groups, then yes. And I guess I I just struggled to say why are we prioritizing them over everyone else on this list. Um, cuz I just to throw throw it out there, I would rather have us have student representatives over um, you know, either parents or and I know people don't like it when I say that, but um, it is you know, a stated focus um, of this board to center student voice in all our work and that is one way we do it. So, yeah, I would be actually more I would lean toward if we're going to limit, let's limit everyone and not prioritize one group over another. Mhm. Were you going to say something, Clark? Well, home gardeners. Um, I I'll pause if someone else has a pressing just response. I'm metabolizing what Yeah. >> Real quick, Chair Anderson, just and I greatly appreciate what you said because we had staff here as well, so why would they be the only ones coming in? When you say to the point where you're not in favor of limiting, like are are are you even thinking of, you know, going back to option one where, you know, we >> Oh, no. >> Okay. I would just say in our deliberations of who we're going to invite, I don't want to prioritize one group over another. So, if we're going to limit and we have to, right, who we invite, let's limit from every group. Not say just staff. Um, and then if we have a couple left over, then we'll have a parent come. Like, I think let's limit everybody. Like, have three bargaining units, three parent, three students, like that sort of thing. >> What? We could draw them out of a hat. We could. >> Did anybody bring a hat? Have you Have a question. >> of like that idea. Yeah, I mean, that's a good idea. >> I do, too. I actually really like the student voice um, being centered as well to be completely honest because we do make a lot of decisions about like the school district and we forget about our most the folks who are being educated which are the students and so if we could invite you know some sent here some student voices I would be a fan of that but also if there would because these three options give a little bit of controversy within I mean within all of them have you seen any other option that school boards have done besides these three that was more equitable or less cuz I just really feel like less is more in some in some instances but just curious to see what have you seen that was creative problem solving when this happens. Are you think are you asking about when you say three are you talking about three groups to invite or Well I'm talking >> going back to the public input options. Going back to the public input option like was there like a optional fourth option that we could choose from to invite folks in. Sure. We've had districts that they struggle with the same thing. They want input but it's also tough because you can't have input from everyone. So ideas are easy and implementation is hard and the implementation is what starts to bog this down. So many people will decide on option two or three and then they get that other list and say well okay now who gets to be a part of it. By trying to include people we will exclude people and it ends so very often they've reversed course and sometimes they also then say well why don't we just invite everybody and have one big group interview of 40 or 50 people and all of them provide input but then they need to do it at least the day before our interviews and we need to ask candidates to come in on the 19th which is a Sunday. That wouldn't work. Um earlier in the day I suppose but for you to have time to digest feedback from 50 people. Usually it's been a full day later that you get that information, but you're interviewing right now around two on a Monday. So, Sunday probably wouldn't work. So, that's just a group they couldn't choose who to and so they just said we'll invite everybody and so it it was a matter of one or two people from each group. You know, they had the PTOs, they had the bargaining units and one or two from each came, but they have to sign up in advance and they have to commit and they have to have an email address so I could work with them. So, that was one great big group and it was separate from the board interview. Other times, the informal interactions during the tours, um they have asked people that gave the tours to provide feedback. And we love to have students accompany on the tours. And so, there was a district that had like two members of the cabinet go with each person in their district tour and they had two students accompany them the whole way and the building administrators obviously showed off their buildings. So, all of those people were given an opportunity to fill out this form based on their tour. So, it was an informal interaction for like six hours or five hours, but those people that were involved in the tour provided feedback through the same form, strengths and opportunities for growth. So, that was another thing people do. Um You you really could do anything that fits fits Hopkins. And I appreciate you recognizing the complexity of this choice. Um we have had districts do a lottery. So, we need one from each of these groups, collect the names of anybody who wants to be a part of it and then in the administrative office, they literally pull out one name out of each of the groups and that's the person that gets to do it. So, that has been done, you know. It's not easy though, so I could certainly see why we're struggling with this one. Um I I think and I might be wrong cuz I wasn't a part of the process, but I think though the option that you mentioned where there were groups involved in the tours who then provided input is something that Hopkins has done in the past. So, I think there is a precedent for that. Am I correct? Nick in that assumption that last time we did a superintendent search that's Um, last time there were multiple interviews with multiple groups and there were separate groups and the candidates each group interviewed each candidate and then provided that feedback to the board for election. Thank you. Option two. Option two. That's the way it always used to be done. Always used to be done, excuse me. That was the way you did a search. So, yep. Chair and Jason. Yes. >> Just one more question. When you had mentioned that one time that you opened the audience input form to everybody and it was so filled out that it was unusable. Would there have been any way to I suppose we kind of ran into that when we did this, but filter it down by, you know, saying what's your affiliation, but people could put anything there. I'm sorry, I talked myself out of my joke. I appreciate that. I'm trying. >> Fine. Yeah, me too. I saw where you were going. Yeah. Um, and yeah, I think it's I think it's tough. I appreciate the com- the comment that you made that by um, being inclusive, we have to be exclusive. Um, and I think it is work that we can do. Um, how are people feeling about creating groups? We could even use our from the survey, the like the four different groups, right? The top respondents, um parent, caregiver, staff member, student. And then we just think how many representatives do we want from each of those groups? Um do we want community members as well? Do we want to just go at it from that? Like have four groups, three groups? With community members, um I think I heard that coming from you, Vice Chair Roper, that you wanted to include community members. Like with city council and that sort of stuff. Oh, yeah. Like city council. I was thinking more so of cuz I feel like our community members have a over like they have a a very big voice in this process like already. Um and so I was thinking more so of like those community partners. So like the government um entities. Yeah, so So you'd want community members included as a group? >> Mhm. Do we have consensus around that? Are we feeling four or three? I just I'm just I'm continuing the riff out loud here, wonder, and I appreciate the wrestling. Um I think again back to the bargaining units and them identifying someone who's representative there. And then uh students groups and identifying some representatives there. So if I'm saying just eight eight and then I wonder about eight community representatives. One of the things when you point out council, you know, versus you know, I think you were naming like what parent groups into what you were also naming, Director Zhao, like, "Oh, so now you're going to speak on behalf of all parents, but in a particular slice?" Are there ways in which like thinking about for instance if we invited the city of Vinatieri to send a council person where they're also representing like the way we're holding community voices, they're also representing a whole demographic. So are there then if we do eight bargaining units, eight students, and eight community members who represent important community constituent groups so like I'll go back to the Chamber of Commerce. Is there someone from the >> said no. Oh, okay. You know, or is there someone from half and someone from the a Chamber of Commerce and from a council or multiple we have lots of cities. So um I'm just wondering if there's some eight then slots for community or uh you know, a leader from mosque or temple or or a church whose representative of particular communities. You know, I'm I'm just riffing a How do you do that? So moving past um >> church and state. So I hear you saying three groups. So staff, students, community, and within community we would include parents. Right? They're part of our community. Yes. >> And and well like for instance a person who is a yeah, PTO or has been involved in the referendum or someone who's been an advocate from an affinity group. Absolutely. >> So three groups. We can say caregiver / community for the third. Any other thoughts? We're talking about 24 groups. So I'm saying that that would be 24. >> No, we're talking about three groups. But >> Eight in each group? 24 people? >> just talking about groups right now. Talking three groups. I'm just talking groups. >> was wondering aloud given we had eight bargaining units. >> Can we decide on groups? How many groups we want? Three? Do you feel good about those three groups? Those work for me. And I would just acknowledge like there's absolutely always going to be not every voice is actually going to be here and not every voice is going to represent every voice within whatever affinity, community, constituency group. I would I think where I'm at is I would rather take that as a like truth of the limitations of a process while having an intentional inclusion of more than just us. That's a calculus for me I'm willing so I'm pro three groups and now the messy details of how we do that in a way that feels right for our broader community and we're not inadvertently causing harm through our process. Chair Anderson? Yes. Um I kind of like that and then also we have seven municipalities so a single council member from each of those is eight of those. I lean towards like excluding external community members that are not staff or parents not because I dislike them. I think that they have valuable voices and they got to answer the survey. And so then us people who are here living the life every day those are kind of my preference just because >> be for staffs staff students and parents. Mhm. Personally just because of trying to think of like one person from half one single council member like just even sending those invitations and collecting their names to draw out of a hat. It Um I don't know. It is complex and I find myself being like, "Fine, one then." Number one then. We just use our survey. Um but I don't actually I don't actually really think that. Um I sort of lean towards This does not of course does not have to be the way it is, but an invitation to every bargaining unit, every established parent affinity group, and then if someone's willing to take on the headache of every other parent, every other sports, band, faith parent that wants to to submit their names by Monday, they know they're committing to the interviews, and two of them are randomly selected, and then we have What is that? Like 16 or 17 people, assuming they all show up. So, if they don't they don't show up, then will we have to redraw a name? If they don't show up the day of the interviews, it's too late. Yeah. Because I will have needed to talk to them in advance, so they understand how to use the form and then understand the commitment. So, if they don't show up that day, then that's they just don't show up. >> of the process. And we have to make that kind of clear on the interview of that. And no, our we are budget season, so this is a crazy question. Do we have any incentives for these parents or folks who come and spend all day with us? I mean, at least an apple or something. Something like an apple. Can we afford an apple? Um But we do that, and then maybe students if they if if our candidates are really going to the buildings to have building leaders show them around, and maybe meet a teacher, possibly students Mhm. and their feedback can be involved there. I don't know. >> You you can use the exact same form after the tours with the tour people as you could use with people who are sitting here watching your interview. You could do both. You could do one or the other. Mhm. I feel like I like that. Um because it's more it's less formal and it's more of an impression. Um and like you were saying Treasure Heartland, it's I feel like it's a really great way to get student input. Um What a wrinkle they'll be they'd have to go to all of them? All the tours? All the tours? I mean the same people >> after the tour. Oh, yeah, they'd have to do each candidate. Yep. >> Glad you asked about that because in that case usually like two or three students go with the same person on the entire tour. And while that tour is at the high school, two or three students are with another person at the elementary school. So they're happening in round robin fashion. So people are only providing feedback on the one person they gave a tour to other than the principals because the principals will be in the buildings showing people around their building, whichever buildings are selected. They'd consistently see all three for example. But the tour guides travel with somebody so they would not see all three of them. Could we could we have them assigned in place? Like you you we're not following you don't follow the candidate you stay at the school or site. Mhm. Sure, you could have students stay put at a building and not travel with someone. They just they give the tours with the principal of that building and then they do see all three of them to compare and contrast. >> Sure, that would probably be easier for students, too. I like that. That would be a great way to capture student input. Um point just point of clarification. Um so you had named uh audience you know, the input. And you I think you had named something like we could get feedback from the tours or things as or meet and greets as a separate thing. You didn't call it input. Did you call it something different? We call it the same form. Audience input form is either people after the tour provide input. But it's it basically strength and opportunities for growth. Up to three. That's what we're looking for. Whether it's formalized through the tours or formalized through people watching your interviews etc. Yeah. So can I just to riff down this thread? If we had tour groups and say we have the link or QR code or something and anyone in that building who interacted with them as a part of that can complete it and give their impressions about the all three. Yes. Or two. We always have QR codes and links. What What if we do that? So then does it become the situation that we've been talking about opening it up and we get a whole a ton of input that we can't possibly process before deliberations happen? Or can't verify if they actually did. Right. I mean I I don't know why we couldn't just have the people that are like identified as doing the tours doing the form. Is there a reason we would want to open it up to everybody? I just I meant for like anyone who was in formal engagement space with them would have access to the QR code. So say and I'm just wondering if they for instance went into a coffee gathering any of the teachers who had been in that space could click on the QR code or anyone who led the tour. I've no idea how this is actually structured. I was just wondering, could we get feedback from whatever that process is that's not open to every human in our district but is whoever actually was in the interaction formal space with them. Okay. So, I just have I was just allowing for if there was additional space beyond the tour itself, maybe there was a coffee, we would have a QR code. If it's just I I'm Yeah. I'm open. There's pros and cons to every single thing you're talking about >> Yep. and you simply have to decide your risk tolerance for each of those things for this particular search. It's totally up to you. Um I'm not quite sure where we're at in this process. Um I don't know have we landed on three groups or are we thinking we just want all the bargaining groups? Yeah, I don't I don't know where we're at. Have we landed on anything? Could just go back We could just go back to one and rely on the survey. Everyone had an opportunity to all the groups had an opportunity to answer the survey and in that sense we're not elevating anyone's voices over another. That's I in my mind the quote-unquote fairest thing to do, I guess, but we've also named and everyone around the table knows that community feedback is really important here. So, it's a it's a trade-off. So, are you shifting your vote to one? Sure. All right. Anyone else? Shift. >> going to shift my my to 3B, I'm going to call it, which is that we um include input, but it is from the formalized and we have tour groups that are hosts at each site that are made up of some sort of principal, teacher, student. Those persons who participate in that with all two or three candidates are asked to give input to the board that we will then take into consideration and we utilize that as a part of our deliberation which then for me honors we're being intentional about doing a check with our people who are um impacted in view of what we know from our community and what we will hear from our community once the names go public, etc. And I am also person who having lived in worlds where um like the like higher ed where people can present a particular face to a board during an interview and may choose to behave differently with uh facilities team members or teachers in or a student. I I would like to feel confident that there is an echo of continuity of person who's showing up in the spaces. And so however like for the tours, however they'd want us we want to consistently have that little team and give those people input and then that is incorporated into our decisions. That would be my 3B. Thank you. So you aren't switching your vote from three. Um staying at three and clarifying here, are you saying instead of having audience input from the interviews, you want it only from the tours? Yes, I would say given what I'm hearing uh the three group approach or trying to identify people who are reflective of the diversity of our community in a way that is equitable feels uh it sounds like it may be more challenging than is practical. And I don't want to lose it, so could we modify? That's why I'm saying for me 3A was here's three groups, 3B is uh tour groups who they get to give their input. And that's just a So, um any I'm going to go back to anyone else want to change their vote from three to one or two? Anyone else? Okay, so unfortunately Director Heineman, we're still on three. >> I was just going to say I would agree with the 3B. Um so, we'll get to that. >> Okay. Um I would say that so, there's 3A on the table, the original as presented by um MSBA there's a 3B on the table as generated by a suggestion from MSBA and um Clerk Boham Garbers um naming it and calling it out. I will say 3C, which I would love a hybrid of the two. Um because I think that the tours, while great and all the things you're saying, yes, 100% we will not have like our community is not all represented in that process. Um I'm thinking, you know, are we going to have uh nutrition services person as part of that? Are we going to have community ed as part of that? So, I think there's a place for us to to say this is an important group who will not be represented on those tours. We want to hear from them. Have them be part of the interview process. Um that would be my thing. So, we have A, B, and C. Chairwoman I I do have a question uh about the tour. Is it I mean and again, I'm not a have not gone through one of these, but to me my impression I I is it Is it like a real, you know, opportunity for them to show their strengths or weaknesses? Or is it just being like, you know, "Hey, love to be here. You know, it's great seeing you." Shake some hands. Shake some hands. Like is there Like is there any content that the interview has that I mean I I can fake being nice for like 30 minutes. And I do often. Like I don't know. Barbara, do you have any thoughts? I think actually from what I've heard from superintendents that have gone through the process and also what I heard about when I went through this process at 287 about the tours, they are very illuminating. Um and I think precisely because they are not as formal as an interview. Um candidates that are great interviewers um will may not shine in that arena and vice versa. So, you might see someone in front of you at the board table that you are thinking, oh but there's these glowing um im- input from the tours. And so, I think having both is really critical. And a question then to ponder is which is more important for a good super. Right? So, if somebody nails the tour, but has a bad interview, Right. and vice versa, like what what is more important for a good superintendent? Well, and I think having both gives you a holistic picture of who that person will be. Um and I think that the tours for the people that will probably be involved in that input, they're the ones that are going to be experiencing the superintendent in that space. So, like our teachers, our our staff, our um our students. That's where they're going to be experiencing the superintendent. So, getting their feedback in that environment, I think feels more authentic and genuine. I also hesitate to ask students to sit through three interviews. Um they would do it because they sit through our board meetings, but I think this would be more fun for them. Chair Andresen. Yes. Um does the board prescribe anything about these tours, or is this something that you help facilitate? And is it literally every school in the district? Like what happens on these tours? Sure. I have um several sample tour schedules that I'm going to be sending to Natalia and Chair Andresen probably tomorrow just to start the wheels turning about the tours. With a district this size, they cannot go in every single building. So, you have to have some representative, especially elementary schools, pick one, maybe two. Um high school, obviously, middle schools, but you just you want the same experience for each candidate, so they each go through the same building. Um but it is coordinated by the district because they're the internal folks that understand how this works. Much like they did a phenomenal job coordinating the focus groups and deciding when and with whom and what links would be shared and oh, she's there, but they did a great job. this is tours are similar, but we have samples that they used to decide how is it going to work? And they would be on that Monday the 20th, the same day. So, someone will start a tour at 9:00 in the high school, someone will start a tour at 9:00 in an elementary, and it just kind of goes like this all day long. Um so, we've got that, but we don't physically line them up. That's done by uh district staff. The one thing you also want to think about is who is giving the tours and what their role is and are they aware of their role? Because there have been occasions where the tours have given an opportunity for the tour guides to share the dirty laundry of the district. And we've had one or two candidates decide not to work for a district after their tour. Um so, the role of the folks giving the tour to be cheerleaders, to be ambassadors, to be authentic, not not um not fake, of course, but it's not an opportunity to tell a candidate everything that you don't like about the school district at the time. And it's a just coaching thing. We have a sort of a coaching sheet of people giving tours. You want to assume good intent that every single person's going to do that. Sometimes though, they will take advantage of that and dump things on your finalists, and that's not helpful to your process. So, we want to be careful cuz they're interviewing you, too. These candidates are looking at buildings, they're talking to principals, they're wanting to understand not just who you as a board are, but who is this district. And they they want a good impression to be made, and if it's a bad impression, it can't affect your outcome. And for clarity's sake, board members are not a part of those tours, correct? >> Not a part of those tours at all. Okay. Um Chair Andresen. Yes. I just wonder if, you know, if we have the opportunity, uh so, uh enrollment person who did tours for 12 years. So, I'm just wondering we have the opportunity in these spaces to curate at our schools who leads the tours and to work with our district leadership to do that. I wonder if there's a way to then get to your C concern, you know, the option C which is to ensure that then at our different tour locations, can we say we want to ensure that that as a part of their tour, at one of the buildings they will be interacting with a a person who is a member of SEIU? At one of the locations, we want to ensure that we're going to actually invite a head of PTO to be there. You know, I'm just wondering if there's a way through intentional curation of the tours that we can reflect at least internally you know, all of our bargaining units will have a representative who will be at least present for one of the stops along the tour and or is helping to facilitate that or they're going to have a meet and greet at some point in the tour. Um you know, so I'm just wondering if we could hybrid it. And again just trying to just trying to brainstorm. That's that's not that hard, I don't think, but Is that possible? You could do whatever you'd like to do. Okay. Someone will have to coordinate this though. >> Right. It it's going to take leadership from someone. I don't know if it's staff or if it's administrators or if it's school board member, but someone will need to be the point person on coordinating this. Um and then also how would we incorporate um you know, staff kind of at um more of the executive level. Like I'm wondering our executive assistant who is somebody who has a lot of experience working with superintendents. Um how is their input just assumed because they're kind of at the meetings and that kind of stuff or is there a way we can formally bring that into the process? Would they >> Absolutely, you could give them the same form. Okay, great. >> Ask them to fill it out. Okay. So, do we want to do a round the table and vote on 3A, 3B, 3C? What exactly is 3C? Just for clarification. That's where we have the audience input form um filled out by representatives on the tours with all the candidates and also invite people to the interviews to um also put in their audience input form. Okay. Let's go ahead. We can start. >> for 3B. All right. Um Can I pass? Yes. >> know if that's appropriate. You can abstain. I can abstain. Can you It's not a formal vote. Well, I will vote for 3C. I'll do C. Treasure Heartland. Um I think 3C. I'm staying on team a lot of input. >> More input. Yes. Uh to me it seems like of those options, the one that I can see that's the cleanest and we could actually get done is 3B. So, I guess I'm going 3B. 3B. All right, you are the tiebreaker. >> I will say I'm happy to help be a resource if I can be. You You are the tiebreaker Z. That's what you get when you get that. Yeah, okay. Well, Sorry. send me a note and I'll read them and I'll provide you feedback for them. Um For both A and B. Okay, so three three A is tours. Three B is >> B is tours. Three B is tours. What's three A? Three A is just invite them to the interviews. The the three by three by three? Or the three groups of eight? >> Mhm. Well, we didn't have That was just Okay. >> we were talking about it. So, A would be invite people to the interviews. They fill out the forms. B is only the only people who fill out the forms are on the tours. And C is both. We invite people to the interviews and we have people providing input from the tours. I think B then. B? Yeah. All right. B it is. So, only people who are on the tours will be um providing audience input forms. Okay, thank you. So, I am going to tomorrow uh send some information to Chair Andresen and Natalia to start the wheels rolling on this with the tours could look like, how long they might take, guidelines around that, and then you can decide the conversation is held with uh I don't know how they set up focus groups, but it worked really well. So, they can start brainstorming the tours and which buildings and time cuz we have to allow time in to drive from one to another. Someone will have to drive the candidates from one building to another and it needs to be not a student. Um somebody who has, you know, with a district van or something like that for insurance reasons. So, there's stuff like that that I'll share and then let them run from there with it. Does that sound okay? That sounds great. Okay. >> And um I don't know if this is a serial meeting, but if you want in particular um to um clerk uh Wilhelm Garber's point that we be intentional about who is part of that tour process, if you feel very strongly about a particular bargaining unit being there or staff member, um then please do let either myself or Barb know that so that we can include that in the planning process. To Barb Lynn or you? Does it matter? Send it to me just to be safe. Okay. Send it to me. I'll keep a collection. If you can send it to me, let's put a deadline on it. Today is Tuesday night, correct? If you could have me your thoughts by Sunday night at the very latest, if you have suggestions on tour participants and even buildings that you want, I I'll just collect it. I'll collect it all and then I will send it um early next week to Natalia and your Andreason. Okay? >> Great. Um and then my other question is then because we've got we've gone um with a thing where we're getting input from people that are on tours, we can't necessarily um control whether they like they're not necessarily opting in to provide that service for us or are we going to make that part of the invitation? I would make it as part of the invitation. >> Okay, great. But sure, they could elect not to or Right. >> So they could leave. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you all for having that conversation, for coming to a decision. Um and I'm kind of excited about moving forward with this. So, thank you. Can we do a 5-minute break? Yes. Does that work for you? 5-minute break? Sure. Thank you. Thank you. But, my understanding we have only one more subject to cover or do we have several tonight? Mhm. Two more. >> Two more. Okay. Yep. The interview training and then the question. >> Mhm. >> Mhm. >> I have a friend that just got discharged. It's called C-PAP office. Do you have one? What is a C-PAP? What is a mammal? A mammal is an animal. A mammal is an animal. A mammal is an animal. I'm conflating the Saturday. >> That's a modern model of a >> at the district major general. Okay. Sorry. Yeah, it's like it's Welcome back everybody. We'll go ahead and get started on the second part of our uh school board meeting. Hopefully it does not take another 3 hours. Um but we will um get started with our school board interview training and preparation. Thank you so much for being here again with us Barb Dorn and I'm excited to to go through this. I haven't been trained by MSBA before on this. So thank you. Thank you. Could you remind me has anyone on this board been through a superintendent search interview before? With 287. Yes. Okay. Anyone here for the Hopkins selection 9 or 10 years ago? Okay. Mick. Mick. Great. Okay. All right, thank you. So I emailed to all of you the full interview training packet which is pretty hefty 80 80 plus pages I think. But I did print to save trees I printed a smaller abbreviated one which really is the gist of what you need to know. So we're going to go through everything electronically. However, you want to pay most attention to what's in your hard copy packet of the abbreviated one. And then you can always go back and read in and in more depth the longer packet that you do have electronically. So as I mentioned earlier this is a position funded by taxpayer dollars. So we want to make sure that school boards are prepared to conduct these interviews as well. So one of the things I'm going to point out in your packet we always open with the information you've already created which is your vacancy brochure. Right there. It's a three-pager. This is what is available out there on the national and the local sites, and it is driving people to apply. And again, at the bottom of the third page of the vacancy brochure is the application link to apply if you know someone interested in putting their hat in the ring. Also, at the bottom of the third page is my contact information, email and phone number, and people are welcome to reach out to me with questions about the process. Next in here is the timeline. Uh there's also current information on the website including this timeline, and you'll see that the next time we are going to get together will be on April 7th. That is the next meeting, and that is the meeting at which you are going to announce your semi-finalists. So, between now and then, what happens is the deadline is uh March 29th. So, that's coming up next week. Midnight on March 29th is the last time people have the opportunity to apply for this position. We start looking at those immediately. We're currently looking at them, especially with things like licensure and such. We want to make sure that they're current or they've started the process to get a Minnesota license or get a renewal of their own license if it's expiring in June this year. So, we're doing that now, but on March 30th, we'll take a much closer look to make sure the applications are complete. Our team, which is made up of the um five uh metro service providers I mentioned in my interview as well, will be looking at those. And so, that includes um Kate Maguire, John Hord, Josh Polly, Bernadeia Johnson, and Connie Hayes. And they are looking at the information in the uh stakeholder summary report, and also your leadership profile, all of these applications to identify who they feel best aligns, and they do it individually with those two documents. Uh then we are going to meet probably on March 31st to talk about their first blush of application information, and then who do we need to vet further. And then uh those folks will make phone calls, conduct phone interviews, do reference checks, we always do social media sweeps, background checks and things like that are in process as well. You have access on the 31st. So each of you will get an email from Shelby Herrera at MSBA one day that says, "Hey, you need to think about setting up your own username and password because you have individual access to this in the cloud. And when you set that up then the next day she'll give you access to the information as well. You as board members can look at as much or as little of those application materials as you'd like because it is a lot. If you intend to look through every piece of information on every applicant, you're going to need probably days to do that, to absorb it and to really understand what it means. You can do that. Other board members choose to look at the the sort of big things like the cover letter, the resume, the letters of recommendation, and the answers to the questions that you specifically asked in the applications about Hopkins. Those sort of big four things can help you get an impression of the person without taking a deep dive into their transcripts and into their licensure and their work history and all of that. Um but we will meet then on April 7th. I'll have sent you a list probably two days before then that lets you know who we settled on as our top six. And sometimes it's four or five and sometimes it's seven, but I will let you know at least two days before the 7th who I'm going to be recommending on that day. You can call me individually. I'm not going to reach out to you, but if you want to call me and say, "Byer, why are you recommending candidate E?" Or "I really don't understand why you're not recommending A." I'm happy to tell you in a one-on-one conversation why that is or is not because if you ask me that on April 7th, I am going to be very vague. I cannot give away any identifying information about anyone as to my our reasons why or why not. You know, we can't talk about um work experience, where they've been, we can't use gender pronouns, we can't use any identifying information about their work history, anything. So, if you want to call one-on-one ahead of time, you can, but you're not required to. But, you'll come into the 7th with information about who I'm going to recommend that night. And I'll read something about each of those finalists to you, but then I'm turning it over to the board and you decide whether to accept those recommendations, to go outside of it with some other folks, or um ignore all of them and bring in your own people. That's entirely your prerogative as a board. Uh so, just so I understand, if and I, you know, obviously you're the expert, so, you know, but if we're like so-and-so, we, I really liked, I should call you and be like, "Okay." And not be like, "Oh, I want this person on the 7th." Right? Yep. Yep. Call me if you're wondering why they're not in our recommendations. And it might be that it's such a good pool that there might be 10, 12 people worth interviewing. It's really tough sometimes. But, if you ask me that question in this meeting, "I really liked candidate C. Mhm. Barb, why didn't you recommend them?" I'll tell you as best I can. Sometimes it just comes down to the depth of the pool. There's just stronger people in the pool. Even if they're an amazing leader, there's just people with deeper experience. Um but I'm not going to be very specific in the meeting at all because it's public and I have to be careful not to violate data practices. Thank you. >> Okay. So, April 7th is a big day. That night the names go public. You will pass a motion to interview these candidates A, B, and C. When you do, at the end of that meeting, I'll read those names out loud. Everybody else's name that you have known because you know who's in this pool, those names stay private data forever. So, no one, even if they say, "Gosh, these are six really interesting people. Who else was in the pool?" You won't say anything. If they say, "Hey, I heard Jane Doe was was the pool and you didn't pick her for an interview." You have to say no comment cuz Jane Doe's name is private data. And if she's sharing it, that's up to her. She can share her name with others, but you as board members can't comment on who's in the pool. But that that starts the Googling on April 7th. And um on April 13th, you are having all day long interviews of potentially six, maybe more, maybe less. Um and at the end of that meeting on April 13th, you will narrow it down to perhaps two or three people for the second round to occur on April 20th. Uh that's not till 4:30, so earlier in that day is when they will have these tours and you'll be I'll get input from people in time to give to you after your interviews on the 20th. We don't want to give you feedback from the tour participants before your interviews cuz we don't want to bias you for or against a candidate based on that feedback. But you will get it after your interviews as well. And then you may on April 20th select someone to begin negotiating with or you may decide that you you're tired and it's 2:00 a.m. and you decide to do it the next day. You could amend your board meeting on the 21st. Or if this just the person's not in the pool, you suspend the search. We'll help you find an interim for 1 year and we'll come back and start this up again this fall, November or December. Okay? No charge for any of the search services till you have a superintendent. So we won't invoice you till whenever you have a superintendent, even if it's a year from now. Okay? That's the timeline. Any questions on the timeline? Cuz it's going to start to come fast and furious, I think, now that April's almost here. I just wanted to be clear about this process that starts on March 31st when we have access to applicants. Um and just can you reiterate kind of like what the what the law is? I know that you said it's protected data. Um but I just want to be clear like even to the point of, you know, we have to respond no comment. But like, you know, no sharing of that information, no giving access to other people to see it. Like can you kind of just go over all the restrictions on us as board members that we have to follow? Yes. The biggest one is don't look at these on your computer in a coffee shop. Because if you are looking at applications in a coffee shop, someone's going to see a resume on your screen. So that's just um common sense. Don't look at these in a public place. Be careful even at your own kitchen table that no one walks behind you while you're looking at it at home. If you're on your phone looking at them, don't do it on public transportation. Someone could see who you're looking at on your phone. So it's being very very very careful. There'll be instructions when you get the email from Shelby about how to access these that basically says over and over and over again this is private data. Do not download this information. Do not print this information. It it it will strike fear into your heart of breaking the data practices act when you read everything that we tell you to consider as you have this information shared with you. And as board members, we share it with you because we trust you. You are used to handling confidential information. This is the same thing. And as board members, you're bound by that. Other people are not bound by that, but you are as board members. So we are able to share them with you because we trust you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for asking that. So now we'll move on and you do have the abbreviated packet, but this page right here that I'm going to blow up a little bit larger in case anyone's watching it. This is extremely important. There is law that does guide superintendent search. And in particular, because you are an equal employment opportunity employer, you must abide by all EEOC requirements. That include not asking and not considering things like protected categories. Don't ask about things relative to anything in this blue box. Um again, it feels like common sense, but do not ask about age, marital status, disability, so and so forth. There are many protected categories here. There are ways to inquire about these things, but I don't recommend, for example, the next few pages that we bother even asking about it. Because what's most important is can this person do the job of superintendent for Hopkins Public Schools. Where they're from, um any of these things here aren't relative to their ability to do the job and meet the expectations outlined by the school board. We always include options in here on pages three, four, and five that there are some things that are permissible to ask that will tell you some of the information that might lead you to understanding these things, and yet I always say why would you even need to understand those things in the first place. So, um for example, uh what languages do you read, speak, or write fluently? You can ask that, which does give you some insights into their ancestry, national national origin, nationality, et cetera, if you want to ask that. For some districts, it might be relevant with a student body, for example, that 80% of the students speak Spanish. That would make sense perhaps to ask a question about um are you bilingual or trilingual and things like such as that. But if you're asking it to find out where they're from, you don't want to ask anything that might indicate to them that you're asking where are you from. Because that's not something that would be relevant. If they can do the job, they can do the job. Um age, you don't say um when do you plan to retire? Or something like that. But you can say, what are your long-term career plans? Someone who's savvy might say they're trying to figure out if I'm going to retire in 3 years or not. But you just don't want to be accused of age discrimination. So, these things are talking about interview questions, and I'm not concerned about that because we're suggesting interview questions to you. What I would caution, however, is please don't ask follow-up questions during the interview. And that's something that people who have not interviewed in the public sector think is kind of weird. Um, because you'll have a list of let's say 12 questions. And you'll ask the same 12 questions of each candidate in the same order, and each of you will ask the same question for all six people. Correct? It's just It feels sort of um, rigid. You can ask a question if you didn't understand an acronym, so if it's a clarifying question. You mentioned MTSS. Could you tell me what that means? You could ask a clarifying question if they've used an abbreviation that you don't know. What we don't want any of you to do is say, tell me more about that, or what did you do when that happened? And start having a very casual conversation with them, because you're not giving that same opportunity to each of the semi-finalists. So, if you if you ask a follow-up question of the first candidate, you have to ask it of all six of them. It Does that make sense? We're trying to give the same experience. And for me, it was kind of strange because I came from the non-profit sector, and when I would interview people, we'd go on all kinds of conver- conversational black holes. We'd talk about all kinds of things, trying to get to know them better. We don't want you doing that in this instance with these candidates for this position. Um, and it feels a little awkward at first, but once you get the hang of it, you start to understand the necessity of providing a level playing field to each candidate, which means they each get the chance to answer the same question. And if they don't answer it very well, it's not your place to say, "Tell me more about that. Can you make sure you answer the second part of this question?" Because you're giving them the advantage of coaching them during the interview. So, try not to do that, okay? But protected classes, it is common sense. Um there are lots of things that you could but ask, but you really don't need to. All right. So, applicable. You do not have the things that are on the screen right now. You don't have these policies cuz it's a lot of paper to print all of these policies. I just want to go over three of them that affect the search. Uh so, the first one is the EEOC policy. You are the Equal Employment Opportunity. I'm sure you have this policy of some in some way, shape, or form. So, that's the reminder of that one. But the next policy is the public and private personnel data. I'm going to kind of zoom through this to two highlighted things. I'm going to go past the first highlight because this explains There we go. In this policy, the names of applicants are private data except when applicants are considered by the school board to be finalists for public employment. Okay, so what statute says is that the names of applicants are private data, which is why we have that whole put fear in your heart when you're dealing with private data until they're considered by the school board to be finalists for public employment. Well, let's look at how they define finalists because this is where it gets a little messy for some folks. A finalist means an individual who is selected to be interviewed by the school board for a position. So, your semi-finalists are some are finalists, correct? If the board is going to interview them. So, this is the question I have for you, and we talked a little bit about this at a previous meeting, and I think at the interviews, um are you as a full board going to interview all of the semi-finalists and the finalists, or are you considering having round one interviewed by a subcommittee or a small group, which in which case their names would not go public? Do you need a decision on that tonight? I assumed that we were doing both, fully full board, fully open. Um if anyone has a differing opinion, please share it. Chair Dressen. Yes. >> I agree with that. I just have a question for Barb about um will people will will candidates hesitate to participate? I just worry about candidates hesitating to participate. In your experience, do people pull their candidacy if the first round is open to the public and their name will be public? Possibly. Possibly. However, because it's Minnesota law, vast majority are used to it, and they need to make the risk assessment that my name's going to go public if I'm in the semi-finalists. It's not great, and there are some people that would say, "If I don't know that I'm in the top one or two or three, I'm just not going to apply." And so, you you sometimes will lose out on candidates that might want to be assured that they are really close to getting the job, which would mean the final round with the board, and the names of people in the first round that didn't move on, those names will stay private forever. No one will know that they interviewed for the job. Because it's a risk in your home district to be interviewing in a different district as well. So, it is confidentiality is a concern for candidates. I I won't hide behind that fact. It's true. What am I hearing you say that it's because it's Minnesota and people are used to it. The uh semifinalist interviews are are typically open. Yes, typically. However, there's districts uh that um sometimes larger districts, higher-profile districts, will do round one in private if and we talked about this in the interview, your policy allows it and your legal counsel supports it. Because some legal counsels will say as long as it's not a quorum of the board, open meeting law won't apply. You can interview and everything stays private. Um other legal counsel attorneys will say if it's, you know, if it's a quorum or excuse me, even if it's a two or three members of the board, open meeting law is going to apply. So, we'd need it in writing from counsel that it's okay that you do it that way and I would confirm with your policies to make sure your policies don't contradict it. That every time the board meets even in a subcommittee, it has to be posted. Those two things would have to apply. I just want to make sure we were clear on it tonight because there are reasons to do round one in private. We did one search so far this year that did it that way. All of our other searches thus far have been round one and two are in front of the whole board. Is there any appetite to explore whether our policies allow it or not? No, I think we're all pretty comfortable with both being open. Okay. Thank you. So, in this case, a finalist means an individual who is selected to be interviewed by the school board for a position, which means your semifinalist names will go public. Okay. Sounds good. Thank you for confirming that. All right, that is it for policy until I have the last policy that should be the open meeting law policy. Chair, I'm just going to ask a quick question that I just thought about. Um if we're talking about confidentiality amongst the candidates, if we do the option 3B, like we um decided what we need to also get a disclaimer to the folks who are giving the interviews or the tours as well? >> No. No, that was that process was that we decided on was for our finalists. So, it would just be the top three. Okay. Or two, depending on what we narrow it down to. Okay. Okay. They wouldn't get the resumes or any private data either, right? The tour people wouldn't get the resumes and private data. Would they? The the tour people will know exactly because names go public on April 7th. >> Yeah. Mhm. By on by the 13th and 20th, the dates of your interviews, these names are public and people have looked them up on LinkedIn and they've heard from everybody and their neighbor about who these people are. Um there's private data in resumes. So, we could certainly provide a redacted resume where we redact stuff that's in the resumes that's private and provide those to tour members. However, usually the board are the folks who've seen everything. I mean, you've seen everything. You can see everything, but we we have bios about the three finalists that we'll put together, like a paragraph or two, so people know who they are. Okay. So, yeah. But, their names will be very public by then, so we don't need to worry about violating data privacy by that point at all. Okay. Thanks for asking that though. And then policy uh model policy 205 is about open and closed meetings. So, just a reminder that all of the meetings are open to the public. These are special meetings, but they are open and people can come watch you conduct the entire superintendent search including the deliberations when you were trying to decide who to move forward into round two. So, this is why I don't print all of the policies. There we go. It's so much paper, but here we go. Other search considerations based upon statute. You don't have this in your hard copy, but But are just a couple of things I want to make sure you are aware. So in terms of statute if you're related to someone in the pool when you see the names please let me know right away. And it does happen because education is kind of a small world. So if you are related by blood or marriage within the fourth degree to a board to one of the candidates that you're considering, it's going to require a unanimous vote of the full board to hire that person. Doesn't happen very often. But sometimes there is through in-laws or marriage or something you're related within the fourth degree to a person and if that's the person the board wants to hire, it must be unanimous. And you all have to be here. So if someone is homesick and can't vote we need you to adjourn, come back another day when all seven of you are here and you all have to vote. And you might almost think that you would abstain if you're related to the person that you want to hire as superintendent and it's actually the opposite. You must vote. So even a 6-1 vote will not hire a superintendent if someone on this board is related to them. It must be unanimous. Okay? It's happened twice to me. Seven years so. Okay? And then the other thing is note this. Um a teacher shall not be required to reside within the employing district as a condition to teaching employment or continued teaching employment. For this part of statute, it does say a superintendent is a teacher for purposes of subdivision three. You cannot require them to live here. You cannot require them to live within district boundaries. You should not even consider it if they offer that during their interviews. It's one of those just strike it from your from your mind. They can live anywhere and do this job. So residency is not something you should consider. Okay? And then all the contract stuff, you all know this, that you must have a contract and you can start negotiating at any time in the last year. You know, within 365 days prior to the expira- expiration date, you can start negotiating new contract. All right, here's the special voting circumstances. Unanimous. Um here we go. That's not What is that? Blah blah blah. None of the other ones apply to superintendent search. Here we go. This is in your packet. Common interview mistakes. You will not make any of these mistakes, um I'm certain. You know exactly what you're looking for. You have extremely clear leadership profile, hiring criteria, and results from your um school communities in the public input report. So, you know what you are looking for and you've thought about that long and hard. Please make a good impression because occasionally someone interviews um doesn't quite feel great when they're done and decline to come back for a second interview. That's happened this year to us. Uh so, try to make a good impression, but they're also watching you. They're watching your board meetings. They're talking to people. They are talking about reputation of the Hopkins Public School Board. So, that's having an impact on the impression you're making on these people. So, be be aware of that during the impression are the interview and I did mention it briefly about the tour, as well. Um because that also has happened where the tour guide put a bad taste in someone's mouth and they withdrew. So, it's just a two-way street. >> Correct. Um the don't ask list, you're not going to worry about that. Um vague questions, you're going to have real specific questions, behavior-based questions. Don't worry about that. Uh keep in mind the big picture. Every once in a while, there's something that takes on um more significance than it should. It becomes the issue that helps you decide versus remembering that there's a whole lot more to the superintendent's job than that one issue. So, please keep in mind that it's a a big picture and you're looking for someone to lead all students in all circumstances. Uh so, that's just one other thing. Probing motivation, you know, we're not going to ask those follow-up questions. Um however, the questions will look for specific examples. They're going to look for some whys. So, you're going to get those from the answers that you're getting, I hope, from candidates already. It's not a one-way street. Notes, so do you want to talk about number eight for a second? Um your notes are subject to a data request. So, when you're taking notes on the applications, don't write anything down that, if requested by a candidate to see board notes relative to their candidacy, could put you in hot water. So, you know, don't write things down in a protected class, for example. Similarly, when they come in for their interview and sit down and you're taking notes, cuz I'll give you paper to take notes on with the EMD form, exceeds, meets, disappoints, you're going to evaluate every answer. Don't write things down on that form about them. Um things such as, don't write down older guy or um crucifix necklace, trying to remember who they are, or something about their appearance. Don't write it down. Those are not things that you need to write down in the first place. But when you're looking through applications, if you have 20 applications, you're going to be tired. It's a lot to look at. So, write down the things that are pertinent for you that makes you want to interview those people. And then same thing when they they sit here and answer questions, write down what you liked about them and that you remember. But you don't have to write down everything about them. So, be very careful with your notes. As long as they're um professional and appropriate, you're perfectly fine. You will turn in all of your notes to Nick when you're done, because they need to be filed with your HR policies. There's um data retention policies that explain how long you have to keep personnel data, whether they just applied, whether they actually got an interview, whether they were actually hired. You keep some longer than others. So, they need they need your notes when you're all done, okay? Yes. Uh so, a question about the notes, right? Um I I think you talked a little bit a little bit about it, but like what's the detail? I mean, I might probably in too much detail, but um is it uh like for example, if we're talking about like metrics, right? Like good an- like what's appropriate? Good good answer on metrics, like is that enough or you know, candidate talked about how they tracked FastBridge data, whatever, right? Like what what's the level at which we should take the note? That's a great question. I I would say it does vary somewhat between board members. So, um when someone answers, the more specific the answer, the better. So, we always say if it exceeds your expectation, you'll give them that. If they just sort of talk around an answer and don't answer it, that's a disappointing answer. That one in the middle where it meets your expectations, but it didn't wow you and it didn't didn't disappoint you is a a safe place to put a response. Um occasionally, we have a board that does want us to create a rubric for them to tell them what is a good answer to this question, what's a mediocre answer, and what's a poor answer to this question. And we can do that. What that does for some boards is it removes the individualism of board members where you know a good answer in your gut when you hear it. If you're relying on a rubric that's really clear and very black and white, but if that would be helpful, we'll create that for your interview questions to use during the interviews. And you don't have to decide that tonight, but if that would be more measurable and more consistent, we can create a rubric for you. Um versus relying on your your core gut when you hear the answer. Yeah, well, I I think it's just kind of like, you know, it's like do we show how much of our work do we show, right? Like if we were wild and we said, you know, it exceeds. I really liked how they, you know, improved whatever by 10% because of this, that like do should we write that or just say exceeds expectations, good answer. >> There's There's room to write notes like that much under each question. Some people are meticulous about taking notes. They'll try to write down everything someone says. Other people only write down the one thing that they really liked. Mhm. So, I don't know, but there there are differences amongst all of you as to how much information you want to record on your notes. But, if you write down what they're saying, it's the safest bet. If you extrapolate and kind of invent things that you read into their answer, I'd be careful not to write that down. Because that's not I mean, it's safest if you write down what they said, and it could be that much or it could be a paragraph. >> Okay. Thank you. Okay. Great questions. All right, so don't make a quick decision. You know, don't make stuff wrong fit. You're not going to settle. I just want to assure you that you have to find the right person and don't look for a person just because you're doing a search. We will still be here and we will help you find an interim if you don't find the right person. And then not checking your bias at the door. So, I'm going to do this a little bit of conversation around bias, which is in your abbreviated packet. And um I'll tell you why we added this. We added this maybe how long ago? Four years ago, we added this. Um because we were noticing a pattern that was bothersome because people with this unconscious bias, and I know you've said this as a board, they weren't thinking that through and they were letting it seep into the the superintendent search process. So, we're going to talk about a little bit of bias that has reared its head during the search process. And you'll know these when I tell you, but I'm going to give you a quotes from boards and you'll help you'll understand what it is. So, there was a search 4 years ago that there were only two finalists, both incredible candidates, both very strong. And they were sharing um their opinions afterward about each of the finalists, and someone on the board said, "You know, I really liked Jim." Jim was straight shooter, very direct. I think he'd be a great fit in our community. Okay, lot nodding in agreement, and they went around, and eventually they got to the second candidate, and the exact same board member said, "You know what? Sue was a straight shooter. She was really direct. I don't think that's going to fly here in our community." Jeez. Yep. Kind of obvious, right? What kind of bias is that? Gender. Call that gender bias. That's gender bias. And so, the idea that the female candidate should be warm and nurturing and, you know, that the male candidate should be direct and assertive, that that's just the one we see most often creep in. Um again, unconsciously. They had no idea they were doing that. So, that's why we talk about it now. There's that one, and then there was um two candidates also where uh technology was going to be a big part of their job. Smaller district, they needed someone to lead technology or at least participate. And it's assumptions. It comes down to assumptions. And someone said, "You know what? I I'm pretty sure that Jim is going to be phenomenal at social media. I don't see that in Tom. I just I don't I don't." And, of course, the younger candidate was being preferred for technology over the mid-50s year-old prolific tweeter that tweeted 30 things a day. So, they were making incorrect assumptions, which hurt them in the search. Um they ended up asking about it in round two. Specifically about technology so that everyone had a chance, but they were making assumptions after round one, which was not good. So, age can creep in, too. Another one that we do see, unfortunately, more and more now is geographic bias, where people from greater Minnesota aren't a fit in the metro. Or people from the metro aren't a fit in greater Minnesota. And that's very unfair to candidates. Regardless of where they have worked or are working, they are still an individual and have their own belief systems and values. So, we would encourage folks not to dismiss candidates in your instance from schools in greater Minnesota. Um and sometimes size of district. There's assumptions made about people in the size of district that they're currently working in. So, geography will play a part. And then the other one is uh familiarity bias. And that comes into play when it's people that you know who are in the pool. Sometimes it's an internal candidate. Sometimes it's a person from a neighboring district. Sometimes it's someone you worked with 10 years ago. Uh there will be bias for and against people based on what you know about them. And so, for folks that are familiar to you, it's the best and worst thing that happens to them because they know you. And they know you. So, it's not always great. And sometimes it's phenomenal. So, just keep that in mind to try to treat everybody with um the same lens and to put them through the same exact exact process. There's no shortcuts for people in this. They need to jump through all the same hoops. Uh with internal candidates, sometimes people will tell people they've applied. And they're very excited because they can't wait. You know, they work here, they're passionate, they they tell everybody they're applying. You can't comment on that again because that's their data that they're sharing and you can't share it. We have had instances where an internal person has told everyone they're applying. They don't get interviewed. And in that case, it's unfortunate because it's very disappointing. Sometimes it's better that they hadn't told anyone they applied, and then if they get an interview, it's wonderful, and if they don't get an interview, no one knew. But it it can happen sometimes for an internal person to not gauge the likelihood of them getting an interview when their name would go public. And they have no idea who else is applying for the job. Again, if you have three people in the pool versus 30 people in the pool, it's going to be much more competitive if you have 30. So, an internal candidate might rise to the top. Um or not. So, those are the the biases we see in superintendent search. Any additional ones you've thought of or have seen that you might be worried about? And I think this board is um very aware of it enough that you would be aware of it from one another. And if someone for whatever reason during deliberations says, "Well, I think they would." Someone would say, "I'm not so sure they would." Or why are we thinking that? And it's usually a bias um thing. Okay? I'm going to move on to If I'm going too fast, let me know. But again, you can read these in more detail. Deliberation scenarios. These are just three situations that we want you to think about occurring and give you a couple of techniques you could use because you are speaking in public about people and their careers. So, we want to be really careful what each of you says so that you're not harming folks that have again put themselves through a lot of work. Number one, if you were deadlocked on two finalists. Oh, we already talked about this one. Um each side digs in. They drill deeper and deeper into the reasons why um they're making assumptions about whether they'll move to the area. They're young. They'll Sometimes it's like they're young, they're going to stay here a long time. That's not true. Or they're older and they're going to retire. Sometimes also not true. So, be very careful about those assumptions, but um the rule about bias, how would you manage the discussion if people are starting to dig in their heels and make suppositions about the candidates? Is there anything you would suggest doing at that point? I like how the example is because the candidate looks like a superintendent, which I find fascinating. My My first question is what does a superintendent look like? So, asking questions. Yeah. Getting curious about what's happening, I think, is really important, cuz we all do um and this was part of a board retreat that we did. We all we all have implicit bias. Um and the work is to be curious about what's showing up and not just have it be a an automatic response. And that's hard to do. And so, it is nice to have um people that you're working with who can be curious for you when needed. So, I appreciate that about this board that we're willing to do that for one another. Um but yeah, it can be hard, especially when it's public. You don't want to potentially call someone out in public that is your colleague that um you're you're working alongside, so can be delicate. I think one of the things if we were in a protracted sort of um moment of deadlock and it seemed that either I would I would want to be noticing, so I'd want to be noticing what was going on inside of me. So, if I'm getting really big feelings about it and or noticing some comments are coming from me or others, um where we might say, "Hey, I'm noticing I'm feeling some feelings that are getting you know, like we're we're seeming like we're little deadlocked. I'm wondering if we could take a 5-minute stretch or take a you know, cuz sometimes you just need a second to take a breath and back up from the conversation. So, like, can we just take a 2-minute stretch break? Maybe that could help us all to come back and just let's re-approach this just even in a few minutes. So, that's a thing that a strategy that I like to employ if I'm noticing moments like that. Taking a break definitely can work. Okay. And we mentioned earlier about going down the leadership profile step-by-step-by-step and going down the stakeholder summary report step-by-step-by-step. >> Yeah. Sometimes that breaks a deadlock as well. Okay. Two found um the rubric that we used to be really helpful to keep going back to when you have like your notes and you have filled out on each candidate you know, the number. Sometimes as the deliberations go around and around and around, you can lose sight of that and having something like ours was numbers, but having something concrete that you can look back to and say oh, that's right. Like that is actually a point that I also had questions about that candidate. Maybe I'm I'm colored now in my perspective of them. So, having that sheet to go back to I found really helpful. Was that a sheet like the rubric I'm thinking of we created there was like a full page for every single question. So, if there's 12 questions, it's a 12-page document. Is that too much? Do you have a simpler rubric in mind that we could also utilize? >> No, I think it was that model. Okay. >> But it it just instead of like you said you have EMD Mhm. >> um this one had numbers. So, you'd do like one to four. Okay. >> And a four was hit all your Yep. your marks. And it was very spelled out and it had the information that you had talked about, like what does it mean to get a four? What does it mean? And so you were able to be like, "Oh, yep, they hit that. It's a It's a tick. Oh, yep, they hit that. It's a tick." And then you had four for that question. So you could go back as we were deliberating and be like, "Oh, yeah, I only scored the candidate that I'm pushing ahead at a two." Just was helpful to kind of take yourself out of getting entrenched because it is our nature to be binary. Do you want us to create a rubric based on your questions so that you have a road map that says this is what a an exceeds answer is, this is what a meets answer is, this is what a disappoints answer is? Um, it's a lot more paper, but it is something that some people find useful and other people find it stifling. So it's up to each board if they want us to do that. But we then have to all decide on what exceeds No. No, you don't have to decide. You could choose to not use the rubric and just say, "I really like that answer." and you give it an E. Because I will give you a one-page overview when we're all done that lists all six people and it will tell you questions, you know, one through 12, how many E's they got, how many D's and how many M's for every single question. So you can look back and go, "Boy, we all felt the answer to question seven exceeded expectations. Great. Oh, in this case we have three people that thought it exceeded and we had four people that said it didn't. It disappointed them. Why are we so far apart on that one? But it's just one tool in a toolbox. And the more exceeds someone has, the better. And the more disappoints they have, the worse. So I can be as specific with a rubric as you want, or you could see how it goes in round one without one. And if it would have been helpful, we will definitely do one for round two when you're down to two or three people. If you want the specificity of that kind of rubric in round two, we could also do it that way. Skip it in the first, see how it feels, do it in the second. Or do it for the first, and if you don't need it, don't do it in the second. Thoughts? Can I ask the option is to use it or not? Correct? Correct. Yeah. Barb Taska, just as we're answering this, just to ask a clarifying and under seeking understanding question, um which is with the questions that we'll be asking, uh and then thinking about the evaluation rubric, wherever we land, I'm assuming that as we land in those those will be deeply grounded in what we heard from the community regarding the leadership profile, all of these things, right? So, we're essentially we are doing an evaluation of, you know, let's say it's develops trust and works collaboratively with diverse groups and communities is the question. Like we had a question designed to get at that. Then I have six proposed questions for you to consider tonight under every single one of your leadership criteria. Okay. And so then we're evaluating how they're in alignment, like are they exceeding, like we think they're someone and okay. Thank you. Yeah. Now, this is our last thing we'll do tonight as well. It won't take that long, but yes. Great. Do you want to think about it, or you want to let me know now whether a rubric is or not is not desired in round one? I mean, I would have voted for it cuz I found it useful, but and in particular if you can use it or not. Cuz we're going to be ranking EMD regardless. This just gives us information as to what that means. How about we create one for round one and you see if it's useful or not and if it isn't, we won't do one for round two? Perfect. >> But we will um play it by ear. So, we'll create a rubric for the round one questions for you then. Sounds good. Thank you. >> Absolutely. The next scenario, uh the biggest part about this is the it becomes heated. Okay. >> The discussion about who to move on or who to hire starts to become heated. Um it starts to become personal. I know that won't happen with this board, but the best thing to do in that case is to gavel a recess. You know, it's I don't know if you call a recess or the chair gavels, however you do it, but the idea we just need a break for 5 or 10 minutes, stretch our legs, get some water, let the tension come down. That's one that often happens, I guess, if people are really truly concerned, okay? And then the last one, this one is tricky because during final deliberations a board member is just dying to share something they know about one of these candidates cuz somebody told them something. Yeah. >> Please don't share rumors, hearsay, um gossip at the board table about these candidates. And if it's something that you absolutely need to get off your chest, call me beforehand so I know that you think you know this because I might also know of it and know that it's not true. So, let me know what you hear if it's really concerning to you because the longer people have been in public at school administration, the more battle scars they have. And they're going to have people that don't like them and there's going to be stories and headlines about them that are based in reality but aren't true. So, let me know and the biggest advice I'd have is during deliberations, even if it's from a credible source, don't share it during deliberations, okay? The last thing you want to do is um not even slander. You don't want to harm someone's career with misinformation because your board meetings are recorded and up in the cloud maybe forever. And if someone Googled their name, they might hear you say these things about people. And if it's not true, it's hurting their career. So, please be very careful and very considerate of the candidates that are going through this process. And thank you in advance for um assuring that. I'm going to zoom past these interview questions. You don't need them because I've got some for you to look at here in just a moment. And then the next page, we're almost done with the interview training, is about Here we go. The candidate's turn. I will share with you that candidates are getting more and more savvy with what they ask you during the interviews, right? So, typically the last question's going to be, "What questions do you have for us?" And they are allowed to ask you questions. Hopefully they've left 10 or 15 minutes in the the timing of the interview to have time to ask you questions. The chair usually fields the question and then says who might want to answer that. And I'm hoping that you will feel free to speak up and answer cuz they really would like to hear from you and see how you build off of each other's ideas and statements. And they're asking tougher and tougher questions. It's no longer, "Tell me why you joined the board or why you like serving on the board here in this district." Those were softballs. Um They might ask specific questions about your strategic plan or your uh funding or maybe your curriculum. They might because there's things they want to know. I think very often they're trying to get to know you through asking those questions. And I'll tell you something I saw someone do uh last year and I think it it was really clever. Um I don't remember what the question was, but they asked a very very specific question. And I don't remember what it was. It was a specific question about the budget or something or curriculum. Very specific. What do you think they were doing when they asked that question? Why would they ask a question so specific of the school board. What? They're testing. Testing what? Knowledge and oversight. Governance. Governance. Yeah, like how well does >> Micromanagement. Yeah, how how how tied in is this board? Well >> say micromanagement? >> micromanagement. Yeah, like does the board know its role and that it's governance, not operational. Correct. Yeah. >> And if if a board knows way too much about the superintendent's job, or if they give an answer that because they know a lot, a candidate might go, "Okay, I'm going to be micromanaged. That's good to know." Um so, be authentic in your responses, but be very careful that you're not giving an impression that's not accurate. If you're truly a governing board and you understand policy governance and you allow your CEO to run the district, the kind of answer you give would be "That sounds like a management-oriented question. We trust our business manager, or whatever it might be, to do that." Um so, the candidate will ask you good questions, and sometimes they ask better questions than others, and that makes a great impression. So, just be prepared to talk about that. And if you have a passion area, if you're passionate about um programming in the district, or they ask a question about something that you really love, feel free to answer it. I mean, they're they may ask questions about um special education. They may ask questions um about um career pathways. If you as individuals have sweet spots, make sure that you get to say something about that. If you have a passion area that you want to share, all right. Then, the only other thing here is to talk about reference checks just for a moment. We will do reference checking um while the applications are being reviewed by our team. We are limited, though, to the people they've provided in their application. And that is because their names are private data. So, we cannot call outside of that list, or we are outing their candidacies to people simply by asking around about them. So, we can't ask around. We call people they list or people that write letters of recommendation. And that's for a very good reason. However, between round one and round two, it can be enlightening to have school board members make some reference check calls. Not um randomly, but if one or two people on the board is able and interested in making some calls between the 13th and the 20th of April, you can call anybody cuz their names are public. You could call anybody in any of the districts they work. Um we have some guidance on it. This is one of them. But they will very often be told things that people would never tell the search firm. Um search firms when they call, it's just a little people are a little bit more on on guard not to say the wrong thing to a search firm. Board members, they love to help you understand who these people are. So, if anyone amongst the seven of you is interested, think about it. And at our next meeting, we'll talk about is there someone who'd like to do reference check calls between the 13th and the 20th. And you might only call three to four people, but you can call anyone because the name's open, okay? Okay. So, it's a good due diligence kind of thing for the board to take some ownership on reference checking as well. And if two or three people want to do it, that's fine. Um I'll meet with them after that meeting and talk about what to do, and I have a whole list of things to do or not. Finally, last thing, deliberating in public. Just keep it positive if you can. Talk about strengths. No need to bring up anything that they maybe didn't do well. Um it's really nice when I can call candidates that were not moved forward, and I have lots of positive things to say about their candidacy. It's nice to give them feedback from the board about what they did well, and that helps soften the blow a little bit. So, please do talk about positive things and what you were impressed with for all of them. And then you're still going to have to narrow it down to two or three. Um but it's nice to stay stay positive. All right, do's and don'ts. The last thing in here is a superintendent contract. So, I wanted to touch briefly on that. Uh we talked at the planning meeting about that, and I believe that there was going to be a designee. Correct? I've got it in the planning or not? Yes. Okay. So, contracts, you could begin negotiating the very night of your round two interviews. Board designee begins negotiations of employment contract. So, was it going to be the board chair working in concert maybe with Nick or something? I think yes, we talked about the HR committee. HR committee? Okay. Have those conversations started yet? Yes. Okay. So, the ideal situation was on the 21st, if you have the right person that is in your pool and you interview on the 20th, the right the ideal thing is on the 21st, you can send them a contract as a starting point and say, "Hey, here's our offer. Get back to us as soon as you can." So, as long as it's kind of ready to go, that's great. But it does take some parallel work while the search is happening and have that contract ready to go. So, as long as you're all comfortable with that, that's great. Questions? That's the interview training. I'm all done. Unless you have questions. Do you feel ready to go? Yeah. I will be here during all of the interviews as well. I'll be sitting off to the side, probably a side table over there, with time cards, making sure that they know how much time is left. Um but you will facilitate the interview and I have I have a script and stuff we'll talk about on April 7th as well to make sure you're understanding how it's going to happen, but I'm not going to run the interviews for you and I'm not even going to be sitting here. Okay? Anything? Questions? I just had one clarifying question around the You said that board members can do reference checks one or two. How would that process work? Is that something they would like volunteer for at the board table here and then talk to you after or should they email you if they're interested? How would that work? The first way. We're volunteer like at our next meeting someone could say I'd like to do it. I've actually had three people on one board want to do it and then we meet afterwards and I give people sort of a a guideline because we don't want people being called twice or three times because there's different board members. So there's some coordination that has to be done between board members and sometimes they divide it up by kind of person that say I'd like to call staff or teachers in that district. I'll call them for all three people. Someone else says I'd like to call community members or city council or mayors or city managers about all three of them. So you have different kinds of people being called. The other option is each board member takes one person and you do it vertically where you call all kinds of people about this one person. But it seems to be more successful if you divide it up horizontally and you call somebody for all three of those people. And by by kind and then I also have a sheet that explains how to report out because you do want to give a verbal report at the board table, but it should be very high level, very vague. You don't want to quote people. You don't want to say who you'd actually talked to cuz references are talking to. They're considering it probably off the record. So I have a whole three or four pages of stuff that I'll go over with the folks who volunteer. So if you're interested you You volunteer at our next meeting. Great. Okay. All right. The very last thing I'm going to ask you to do, I hope you're still awake, are um questions. So, I'm going to hand these out and then I'll tell you what your assignment is and I'm going to give you whatever time you need, 5 10 15 minutes. I don't know how long it'll take, but take these. Pass them that way. Have you one for Shannon? Thank you. >> Oh, do you have one for her? Okay. There you go. Okay. And I I'm going to collect those back when we're all done. So, is the process here that we look through the questions and then without saying the question, we just tell you like which ones we want? Yep. I would suggest that you go through these cuz it's by category and I mean the opening question is kind of standard as is the closing question. Um but under each of these categories, there should be six five to six and I'm going to suggest that you each could pick two under each category. So, you if question one is okay, between questions two to seven, maybe circle um two of them you like. And do the same thing with questions between eight and 13, pick two. 14 to 19, pick two. 20 to 25, pick two. 26 to 31, pick two. Um and just do that and then I'm going to take a quick tally. I'll just ask you to raise your hand, who liked question two, who liked three, who liked four. At the very back, the very last page, are questions based on the public input report to get to some of the things that arose in the report that maybe weren't in the leadership profile. So, don't overthink it cuz I can rewrite these. If there's part of a question you like, you could say, "I like both of them, but can we combine them?" But we do want to be careful to not wordsmith at the table because this is going being recorded, correct? And we don't want people to know exactly what we're asking. So, I'm just going to stop talking and give you at least 5-10 minutes to pick two in each category that you like. >> Okay, maybe another 2 minutes or so and then we'll take a tally. I also don't want anyone to feel too rushed. It looks like I'm the last one and I'm good. I don't know if Sarah's still going, but Okay. So, we're good? Awesome. Okay. I'm going to take a quick tally. And we will circle back and see how many we have and if we need to combine any. So, how many people are you all okay with question one or does anyone want to modify question one? Good? Okay, we're going to use ask question one. All right, so the next two through seven you could pick two of these. So, just raise your hand and I'll do a quick count and jot it down. How many liked question two? That's one of your two? Zero. Question three? One, two, three, four. Five. How about question four? One, two. Question five Are we still on question four? Yeah. Okay, question four. One, two, three, four. Got it. Thank you. Question five. One. Question six. One. Seven. One, two, three. Okay. Next category, questions eight through 13. How many in your top two had question eight? Two. Question nine. Two, three. 10. One, two. 11. None. 12. One, two, three, four, five. 13. One. All right, 14 to 19. Question 14. One. 15. None. 16. Three. 17. Three. 18. Two. 19. One, two, three, four. Thank you. Next category, 20 to 25. How many liked 20? None. No, one. Okay, one on 20. 21. One. 22. Two. 23. Two. 24. None. 25. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Winner, winner, chicken dinner. All right. Okay. Next category is 26 to 31. 26. 1 2 3 4 27 None. 28 1 2 3 4 5 29 1 30 1 2 31 1 And then 32 to 36. How many like 32? 1 2 3 33 1 2 3 4 34 None. 35 1 36 1 2 3 I picked 38 in this And 4, Rachel, 1 2 3 4 and a half. 2 3 I raised my hand for 34. I'm sorry, I don't know if you got that. >> I'm confused about how this one went. I wanted to vote for the question 34. Okay. 32 >> going to start over at 32 to be sure cuz I don't want to get it wrong, okay? How many like 32? 1 2 Yeah, I had three. Okay. 33 1 2 3 Okay, I had four, so I'm going to change that to three. And then how about question 34? Two, okay? 35 1 and 36 1 2 3 4 Okay, great. Question 37 is kind of standard, is that okay with everyone? All right, and then on the back page if you picked two of 1 through 6 and two and 7 through 11 how many preferred question 1? 1 2 2 1 Question 3 1 2 3 4 4 Oh, and 5? Should I add you, Brooke? No. Question three. Um um yeah, question three. Okay. So, you have five people on question three, then I added you. Uh four. One, two, three. Five. One. Six. One. One, two. Great. And finally, seven through 11. How many preferred seven? One. Eight. One, two, three, four, five. Nine. Two. 10. Two. And 11. One, two, three. All right, thank you. So, we'll go back and just count how many we got that had a majority of the board. Did you vote for 10? Did you vote for 10? There's three on 10. I had two. Three on 10. Yep, I did. I voted for 10. I also, sorry, I also wanted to I also wanted to do question 11, too. 11? Okay. I'll add those in. Okay, so if we go back So, a majority of your board would be four people. So, I'm just going to do this to start. It doesn't mean we have to do this, but it looks like question three and question four Um we had five votes for three and four for four, so that's a majority. The next group of questions, we had five people that liked question 12. The next group, we had uh four people that liked 19. One, 19. >> 19. 19. And the next section, 25. You all liked that one. So, 25 had seven votes. The next section, 26 and 28. 26 had four votes, 28 had five votes. Uh 32 to 36 36 had four votes. And then question 37. And on the last page, question three had five votes. And question eight had five votes. And 11 had four votes. So we're going to go back through and see if there's categories that you want to ask two questions about. And these would not be in this order. We mix them up so they're not asking similar questions back to back. So sometimes it feels like you're asking the same thing, but you aren't. How many voted for number four? Question four? >> four people on four. >> On which one? On number On the first page or the back page? >> Oh, sorry. First the first page. >> Oh, on the first page. Yeah. It's the same number in the system. Oh, well, there's a back page of four, too. No, but I understand. Oh, there's Oh, wait, wait, you write it down. You restart it. >> Women are always right. That was implicit bias. >> Um that was a bias. Save me from the implicit bias, everybody. Okay, I'm getting curious with you. So four votes or more, you have 13 questions. Which is a nice number for round one. If you go 1 hour, if you go an hour and 15 minutes on round one, which we could cuz you're starting at 8:30 in the morning, so it's not like you're going to go till midnight. You could have more than 13. You could have 13 to 15. It's up to you. Some people have nine or 10 in round one. I had one district that had 18 in round one in a 1-hour interview. It was moving pretty quick. Are we giving them a time limit on the length of their answer? Like they would say, "You have 2 minutes to answer a question." >> One No, okay. >> No. And some people sometimes question one takes a long time to answer. There's a lot of reasons why in that one. Mhm. And I'm the one keeping time to make sure that they know that I'm keeping time. If they spend 10 minutes on question one and 2 minutes on the next question, that's fine. That's kind of you'll get their feel for their style. Um if they're loquacious or they're You know, some people are just real succinct. Not a bad thing either. So, but we don't limit them on time for each question. But they know there's 11. Do you give 11? No, they they know the number of questions. They'll know exactly how many there are. And in fact, usually, and I'll clear this with you when we get closer to the interviews, um we let them look at them for 15 minutes before their interview. So, they're not sitting down for the first time. But it's up to you. You could have them sit down fresh and look at them go, "Oh my goodness. Okay." But we want to have a hard copy for them either at the table or 15 minutes before. Okay, so they can gather their thoughts a little more or just respond in the moment. But not everyone is an auditory person, so they need to have a question in front of them to read it and reread it. So, So, you do have one. Questions three and four, are those different enough to ask them both? Are you comfortable asking both? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, we could ask three and four. Does anyone want to advocate for question seven? We had three people that wanted to ask seven. I circled question seven, also. But Okay. I had three people on that. Some of these could also be in round two. If you see a question you really want to ask, you could ask it in the second round. Oh, I thought we were only supposed to do two. You are supposed to only do two. So, did you just say >> vote. I didn't I just I made a note that I would if the majority liked seven, I also liked seven. Oh. >> Like I would vote for it. You know what I mean? That I would vote for it. >> circled all three of them. In my mind. Um the ones that don't choose for round one, then we what we ask in the second interviews? >> No, not unless you say, I really think we still need to ask seven, but can we ask it in round two? I'd say in this case seven is very very similar to four, so I wouldn't ask it. Um, but you could pick any of these. I'll come back with another list for round two that is actually more in-depth questions. Okay. I'll bring those to you to look at on the 13th. When you're all done with picking your finalists and you've got two or three people picked out of six or seven. You still have work to do which will include questions for round two, but I'll have a bunch of them to share with you that night also. Okay. But if you'd like something in here, I'm not going to disregard it. Okay, so questions three and four are in. Then the next group, the only one that had more than uh four votes was 12. Five people voted for 12. So, is there anything else in that group that you feel we should ask or do you think 12 will suffice? I like question 11. Um I think that's the only question that focuses on that, so. Okay. I liked question eight just because it um echoes something that came out, I felt, from the survey about um certain groups or or individuals or stakeholders not feeling heard or feeling disconnected. Was that in the survey? Yeah. I don't know Well, she's looking for that, Chair Andriese, can I ask a quick question? So, Barb, can you just tell me what we're doing here? Like we we had 13 questions, and so now we're thinking about adding a couple more. Only if you want to. Okay. You can you can skip asking a question about any of these categories, but if if you should have at least one in each category in round one. It seemed like we did. And I feel like we did too. >> You do. I mean, is there an appetite for going through I I'm sorry. I'm I feel like I'm jumping on what you were saying. >> That's kind of where I'm going. But like is there an appetite for going through all of these because it looks like we have at least one question in each category. >> You do. Do we feel comfortable with 13? The only thing I was considering, do we want to add one more so each board member gets to ask two questions cuz there'd be one board member who only got to ask one. I am perfectly fine only asking one. Um I feel like Yeah, do we do we just feel good with where we're at? Sure. The 13? Uh Director Hyman is right though on page 36 is a theme as some happens can make you feel unheard, excluded from decision-making, and uncertain. So it's potentially worth you know, and and we've got another round of questions. >> Questions too. So eight or 11? And we're definitely doing 12 cuz I got more than five. >> sure. So this is for the second one, right? So we're This is for the first round. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm I'm I'm sorry. I meant to say for the second category. Yeah. Yeah. Do we want to add a question either eight or 11? Open to it. We could also circle back to it because you do only have one chosen in question 19 in that group. You're asking one question in that category, 14 to 19. You could add a question from that category based on its prevalence in your profile in the stakeholder survey. This category 14 to 19 that particular category that those are under? That category came up a lot in the stakeholder survey and the focus groups. So, you could ask a second question in that category versus a second question in the category right before it. So, you're saying in the the equity Correct. You could. You also have Right now, you have two questions. Uh 26 and 28. I think they're different. But, you could ask one there and have one question in that category and add a question from a different category. Just trying to see where your priorities are in terms of what you are looking for in that first round. Which categories do you want to have two questions in perhaps if you want 14, which is also a great idea. Or, we go with the ones that got all the votes and you're you're at 13. Ta-da. And you're done. That's another option. Do we feel comfortable with going with 13? I I do because it gives us flexibility timing-wise as Barb said, if some questions go longer, I I I I'd rather err on the side of less than hope we pack them in and maybe shortchange an answer that somebody wants to expound upon. And then, they're free to do that. Right. >> Right. If they want to talk more about a particular question, they can. Yeah. All right. >> If you look at the last page, I'm sorry to interrupt. I just want to ask if you want both eight and 11 on that last page. Eight and 11 on the last page. Cuz these were not based on your leadership profile. Are those two similar to ask both of them in round one? Would you rather ask a question around equity again in round one? It's up to you. I think that's what I was to say. I would almost rather take question the first question eight rather than Yeah. The Wait. Then I don't know. Which eight are we talking about? The one on the >> page. I agree. The first number eight rather than The first number eight. In the very last section. >> The last number eight. Rather than the last number eight or maybe the last number 11. I sort of like the specificity of the second number eight over I prefer the second 11. That's fine with me, I think. The second 11? I would take the first question eight over having two questions from that very last section. And we could roll one into two if you want. >> Sorry. I'm sorry. I would support the pick up of the first number eight and then striking Me, too. Everyone else? So, we're going with the first eight. The first number eight. Okay. The first number eight and then we're going to eliminate either eight or 11 on the back page. Eight A, if you will. Yeah, eight A. Eight A. Okay. Or eight C. Or eight C. >> The last decision of the evening you have to make. I like eight cuz it's I like eight cuz it's so specific. Which >> But I'm Eight B. Eight B, yeah. I'm for keeping eight >> I mean I think we can keep eight B two because I think that's another question and conversation that's extremely um popular in our community as well. Yeah, I prefer eight B over 11 B. Me, too. Okay, on the last page we'll keep eight and we'll strike 11. And you're still at 13 questions. Does that make sense? >> I prefer 11. Let me see. Can we >> do a round? Yep. Robin about So, we're talking about getting rid of eight on 8B or getting rid of 11B. Correct. So, if you had to choose between eight and 11 on that back page, how many of you would rather ask eight? One, two. Three, four. Maybe. How many would rather ask 11? I'm hearing voices. I don't care. Okay, sounds like eight has more support. Sorry, yeah. On that back page. So, we're keeping eight on the back page. But, I'm just going to Four people said 11, I'm going to cross out 11 then. So, we're still at 13 cuz you added the first eight. Mhm. Yes. One question I had about 8B was could we ask um and like the impact that it had as well? I mean, it's one thing to you worked on it and nothing happened. Oh, what was the impact? Yeah. Ask that question. The impact or outcome? >> is it up to them to tell us that? Yeah, like I I'm very interested in like Okay, so what do you do and what happened Okay. with it. Yep, I can add that. Okay. Okay. Got it. Okay, that has you at 13 questions, which I will place into an EMD form and we will also create a rubric around those eight 13 questions so that those who want to use it can on the 13th of April. That was the last piece of business I had, but I do want to collect those from you because we don't want them floating around. All right. Okay? Okay. So, hopefully you didn't take any notes. See. What? I didn't take notes. I should. One, two, three. She I gave you hers. Four, five. Thank you. I need you. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Is my colleague I I took yours. Oh, thanks. You're welcome. Anytime. Does anyone have anything else you need from me? Otherwise, I am done with my part of the I was just wondering what the longest one of these for you has been. Oh, this? >> Yeah. This wasn't long at all. Oh, good. Look at us. It wasn't short. I shouldn't say it, you know, it wasn't short. This was This was not that long. I've been longer. You always like to meet in the middle, right? Meet in the That's right. Follow the market. Well, that is all for this special meeting. So, thank you again, Barb Doran, for being here and guiding us through what I think would be really complicated processes if we didn't have your guidance and expertise. Um and thank you all for engaging fully in all these conversations. You I hope that our community can see the depth of caring um that is going into this process. We are all invested and um want this to be the right fit for our community um and the right process. So, thank you all. And with that, I would look for a motion to adjourn. So moved. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The chair votes aye and this special meeting of the Hopkins School Board is adjourned at 9:27 p.m. Thank you. Have a good night.