Board of Education · Special Meeting · March 20, 2024

Meeting is now in session at this time we wish to extend a warm welcome to everyone who's joining us the purpose of this meeting is to interview a selected superintendent to interview superintendent search finalist the interpreters for tonight are Martha Romo eiles and Vanessa pinet Ramirez thank you for taking the time to join us the board last Wednesday had an opportunity to review proposals from multiple search firms and we able to select a set of four finalists we will hear from three of those finalists tonight this evening and we'll be able to make a decision at our board meeting tomorrow let's review our agenda Madame chair I would move approval of the agenda with the deletion of summit as item d as they withdrew their application Miss SP Madam chair a second been moved by Miss berer and seconded by Miss Rogers is there any other discussion all in favor say I I any opposed please use the same sign oh I'm sorry we need to Voice vote.

We have one of our board members who is joining us virtually Miss Chávez Vice chair Chavez so let's do that one more time Miss Chavez this is em Chavez and I will I miss Rogers I Miss Valladares I Miss unknown hi Miss Carter Aon hi and Miss Lewis hi I vote I as well so it passes unanimously well before we get started with our actual interviews we do have rubrics that are in front of us as well as search from questions Miss Lewis did you have something you want to kick us off with before we got into the questions yes just briefly I did want for the public to be aware that of the the process this evening so each firm will be escorted into the boardroom by themselves and then when they're not being interviewed while they're waiting to be interviewed they will be in a holding room so that will be the process no one none of the other firms will be present while each firm is being interviewed the plan this evening.

Is for the interviews to be approximately 30 minutes give or take of each firm and as the interviews conclude with them we will then escort those firms out of the building what we would ask and I know the board has worked several of the board members worked with Mr Malone on the questions and I believe it is the board's plan at this time to assign each of those questions we also provide it I did work on a rubric yesterday evening for you and if it is the board's desire we can tweak that as well I was attempting to capture the areas that you had in your interview questions so with that if you the board wants to go ahead and I believe you have nine questions right now thank you Dr Giovani board you'll see there are nine questions in front of you are there any additions or edits to the.

Questions okay hearing no suggestions or edits we can do want to assign folks to ask a question just to make this process move really smoothly we okay with going down the line or do you all wanna just the question of where Miss Chavez would like to fit in I think it's a little bit I don't think that she'd necessarily want to go first from from the screen so or that works out Miss Chavez do you have a preference on a question that you would like to ask on which number question you would like to ask I'm happy to go wherever wherever would be easiest my favorite question is number three but I could ask I could I'm happy to start or finish us up either way let's maybe have you start let's do that perfect right Miss Chavez will go first Miss Roger she'll have two Miss Vadar three Miss Beyer four Miss Carter Aon five Miss Lewis six I'll take seven Miss Chavez can we come back to you for eight.

Yep and for number nine anybody want to take the second all right M Rogers right sounds good any other questions before we get started just the the notion of before everyone was here and we were talking about follow-up questions and and keeping on time and just wondering what advice you and AR's from sington have about that before we get started I don't know if you would like to assign a certain amount of time for each question you certainly can do that I think each firm has 45 minutes if that's correct M with nine questions so you know that doesn't leave a whole lot of time per question so if you wanted if you would like me to time each question I can if you would rather have me give you an update maybe when there's 10 minutes left if we need to speed things along it's really what the board prefers can you do a 10minute warning time when time is left we did have an opportunity to send the questions to all the firms.

In advance so they might even though we just assigned some might have a presentation that they want to do or some might be ready to have us answer question so it might be a variety tonight and we'll be able to flex with that but the 10-minute warning will help us stay on track thank you absolutely and the notion of follow-up questions we have had these questions written and vetted in advance so we won't ask follow-up questions today we know that'll be harder but we're going to try to stick to our script again that has been sent to folks in advance so people have had an opportunity to really look through these questions other thing I want to note just about the search from process is this is our opportunity to really understand how a firm can support the board in the work of selecting the new superintendent the board will be responsible for reading applications and making decisions around who we want to interview and move forward in the.

Process and our goal in this process is really to understand how the search firm can support us with the recruitment of the candidates and also helping us with the whole process all right any other questions before we get started I think we're gonna be right on time at 5:15 all right let's invite our first firm and we'll start it off maybe with a quick round of introductions as folks come.

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We chair I'ma just stepped out to get her phone which is in the car she wanted wanted us to start with introductions and our vice chair is online so I hope that she can start with introducing herself and you can see her face but welcome hi there but I'm Emily Chávez Vice chair and thank you for coming. Tonight hi good evening Jessica CA auton hi I'm Javan Lewis I'm Natalie I'm alexand good evening I'm ment. Rogers Emily I think you have our first question what's your name yeah what's your name that seems important thanks my name is syia flow.

Of the name Alma is that it means to Foster in Latin and what we the reason that that is important is because this work with our clients is really about fostering our relationship and fostering this work together and so we believe that in capacity building at our core because we want you to leave knowing that you have the tools and skills to carry out whatever work whether it's our Consulting work our search work on your own going forward so thank you for having us you so much siia it's it's a little strange with our vice chair online and and we wanted to make sure that we're timing our our attorney is timing and we'll let you know when there's a 10 minutes left but we have a little bit of overflow if needed anything else that I forgot y'all are I'm just happen to be sitting closest to the middle so okay Emily you comfortable getting us started yes I am going to give the first question so this question is how.

Does your firm's understanding of institutional race racism and Equity inform your recruitment of candidates as well as your board and Community engagement process thank you so much for that question as you note in our proposal our results are not by accident they are by Design based on our team's lived experiences our work began as I mentioned in the HR and talent space working with organizations to help strengthen the ways that they recruit retain and staff their organizations and so we found that in starting this starting with the agreed upon competencies for the role whatever that role is that's the first step in mitigating bias and so when we design the job profile it begins with ath authentic voice and transparency and communicate and Community engagement all of the community engagement work helps us really Define that job profile and the key competencies that will be used to shape the selection process our search work evolved because of that Consulting work and people began to see that the tools and resources that we.

Developed to help staff schools with teachers and leaders could also be used in finding their next cabinet level member or superintendent and those what we found is when we develop a process that is grounded in those competencies women and leaders of color tend to make it through the stages of the selection process because of that work on the front line defining those competencies and so that is one of the ways that we mitigate bias through our search processes we also provide training to anyone who is going to be a part of the interview and selection process and that is our sort of proprietary anti-bias training that is foundational to our search.

Practice sorry it's my turn thank you can you provide examples of how you navigate board Dynamics in a board's multiple thoughts and opinions it's a great question and we know we have had numerous engagements with school boards that have been in a variety of states and we know that you all are facing a board transition you'll have two new board members joining your organ your team in July we had a situation in Cincinnati public schools where there was an election happening in the middle of the the superintendent search process attracting a strong superintendent who's going to be committed to your your city and County starts with having that align alignment at the board level so what we want to do first is have individual interviews with every board member and we would want to also include your incoming board members as well to get them engaged in the process before they assume office because they will be then working with your next selected leader help that really helps us.

Identify any risks and plan for for plan for the selection process going forward it also helps us align on those key competencies as I mentioned at the beginning so that we're clear on what what the board is looking for in addition to what the community is looking for I'll share another example where we worked in unknown public unknown Township High School District they hired us and unknown is just nor of Chicago where Northwestern University is they had an outgoing superintendent who had had many years of service and they thought they had an internal candidate for the role and we worked with the board to decide whether or not they wanted to conduct a a nationwide search or if they wanted to really engage first and align on the competencies and then align then evaluate that incoming the internal candidate against those competen icies and what was great about that is after doing the community engagement work developing the job profile and evaluating the internal candidate the board selected the internal candidate.

They all had these t-shirts on that said like I forget the I forget exactly what it said but like team of eight so the seven board members and eight and they had these t-shirts on when they announced that he would be the next superintendent really to show that alignment and that commitment to to this internal person stepping into the role so again I think it goes back to the clarifi clarification of those competencies at the very beginning and then having everything come back to that and working with the board to to stay focused and aligned I have the next question and you've answered part of it but can you provide examples of how you work with boards to identify their specific needs for their next superintendent since you've already talked a little bit about this I mean you have just a few more minutes to just expand on on what you were sharing yeah I mean again first we want to meet with you individually and then of course we want.

To meet with you collectively as we go through this process I think it's really it would be really important for us to have and I don't know if you all have thought about this already one or two members who are working closely with the Alma team going forward so that we're planning every step of the process together and then those one or two designes are are then making sure that the full board is aware of the work that we're doing in between those times where we come back together as I mentioned we'll want to do anti-bias training with you all together to really talk about what's important what are some of the ways that we want to help each other stay grounded in those competencies recognizing that we all have biases but how do we mitigate and control for those and help pressure test one another and stay focused on the evidence that we'll be gathering throughout the throughout the selection process thank you so much what is your communication protocol throughout the process you.

Talked about this a little bit but with the board the community and the candidates and how do you handle confidentiality so as I mentioned that authentic voice and transparency will be important in this process we want to make sure that the community knows what's happening with the search we will want to work with your designes at the district level hopefully to create a landing page for the superintendent search so that people can access and find out where we are at each step of the process so we'll help craft out a communication plan that identifies when we're reporting back to the community and sharing updates about the superintendent search in terms of working with the board we'll want to again have one or two points of contact who are our sort of project team working alongside of us and then we'll want to come back and meet with the board at regular intervals typically that's every other week with the project team and can be at least monthly with the.

Full board to keep to keep the information flow and to get their input on the process in terms of candidate confidentiality this is of utmost importance to us our recruiting team is going to be looking for candidates that align with your values and align with the job profile that we create based on our community engagement work and so we're we're looking for active job Seekers but we're also looking for people who may not know what a great City what a great County this is and what a great opportunity it'll be so in those cases when you have passive job Seekers candidate confidentiality is really important to them as well because we know that you know if someone finds out they're looking sometimes it could create a difficult situation for those those candidates so we believe in candidate commun candidate confidentiality we will definitely want to get clear on the the rules and regulations in North Carolina so that we can understand if there any constraints we have with sharing applicant materials either.

For those being foyer or for others having access outside of the board we have used confidentiality agreements in certain situations where we've introduced other interviewers into the process at various stages so that's certainly something we'll want to discuss with your board attorney as well and again we have worked in States like Ohio that have very generous open records requests where appli the list of applicants can be requested and shared almost immediately and then we've worked in States like Wisconsin where candidates can request confidentiality in advance but they're not guaranteed confidentiality at the finalist stage so we'll just want to understand what how things work in North Carolina and make sure that we are planning for that and being clear upfront with candidates about what they can.

Expect thank you I apologize for my tardiness coming in my name is batina Umstead chair of the board thank you for being here today oh actually it's not even my question that's question I apologize what do you believe should be the role of community stakeholders and how do you ensure the engagement of under represented Community communities that's a great question I think stakeholder and Community engagement is the most important part of this process so we will thoughtfully Design our our community engagement process upfront we will want to work very closely with you to identify individuals that will either need to be interviewed oneon-one that could be invited to focus groups and then we would also want to work with you to design Community forums and other ways to engage the broader community in the early part of the select of the search process that intentional Outreach of historically underrepresented groups will be really important and we'll want to lean on your connections hopefully your family and Community engagement team can help us identify the.

Ways that we want to intentionally reach out to all members of your community we are obviously we're now living in a virtual world so we can conduct a lot of things virtually and then when we're here on site we'll want to go to the places where the community members are and we'll of course want your input on how to best do that we have also used a community survey as well there are several members of our team who are bilingual in Spanish and so we can do our own translation we can also hold monolingual Spanish sessions in your community as well we would need support for any other languages that are pro prevalent in your community but we'd want to make sure that we are going to the community as opposed to making it difficult for them to come to us so we want to leverage as many Avenues as possible to get to the community that's the beginning that starts the process that helps us understand what's most important to the.

Community we would also want to through the communications updates make sure that we're getting that information out to the community on the search process at every at at Key milestones and then in the finalist stage we want to come back to the community and invite them to be a part of the finalist interview process we have designed an finalist interview rounds that include up to nine different stakeholder groups all of those interviewers are trained in our anti-bias training and are able to really design and craft questions from their point of view what is most important to them and so that on the back end the community has an opportunity to participate in the in the finalist interview stage and we also want the broader Community to be able to either view interviews and give feedback and we synthesize that feedback and provide it to the board to use in their final deliberation you and how do you address unconscious bias in the Recruitment and selection process so I talked a little bit about.

That at the beginning which is really it starts with those competencies first getting clear on what you're looking for is the foundation of this work we spend you know th those initial weeks is really about understanding what's most important and how does that come alive in the job description for your role we don't have a cookie cutter superintendent job description we really want the values the the skills the experiences the core work to come alive and how we tell the story about Durham Public Schools from there I mentioned our anti-bias training is foundational to our work we want to be able to acknowledge that biases exist and then be a able to set those aside and focus on the evidence against the count the competencies that candidates demonstrate at each stage of the process we believe in designing those interview activities to really get at what are the skills and experiences that candidates have demonstrated that show the alignment there and we find that when you focus on those that evidence and.

Gathering that evidence and when you have multiple interview interiew viewers who are evaluating candidates from their point of view you tend to again have women of color women and people of color make it through the the selection process at higher rates the the second part of that is Alma does provide facilitation at each step of the decision-making process so our team does all of our debrief sessions with you and with interviewers are facilitated so that we are focused on evidence that we're challenging one another when we see or hear things that may sound like bias and not evidence-based to really get at what what it is we're looking for what it is we're hearing and again making sure that we can come to agreement on who's advancing through each step of the.

Process hello again what are the my question is what are the expected fees and expenses including an explanation of any additional cost that may be incurred so thank you for that question and we definitely want to take a moment to talk about our pricing and how our approach is different our proposal does include an all-inclusive pricing structure we base our pricing on 32% of the estim ated base salary and for those of you who have been involved in executive searches outside of this this setting you would you may know that the typical search firm charges 34% of total compensation so we're a little less than a traditional executive Search firm as I mentioned our pricing is reflective of the time and effort that we that our team will dedicate to this process that includes all of the training for interviewers this facilitation of your board and board debrief times we of course can translate and facilitate in Spanish so that would be included all of the community engagement work is a part of.

That and you know the level of work is very is extensive in the way that we design and co-create a process that fits Durham Public Schools and I will say that you know board members who have participated in multiple superintendent searches over the course of their board service will tell you that there is a difference in the level of service that we that we provide and the value of that service and I'll certainly you all have our references in your in our proposal but would definitely point to board chair Eve Bolton in Cincinnati public schools who is a long serving board member who will Who is our reference for us and she can tell you about the level of service that we provide also we just wrapped up Madison public schools in Wisconsin and former board chair Al Ali mro and others can tell you the differences between an alma search and and other firms the last thing I'll say is that we would dedicate about five people to.

Supporting your search a couple of those folks you won't see on a day today basis they will be behind the scenes either doing recruiting and sourcing work some of our data analytics work and then there'll be one or two project team members who will be working closely with you all on a weekly. Basis here patina we are at 10 minutes thank you that's perfect because we have two more questions left Miss Travis so you touched upon this a little bit but could you explain how you would comply with North Carolina's open meetings public records and Personnel confidentiality laws so again we would of course want to meet with the board attorney or outside counsel to make sure that we understand what's required in the state of North Carolina and any potential constraints that we have we just want to make sure that we are complying with any open meetings public records and confidentiality laws that exist we've worked in in again states that are very generous where we have to let candidates.

Know upfront it is possible that your name and application materials will be released to the public before finalist stage and so we'll want to be really honest with candidates about the expectations here and then we've worked in places where the search can be confidential up until the finalist round typically at the finalist stage we will want to announce those finalists so that the community again when we come back they have the opportunity to meet finalist candidates in terms of working with the board specifically on what has to be a public meeting versus an executive session or trainings we found that the laws vary in every state and so we'll want to help your attorney understand what is happening in in each of the meetings where we're all together and plan thoughtfully for what needs to be done in public versus what needs to be done or what can be done in private thank you and you've already address some of this but what assistance does your firm provide with scheduling board meetings preparing meeting minutes.

And handling other logistics yeah so we'll definitely want to get clear on the expectations for that we we have typically had one or two points of contact within the district who are working alongside of us as well that could either be from the board office specifically or your Communications team to help to help us with Logistics and meeting materials at every step of the process we have found that we have found great success when we have that Clarity up front and we are identifying those trusted folks that that we can work with alongside at every step of the process because we do want to name that this is a Time intensive process not only for you all as board members and there will be times where staff are needed to help with scheduling a community meeting at a school for example or helping us identify locations for any meetings where we want to engage with key stakeholders so that's definitely a partnership that we would want to establish up front front and we would.

Want to be clear on what you all need from us in order to support support you and to support the staff you I'm GNA look at Miss merchon here just to see if we could ask if there's anything else she would like to share that maybe wasn't covered already is that right I don't have anything to add all right thank you is there anything else you would like to add that hasn't been covered already let me see. So I would just close by saying I think the difference in our approach is really around the customization that we provide at every step of the process and our foundation in developing an anti-bias process that that helps to mitigate bias and I think lastly the transparent inclusive community engagement is really important to us us because we have a philosophy that those who are closest to the issue should have a stake in designing and co-creating a solution so it's really important for us that we are able to get to know and engage this community.

Parents students staff as closely as possible thank you thank you so much for coming and speaking with us and answering some of our questions this afternoon we really appreciate it the opportunity to get to know you and the work your firm does a little better thank you thank.

You we will take a quick like 10 minute recess in between I think we have 15 minute recess in between firm so for those who might be viewing we're going to go to a recess and then come back for our next firm I'm at.

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All right we're back from our brief recess we're going to do some introductions I want to say thank you all for being here with us we do have one board member member who is joining us online our vice chair so we'll start with her and then do introductions for the rest of the board Miss Chavez hi nice to meet you I'm Emily Chavez hi thanks for being here this evening Jessica CA auton hey I'm javanna Lewis I I'm Natalie Beyer I am Alexandra VES and I'm ment Rogers and my name is Betina I'm said I'm chair of the board thank y'all again for being here we have I know you all prepared a PowerPoint presentation so we'll bring that up the board also has a set of questions that are in front of us we're going to be tracking your presentation and make sure the questions are answered each one of us has been assigned a question so we'll be looking for our question at the end we'll give an opportunity for if.

Anything wasn't answered for us to come back and ask that question all right and with that we'll pass it along to you. All Mr C if you could just turn hit that button there perfect there you go yep no it's okay you might have to bring it close to you so that the streaming will pick up pick up voice I'm Kevin kassner this is my colleague Percy Mack and this is his wife an important part of our group too Carolyn Mack you'll see us with we go through the PowerPoint we have tried to embed the questions however our very last slide has all nine questions and if we have missed something we hopefully we can get through to that our goal is to try to get through the PowerPoint in about 20 minutes or so so that we have plenty of time to try to address your question first we're delighted to be here and U you've all had an opportunity to look at our proposal which we feel is.

Pretty comprehensive and a lot of the stuff will follow the details of what we're trying to prevent present the next slide please the things that's important how many of you have been through a superintendent search process one of you have been here since 2010 I don't know so the fact that some of this is new to you one of the things that happens during a superintendent search is it does bring a community together and hopefully it brings a board together even a board that sometimes goes through split votes because you have a common Mission trying to pick the best person you can to lead your system and in doing that there's a lot of Goodwill that occurs but also you're on stage too people will start watching your meetings more they'll be paying attention to everything and the idea is how you want to relate this in a transparent way to your community and the process that we have which will allow that to happen you're putting the trust for a group to.

Come in and have access to your community and also report back to you whatever we're hearing now you're the experts of your system you're going to be able to have that as a check and balance as you're trying to come in and develop your decisions in the process that you're going to have but it usually is is a very positive process and again as we come in here we're aware of your school board we come into situation sometimes where things aren't always going well so a lot of times this is still going to build on this in whatever situation so again it's a team effort and a lot of this and the people that you're going to be talking to tonight that would represent you as your search team it's development of a relationship same type of relationship you want to have in trust as you're trying to find your new superintendent and and that's something that you're going to deliberate on and it's very important next slide please I'm going to start having Percy.

Introduce himself and also one of our colleagues is not here Deborah Hill Percy if you would please again hello to everyone and I'm Dr Percy Mack former teacher assistant principal principal executive director Deputy superintendent super intendent in two districts Dayton Ohio and Columbia South Carolina worked there about 40 years in all of that retired and now I am the chair of the Ed leadership department at South Carolina State University we trained School administrators from assistant principls all the way up to superintendent as superintendent in Dayton Ohio I was selected as intendent of year by nabsi in '06 and was advocate of the year in South Carolina as advocating for students as the school superintendent at in that particular District it have an opportunity and Dayton to run a levy to build all new schools Dayton Ohio has all new schools today because we were able to do that and we could only do it if we increased student achievement when I took over super intendent we were last in the state of Ohio we were.

614 out of 614 school districts in academic achievement and we were able to increase to continuous Improvement in a period of four years but we had to have everybody on board parents Community the judges we did a thing with the judges where if parents didn't send their kids to school they would provide the the the court system would deal with the parents because we have a situation where where parents weren't sending kids to school and so we had to move to that and you know because you have to have them present in order to learn and once we got that across to parents then they did what they needed to do but all of that was a team effort and I had a great team in both places and really enjoyed that time and now enjoy working with students at South Carolina state who are training as assistant princip PR principles and superintendents and we have several superintendents from our school who represent the state of South Carolina Deborah Hill Dr Hill is.

Former School administrator she's our managing partner at bwp she was former president of ASC which was Association of supervision of curriculum development she has really focused on curriculum development during her career and is a great managing partner for bwp she keeps us on our toes and she you know her favorite her favorite word sometimes is no no without explanation so we all understand the marching orders as as we go forward but really looking forward to having an opportunity to present to you today and to work with you if you see fit okay first last I'd like to introduce car I'd like to introduce Carolyn Ma and Carolyn has been an educator all her career she was in essence a Chief academic officer in the Dayton area and she also has helped us with communication as it turns out she started coming with Percy to some of the meetings and we found out that she's a valuable member of our team she owns a company now called Elevate which is in.

Professional development and has a lot of the technology skills that we can use with her when we're getting into the zoom and the ways that we can create access that if anything was was enhanced as we went through covid so that we're getting greater access than we've ever had before and I'll talk about that in a minute in regard to myself I'm a former superintendent from Alor County in Charlottesville Virginia so I've worked in a university town I know what that's like but I also spent 25 years in Maryland in Prince George's County which is 100,000 Frederick County which is 40,000 and Charles County which was 25 so we've had experiences in a lot of the larger districts which we seem to be working with more and more in our process I also was a peer reviewer for race to the top and helped give North Carolina $600 million and got to know Bill Harrison and a lot of your people the booklet was about this unknown and so I did learn a lot.

About North Carolina and actually was very impressed at that time with the quality of work that we had there I also own Cambridge strategic services and do strategic planning and I've done over 50 plans all across the country in addition to over the 50 superintendent searches you have in front of you a booklet that I should have told you about and in the booklet you've got a brochure that describes the history of bwp you also because of Carolyn you have a Nifty PowerPoint in a different way than we normally have had it and this is another example of trying to customize our work on the right hand side you have key decisions that if we would have another meeting if we were selected we would want to go through and get direction from you as a board and you're going to see details that go into specifics about how you need to help us in community engagement and how important that is and what it looks like in order to have creating access and a.

Transparency throughout your division we also have a sample survey which in some cases we've had several several thousand people fill out in addition it turns out there's an article that I wrote in for the national Schoolboard Journal which talks about the importance of stakeholder environment particularly when you're getting into multiple opinions and how you're trying to bring all voices into the tent to try to re have consensus it's necessary but it's hard and that's the type of thing that you want to try to do when we go through this process so that's some back ground information that you can have here and I can just tell you bwp if we go to our next slide our our strength is we've got superintendents all across the country but the fact that we have over 35 years superintendent experience in urban Metropolitan and Suburban areas that experience is most valuable when we're working with the public and we know how to work with the public as a superintendent should in order to be.

Able to receive information and not try to be judgmental but to hear people's voices and it's important that people have an opportunity to be heard so when we get in front of a group we know how to navigate those type of things it's not always easy but it's very important that we do it the right way and I think you'll find if you talk to any of our rences they'll tell us that we do it the right way so we have a support system we have the experience which we think separates us from many places and we also have the track record as we go to our next slide please our next slide I'm going to have Dr Matt go into it because I think our important portfolio is important because our portfolio and the examples we've used are customized to examples that fit into your school district one of the things as you look at that that page it it identifies diversity and placement and one of the things we do.

In in ref reflection to your question one we look at districts if a district is not willing to show diversity and Equity we don't take the search we don't take every search we evaluate the district before we decide if we're going to take that search not and as I said if they don't indicate diversity and Equity then we will not take that District you know no matter you know you know we will you know if we've already applied we'll withdraw you know we have no problem doing that because you know we want our record to speak for itself because we want the best possible person for your District our goal upon getting the folks for your district is for you to have a hard time deciding which one of them you want you know we want you to have to stay up at night we want you to have to fuss at each other a little bit about you know the individuals involved and so that's why we we work at.

This and you can see our placement 37 minorities and this is just recent and 52 women the ladies are really stepping it up in the superintendent category today because they make up the most of the workforce within the schools and they have moved into principal ships Deputy superintendent superintendents and that's a good thing because I have one of those ladies who is one of my daughters who's a school principal and I have three other daughters so you know I'm I'm glad things are are really doing well at that period of time and if you look at those schools minute if you look at those schools you'll see the breakdown the large medium you know small and all those schools have great superintendents and they they're still holding on the point I want to make we don't select the superintendent we try to give the board six candidates usually that we feel are a match and fit based on your leadership profile we do have when we work with urban districts Cosmopolitan districts.

We have the ability to attract a very a very good camp cidate pool in that candidate pool it always has diversity in it and in doing that then it becomes the choice of the board but it just so happens as you look in the southeastern region which we have specialized particularly in the last few years with Savannah and charlott Mech and and a lot of the places you can see we have in essence developed a great reputation in this area and people look to us more in the Southeast than if we were going to do one in the Midwest so with Percy and I in this area I'm in Virginia he he's in South Carolina the southeast has been somewhat of our specialty but of that group right there 11 out of 12 do have diversity whether it's been Hispanic black or or women so this is a reflection of our work all right the next slide please we want to we want to let you know that we personalize your search.

Your search church will be like none other in other words you know what your community says they need what you said you need you know is not a match you know a lot of time people talking about say You Know A District similar to yours there's no District similar to yours every district has its own unique individuals our content our needs of the community and so if we designed it for everybody the same it wouldn't work so we talk with you first and then we make a move on that next slide please all right there are several phases to our to our work we establish a process that supports and helps the Board to find that candidate we create community and staff support we aggressively recruit highly qualified candidates for your position and upon the SE successful completion of your search within your timeline your budget and your expectations so let's look at specification.

One okay the next one please all right first specification we will coordinate the community engagement process we will create a draft leadership profile of experience qualities and skills needed in the next superintendent and then we will look for board to approve that leadership profile once we establish it it's your approval and then we will post and announce the vacancy now here's what we do to get that profile next slide please we interview each board member we interview each board member we meet with representatives of various groups and you give us those groups we have opened forum for employees and community and we also include students in our interview process because students know more than you think they know about what they want for the next superintendent and we have a online survey posted on the district's website in multiple languages whatever language you tell us that it needs to be posted in we'll post it in that language and that has been great for us and it's it is brought about.

Great results because a lot of times folks don't want to come out and but they will handle this and I want Kevin to talk a little bit about the place where he went when we were in Charlotte so Charlotte mecklinburg we rely on staff and board members and so I didn't know where I was going but I went to a Hindu temple and found out there were 100 people there had to take my shoes off and it turns out that 20% of the Charlotte Mech population is Hindu we allow we want to go the places that need to be gone to so in Prince William County as we're getting into Co and we're trying to get access to the meeting we're having a community forum and on the screen are translators for nine different languages that go into chat rooms simultaneously translate get the information back to us so how do you get into those div diverse groups how do you get into areas of key Hispanic communities all of this you can help us.

Do that but it's important that there's a partnership we'll go where we need to go and we need to be able to do this in such a transparent way that we don't leave somebody out that's a recognized member and that accountability is something we have to work at a team so we think that's very important and we agree with this and I also you know when we look at your work the questions you've asked and the types of things that we're trying to present all are driven by your core beliefs and your five priorities and so the leadership is there what we're trying to do now is you're modeling it and and doing that we're going to help you continue that one of the things you'll be presented after that Community input is you will be provided a document similar to this it will have have in it everything people said we'll not cut anything we'll say it the way they said it we won't Jazz it up we won't correct.

The grammar or whatever however they say it it'll be in this booklet and each one of you will get a copy of this and you will see what the individuals had in mind or what they had to say doing that particular for and and we tell them up front you know we want you to be honest say what you want to say say and we will record it and at the end we go back over what they said and say have we missed anything because we want them to understand we were listening and that we feel that they are a great part of this process to find the next superintendent so like I said each one of you will get this document that will be divided and separated out but it will also have people saying what they actually said nothing made up all right we're going on to recruitment on the next slide please all right under recruitment we advize advertise in National Publications and websites and we seek nominations from an.

Extensive network we have directors all over the country and if someone comes from California we have contacts in California to let us know if that person is the right person for this particular position and people are very very very clear on what they need to do and then we initiate contact and let them know that they need to apply on our website five minutes so we have time okay all right good enough so I'll keep moving next slide all right the the assessment we assess everybody we we we work with them and then we we come up with our group who we say now these are the ones we want to present to the board we'll present you six or seven candidates and from that group you may choose maybe three or four or may say hey we want to bring all six in an interview that's again your call and that kind of thing and we will only bring you the top candidates ones that we have done formal and.

Informal reviews on we will check their Google searches we will know if they have any hidden agendas we have our individuals go deep they will tell you if they walked across the street the wrong way and and then we will let you know and then but you know once we get everything lined up then you will get this document this document has everything in it about the six or seven people we'll give you everything all of their articles everything you will get this book and in this book also so you will have the protocols of how the selection process should be what questions you should ask what questions you should not ask because sometime you ask the wrong question it ends up being a lawsuit and you know we don't want that to happen we want you to be fine and we'll do a training with the board before this process takes place so we can we can make that happen first I want I want to add one thing we encourage you.

Because the state of s it to have a confidential pool we think it's very important to be transparent on the front end but in order to attract the strongest pool possible we find that by having it confidential if we go to South Carolina we have smaller pools it's a balancing act that you're going to have to decide as a board we can tell you the pros and cons But ultimately that's your position but to attract the maximum pool of sitting superintendent that's the best way to do it we've done it both ways again we've done it in South Carolina that way we've done it in minap that way we did it in Columbus that way so we know how to go both ways but that's going to end up being a community decision and that's something that you as a board when you would have that interview with whoever you select you would have to give us direction for that ask Slide the next slide please it it's just what I spoke.

About you guys will set up interviews we will work with one member that you determine oh I'm sorry thank you we will work with one member that you determine who we will schedule with and then we will schedule these interviews based on what that person tells us your schedules allow for because and let me say this when you interview everybody needs to be present do not set it up if three people can't come if two people can't come and one per please don't do that because what we understand is this these candidates are interviewing you as well and they want to see that you're interested these people are going to be moving their families they're going to be leaving positions and usually the people we have are in positions and they're doing pretty good already but an opportunity to move here with you will allow for that opport opportunity so please when you set up your interviews make sure everyone can be can be present all right Kevin you want to go over the.

Timeline right quick and then we'll give them time for questions next slide please if you want to have someone on board by July one it's going to be tough but we've worked with that timeline the problem is when you're negotiating when a candidate is going to be available because you don't want them to do wrong to their previous system so you have an inum that's the type of thing that is going to have to happen when you get involved with who you want to pick and you get into that type of negotiation it's very clear that what the option is if you want to expedite it and go 30 days sooner I think it'll make your pool a little bit smaller but this is a timeline that we worked with in Charlotte Mech and actually we were doing Charlotte Mech and then a month or so later Savannah so we know that it can work another thing you need to understand you're an attractive area of the country that people want to come to.

So a lot of things that you're working towards is because you have things going in a very positive way you're in a unique place that's very special to people okay now I'd like to get to the questions because I want to add a few things if I may if you could put the nine questions up please next slide find out if the board let's find out if the board has questions that we may not have answered yeah let let me stop for a minute before you get to that go ahead first thing is as far as pricing pricing our base is 34,000 we think that we're going to have we are going to be able to drive we don't have to get in a plane so we think we can keep it around 40,000 but one of the things that you can't determine you we believe you should bring candidates in you should not do Zoom interviews so the expense for candidate travel you know that's something we think is worth the.

Money the other thing is on Advertising whether you go 30 days or 60 days if you can do 60 days you'll have a larger pool but that's 3,000 or you can go to, 1500 so ballpark we think that our price is competitive but we also know that that's the type of thing we could talk about more because some of that's going to be related to your decisions the other thing on confid confidentiality we believe in confidentiality throughout the search we even have had boards choose to sign a confidentiality agreement that's your call if a board thinks that's what they want to do that's important unfortunately we've had that happen and we've had it not work complete now everything else on there we have familiarity with North Carolina we have worked in school system Charlotte Mech was a good one and I I guarantee you they were on top of everything and and as you would expect so we we do know the nuances that you have in your state and.

I know several people through the state your superintendents that we work with I would like to stop there if we missed something we'd ha be happy to entertain any questions thank y'all so much for the presentation and I do think you covered a lot I'm going to look at my board members to see if there was a question that we felt like needed to be covered Miss Lewis thank you for your presentation and the diversity and placement that you shared to us the question number six is specifically how do you address unconscious bias in the Recruitment and selection process we haven't had that as an issue we try to follow what is the best match and fit to your leadership profile and there's no bias to that the issue is a candidate that can show a body of work that relates to the expectations and the what this this school board is looking for so it doesn't and we don't the gender issue the equity issue has not.

Ever come up that way I I also think as professional Educators we want to guard ourselves against it and it it just has never been an issue we have seen places where people say take the name off the top we haven't seen that improve a search One Way or Another when it comes to a board although there are options if a board would choose to do that so we're very we're very sensitive to that but I also think that it goes with our experience in professional training not to let that happen one of the things we look at as well is we listen to what the candidates say when we're interviewing them we listen at what they're saying we we look at the district they're coming from we've looked at their the their their body of work in that District have they really worked with you know everybody have they worked with the the the individuals in that District who were in poverty areas you know have they provided education for all for all.

Students in that District because every student deserves the right to Quality education and so you know we we look to make sure that we don't have people who have bias to low income or you know it's not just racial bias you know it's other biases as well that people have and that's why we have to do a close look at what they say and we have to do a close look of references check to make sure that we don't run into that situation one of the things that counters bias is when we're looking for datadriven examples of student achievement you can't hide that where are your achievement gaps are you going the right way or the wrong way so those type of issues the data needs to follow that and when we talk with members of that Community or even the board or other people in the community U one of the things superintendent can't hide they're an off fishable and these things would come up also the fact that we give you no.

Surprises when we go through some Google searches sometimes there's some things there that you want to know about sometimes they aren't exactly as accurate as they should be so we try to eliminate some of that because our goal and your goal no surprises and we've been fortunate that that has not occurred and we asked the question you know is there anything that we need to know that would cause embarrassment to the sport and then we do our check and if you didn't tell us the truth we'll know it because we want to put you on the spot we want to say you know because some people say well you know I had a speeding ticket or I had this or that but you know didn't tell you that they took took money for gambling and tried to put the money back before it was time for the the budget to be reviewed and couldn't make it and and that type thing so those are things that.

You find out as you go deep we go deep into background checks on individuals thank you all so much we have concluded our time I'm just going to look to see if there's any other questions I was going to ask Miss Chavez do you have a question you feel like we need need to make sure we get answered from our our questions no I don't have any additional questions at this time thank you thank you all so much for coming and have an opportunity to share with us we did ask our other group is there anything you needed to share that you felt like was not covered.

Already but no you know and we've researched your District you know we kind of know what goes on the other thing is now is this being tell is this being recorded yes so as we observe and we've been in a lot of board meetings just the way you've reacted to us the fact that you have engaged with us you've asked the good questions you've been true to what you have in your core values so all of these things give us every reason to really have the opportunity we'd like to work with you and we'd like to thank you thank you all so much thank you for coming lady right here thank you all we are going to take again another recess before our next group comes in five.

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Right we are are back we are now getting ready to interview our last firm North Carolina School boards Association thank y'all for being here we're going to do a quick round of introductions and then we will pass it over to you all one of our board members our vice chair is joining us online so we'll start with her good evening this is Emily Chávez I'm the vice chair thank you for being. Here hi good evening thanks for being here I'm Jessica CA auton and I'm javanna Lewis batina Umstead I'm Natalie berer I'm Alexandra VES Millis Rogers all right we understand that you all have a presentation so we're gonna let you all go through that PowerPoint presentation the board has copies of the questions that we sent along and if there are any that we feel like we didn't quite get the answer to we'll Circle back at the end of the presentation all right good thank you I'll pass it over to you okay first of all I just want to say thank.

You so much for inviting us to interview with you tonight and considering ncsba as a finalist for your superintendent search we really appreciate this opportunity very briefly just to introduce ourselves my name is Sam Sam Thorp and I'm an attorney at the North Carolina School boards Association where I currently head up our association superintendent search Service two of my colleagues who work with me on superintendent searches are here with me tonight and I'll give them a brief moment to introduce themselves to as well thank and push the button to make it sure it's green thank you thank you good evening my name is Caitlyn ay and I'm also an attorney at ncsba I'm a colleague of Mr thorps and I've been in csba for about two years now and help out with the superintendent search thank you for letting us be here this.

Evening our team prepared a PowerPoint oh I'm so sorry hi my name is Maddie gden I am the editorial coordinator here at ncsba and we'll be assisting Sam and Caitlyn I am also a proud DPS. Parent I apologize again Madison please forgive that our team prepared a PowerPoint Point as Dr Giovani said in response to the questions that she shared with us yesterday afternoon and I would like to walk through that PowerPoint I'm not sure where that's being shown at and answer the questions one through nine as Madam chair mentioned hopefully leaving as much time as possible at the end for any follow-up or additional questions I know this goes without saying but please by all means feel free to interrupt me as I'm going through the PowerPoint with any question clarification that you need I want your board to have as clear and accurate a picture as possible of our search process what it might look like if we were to facilitate another search for your board beginning with question one on the next.

Slide in responding to your RFP and even in preparing for this interview it became very very evident quickly in researching your board and in researching your District that each of you have a very very deep and sincere commitment to equity and social justice combating institutional racism that appears to be true in both your personal and professional lives outside outside rather of your your role as board members as well as in your role as board members and we have experience our team has experience especially in the past few years in working with boards who have a similarly deep and sincere commitment to equity and social justice and I know that no two board boards are exactly alike but what those boards found very helpful and what I if you were to hire our search firm to facilitate your next search we would really encourage you to lean into that commitment to equity and social justice and to make that a central guiding tenant that informs your superintendent process throughout the entire search.

Beginning with the vacancy announcement where we could work with you to include language that explains your board's understanding of and commitment to equity emphasizes its importance in terms of your board's decision about the district's next superintendent crafting application questions that require candidates to explain their understanding of and commitment to equity work including questions about this in the public input portion of your superintendent search process really making sure and we would work with you to make sure that you're having those open and Frank conversations about institutional racism and about Equity not just with each other as a board and with your staff and your community but also with the candidates that you are interviewing and assessing in terms of being the best fit and we found that by in working with these other boards we have found that by making Equity combating Institution racism a central tenant and undering tenant so to speak of the superintendent search process that boards find themselves really well situated at the conclusion of the search.

To make sure that they're finding the candidate that's going to be the best fit in terms of those very very important issues and cohering with your very established commitment to equity and social justice we have a lot of experience working with boards that have sometimes very tricky Dynamics and differing opinions especially over the past few years when as you know the temperature's really been turned up on local Boards of education and and the issues that you deal with and what we have found to be the most effective tool in navigating those sometimes tricky Dynamics differing opinions is communication sort of creating an environment and a culture where there's consistent open and honest communication between board members and without going into detail about any of the boards that I've worked with what I have found is that even when a board has a really really sharply divided vote even if it's a seven member board and it's a 4-3 vote the boards that have committed to communicating with one another before.

During and after that vote they can move forward in a fairly unified healthy and productive way assuming they really have meaningfully participated in that communication with one another I've also worked with boards that have had unanimous votes or nearly unanimous votes who haven't been able to move forward in nearly as cohesive and unified a way as those boards with the four3 votes and that's because what I found to be most important is that all board members are heard and that all board members have a full and fair opportunity to share their views and perspectives and opinions the main way that we work with boards to identify the specific needs for their superintendent I don't know if we're we're this would be question three so I apologize I can't drive the PowerPoint if you just next slide we'll make sure it goes whenever you're ready main way that we help you identify specific needs is by drafting what we refer to as a custom leadership profile which is informed by two things.

First it's informed by your community and staff public input that they provide through during the public input portion of the superintendent search process which we solicit through online surveys where we ask respondents to identify the characteristics traits and types of experience that are most important to them in a new superintendent we also provide a comment section where community members staff members can discuss in detail issues that are really important to them that they really want you the board to take into consideration during your search process we take the top characteristics traits and experience that are identified by your staff and community and include that in a draft custom leadership profile we share all of the results of the public input portion online surveys that we facilitated with you and give you as much time as possible to review that feedback and then we would meet with you the board in Open session at a regularly scheduled meeting where we would facilitate a discussion with you and give each of you the opportunity to.

Share with the staff and public what's most important to you and a new superintendent which we would of course include in that leadership profile we would then use that profile to inform all of the remaining steps in your search process reviewing the applications deciding who to interview crafting interview questions interviewing the actual candidates and then of course ultimately deciding who the district's next superintendent is going to be our policy protocol when it comes to communicating with the board is to always be as prompt responsive and professional as possible and most importantly we always always always communicate with the full board if you were to hire us to facilitate your search number one it's your search number two we work for the full board and so any communication that we have includes all board members and anytime a decision needs to be made about the search it is at a meeting a regular or special call beating with the full board present or certainly the full board with the opportunity to be present perhaps.

Even remotely I apologize and and a full and fair opportunity to be heard and weigh in and we would of course move forward based on what the full board's decision is with whatever issue we are addressing in terms of confidentiality we work with boards to strike a balance between making sure that the public is aware of where the board at within reason that the the public is aware of where the board is at during the superintendent search process but we help the board balance that with the obligation that the board has in terms of confidentiality under North Carolina personnel laws I'm sure you already know this but all applicants to your school system including superintendent applicants are entitled to complete confidentiality and so it is extremely important vitally important that you guard and maintain that confidentiality two ways that we found that are really effective at doing that one is anytime we share confidential information with boards we do it electronically via secure online platform it's called symbl each of you.

Would have a unique login ID and password for accessing that information we also as a search team handle all of the exclusively handle all of the communication with the candidates beginning with the very start of the superintendent search process in terms of Recruitment and applications following up to the board's ultimate decision about who to offer and negotiate a contract with it's really really important I'm sure you've heard this as well that board members not engage in any independent and we would of course educate you about this and and impress this upon you but it's really really important that board members not do any independent contacting of researching of superintendent applicants we've worked with boards who I think very inadvertently and innocently have done some IND dependent researching and contacting not necessarily of candidates but folks who know the candidates used to work with the candidates and in my experience the fastest and most destructive way to damage a search usually irreparably is to breach confidentiality from a legal standpoint it's a crime from a practical.

Standpoint it ends the search the candidate usually withdraws all of the other candidates most if not all of the other candidates withdraw it is very very bad for the searching board and for the the search firm that's working with that board and looking for a superintendent and so we would work with you to guard and maintain confidentiality and we feel like we do a really good job of striking a balance between helping you keep the public informed but also maintaining your obligations in terms of North Carolina personnel laws and those confidentiality requirements we believe that the role of the community stakeholders is to give you the board as much meaningful feedback as possible as much substantive meaningful feedback as possible to inform your superintendent search process we have found and we've tried a number of different things but we have found that the best way to get the most feedback in terms of the number of responses and the content of the responses in terms of candid responses is through online.

Surveys that folks can respond to anonymously that's the most important part but also on their own time and in the privacy of their own home we have worked with boards and would work with your board if hired to do your search to reach out to and try to engage under represented segments of your community that's really really hard work but also really really extremely important work and we found that the best way to do that or the best way to have some success at that is by building upon whatever existing relationships your board and your District already has in place in terms of reaching out to those segments of the community and trying to find creative and thoughtful ways to use those relationships use those mechanisms to engage those folks in trying to inform your superintendent search process and we would of course work with you in trying to strategize toward that end one of the ways that we're really different from many other search firms not all but many and it's not.

Necessarily in a good or bad way but it is in a really really sign significant way is that we in csba do not screen applicants we never filter application materials we are never going to tell you if you hired us to do your search we would never tell you which application to look at or not look at who to hire or not hire who to interview or not interview we believe in giving you as much information as possible and as good of information as possible and helping you process that information in a really thoughtful and deliberate way but when it comes to deciding who to interview and who to hire that is exclusively within the province of the board North Carolina law makes abundantly clear that it is locally elected Boards of Education who hire superintendents and we do not get in the way of that we believe in providing you with a process that empowers you the locally elected board to make as fully informed and unified decision as possible in terms of.

Who your next superintendent is going to be and by not screening any of the applicants and not withholding any information or filtering any information we feel like that goes a long way toward mitigating unconscious bias in our search process to the extent your board might be interested in any sort of continuing education training on unconscious bias Ramona Miller who handles board velopment at ncsba I spoke to her earlier today and she would be open to finding a third party provider who might could come in and do that if that's something your board would be interested in doing the expected fees for our superintendent search I've shared with you a cost estimate in response to our RFP I've also brought handouts tonight that include that cost estimate bottom line is our search fee is a flat fee of 21,000 $500 plus any additional board approved expenses examples of those include background checking we use a third-party provider to do that for your finalists advertising we cast as wide a net as possible but would take.

Direction from you in terms of whether or not you want to spend any money on advertising and where you want to Target those dollars and some boards choose to cover lodging Andor travel expens of their first Andor second round interviewees and that's entirely up to you the the main thing for you to keep in mind is that all of those additional expenses will be presented to you the board to decide whether or not you want to incur those additional costs in our cost estimate we I think the the final total was $2,799 what I would say is that historically our searches end up being with additional board approved costs in the neighborhood of 225 $5,000 sometimes it's a little less $500 or $1,000 less sometimes it's a little bit more $500 $1,000 more as I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation and as Caitlyn mentioned we have numerous attorneys that work on bar licensed attorneys that are part of our superintendent search team and work on superintendent searches.

We are very very familiar with open meetings Law Public Records law compet it laws or confidentiality obligations under NC Personnel laws and we have a lot of experience in working with boards and making sure that boards have legally compliant searches throughout the entirety of the search process and then finally the short answer is that we try to handle all of the logistics and administrative details of all of the meetings that we attend the one caveat to that is sometimes especially early in our search process we are meeting with boards at your regularly your existing regularly schedule meetings or or work sessions and so we obviously for obvious reasons would not handle the logistics of your regularly scheduled meetings and work sessions but to the extent we're responsible and there will be several special call meetings that we're entirely responsible for we would handle all of the logistics administrative details of those searches including keeping records of the open and closed session minutes we really try to do everything we can to make sure.

That you don't have to worry about whether or not you're having a legally compliant search or whether or not any of the administrative details are taken care of so that you can focus on what's most important which is assessing the candidates and their fit with your board and your District that concludes my responses to to your questions our responses to your to your questions I'm certainly happy to to answer any any followup questions that you might have Madam chair we are at 11 and a half minutes to go awesome thank you you did cover all of our questions I don't the one question we've asked everyone is there anything else you would like to share sorry to put you back on the spot that you didn't share about your work any any closing remarks or any additional information I I would just say I would take off my ncsba hat my superintendent Searcher hat I'm a dad I have a four and a halfy old son I call him King James he.

Kind of runs the house he's starting kindergarten in August and we're really really excited about it my wife's really really scared I'm kind of a little more scared for the teachers that I am for us but just I feel like boards have gotten so much scrutiny and criticism and I don't think there have been enough thank yous and I know that in August I don't know the exact date but I'm GNA be taking my kid down to the public school near our house and I'm going to be in trusting him to teachers but I I have tons of faith in that decision and I can't wait to do that because they are board members like y'all I was really heartened and thrilled to read your bios and to to know that there's folks like you on Boards of Education who are doing everything you can for kids like mine and so if I could say anything additional I would just say thank you I think you get enough criticism.

And thank you really and truly for your service thank you that was that was really kind I appreciate it thank you with that you all are dismissed thank you so much for coming thank you thank you the board members we have now spoken with all of the different firms we will have an opportunity at the board meeting tomorrow to make a selection on the firm that we would like to choose and to move forward with this process there any questions before we dismiss us miss Chavez also anything additional from you nothing additional from me thank.

You with that we are adjourned thank you all.