 I have a piece I need to talk to you about the calendar, that has been a technical error since that I handed that the board approved last night, and luckily to Linda, I want to thank her for. We were talking about it. Yeah, in the kitchen we couldn't figure it out. So I would suggest that we add calendar at 2.1, because you do the superintendent transition second, so you can get the calendar out of the way. If there's no other revisions, are there any public comments and correspondence since yesterday? For executive committee comments, I just want to welcome Mary Lynn, sorry I didn't get a chance to do that yesterday, and I don't want to assume that you know everybody here. You don't, so maybe it would be useful to actually go around and do something. I hope so. So yeah, I'll start. I'm happy to go out and serve on the Worcester Doty School Board, and I've been the chair of the SE Board for the last year. Hi, I'm here, I'm pretty sure I'm one of Roland's four. I'm Dara Benara, I'm from Carroll School Group. I'm Karri Bailey from U32, and then these won't be there. Dave, don't work on the top doors. I'm Juro from Worcester Doty School Board. Hi, I'm Lisa, I'm the board recording secretary in the floor. These won't be the other boards. Mary Lynn, I apologize, I don't know your last name. Oh, it's Strachan. Thanks, welcome to the Executive Committee. Thank you. So, yeah, I mean, we'll move to the calendar. So, I need to apologize. This is totally my responsibility. I'm not saying that to say to someone else. I actually have been the one doing the calendar this year. And there was a first version of this, of the Central Vermont Career Center calendar that had the April vacation. On the week of April 13th, and after a meeting around the 10th or 11th of November that I was partly there, partly not, it moved to the week of April 20th. And in the version that was approved last night by the SU, that change had not been made. Without having that, we would have kids who needed to get to the tech center without there. So, I'm looking, some years we haven't gotten to the SU board. First rule of the calendar has been done by the Executive Committee. I was saying earlier to Matthew today that we have parents that are already pressing us for next year's calendar. So, to get back to the SU would be a little hard. But I wanted to seek your advice and where to go with this. The major, that's the biggest thing. And I just would like to get it fixed right now. Just to go to the site. Hopefully there's going to be any further comments on that. Can I ask Bill one of the next, I don't even know one of the next on the SU board. Is June right now on the calendar that we have? Right. So, if you want, there's the two, there's the tech center, here's the... I understand that. It'll be the same week of the year basically. Well, the problem is May is split in half. So, it'll be the third full week of the month. Thank you. Is that what it is, this here? It's the, this year's the third full week. Because April, because April starts on a Monday. April starts on a Monday. So, you'll see, the one that you have that's printed out with ours is the one I handed out last night. And the color copy is the tech center and you'll see how it's done. So, this is no good. This is no good. Don't use it. That's what I did last night. But we will get that out. And I would put a letter out to the board telling them there. Yeah, Lindsay and I were talking about it. And she said, well, ours is different because we follow the tech center. And I said, no, we follow the tech center too. So, it's like, I just want to go talk to Bill. And she didn't, but she went and talked to John. John called me. Oh, she emailed John while we were there. That's what I'm having. And John, John and I were in the same meeting this morning at 8 o'clock. So, he's like, Bill, you have a problem. Okay. I'll take care of it. So, I don't think we can like override. I mean, I don't, the SC board would not care about this. They just want to write. They can't make it. They can't make the change without busting the kids. No, of course. No. Yeah. I'm just saying like this would probably be passed in like 30 seconds, like if the SC board can meet, but the SC board is not going to meet. So, I don't know what the executive committee, should we just like have a motion to note the amendment to the calendar like until the SC board can be in there or something like that. I mean, or do you need something more definitive than that? No, I think just to note that you approve that there was a technical change. You know, I think a motion just to approve an amended calendar from what was at the SU. And then in the notes, hopefully the lease is reflecting what I said, which was made a mistake here. I wish I caught it. I didn't catch it. And we're getting it fixed because we need to be in alignment for 175 days and support those kids for a week not to have busting. There are, perhaps kids go to Texas and use our busting services together. So, what's on? I'm happy to make that motion. Also, can someone tell me what the motion is? That we approve the change in the calendar to align with the technical career center. Is there any further discussion in the motion? All those that favorably say aye. Aye. Opposed? So, we'll go to the discussion on the superintendent tradition. I have a suggestion for how we might try to organize the conversation. But, you know, I'm open to ideas that people may have. I have a list of questions that I feel like, or you can call them, I guess, topics that I think we need to get into at some point or address. And then maybe people have other ones that I have not thought of or missed. So, I thought maybe we could, you know, just name these questions or topics and then see if people have other ones. And then we can figure out sort of like what we're maybe going to take them in. Is that? Do you want me to break them up on the wall or something, according to Matthew? Would that be helpful? If you don't mind. Yes. Yep. Yep. I'm just going to go to that box. And unfortunately, I have probably ten of them. So, I apologize in advance for that. That's all right. You have to deal with my spot in, right? The... Okay, so these are in no particular order. So, so far the sort of preliminary consensus has been that an intro to superintendent is a good idea. So, do we want to confirm that? Is that our intent is to go out to the search for an answer to that? That's one question. Another is that the agency of education and state board rules state that they, their permission to proceed is required. So, can we proceed without their permission? We can disagree or contest their rules. But it probably requires a court action to contest it. And I did speak to Scott Cameron, one of our attorneys yesterday. That was basically his advice was that we wanted to contest that. We would require a lawsuit. Do we want to hire a consultant slash facilitator? Again, that seems like the consensus. There are four people or organizations that have identified already. We have a conversation about that. How do we engage the leadership team and the rest of the WSU staff? Do you want to? Okay. I'm just listing. So, if you come up with anything else to add in there, or anyone else has anything else to add? There is a contract issue we have to address. We should probably do that in executive session. But at some point, we have to do that as well. Charlie put on the table last night the question of, you know, the sort of broader philosophical question of whether we want a superintendent, which is a topic that we have to take him at some point. Either we or the SU board is all, or both. How do we communicate back out to the SU board and to the staff what we're doing? And will the SU board have to meet again before June to ratify something we do or approve something we want to do or something along those lines? So, I guess those are the basic lines that I came up with. I probably have an order I put them in, but we can talk about what's appropriate. I'm just going to put it up here for you, because I would have wrote community on it. You have justice? Yeah. Well, the students. Yeah. The stakeholders. Yeah. Well, that's your idea. Yeah. And I would include that on the communication too. Yeah. And then to this, I would add, what do we need a contingency plan if we're not able to hire an interim or anybody for July 1st? Or if that person can't start on July 1st. Yeah. Any other topics or questions? Has the letter been drafted yet? I sent it this morning. Yeah, I can read it if people want to. No, I was just wondering if it was done. I did send it to them. And do we know typically what the turnaround time is for? They're supposed to, according to their own rule, they have to reply within two weeks. Yeah, they have two weeks. And the secretary, I was with the secretary and today I was meeting in the city to receive that. So if we wait two weeks for a city that's doing nothing? Or is there... Well, I mean, I think that we could probably do... I think we could look for an hire... I guess I should say we could look for and try to decide on a consultant or facilitator. But I don't think we would want to start paying that person. No, and I think... I think we can't post a position until... Does Scott give you an opinion on that, on the posting of the position? No, no, I didn't get into that level of detail. Okay, I've seen it both ways. Okay. Alright. Got you. Are we posted as just anticipated? Just posted, waiting for the letter. Yeah. You want to get data. I'm just saying I've seen it both ways. No, no, I should say just so everyone is aware that I did not ask the secretary for permission in my letter. I just told him that we were having a vacancy and that the SU board had decided to initiate a search and our preliminary thinking was this, but that might change and that's all I said. So I didn't sort of tell him we were waiting for him to respond, but... Great. Another question is, are the things we can do to prepare ourselves prior to the hiring to consult them, thinking that... We know last year, there's more that we don't know than we do know, but we could start looking at the job description, for example. Yep. We could think about budget. And I think that we have to divide it in two. We first have to decide, and I think we decided that we're doing an interim superintendent in the staff's board. An interim superintendent are a little different than if we start right away with the search. What we'd be asking the consultant to do. Well, let me just ask as you brought it up and I agree with you. I think that's one of the first questions that I've had to put. So does anybody on the committee want to speak against the idea of going out to work for an interim superintendent, or want to speak in favor of something else, some other... So our consensus basically, I think that's where we're heading. Yeah. There's one thing taking care of us. There's one thing taking care of us. That's what I'm trying to help. I figured these are good notes for you guys. And then, is there anybody that is against the idea of trying to identify a consultant or facilitator who can help us with this process? Yeah, that's a good idea. I think we're freezing. Yeah, I agree with that. It keeps us a real objective and we're going to try to come in and find out. So... Is that person... That person can also help us with communicating and a lot of stuff. Give us some advice. I think you're right on point. That's what I've seen throughout my career. They can help be the point person for communications and they can be the help to be the point person of engaging and gathering. Right. If you want them to. You can get into more costs but that's what they can do. So, if we can stay with that one for a second, let me just list the people that I had identified already. So, the last time that we did a search when we recruited Bill, we worked through NASDAQ, which I forget what it's like the new one. In the Staff Development Council. Okay. Thank you. What are the initials? It's NESDEC. They do have a fairly extensive website. And so I contacted them already one day I think or something and they got back to me yesterday and then sent me a document which I will send around to the committee but it's basically lists like four different levels of service that they provide and they sort of fall part costs for each level. I would say that they seem like they're on the pricier side of the options. Maybe the priciest of the ones that I have seen. But that's one option. A second and Dorothy and I met with this gentleman yesterday morning. His name is Mark Andrews. He was a superintendent in Orleans South. Southwest. Southwest, thank you. For six years and then also in Chittenden Central for seven years. And he's now retired and has been involved in a lot of searches. And he helped remain Southwest with their recently concluded search. That was the first one that he has done professionally as that type of consultant. And he gave us a ballpark figure for what he might charge which is maybe half as much as VSBA and maybe a third as much as an SDAC. In the last four board associations the main person is a guy by the name of Bob Stevens who I have not yet contacted or been in touch with. And there's a guy by the name of Peter Clark who I guess who was referred by a woman named Val Gardner who runs a kind of education consulting. Val is the head of the Snowing Center for Education as Dorothy mentioned last night. So I just wanted to, that's why I put you on to that. Val works with. So was Peter Clark connected to that? No. I reached out to Val to ask if she did this kind of work. You reached out to Snowing or Snowing Institute and Val and then she gave you the name of Peter Clark. I reached out to Val. I didn't know she was with us now. I didn't tell you that. I didn't tell you that. That's okay. But she said she doesn't do that kind of work but she recommended this guy, Peter Clark. And she said that someone from the Vermont Principles Association would have his contact information but I haven't got out to get it yet. And if you want it, I can get it for you. So those are the four that I have identified. Very, very crazy questions. I don't know if you've got a sense of going to Mark. I know that big work that he's doing now is how he wouldn't be interested in being an interim superintendent. What did, I didn't hear you. Would Mark Andrews be interested in being an interim superintendent? We didn't ask him. We didn't ask him. I, from the way he described what he does or how much I got the idea that he would entertain that. I didn't bring it up because we invited him to ask him questions about being a consultant to the process and I didn't want to talk to him like he was a candidate for the position while I was talking to him. I didn't know you were talking to him, sir, but that would be... Not that I was saying that we had an opening even to the consultancy but it was just that was what we were doing. Well, I think we kind of told him. We didn't even know if we wanted a consultant. I mean, we needed... Yeah. We needed to kind of talk to him to find out what they do and how they can help us. It was really exploratory in many ways. I mean, I'm happy to add his name to the list. I thought he was a great guy. I mean, just really... I was really impressed by him. I don't know how you felt, but... Because my thinking is that if somebody like that... I couldn't think of a better name. Yeah. That would be willing to be the intrusive superintendent then we can hire that consultant with their help, too. And not to... Well, here's another sort of question that I have. It might be a cart horse thing. It seems to me like we have to be transparent in how we go out to look for candidates, right? But it's been suggested in just the conversations I've had that we might contact the president of the Vermont Superintendents Association who might know anybody who is retired and is willing to do a one-year commitment or is looking for that kind of thing specifically for some reason, or maybe we could just talk to Mark. But that's not very transparent to just start picking names and start calling people and asking them if they're willing to do it. It seems like we need to have some kind of process. I kind of envisioned that the opening would be hosted somewhere. I mean, there are places to post. You'll see it on television all the time, whatever you know. It's monster.com. It's only going to help with the recruitment part of it, right? Where do you post? That's right. Who do you talk to? Let me say this. Having gone through it, you want a consultant to have the quiet conversations where they look at these positions, they're going to want to ask some questions before they think about the position. And the consultant's a good way of having that one-point person to do that. They may, a lot of times, and I've had this happen to myself, when I ask a question, I don't know, but I'll go talk to the board contact about that. And if the board needs to make a decision. So you can try to determine if you want to apply. Oh, wait, I see. Because there's sometimes that just needs... It's better than initially talking to a board member. Yes. And so let me ask for the consultancy itself. Not for the position, but for the consultant. Are we on safe ground if we identify a short list of people that we want to apply? As long as you're below $15,000, you could do it whenever you want. It's when you go over $15,000 that you get into an RFP situation. And normally, because I know NASDAQ rather well, NASDAQ, they get into places, they primarily service southern New England, and they primarily get into searches that are pricey because that's what those districts are going for. That's their bread and butter. Yeah, I wasn't driving force behind the last time I went through it, so I had no idea what it ate or even why that decision was made, or I just don't remember. I didn't even remember that Brian came through. Yeah. Look, I'm happy to reach out, have conversations with people. I'm also happy if other people want to do that, or if somebody wants to join me in doing it, or whatever. I'm not trying to jump the process either. I think we need to post that, but Vermont is so small. In the past, there were a few people that made a career being in terms of great attendance, but most of them are really tired. So I don't know, it's been a long time, that was the generation that I knew. People that have been mentors to the years. So what I understand is that we can't really wait very long to find the interim, and I didn't know that Mark Anders was the person I had talked to. I haven't talked to him. I don't know him well. He's just... I couldn't tell you. He's just highly appreciated by a lot of different people. All I can tell you is that he had a great impression on me, but I didn't broach the topic with him at all. He's not a consultant right now, so in the interest of going as quickly as you can, I would say let's think about the criteria for a consultant and whoever wants to work with Matthew on interviewing these people, we can narrow down this list pretty quickly. Can I go back to when you spoke to Val Gardner? Yeah. Was she only comfortable giving you one name or right there with others? I just sent her an email and she responded by email. I just said, I don't do this work, but here's a person you might want to talk to. That's all she said. So you sent it to her as her, not back to the snowing. That's right. Maybe we need to broach the snowing and just see what they have to offer. I will add them to the list. I mean, I'd like to choose from three or four, at least. Sure. So criteria. Go ahead. Experience. Experience. Experience as a superintendent? No. Search process. Yeah. And specifically for interaction. That's the thing I'm curious about. I assume that's somewhat different. That's a good thing. I'm going to say good political slash communication skills. Yeah. Seems like a reference for this. Yeah. Well, yeah. Do we ask for references? Yeah. Are we looking for somebody close? I'm thinking of mileage and time. The cost, I guess. That would be for the cost. Availability to get right on this. Availability yesterday. Can I ask a clarifying question? Are we talking about a consultant just to help us with the interim principal or are we talking about I'm sorry. Yes. I'm currently searching for a principal and I've been in this room for three days. Sorry. Superintendent, or are we looking at a consultant to kind of look at the entire process of what we need to do? I think what I would, the way I would want to answer that is getting off of some things that Mark said in our meeting, which I thought were pretty illuminating for me. Which is that what he said about it was the board really has some work to do to discuss and kind of hammer out what its collective vision is for the school system. Because when you hire an executive, a chief executive what you want to do is hire someone who is in line with your vision and who is capable of executing it. And it was when he said that that I think that we started thinking that interim actually probably makes a lot of sense because we're in such a state of flux right now just organizationally, operationally and with a lot on everything. And I think our boards are just to be candid about it are not unified or sort of not in a place of unity about vision. So there's some work to do there. And it could take a few months minimum for us to try to have those conversations and come to a point where the reason of responding to your question that way is that I'm not sure if somebody who we would hire to help us find an interim superintendent would also be qualified or prepared or the best person to lead us through that process into it and then into a future superintendent for changes. I don't know. The thing that I got from him very strongly was you can't expect this interim superintendent to mend your fractures. That's kind of my point of asking. The other thing we have to keep in mind that while we individual boards may interview the person or go through all this the board they actually end up working with may be totally different. And they're going to be wondering about that as well as we. So that's another part of it and how that fits in I don't know. I agree with that too. I don't think I actually don't see the fractures that great and we've got some issues. We've had a very bad deal that has caused some definite differences of venue but these boards work together for a long time and continue to do it. I don't see that as a huge thing and I also don't think that would be his job to address it all. It's really getting us through and we'll do that. We do that internally. That's our job and we'll do that. I have no doubt about that but I'm just addressing Marilyn's question that we're looking for a same person to kind of Well no I don't think I was necessarily asking that. I feel like this is a two-step process and so an intern superintendent is in my mind is someone to come in and just help us to just and then there's this greater part of it which I do think is the bigger part of it and so my criteria for thinking about a consultant to help with an interim is a little bit shorter than what a consultant to move us for in the overall bigger picture of us becoming unified in that word in multiple ways is different. That's why I'm asking that and just for me I was thinking consultant for the bigger picture I'm not sure how much I'm not sure how much work a consultant to help us find an interim I don't know how much they need to do but also I have only done this with a principal in a very tiny school a couple times now and that was a pretty quick process to find. I think it should be short term if we're looking for somebody by July 1st then we've got a couple of months to do it basically. So in the criteria for that person it should be somebody that is familiar with our system. Familiar with our system? Yeah, that could understand our system. Yeah, I don't necessarily agree I think that when we need someone that could move quickly to the superintendent. Interim superintendent to get us through transitional period and then next year with a new board we're going to undertake this sort of much bigger process that will look at values and strategic direction. What I mean by familiar with our system is familiar with Vermont and where we are right now like what we've been doing with where we are in clubs with all this at 46 we do have our student learning outcomes and we do have that is a lot of education I guess or something like that is really crucial right now for that interim because it's going to be so quick. I think they're going to have to be able to box us we're in this period of we don't know where we are but we know we have this core of education where we're trying to maintain. We want to keep the good in this process and we want to have somebody who can kind of get their hands wrapped around that they don't have to solve all our problems for us we want to protect what we've got and grow it if we can but it's stabilized, keep that stable so we don't disintegrate put the bumpers in our bowling and our ruts that we have created so we get in a groove instead of all these ruts that we have in ourselves I mean I think there's debate going on but you have that in certain areas you start this core of education that's happening out there so we have to preserve that we have to make sure that's happening and we have to make sure that we don't unwind that and that's we want somebody with a good solid idea that's going to be able to come in here I think and quickly identify what is you know that's working really well in here and maintain that I think we'd be careful about scope creep on the this is an interim to me that's what would be really important about this but I think a consultant could also help us figure out what approvates scope learning but also talking about that it's just a different set of I was spinning into the superintendent we want to help that that person that will guide us to define those things so does the I almost see it as I've participated in some searches I almost see that I don't think that as executive committee we are all kind of might have the same vision we're not completely qualified to it's that this criteria I think this criteria needs to be a little bit broader and what we identify is to create a committee for the search of the interim that includes people from different so some people from the like we've gone to the superintendent search and have those people create you know quickly because then we would have a broader perspective we all are involved up here and they're involved here and they could have something to say about I just want to clarify I'm sorry I'm interrupting you can give it a thought back to you we're talking about the criteria for the consultants not for the interim superintendent but I think for particularly for this consultant it's going to be important because it's going to affect quickly everything that is going on on the on the school I think we are qualified to have find somebody that is really nice but I think we gain more from starting that sooner rather than later that has to say especially if that consultant will stay on for the larger I'm sort of confused about I see that we're hiring a person to do a very specific thing which is to help us hire an interim superintendent to me that's what I feel like we're talking about so anything that's broader than that I would feel some discomfort I'm thinking the consultant would guide us on how to develop the search committee that is other than the executive process really we need to really really focus on getting and getting the timeline for that and once that's done then the consultant will give us some advice and we'll know which way to go and how to do it so would it be I mean we want to try to do that as quickly as possible so does the committee want to ask some of its members to reach out to as many people as possible and get information from as many people as possible is it a week enough time like are we willing and able to meet in a week yeah yeah yeah week from tonight and we can set the day I'm just saying we want to do it as soon as possible you don't want to lose time on this one so what do you have written down right now criteria I have experience in leadership searches particularly for interim possibly good political slash communication skills cost and availability and knowledge of Vermont in Act 46 and I have five possibilities to talk to, consider, put together at least do you want help I want help I'll volunteer to do something I'm free all day so do you want to I'm happy to do the outreach and I'll copy you on all of it and we can try to have the conversations together if we manage to have conversations is that yeah just tell me what to do and I'll do it you know sorry about saying that well we're going to work on that within this week is it possible to have to meet and consult next whatever night we meet Thursday it depends on whether the committee wants to charge people with making a decision or just bringing candidates back actually that's the question we can bring three or four candidates on paper our impressions from having talked to them I think we can do that but to speed things up how about if we charge you with bringing us one or two from us we can try it's going to depend probably on people if they're available but yeah we can try we can do calls people are willing to do that yeah we just give you the authority so you've got the if it can be made to work out times are most important all right well I'd love to ask for a motion or something about this to charge whoever with identifying two finalists for position consultant to assist with an interim superintendent search yeah so I'll make that motion for Matthew Curry and George I don't think I was volunteering I thought you were I mean I'm having a lot of help that's what I thought I thought you were volunteering I can't I think we can probably manage it yeah between the two of us okay so I'll make my motion to Matt I mean my guess is what we need to do is you and I need to do is find some people who are consultants and then figure out how to connect is there a second okay thanks is there further discussion of this topic so all those in favor of the motion they say aye proposed, pensions motion carries you didn't really suspect this is going to happen by next Thursday did you we didn't say that in the motion but we will do it by next Thursday I guess one question we should address is whether I want it available to be next Thursday Bill are you available I think so I mean I just don't want to assume that your time is infinitely available so yep we don't know about the room until so I'll check it right now I'm pretty sure at this time of night it's usually not booked but I can go on the calendar I think it's hard for you to get here but it would be 6th the earliest right okay I think the whole rules thing we'll just not worry about that and we'll see what happens by next week we'll hear from them I assume they don't want to drag it out I guess I'll reserve it right now and I assume that we want the consultant probably to advise us about engaging the WCSU staff and these days so we can park that for a moment and I assume that we probably will need more SU board meetings that are currently on the calendar but among them we have no idea what those might be contingency plan I don't know where to start what's your thinking on that we should have done this a long time as soon as I as soon as I realized that Bill was searching we don't really that I'm aware of have a backup plan and that if people were to drop dead what would we do get it by the bus so a lot of boards require a plan to be in place so we're way behind I think just in terms of what are our options if we don't have someone in place by July so as I said to you last couple weeks ago we had this discussion we have two superintendent two people that are licensed for superintendent they're on the issue and that's Kelly and Jen I thought you said that they are not interested in doing board work they're just doing everything about board work they're willing to do I just want to make sure that it's okay for us to discuss this in an open session because this is for naming names I've also said to them that you might want to talk with them and they were fine with that they actually asked if they need to be here tonight and I said I wasn't given any instructions that they needed to be but they could so in other words what you're saying is that we might be in still in search mode but we will not actually have a superintendent for the first of July whenever it is no I'm not saying that what I'm saying can they step in I guess I'm asking can they just step in on that day if we're sort of still finalizing getting an intro superintendent so I believe I believe that in the States you have to have a superintendent I know that was some discussion last night that's my belief from reading the statues and that they have the endorsement to be able to be a superintendent because I asked them to have that because although we didn't have a policy about succession planning I've worked in other districts for it is and I believe I needed that because just for exactly what Kari said I wanted to know we had an endorsed superintendent to take over every time that I leave like I was Monday Tuesday I was down and Jen and I were down with 10 other colleagues from U32 at a conference I always want one of the three of us on site with the license because there's some time do you think you have to do that day that could happen that require a superintendent's license even though I'd be on the phone I want someone here with it to be for somebody to have that conversation with them and now that we could have somebody to support let you have somebody that supports the board work for them so part of an agreement with them if it came to that and then I think that we would have to have somebody that would help them with the board work I think you should talk with them I would offer to have conversations with each of them and just kind of feel out where they are with this question if they'd be willing and under what terms they'd be willing to be in charge on an interim basis because I would feel bad to have two candidates one that couldn't start for some reason until you know August 15th and that was a better candidate but we felt but have to take somebody else because we didn't have a plan to be I'm happy to help you do the two of you want to do that before next Thursday sure I'll take a phone call okay why don't I we'll figure it out is there anything that people want us to ask specifically I think I trust you both to figure out what the real questions are actually personally that can look like a lot of things it can be collaborative work it's basically covering a leadership right for a period of time if they're familiar with the duties they can have a lot of different shapes one person doesn't have to carry that whole especially the summer is kind of an unusual period we're looking for something that can be done for like a few weeks which may be different than what the role entails regularly day to day throughout this school year yeah it's different okay so there's two other things one is the contract issue so without naming specifics we would want to invite Lori to join us so maybe we'll invite her to join us next week I did talk to her briefly last night and say I didn't think of any reason for her to be here tonight yeah she asked me so the three things we would have for next week which specifically are hopefully to speak with a couple of consultant candidates possibly make a decision on one for that unfortunate the second would be to hear back from Karin and Flora about their conversations and then the third would be to ask Lori to be here for that conversation possibly the HR person also may be here or is it sufficient I think you'll be fine with Lori Karla could be here but I think it doesn't need to be here and then the last question is I don't know if this is a conversation we need to have before or during the hire of an interim superintendent but I don't want to ignore Charlie's memo suggesting that in the long term maybe there are other options I don't want to have that discussion now just noting that it was raised at some point we're going to have to figure out a game plan for trying to not discuss that it seemed like the board spoke last night at least in terms of the short term go forward and find an interim one year superintendent I agree and even one of Charlie's suggestions given we might be interested in those other points he thought one of them was an interim superintendent until we knew what we were doing I also think that the question that Charlie raised having one more member believe that we don't need a superintendent means that we have to have a better understanding of the board of what the superintendent does so it's a very educational moment so we don't have to treat it specifically to just responding to him but we have to either we've done this at different schools when there's a question about why do you have an assistant principal but I think there should be some just let's talk about what the superintendent does and that would help us with as we move on with the consultant in our vision and put us together because yesterday's meeting was not necessarily a reflection of how any yesterday's meeting was not necessarily one of our best meetings you know what I mean I think that I don't disagree that the board clearly sort of spoke regarding to hiring an interim superintendent for a year you know but I think that you know I heard more than just Charlie more people than just Charlie saying that maybe it's a discussion we should have about what the longer term you know plan should be and so even though I agree that I don't think that that's a conversation that has to happen like immediately or you know even before we hire an interim but you know I would say that if we it's definitely a conversation we would need to have before we go to search for a longer term superintendent which we would start to think about already October November December so the clock is ticking as we head into someone the board typically doesn't meet at all anyway so I'm just saying that at some point you know we're going to have to come to grips with you know what it looks like to actually maybe it's just putting on agenda and we discuss it some and we take a decision and then we move on you know maybe it's that easy but I just don't want to I think you think of it this way you know it warrants a look you know we're boxing ourselves in it we're becoming very very sometimes almost overly rigid and we're stepping back and looking a little bit you know I don't know if I would be supportive of something like that or not do I do for them because the superintendent does a lot of work and that work has to be you know spread across other people if you don't have a superintendent that means it's got to be a lot of coordination and so that could really go right you know but it doesn't hurt for us to take a little time over this coming year so we should you know I think it could be healthy to step back and take a really objective look that doesn't really happen right now I mean we're in you know our job now is to really get you know have stability for that next year you know we should be looking at it in this year but now we're working on getting to that point where we're at I guess I'm just sort of like coming to and I'm fine with like parking it I guess I just want to plant in the minds of the executive committee members you know in a way this question is a part of that larger question of what is our vision as a board of the school system you know we're at a crossroads you know I think that there's a lot I could say about it I think we really are at a moment of choice as well as operational as transition so it's a complicated thing and it's a I guess it's just something that I'm sort of trying to grapple with about like how do we have that conversation in a constructive and productive way that leads to actual resolution and that's it's not just going to happen by itself I guess so it's going to require some conversation about how we do that I'm thinking that it is an important conversation to have I don't know how urgent it is I mean June we're hoping to get some student learning data that seems urgent but at some point we do have to hopefully reaffirm for ourselves that's how I feel that the superintendent's needed I'm trying to think of different ways we could frame the conversation want us to have the job description or you know the essential functions I remember early on in my tenure on the board there was a paper on principles being the building level leaders and that was very illuminating for me because by contrast the superintendent's taking everything else off the principal's plate so they can focus on being the educational leader of this building so I understood the roles much better as a result of a scholarly paper and the other thing that I would say is a meaningful conversation about this I kind of have to understand a little bit better what is meant by not having a superintendent because to me it doesn't actually make much sense it's sort of like chopping the head off the organization you know if you don't have the CEO of your business your organization what do you have how do things function I don't get it so if there's a model out there or someone could describe for me how that would work and who the board would actually supervise I really wanted to avoid actually having the conversation because we could do that forever but yeah there is a conversation so let's come back to that at a future meeting and try to figure out if we can sort of think about can I just say something I think we should twist that positively as an education thing about understanding and be very careful with this conversation could make really nervous a lot of outstanding principals so this is really how we frame this conversation is very important because I wouldn't want to see any principal jumping with even the thought of this being differently so I think we presented it to the way that he presented us and we can flip it around as an educational moment of understanding first that's all I wanted to say I don't want to get into the details but as opposed to what you call it we are even debating going that way I think we really need to understand what it is I think it is a conversation about what kind of educational system what kind of skills that's the conversation but people will frame it in different ways and I'm not sure if we can possibly frame it in only one way it will be framed but we can we could say that could be a retreat this summer last summer we did something else this summer our retreat is going to be even though we have what we don't have all the words but the retreat this summer should be something like that that should be a retreat we need like the world's best facilitator well no you know the way I would see that is you would really sit down that would be an educational day where you really laid out that structure in a way that everybody understood I mean there's no question there's a danger when you don't have you know there is a reason you got the individual leaders but you have unified command with an emergency management where you don't have an individual leader you've got a group management and that works really well that's the way you can use that internationally certainly nationally big and small incidents so it's there the question is but it takes coordination because very good coordination I know it works I'm not saying that's an easy thing to do I think it really it could be a great retreat and I don't mean to debate about whether we do that or not but it's about here's what our challenge is it's what the needs are of this group this educational group how do we best how do we what are possible approaches to doing that and this is one I don't know what the answer to that is I wouldn't use this as a debate time just so much as an educational time to look at the problem there will be some debate I'd just like to say one thing I think in searching for a superintendent the questions we will be asking them and the questions they will be asking us will make us focus more on actually what a superintendent does why we may come to that conclusion while we're doing this search of what the important part is so I think this next couple of months will get us on that path that makes me think that you're concerned about the implications of having the conversation on other employees but does having the conversation limit the pool of people that would consider applying to work for us absolutely I think there's a lot of misunderstanding of what the job it's really misunderstanding of what there's a lot of misunderstanding of what gets done or not gets done so we could gain a lot about just plainly stating what it's done it's education like people I agree we'll come back to this at another meeting not next week I think but we have an opportunity to end our meeting half an hour early if there's nothing else to discuss so let's go ahead and almost do that let me just check the agenda yes there's nothing else on it so we have feature agenda items we have the time date and time and place of our next meeting so unless there's any objection by consensus we will adjourn at 7.03