 So we have quorum, and we've got Tupu on the phone. So I will call the major order at 6.04 PM. Second item is public comment, and that is not your term to speak, but we have to do public comment. I mean, unless you have public comments, it's not related to the steering committee. All right, so go on to your action item, which is to, first of all, thank you all for your interest in being on the steering committee. We really appreciate the interest, and then we did want to provide an opportunity for you all to speak about your interests and just introduce yourself. I think we know most of you. We have to leave for our regular meeting at 6.30, so that's 25 minutes. And how many people do we have? Six. So if you could all speak for about three or four minutes, I think that should give us plenty of time to hear from everyone. And if you could aim for two, just in case a couple of people filter in the room, so we have some time on the back end. But my guess is that won't happen. So don't worry between two and four minutes. And then you can align yourself in whatever order you want to go in. But when you come up, please introduce yourselves, put a name to the face, and then just elaborate on your interest for serving. We've all got your letters, which are great. So Rebecca, do you want to go first? Sir. To the mic. To the mic. Mic. Is that one right? OK, why do you send the desk? Because we have two people on the phone. We have, just so you know, who's on the phones, they're not the street people. We have Lisa Frost and Ryan Sejak, who are two Rockbury board partners. So I'm Rebecca Cobans. I am a mother of three. My first is in second grade. My second is our bonus. She just graduated from here, and she's at UBM. She's adopted. So she came to us when she was at the middle school. And so we shepherded her through high school here. And then my baby is at the Montpelier Children's House, which is a pre-K partner of Montpelier. I feel like that gives me a really good, broad sense of the school system as it is now. My second grader is on an IEP, so I have the perspective of a special ed world. And I have a specific passion about pre-K and child care and the benefits of having a publicly financed pre-K system. I've lived in Montpelier most of my life, 1,232, and came back here after sowing my seeds elsewhere. So Montpelier is definitely my home for a long time. Any questions? Just want to verify the schedule works for you. And we may, to accommodate teachers, we're likely to move back the 4 o'clock meetings on Monday to 4.30. That's fine. I just wanted to verify. And then my professional world is I work at a director of external affairs at Lamoille County Mental Health. And I work half time, so that's why the schedule works for me. Great. Thanks, Rebecca. Anyone want to go next, or should I? I'm Stacey Sheehan. I don't know any of your many in the room. And so this is kind of my first time stepping forward for something like this. I have 10-year-old twin girls in fourth grade at Union and have been in Montpelier for about a year and a half and in Vermont for about the last seven, almost eight. My husband is an educator at Twinfield Union School. And myself professionally, I'm the Human Resources Director at the Institute for Sustainable Communities, which I've been at since we moved to Montpelier. I am really interested in this, because I don't have a lot of opportunity to use my HR skills and the recruiting rigor and experience that I have there. I think would be really useful in this process, as well as the last several years working in HR non-profits, working in HR in non-profits. I've done a lot of work around the diversity and equity with that lens in my role. So I feel like that's a very important component to this search and one that I think I bring a different perspective to. And then, yeah, I think that hopefully that outside, more outside perspective from someone who's not engaged in this, I think I could bring something a little different. The schedule works great, my role's flexible, so I can help out when needed. And any questions? Thank you. Thank you. Richard, do you look at your to go? Take it. In contrast, I know all of you. Yes. I would like to do this for an unusual reason. My name is Richard Shear. And I do not have a child in the school. Our child is in the Peace Corps in Ukraine. And I'd like to do this because I've done it before. And I think that that experience would be helpful to the committee. I was on the committee that hired Sue Boyd at Union Elementary, which was a very good hire. And I was on the committee that chose Pam Arnold at Main Street Middle. And that was another good hire. And these committees are kind of, in a sense, like juries. And they come to the right conclusion in very unusual ways. And to have someone in there who's done this before helps on the process side of this. And I bring some things to the table. But I just, I'm coming in that direction. I also feel that the people who are chosen, who don't have kids in the school, have an important role for this committee. And that's how I'm coming in. And I think for the first time in my life, I beat my time limit. No. No. Thank you, Richard. Thank you, Richard. And the schedule works? Yeah, the schedule works. OK. Great. Nathan. I'm Marna Murray. I'm a resident Montpelier. This time I've been a resident since 2010. Before that, I lived in Montpelier from the mid-80s to 1999. I was raised in Vermont, graduated from four educational institutions, BFA, St. Albans, Goddard, Johnson, Vermont Law School. I do not have any children in public school now. I strongly support quality public school education. That really matters to me. My professional career was in continuing professional educations for state judiciaries. I did that in three states, and I returned to Vermont in 2010. In the process of my professional career, reviewed hundreds of resumes, applications, and things such as that. So I think I could bring those skills to this. Since I've returned, I've been eager to participate in civic opportunities. But because of my work and travel schedule, I'm not able to do that. So I see this as a limited commitment and experience, and I would make commitments to the dates as outlined in your program. Because of my work experience, I have deep respect for discretion, confidentiality, and independent judgment. So those are things that I think I would bring to the table as well. Do you have any questions? OK. Thanks, Mara. We don't know you. I'm Ken Jones. I've been a resident of Montpelier for 20 years. For 17 years, I've had a kid in the school system. And those days are coming to a close. What is he over there? 32 days. 32 days of graduation. 32 days of graduation. What I would like to bring to this selection activity is the recognition of the importance of the educational philosophy, but also the management piece. And when I say management piece, it's not just the management as a business, but managing the relations that are so important in schools. I mean, we have students. We have teachers. We have administrators. We have a school board. And we have the community as a whole, a community that may not have another connection with the school, may not have that student connection. And the superintendent is kind of a keystone there. I have to represent all of those managed relations. And so as we look at the candidates, that's kind of the real angle that I'm going to really be looking towards. I know the educational philosophy piece will come out. That's a very important piece. But to say what I want to do is bring that perspective about management as others. I've hired a lot of people. I won't mention any specific names. But I also want to say, I want to thank you folks. One of the reasons why I think Montpierre is a great school system is, do you think that other schools would have 15? School districts would have 15 people signing up to be on the superintendent search committee? I mean, it's great. It's fantastic. So I'm sure you folks will have good folks, even if you don't pick me. Thanks, Ken. I'm assuming the schedule works, right? It stays an end of the letter Y. Good evening, everyone. This is Nathan Souter. I live in Montpierre, parent of two children, spouse of one teacher at Union Elementary. As always, thank you for your service. I know each of you and enjoy spending time in here with you, especially during budget season. I'm interested in participating in this process because I've watched with great interest the tenure of Dr. Rico as superintendent in the course of the school district under his care and under the care of various iterations of the board. I'm strongly aware of the long-term impact of any hiring decision in the district, and the superintendent one is one of the deeper impacts. I have an appreciation for the profound implications of the vision and direction of any particular leader, especially a person at the top who works with their administrative team and acts as a visionary and educational leader for the district. And then I have a strong appreciation for what I think Montpierre-Roxbury Public Schools can be for these communities, for this state, and even leading regionally and nationally in other ways. And I think that's really important. Professionally, I work with strategy, leadership, and internal culture in organizations and have a deep appreciation for team dynamics and the impact that the person at the top position can have. And then last but not least, I am interested both in this process and in the second round, which I hope that the board will pursue a second search regardless of the person selected in this round, starting sometime in October or December of the coming school year because I think we want to be able to pull from the stronger school of us if we can. So, throw my hat in that ring as well. That's it, thanks very much. Thanks, Ethan. The schedule does work for me, except for one detail that I added in my letter. On the 10th, I would participate by phone and then arrive halfway through. Okay, is that it? Anyone else? I guess that's everybody. That's everyone. That's everyone? Yes. Great, well, I think most of you are adjourned. If you have any further comments, we can go talk about this more in Roxbury. Well, I just want to echo what Ken said, but thank all of you for your interest. We get staffed several amazingly talented search committees out of the people who have expressed interest. And that's just a wonderful expression of Montpelier's commitment to his public schools. So thank you for coming out tonight, Mr. Marshall. Yeah. Nathan. Can you now or leave in the future, share who the teacher and the argument who offered themselves and do the tips and part, and then I will see you in the finalist. Yeah, I think we can do that, can't we? Yeah. Well, first of all, let me echo what Pritchett said. Thank you all for coming out. There was a strong showing of interest. So we have plenty to choose from and we'll probably not be able to choose all of you. In fact, I know we won't be able to choose all of you because we're only going to choose three or four community members. So I can give you a little bit of breakdown of what we're planning since we do have a few minutes. Mike DeWise, who we are contracting with to do the search, who's a former superintendent in Chittenden County and is now retired, but does superintendent searches on contract and now that he's retired, has asked us originally to have 10 members. We bumped it up to 12, so we're gonna have 12 total members on the steering committee to keep it a manageable size. From that, we want a mix of community members, parents, teachers and other staff and faculty, the leadership team in the district, the board and students. We're gonna decide later how that likely breaks down, but we'll probably have three to four community members, probably four, one we would like to be from, while we wanna get Roxbury represented, so probably two of those total members on the committee will come from Roxbury, one is gonna be a board member, Lisa Frost, so just given the mix of what we have, it's probably likely that one of the community parent members will also come from Roxbury. And then we'll have a mix of teachers, leadership and board from beyond that, so probably looking at four community members out of 15 that applied, so three of, I think 14 from up here will be selected. We're are looking for a representative committee, one that really understands diversity, equity and inclusion, one that can bring, again, a variety of perspectives to the search so that we feel we have the best shot at getting a candidate who reflects the values and the various perspectives of the community. Do you want the names of everyone who threw that in the ring? Okay, the community members, Richard Shear, Nathan Souter, Jay Erickson, Sirika Tanden, Ken Jones, Dan Dash, and by the way, several of these contact me and so they had conflicts tonight. Rebecca Copans, Keith Jones, Marna Murray, Tiffany Miller, Stacy Sheehan, Adam Sargent, Jill Briggs, Denise Bailey, and Rhett Williams, who's a Roxbury parent. The teachers, we have Laris Lesser, Morgan Lloyd, so if you both end up, end up the committee, Nathan, you're gonna have to, does the schedule still work? Mm-hmm. You're not providing childcare. Sylvia Fagan, whose name I misspelled, I'll apologize to Sylvia for that, I just noticed that. And Julie Smart, and then we also have Peter Watt, who's an instructional assistant, and Russell Leet, whose tech support is district wide. Yeah. The leadership team, you know who the leadership team is, they have ranked their preference, there will probably be two to three. The preferred order they gave us was Mary Lundin and Pam Arnold, so they will definitely be on. And a third might be Grant Geisler, and that was, they met and gave that order preference to us. We have two high school students, both of whom come highly recommended from Mike Picrates and gave very compelling letters. Jenna Crossman and Juno Nagel, both are sophomores, so they'll have two more years in the district. And then Lisa Frost and Tina are gonna be our board members, and Peter actually emailed me earlier and said that he is too busy, and is okay, not, he didn't say he was too busy, but he said he said it was fine. And unless someone else jumps up from the board later, I think those will probably be the two board members. And then that committee will give three candidates and then the board will select from those three. That's Dan Dash. Oh, hey, Dan. Hi, hi, Jim. You're in, for us, yours. Okay, I sent a letter to Jim about giving my... Do you want to send it to the teachers? We have two board members on phones there. Oh, okay, yeah. So I sent the letter to Jim, and I don't know if you guys have seen it. I know you guys are in a hurry to get on to Roxbury, so I don't want to repeat myself for really add anything to what I said in that letter. I'm happy to share it with you if you haven't seen it, but I thought I should come and if you have any questions for me, I could answer them. Otherwise, I don't want to waste everybody's time by repeating myself that I'm going to add really. So to you, I mean, if you want to give a summary that's... Just essentially that we have this challenge to merge the schools, Roxbury and Montana. I'm very much in favor of that merger. I want to succeed. It's going to require a skilled administrator to make that happen smoothly. And along with achieving the various goals, some of them competing that merger entails. So I thought I might be able to help with that great selection process. Yeah, no, thank you. And no, your letter was great too. And as I was just explaining, we are going to make the choice later tonight. So we will know by the end of the meeting and I'll email that out either later tonight or probably tomorrow. Very good. Yeah, thank you all for coming. Yeah, no, the interest. We wish you could have like 25 people on the search committee, but I don't know if Dewey does not wish. So with the UES principal search, was there thought put into the actual hours that were, there's like two full day days that they're doing, looking for the principal. So that they're having a really hard time finding parents to serve on the committee because it's such a difficult schedule. Lift. Who chose that schedule or why? I don't know why I know Pam Arnold has been in charge of the search. My guess is it was probably to accommodate internal schedules. And frankly, we have time constraints with all of these hires. That is relatively the same schedule it was for the Creek Hill Coordinators in that you see a lot of people in a day and we talked about that even with the Creek Hill Coordinators. It's difficult for board members who work to take the day off or arrange big child care. It's pretty typical though for these district hires. Yeah. Yeah, and I think with the superintendent just because it is such an important position. And it's also a position that the board is more directly involved with. We wanted to, you know, we chose the hours to make it more community accessible. But I think for the district hires, they tend to, it tends to fit more in the work day than you have to work to. I move to adjourn. Second. All those in favor? Thanks again everyone, we really appreciate it. And this is very helpful for our decision making process.