no Miss Munos will you please introduce yourself good evening good evening everyone I'm Rosa mun I'll be The Interpreter for tonight's meeting thank you welcome to everyone here and those of you joining us virtually to this February 27th do Board of Education meeting for those who wish to provide public comment remotely a Google form was posted on the district website at 6:30 p.m. and those remote comments will be read during our public comments section this meeting which is hereby called to order at 6:30 p.m. is in compliance with the notice requirements of the law public notice was posted in the office of the Board of Education and communicated to the municipal clerk and daily record on January 22nd 2024 can we please rise for the flag salute I pledge allegiance to flag of the United States Mr Miller will you please read our mission statement sure working together as a community our mission is to Welcome All and provide opportunities for our students in a safe and accepting learning environment to become creative empathetic resilient and who choose to make a make an impact thank you um before we go into this evening's um presentations I want to share that over the weekend I spent time consoling parents um from across our state who are terrified for their children um next Benedict a 16-year-old non-binary student was brutally attacked by three girls in the school bathroom and subsequently passed away this highlights words matter policies matter Oklahoma policies failed next now more than ever I am proud of our district and board for protecting all students and specifically affirming our trans and non-binary students to the trans and non-binary students and our school district you are Fierce you are supported you are loved and now I invite us all to share in a moment of silence for next thank you so this evening we have two presentations um the first one is a presentation on um board dos the second being an njsba training I will turn it over to Mr sabahu who will introduce our first presenter we will have Sylvia from bordo uh it's going to be virtual training Mr SAU did we take roll call yeah sorry roll C Miss ESO here miss DS present Mr Miller here miss nothing here miss Phillips here miss penales here Dr sen Pres Miss SES here miss mandz here is syia read it okay well uh good evening everyone I'm Sylvia Ray I am your board docs trainer and this evening I'm going to introduce you to the the site how you will navigate it find your documents um and overall what it looks like whenever you have a question just feel free to ask you know I don't Rec require that you wait no whenever something pops in your mind just go ahead so I do want to start with how will you um know that the agenda is is ready going forward you will get an email with the link in it um and it will bring you to the board do site and you will be in the public view you when you click on that link in your email you'll have to go over here to this an avatar and click on that drop- down arrow and log in once you log in then you will be able to see confidential board information okay uh another thing that I want to bring to your attention is this house with a chimney so when I just hover over this house if you look in the extreme lower left corner of your screen you'll see that it's actually pointing to your District site that is design designed so that during a board meeting if you are discussing something that's on your site then you can click and it will take you there so that house is your home your District's home not the board Do's home but I recommend that you right click open that link in a new tab so that you never have to leave the board do site so here's the board do site right here and then here's your District site look at this all righty so they're side by side so you never have to to leave that site all right now this is your landing page your homepage so whenever you or the public or anybody comes to your board do site they will land on this page typically whatever's on this page is what's going to be discussed at uh this month's meeting so the agenda is here um if you might have some documents or something that's over in the library and I'm going to show you what's what you can put in there a little later uh but that could be on the homepage so uh first I'm going to take a look at the the meeting so we click on this now you will see when you click you will see view the agenda download agenda as PDF print the agenda that's it that's all that you will see add minutes and launch mCP this is for Vicky and Atilla so you won't you won't see that at all now if you are if you happen to get this link and you don't have time to sit down and and really look at the agenda but you you just want to make sure a couple of things made it then rather than view the agenda a quick way is just to click on the print the agenda and then there's um well there's the simple agenda and you can just scroll down quickly and see what's on there um the detailed agenda will will give you more details about what's on there uh but that'll be a quick way for you to just to see what's on the agenda and then when you have time uh to sit down and really take a look at it then you come to view the agenda so this is what that agenda looks like so you navigate on the left and you read on the right just as you do with email now um over here these items is what carries the the content so these black headers just a way of organizing the agenda just as this section is about so I'm clicking on it and it does nothing so all of your content will be over over here now you'll notice some um items will have this little icon over here and that tells you that there are files attached there are documents attached now who sees this depends upon where this item is placed over here or on this side now on this side there are actually three content areas but I only have two so public content administrative content and that third area is the executive content area that is where confidential information will be placed just for you and if this item and this item is in that confidential area I can't see it I have no way to to open that now the only reason why I see this icon over here is because I'm the trainer now the public will not see this because it's not in that public content area so those three content areas public administrative and ex executive um those are different uh levels and so the most confidential information will go down there in that executive content area just for you the only people who can see it outside of the the board members um would be Vicki uh the superintendent atella Tanya people who put the agenda to together otherwise nobody else can can see that now the reading rights are you can read from your level and up but not down so as board members you can see everything no matter where it's placed on the agenda now sometimes you might have something up here in this public content area for everyone to see but then down in that executive content area that's where you might have more detailed information so you might have some backup information uh down there that the public cannot see now this administrative content area that would be for the internal staff that has access to board dos not not many people have access to to board dos this level they can see more confidential information than what the public can see but not as much as what you can see so something like this would be like I don't know if um somebody's retiring and then they turning their retirement letter or resignation letter well the public doesn't need to see that but you might want to put it here in the uh the administrative the area and then you the board and the internal staff whoever that might be would be able to see that but not the public okay so yep and so we've got some more attachments so now this one is up here in the public area so that means the public can see it and I do believe New Jersey is the only one with a hid report I have not seen that with anybody else and it's just like New York state is the only one with a CSP or CSP or something like that some kind of report all right uh let's see also what do I want to show show you so you'll be able to see um all of your documents along with the appropriate agenda items so it'll be right there you'll be able to see it the other thing let's see approval so um you will be able to so a Tilla will be able to record the votes inside of board dos and once he records them it will show up in the agenda right away so um when people say well how did the board vote on blah blah blah all they have to do is look in the agenda so now now I don't recommend in the beginning for Atilla to try to uh record the votes at a live meeting in the beginning it's too is way too stressful and that's a different screen that he'll have to get used to so I recommend that he continues to record them the same way he does and then later away from the meeting after the meeting then he can go in and record and that's when it will show up in the agenda uh now eventually um he might decide you know I can do this live at the meeting and and keep up with it but I don't I don't recommend it in the in the beginning it's too nerve-wracking so that's pretty much your agenda I think it's um I think it's laid out pretty good you've got good categories it's it's you know fairly clear um uh questions about anything so far a ments how do you open how do you find them how do you open them Mr Miller I have a question if we have so another thing that hang onia question okay uh one question I have is if we have committee documents that we want to store here is there a dropdown that we could set for other types of documents to be filed uh by committee so the question is on committee documents is there a drop- down area where they can be stored and access on committee documents um is it in here somewhere are the Committees in in um in the agenda there are reports and information that backs up yeah okay so is there a dropdown where you can keep them no they are all housed right here so we don't have not in this version we have a separate product that's called plus and you would have committees and they would be over here on this on the side and you would create a it it it would be separate agendas that's what it would would be but in the one that you have you don't and so everything would just be housed in this agenda um so that begs the question Dr mclin um how will we then navigate as was there another question did that did that help whomever yeah hang on one second syia okay um how will we navigate the um committee minutes and um um document how we navigate the documentation of our our committees well I believe what we're going to find out is that we I I think our presenter may not be understanding Mr Miller's question correctly we would be able to put an attachment next to any one of those things on the left hand side if it's a Google doc you can put it you can you can put an attach a link directly to the Google Doc and then that would just take you straight there so anybody who has that shared access would automatically it would just automatically take them to that spot so we can work around navigating that and and figuring out what the best way is for everybody but ideally if it's executive content you would have a third section over there where you can either attach it as a document or again put the link in to take you to where it is stored so I guess um that's something we'll have to figure out as far as for the committee chairs how will they get their reports um and to whom to then be uploaded so I guess we're saying that we're going to continue with the Google structure for that and then just use this for agenda we just have to come up with a process so I think we just now that I know what your question is I can we can just kind of figure out what the best way to do that is so either um you can where wherever it was previously or however you you submitted it last time we can just kind of take that and then work it into this document so like where number 13 it says governance so um I'm assuming that you can set multiple uh multiple items in that governance piece where we could say here's minutes here's other supporting documents and only the the the board can see those documents as part of that so they would know if anything to do with governance they would go and click on one of the sub folders basically basically what it'll do is it'll show you so similar to the the example that she showed you a few minutes ago where there's a little icon in there that when you click on it it'll open it up for you you can have multiple documents in there that will automatically open so that you can do them but where we're storing the documents is actually in Google Docs it is actually an attachment in here so again we just have to kind of figure out the process of how to get I mean it maybe Vicki would probably be the common denominator if you send them to her and then she can just attach them inside the um into the into the agenda into the appropriate area Dr s is it possible I'm sorry I'm not looking at you is it possible that we could do it ourselves we're now adding an we're adding a middleman by adding Victoria to this process for example when I wrote the curriculum minutes once they were approved by my committee I uploaded them to the folder that everybody could see them in that is a good question I have to find out so we can yeah absolutely so I'll talk to between Silvia and Victoria and we'll figure out again we just have to come up with what the process is going to be um I don't know from the executive level if you have editing ability in here um but I think it may just be the same thing where wherever you uploaded it into that fold older Vicki can then take that and just add it into the agenda yeah I'm going to jump in here I think it's going to have to go through because there's a a backend basically that where things are uploaded and the and the agenda is constructed so the board has uh Advanced viewing rights but not editing rights in in here so but I think if it's just you know document here put it I I I don't really think that that'll be hard we'll just have to work out who does what yeah it's just a process we have to kind of we just have to tweak a couple of things there's going to be a little bit of growing pains but as we you know identify the different things that you're looking for we can we can figure out how that will best work in this structure are there any other comments or questions from the board does Sylvia have anything else Sylvia is there anything else you want to add yeah um well I was going to uh point this out I thought somebody else had another question or something so that's what I was waiting for okay um this goal I'm going to point this out in the library so you have uh District goals and so whenever they're going to be discussed at a a board meeting then it could be added to that agenda the other thing is that you will also find links that will take you to other we sites and so when you just click there it'll take you to whatever that website is so because one of the things I would say is that um and the only other thing on the agenda that I want to show you there well it does not show up on my screen but uh Tanya and Vicki has it it's the um annotation feature and it shows up it's right behind this icon and it looks like a a little talk bubble and that's where you can take notes it's the equivalent of having you know a little Post-It note that's all it is so a a reminder for yourself so when you're at home or away from the the board meeting and you're reviewing the agenda you can make little not little notes to yourself uh remember to uh ask about this this says blah blah blah said blah blah BL and congratulate so and so on whatever so it's just little reminder notes for you so when you click on that you can type your notes in there you cannot share this with anybody else nobody else can see it Vicki can't see it Tanya can't see it or TCH support can't see it I can't see it I don't even have it uh so no one can see it and it will stay there until you click back inside the note and put it in the trash can now once you save a note it changes colors so that as as you go along in the agenda you will notice that if it's a a color if it's yellow then that tells you you've got a note there and so it's just for for you so that's the only other thing that I wanted to show you on the agenda um so I'm guessing there's no other questions about the agenda no I don't think there's any right can you I'm G to go over here to the library the policies is it's a hang on one second okay um my question and I know Mr Miller I know you wanted to ask something as well um my question is for Dr McLaughlin Mr Sabah holu um Miss Solstice um perhaps even miss peuro um you've all taken this training um I guess my question is do you feel that um this makes as y'all you folks are the ones who really um create this agenda and and go through the whole process of um inputting all the information so do you feel that this makes your jobs easier or more complicated it's going to be a little learning curve but after that after that it's going to be much better because we don't have to worry about the format it's going to be there and numbering all the typos is going to be fixed so going forward is going to be much better but you might struggle a couple months to figure out so as Miss SAA said there'll be some Growing Pains but once we get through those Growing Pains um we'll be much better off for it okay yeah the formatting I will say the formatting challenge is a challenge every time we put together an agenda um there were some nice features of Google where people can contribute but it's also a little quirky in terms of um uh uh tabbing and whether there's tables and whether you're using page breaks or not page breaks and so sometimes like in the last agenda there were a couple of spaces you know that probably shouldn't have been there they weren't there when we first looked at it but when it came out they were there in the PDF that won't happen with this uh it'll be a matter of putting it into the software and um just making sure the content's right yeah and one of the things I'm also hoping is that I'm sorry Mr is that eventually we can move towards not printing out these agendas anymore I mean we have this fancy new program now I think at least for board members we can save some paper and save the environment at some point Mr Miller so two questions so I'm assuming you can just configure this like you were saying any way you want because there would have to be um a structure for additional um documents that support each of the areas you know like the attendance report all those things we would just have to figure out where you're going to put all that stuff so that we just come to this one place it's configured with all the different file folders so to speak that we would need the other thing is if we have a hand carry how do you differentiate what you're entering in to know what's was added actually I'll take special notes for that and edit later into the minutes say that again uh actually I'll take a note uh then I'll add it to the minutes after that as I do right now no I mean before when you have a change in the agenda after you put it all in oh you're so I think what what you would what we would do uh we would add it to the agenda that was published and we can put just put in parenthesis hand carry that way you would know looking back it was one that was brought up you know after the original agenda was or you could just highlight it a different col okay before we proceed anyone else want to add anything no Miss s all right let me get her going okay syvia okay um all right the policies when you click on that is just the link to where your policies are so it shows up over here all righty now the the library so there's four areas in the library General events strategic goals and board members so you don't have everything in here just yet but uh something that could go in general would be like um if the superintendent sends you any kind of confidential report it could be placed here in the library I'll show you in my uh training database so here's the the library now unlike the agenda where it's the agenda itself is always public not so in the library so that access could be private and so if the superintendent's going to send you some type of confidential report rather than sending it through email it could be placed here in the library and you still have those three content areas public administrative and executive and then it could be placed down here along with uh manyi attachments um and then the access is private so it's not even going to show up for the public or anyone if you don't have access to that confidential area so in um so in addition to any type of conf confidential reports in the library you can have any newsletters any bulletins um any information whenever you have an election and you've got something on the ballot that's related to the school board School District or anything then you can put information like that in the library for everyone to see uh the other thing would be events and so like if you had conferences or or something to go to you go to graduations then that can be placed in the library you'll have the the uh the event date the start time the end time that could also be public or or private now you do have in here some goals so here are your goals so you've got four goals now whenever this goal is discussed at a board meeting you can attach it to that agenda item and it shows up here in the library so it says that this goal goal number one um it's in the uh this agenda the February 27th the superintendent report now if I click on this it will say navigate to this agenda item okay and it will take me there and here it is so goal number one is right here so this is a hyperlink and it takes you to uh where it's found in the in the library and then you could run a report on how far along you are in reaching that goals now some goals are forever goals and some goals have a start stop um finish and so if that's the case that you can even have a Graphic that shows how far along you are in in reaching that goal so that's in there now I will tell you um in the beginning when people first come to to board dos most districts don't get this far they usually don't get to the library because they're pretty overwhelmed with just getting the the meetings and the minutes and the agendas and all that set set up so yay to Vicki for uh getting the rest of these goals in yay Vicki did a lot of work on this yesterday yes she did yes she did all right and then the last area is board members and so what board members is this is just a place for your community to know what who the board members and so we just have a link to your site and there you all are um Miss Daniela Mendes I wish I could see you because you look mighty sassy here yes you do yes you do I love that picture so all of your pictures are here so it's just the link that just brings you right here that's it all righty now also in the the library you will still have that annotation feature back here so you can take notes on any item that's that's in the library all righty so that's it with the library I only have one other thing to show you any questions about the library son can you check with them any questions about the library Dr s I don't see The annotation um icon we will figure out why that's not coming up for you I will I will I I have a clarification question and this might have been mentioned yes and that's a no all righty so the last thing oh okay yeah I don't think she realizes we're having discussion in between um I guess a question that I have um is again for clarification for the general public do they need to create a login to access any of this no no so there is a public entrance and then so when you go to the main page for board docs there is a section that says authenticate so if you look at the handouts that you have the first uh image is the one that says enter site and authenticate so if you are a public member you're just going to click on enter site and if you're um a board member you authenticate so then you get to go in and it then delineates you as a um member of that particular or you have access to the agend agenda so a regular um Community member would just click on it and we will we'll we'll kind of finesse it a little bit nicer on the website so that it's it's really easily you know that the public will just see that link um whereas you as the board members you can um either bookmark it on your sites I can help you with that or again you can always just go back to that main page off of the website and then it will take you to the authenticator enter so we'll we'll work on making that a smooth workaround for everybody thank you I think we're ready for syvia yeah okay okay um so the last thing that I want to show you is the the search feature so you could search in meetings so if you know something happen in a meeting you just don't know which one you could go there and you could search for that item in that in that meeting uh same thing with the with the library when did the superintendent send us information on blah blah blah oh I never saw anything I did I didn't so you can search uh just there in the library but if you don't have a clue where it where it is then this magnifying glass that is the universal search feature and it will search in all of these areas meetings libraries minutes and attachments um and you don't have to to know when school is in in when it was out if it was around the holidayers all of those Vicki did when did we questions so you just have to put in your search term whatever it is that you're looking for and it will look in all of those places including attachments um and bring it up so I know minutes I remember that was in there and so it's got all of these places where you will see minutes and so I can just click on one well actually I want to do uh do I want to do that attachment okay all right and then it says navigate there and then it takes you to where it found that item you don't want to sit ex s the if it's not the one that you you want you you say oh that's not the one that I want then go back to your attachments and then you can click on another one and it's always there now this is also available for your community but again for them they only see what's in that public content area now what your community will not have it meta so now when I click on metas then I am no longer searching your document I am searching the public content area of other board dos users so you could be working on something you go H I wonder what other districts are doing about blah blah blah now when you put in your search term if you don't put in the state it will bring it up from all over so I don't know where WKA Public Schools is I don't know which state that's in uh but here's here's New Jersey Mount epim oh and so this is the this is what they made available for their public so oh boy they had a lot of minutes to U approve wow they were really busy that's a that's a lot of minutes um but so this brings it up from all over if you just want New Jersey then you would put in Hama NJ and it will just bring up New Jersey if there's any other states that's listed then it's because they've got New Jersey in there their document now there's another thing that I want to show you that you will sometimes run into so I'm going to put student and New York okay pleas beautiful place that it is Lake Pleasant all right so this came up and I'm just going to click on this one student attendance and it says syia R you are not authorized and yes I am so the reason why this came up is because when you are logged into a board do site and in the same browser same browser different tabs you go to another board doc site that browser is looking for you to have permission to log in and you don't so you can still see that the only thing you need to do is just copy this URL copy and Tanya knows how to do this so if you forget uh she can show you so you can copy and just go to a different browser so if you have Safari um Firefox Microsoft Edge you can paste it there I usually go over here to this incognito window and so if yours doesn't say incognito window it might say private or or something else um but you just go over to that incognito window and then I right click paste and go and then it will open t so it does open you just can't be in the same browser so it does open up um so that um people get confused about that a a lot so I just wanted to point that out to you so you you are authorized to look at the public content so if it's in here then you can see it Miss Mendes so that's yes Dr that's it that is Bard dogs so okay all righty could I just ask uh Sylvia a clarifying question so um if I am a member of the public and I go in and I search for a comment I will be able to search for a search term I will be able to see anything that is available to the public if I go in as a board member as myself perhaps I remember that we received a confidential report on I don't know what um I would have when I do the search for policy 1 two 3 4 maybe it's a draft policy that hasn't been released to the public yet or um Mr Miller mentioned an attendance report will I have access to not just agenda items but any attachments that are in that executive content section that the public cannot see I can answer that yes you will so it's not going to so it depends on if you're logged in or not so if you're just in a public it's just a regular uh straight entry if you if you are logged in and you're in there then it's going to give you different choices are there any other comments or questions from the board does syvia have anything else anything else no that's it actually I just have one question for siia that is it I CLI okay I was thinking if we can utilize library for committee reports put different tabs for committees and all the reports going to be there anybody aort they able to go in theard MERS be able to uploads that is correct yes so Vicki or you would have to to do that but yes that is a good place uh you can do that and it's also something that you could make private if if it's not a public thing Mr Miller I think I'd rather have everything grouped with the committee and not in another place so I wouldn't want it in the in the library well you can in the library so if you put it under General you can have a category yeah I know but the uh the particular uh board committee if it's on the leftand side and we can create the folder underneath it for all I'd rather just go to one place and it's just much easier to know where it is Dr s I didn't hear all of that I'll Circle back to okay so I agree with Mr Miller but I have a question for example um curriculum and policy I believe meet the first Tuesday of the month and our our board you know expectation is that the committee chair would upload the minutes within a week that would be approximately a week before the agenda would be available so for example if I were to attend a curriculum meeting on the first of the month ask or upload it on the 8th of the month would it be available to the rest of the board on the 8th or would they have to wait until that Friday before the board meeting to have access to it yeah if that's the only place that the board's going to have access to it they then there'd be a waiting period we could work on it so if you were asking that to me I didn't I couldn't hear it's again it's another question I'll pick your bra okay okay so it sounds to me like there's still a couple of Kinks we have to work out so we will not be launching this in March or will we we were intending to do it March well it's kind of fresh okay but learning curve some couple of bumps along the way first couple of months but as long as all board members all right so was that was that it those were the only questions can we yeah I think we can okay syvia we're going to let you we're going to let you go thank you very much for your time today you are quite welcome all righty have a good evening the rest of you thank you thank you I don't think she can hear us um so as long as board members understand that there is going to be a learning curve for everyone involved um including us board members so we just have to be patient and understanding um and ask a ton of questions and yeah so the the program is just really tagging information in categories first by the agenda and the date that the that the documents are being uploaded for review um but if you want to see documents in general for governance that were posted in each of the agendas you would have to search governance to get them all in one place to be able to see them because because they're going to be tagged by agenda date correct so that may be what we want to then use the library for so like if you have anything that you you specifically maybe that's where the library will come into play where we can then put them in there and you can go back to reference them there it would also then link back to the previous agenda um but we can go into that library and I believe make the categories that we would look so that may be something so again it's a work in progress as we work through what your needs are I think we can go in here and adjust and make it work the way that we need it um right now it's it's just basically the the general outline and again all the documents are um sort of a little bit easier to find especially like executive versus private versus you know like what's available to the public so any documents that maybe currently were in a Google Drive are now right there front and center you with the the little icon right there you can click on it and then it'll load for you right on the screen so I think just in general again I think it's just going to be a little bit of time for everybody to get used to the new setup and and then as you know issues come up we can just kind of work through them and figure out what's going to be the best path to to make it um as as best for all of you to be able to access everything you need thank you are we going to use Google docks in between our learning curve Dr mlin thoughts on that I think the uh I not for the board agenda we we wouldn't I think we we kind of have to commit one way or the other uh doing it both would be a tremendous amount of work um however it's the board wanted to keep the like for example the committee reports for a while and keep that system in Google Docs I don't see any harm in that what is the failing on that if any Dr Ser don't we have to write them in Google Docs anyway so it it feels like we can't and I know this is a double negative we can't not have them also in Google Docs because that's where we would compose them although would okay so now another question or would the administration send out for example the curriculum agenda through board dos no that's not yet I think eventually we could might use it that way but we would probably still use Google for our committees the way that we've been doing it with policy and CC so we just have to know the process when we create files that we know need to be uploaded we let you know and then as we do this you start to see a pattern and where they need to go correct I think it's just a that once the procedure is is kind of you know designed I think again Google Docs or Google Drive can be a repository for where any files sort of Live And then you can link them into the agenda so you know you can kind of use it in in in both ways that way and then you can always go back and forth and reference so I think again once we kind of get a better understanding of what your needs are I think we can go back into their and and really design something that will work for everybody any other comments or questions M Solis thank you we appreciate you and thank you to everyone um on the administration team who helped pull this together and have been doing the work ahead of time um in anticipation of this meeting and to help us get it together um we will be okay we'll figure it out at some point um Miss Peterson we are going to get your presentation all set up and move into our next presentation so as a part of our board goals we committed to um trainings um for our board as a whole and tonight's training will be focused on the search process for a superintendent so without further Ado I welcome our njsba representative Miss Charlene Peterson here okay great thank you so much everyone it is a pleasure to be here tonight and like you said you know the the board has committed itself to training when I was here last time when we were talking about g board goals right that this is one of the areas that the board you know identified as being of importance to them so um you know recognizing that the the board will be undergoing this process sometime in the near future um just wanted to give kind of a general overview of what a superintendent search process looks like in general I'm not sure how many members were here when the board went through this previously so there's some of you right who have done it before but obviously many of you who have not so again just kind of an overview of what the process can look like um so I appreciate you know you're welcome to ask any questions um any any time along the way so as we talk about this the superintendent search process you know we always say that from the board's perspective you only have one employee right and that's the superintendent and then recognizing that everyone else reports to the the the superintendent so from the board's perspective you know in the training we do in New Jersey school boards we talk about then how important that task is for a board that has to undertake that task and again just because of the the far-reaching impact that that person has not only on your District but also on your community right they're the educational leader of your community um so that is what um is why it's such an important decision because of the impact that they have in your community so this is how we say boards sometimes look or feel when you feel like um you are about to undergo this process and thinking what are we going to do um kind of of saying initially you know somewhat concerned or or questioning how this is going to work but recognize that when you come together with a process um that it it doesn't need to look like that um so having said that I'm just going to kind of take you through what some of the the different steps are so that you do understand um you know what's needed in a process so it starts out first with identifying or looking at you know different vacancies and how you can fill your vacancy um so there's kind of three different ways so just wanted to make sure that that you understood what those look like um so one of them can be if you had a vacancy um like in this case if if your superintendent was still under contract but unable to fulfill their responsibilities um then the board could designate a current employee to act in their stad so essentially the state says you can only have one superintendent on the book so that if your current superintendent is on the books but they're not able to perform that role then you can't bring in an interim or someone else from the outside because that's then a second superintendent on the books but you can take a current employee then and have them act in that role um then separate from that is if then you no longer have you know if your superintendent is no longer you know on the books part of you know no longer your superintendent and then now you have a vacancy um from the board's perspective you can um have an interim superintendent come in then you know you have to have a superintendent um you know there's certain documents certain things that only the superintendent can sign so the board has to have somebody with that title in that role um so you can hire an interim superintendent which is typically someone who's retired who has done this work in the past um and then usually you can can hire them for initially up to a year that you can get approval for an additional year but recognizing that they can't exceed two years and for the most part that's usually because of the pension system and them not allowing them to stay in the same place for for more than two years um and then also recognizing that the board you know will eventually you know depending on on your timeline um how you're a permanent superintendent and so the board's requirement there is you know essentially saying that that's um the superintendent's tenure in your district is their contract and so the state has identified that a minimum contract a board can offer a superintendent is three years and the maximum is five years and the contract has to end on June 30th so let's say if you start like on a date if you don't start on July 1 let's say you start on September one say the person starts um you still have to stay within that 3 years and 5 years and it still has to end on June 30th so now then the minimum contract you could offer to stay within those guidelines would be like three years and 10 months and the maximum would be four years and 10 months staying within that three and five it always has to be within three and five and it always has to end on June 30th uhhuh just before you move off that slide I just wanted to clarify and tell me if I'm incorrect an Acting Superintendent doesn't have to to be when you have someone who's unable to fulfill their their duties for example if the board uh was not ready to hire a full-time superintendent and wanted to put someone presently under contract in that area they would be called in acting because they're an employee of the district am I correct you are correct but it's dependent on the county superintendent permitting that to happen um I have seen some the previous County super intendent we had in moris County did not allow that to happen the current one does so it you know and it sometimes it considers the situation that you're in the the you know kind of what the the pool is like of of people who are interims and you know able to fill that spot but yes it's it's possible that they may allow someone who's in acting to continue to serve in that role Beyond when the permanent superintendent is no longer here and my second clarification is about the interim superintendent it uses the term retired there but I am aware that there are individuals for whatever reason uh even as you mentioned our previous County Superintendent was an interim but was not retired so you don't have to be retired to be an interim so these are the definitions the the state has um like kind of some guidelines and these are the definitions that are in the guidelines but as you has acknowledged that sometimes based on situations can go beyond that but this is you know the the the state has like the county superintendent the guidelines that they use when reviewing contracts this is what the definitions are that are in those guidelines so I just kind of talked a little bit earlier about the that vacancy of hiring a permanent superintendent and the fact that um you know that the 3 to 5ye contract but so the um certificate that a superintendent is required to hold is a school administrator certificate so someone that has previously sat in that seat will have that the full certificate someone who has um met all the requirements but not sat in the seat yet will have a Certificate of Eligibility and then will need to be mentored you know once you hire them um you know New Jersey requires that anyone who works in the in the school districts unless they have been grandfathered some time ago need to live in the state and if you were to attract someone who was outside of the state they would need to move you know it's required that they have to move within the state within a year um the contract when the board puts the contract together you know the superintendent used to have the salary cap right when um when Governor Christy was the governor he said that no one should make more money than he did right so there was a cap then to Super intendent salaries so when after you know some time and we saw that we were losing superintendence to other states and you know it was just acknowledged that that was not working um the state removed the caps and so now uses the language of that the compensation is subject to comparability requirements and I'll show you in just a minute what that looks like or what that means and then recognizing we had just talked about the county superintendent so they are like another set of eyes in this process so that when the board has a contract that it wants to put you know together with the with the salary requirements that the county superintendent has to approve it first before the board can put that person on the agenda to hire them so this is kind of the definition of what those compar what it means for the comparability requirements of saying that it has to be comparable um to similarly credentialed and experienced administrators in the region um with similar enrollment achievement challenges and grade spans so that's kind of the the language that the state uses in terms of considering the compensation that you as a board are thinking about you offering to the superintendent um you know when the cellary Caps were in place um the state had um added the opportunity to provide superintendent miracal and I can say that while they didn't take that away it is very rare to see new contracts that include those um because they're not pensionable so if I can now give you some compensation I would prefer to have it in my salary that is part of my pension versus Merit goals that are not so while the opportunity still exists more often than not it's not something that we see that often anymore in new contracts um for interim super attendant you usually are Contracting them on a daily rate so you would take whatever that annual salary is and divide it by 260 days to come up with that daily rate and then the Acting Superintendent would be you know whatever um was agreed upon in terms of compensation for those additional responsibilities so just going to kind of take you through then um you know what that process looks like kind of what the different steps are and then you the import of keeping our community updated and informed um throughout the process so as we talk about the importance of community um in communication you know we need to be clear like what what kind of a process we're using so like a lot of times when we you know um have stakeholders come and tell us what's important to them throughout a search a lot of times it's also equally important to explain to them the process that you're going through um and have that um something that explains that process on your website so that it's clear to everyone um your calendar or your timeline should also be on your website that so that it's clear to everyone and then you know recognizing the fact that we want to hear from as many stakeholders as we possibly can um to make sure that we've got opportunities for that and then to you know you'll be able to give updates at the board meeting as to how we're coming and what kind of prog press we're making but again recognizing that because this is a confidential process there's perhaps only so much information you can share at that time but just you know suggest that you just continue to keep you know whatever updates you can provide just the just kind of the importance of keeping everyone in the loop about what's going on and what step you're in and kind of how you're moving along so kind of in looking at then really the the most work comes during the the early stages of kind of the the preparation and I'll take you through each one of of these steps um and also kind of wanted to point out the fact and I don't know I don't remember do you have any board members who have a relative that works in the district Miss ASO you do have a relative oh you were conflicted so you didn't participate in the okay so you also then would not be able to par participate in the search process either um so that essentially someone that has a relative that works in the district um is considered to have a a conflict and essentially saying that you have no more rights than any other member of the public in terms of your ability to participate in this process and have information about the pro you know like right now what I'm talking about is public information and just a general process but um anyone that's conflicted would not be able to participate much beyond that so um Miss Peterson um may I ask so miss asedo is currently on our finance and Facilities committee and we are in the process of interviewing superintendent search firms does is that included in the process that she cannot participate in it does that there was an advisory opinion that came out about this very top topic and it was one of the kind of most comprehensive ones we saw the state um suggest in this advisory opinion of saying that a board member with a conflict couldn't pick the search firm couldn't have any input into what goes in the ad kind of essentially said they just can't be involved whatsoever in the process thank you so going to take you through each one of these steps of looking at the scope the budget the the timeline the um the calendar the role of the board so just going to kind of take you through each one of these um so in terms of you know you had mentioned that kind of going through the process of you know looking for a search firm it sounds like you have you mentioned the finance committee as the one doing that and you know from the board's perspective you also would you know need to have a conversation about um you know whether the whole board is going to participate in the entire process there are some boards that will sometimes start out with an adhoc committee perhaps to to start the process so your board would have to kind of have that conversation and make that decision you know at what point do you want all of you involved um you know and again recognizing the importance of this decision it wouldn't be unusual for that to happen but some boards will also identify and say you know it's just based on everybody's schedules and based on the timing and our need to get this m moving that sometimes it starts out with a committee and the committee might get started with the work going and then bring the rest of the board into it so you from from your perspective you would have to decide as a team um what works best for you um and then you know you kind of already started the that process a little bit in selecting a search firm by putting an RFP out which was good because then you made it clear kind of what are the things that you're looking for what are the things that um you know Kind Of You' you've set some parameters in terms of you know things that are of interest to you so you um you know and will then bring in or and again bring in search firms or whoever to interview them and just kind of find out a little bit more about their process and find out what you feel best matches what your needs are in terms of being able to help you um through this process um in addition to that you'll have to and you know side about like what you think about the scope of the search and again that could help make a decision in terms of which search firm you might select because some are National and if you were thinking you wanted to have a scope of a national search that might be something that would help to um have an impact on that decision so you would have to again have a conversation and say what is the the what is the scope that that we are considering for this process um and then also look at your budget because the fees can go um all over the place in terms of what what can be charged and some of it comes down to how much of involvement you want by either the search firm or you know whoever is helping you through the process like we have different levels and the different levels are based on the amount of involvement you want versus how much you are willing to or or you know are choosing to do yourselves and not have someone else do for you or with you I guess I should say so from the board's perspective you would need to make that determination uhuh so is there anything um that's dictated by the state like background checks are required is there certain process that you follow that everyone knows or is it just some people do it some people don't I would expect that we would it would be the same like you're saying same hiring process right whenever so like typically you don't get to that to doing background checks until you've selected a finalist and again that comes down to confidentiality and that's one of the things that's changed somewhat in this process is that I can remember when I was on my board and we were doing a search it was common to bring the the two finalists into the room and everyone could ask some questions and but that was when superintendence had tenure back in the day and now that they don't anymore and it's just their contract with their board if your finalist happen to be a sitting superintendent it would not be uncommon for them to say I don't want my name out there I don't want my board to find out I don't want my community to find out I don't want my parents to find out I have a family to feed I can't to do anything that might jeopardize my current job right now so that's kind kind of the the current reality somewhat is that it's not uncommon to have someone want to ensure that their confidentiality is going to be maintained and then sometimes that's that tradeoff then that you have to make is saying if I want to make sure that I am attracting the best possible candidates and making sure that I am making available to our students the best possible candid it recognizing that one of the tradeoffs might be that we are you know kind of tightening the circle of Who's involved in the process because the board is you know while the board is legally charged with hiring the superintendent the board is the only group where there are consequences to not maintaining confidentiality you know it's part of the code it's one of the tenants of the code of ethics so no one else in your District in your community anywhere else has any consequences to not maintaining confidentiality you know I can remember one time doing this and someone said well how like how about if we just draw up a contract and have them sign it and our in our legal departments like and how binding is that like you know like what difference does that make there's nothing binding about it the board is the only group that has consequences for confidentiality so it would not be unusual for a sitting superintendent to ask and want to know for certain that no one other than the board will be sitting at the table and no one other than the board will know their name um to protect that confidentiality so I guess my question is when if we have a candidate and we need to do a background check who does it we have our business administrator like do we know a process like how do we do that I think I can chime in just for a second what typically what we do at a district level is a criminal history background check which is for every employee and that that's just going through the the state system I think this particular slide refers to what the board might want as a larger background check for example if um it was important for you to see this person social media uh other other aspects of employment history that the firm might have to get consent from a finalist for um but I know in some instances searches uh have extensive background checks um uh that go well beyond the criminal history background check that every employee has to have yeah I guess I'm just saying you know we don't want to sit home and Google a person just to find ourselves I just want to know if there's an official process that would be initiated by it would have to be the business administrator because if we didn't have if we had an inim I don't know who would be responsible for doing that I know there are firms we can go with that and also search firms might might be offering this also okay but that's what I was trying to figure out yeah or like some search firms will have contracts or you'll have different background check provider people that they work with that do that and then so when you sign a contract with them they'll kind of be like different things things that you can add on to it if you want and so one of those things can potentially be a background check so if you've got your own resource you could do it you know have it happen at the district level or you can utilize the um con you know the contacts that a search firm might have so and kind of looking at a timeline you know some of it is um outside of the board's control somewhat um in that you know we know that you know there's certain steps we have to go through and so kind of in the beginning steps here um like once the board's ready to get started like one of the things that happens is that typically the application window is open a month um and then you also have to think about on the back end the person that you hire has to give notice to their District that they're leaving and that can be 60 days if they're sitting superintendent it can potentially be 90 days um so those are things that the board doesn't really have any control over in are parts of the process you know the the county superintendent in in the approving the contract while they can sometimes get it done very quickly they'll tell you that their official response is that you're supposed to allow them 20 days is what's in the the law for them to have that much time um so those are all things that as you're looking at your calendar in planning these types of things out just recognizing that in in the timeline really the only piece the board kind of has you know you have control of it as to when you want to get started you know how soon do you want to begin the process and then you kind of have control over um like the length of time between the different interview rounds and how quickly you want to do those together um so there are some things in the timeline that the board has control over and some things like I said the the the notification of the person um to their current district and then then and then the 30 days that the application window is typically open so this I just kind of took a timeline and said okay let's say if a board was going to get started right now like what what would be some of the like what would that timeline look like so like I said usually the consultant would come and have an initial meeting with you as a board to find out what you're looking for what's important to you um where do you see the future of the district going what does your vision look like so that it can be kind of clear you know we need to make sure that we're finding someone who who matches our vision right we but we are not only going to consider what's important to the board but that is the starting point of having that conversation with the board um then we know that if we were ready to put an ad together if we were ready to put the you know the application out there um and then usually then during that time is when you would do these the input sessions with the staff with the community with the students um have a survey out there as well um and then you know you may choose um again kind of different services from that the consultant could provide or not provide as if you wanted them to kind of do I guess screening interviews or preliminary interview interviews to talk to the candidates before you do to just kind of get a clearer sense of who they are and what their backgrounds are like to kind of bring them alive versus what you might see on paper some boards opt for that some boards do not um and in some search firms that's just part of their process and then they will just you know hand you identify say eight to 10 people or whatever that they think would be you know good for you to look at so those things would be considerations too in terms of the the know the level of information and like I said the the level of involvement um and then the the scheduling of the interviews and then ideally if everything works perfectly and you've gone through the rounds of interviews and one person has kind of risen as your sole finalist then that's when you start doing the vetting and the background checks and the references and all of that start the contract negotiations um and then once you got approval from the county superintendent you know would um hire the person and then 60 to 90 days later they would start in your District so that's usually kind of what the calendar looks like in terms of going through that process so you can see that it's you know it it can be somewhat compact but you can also stretch this out longer too if that's what you know what your board wanted to do so in terms of like I said starting out with what what the board's input would look like of just kind of again having that conversation with the board and saying like what background do you think the person should have had what experience um like what kind of leadership qualities what are those things that are important to you as a board and then um kind of the way that you help um in in putting the ad together and looking at what you want is saying there's some things we're going to say are required that the person has to have it um and then we'll say that there's some things that we think are preferred or that it would be nice if they had it and the reason that that's such an important difference is because if you say that something is required in order for the board to have a legally defensible search you cannot interview someone who does not meet a qualification that you identified as being required so what that does is that allows you to past kind of a tighter net the more things you say that are required um versus if you say that something is preferred um let's say that if you have it and I don't that would make you a better match to the position but it would not preclude you from interviewing me um so those are again considerations you know like I in one board that I worked with they made it required that the person had to have been a sitting superintendent and I said well just so you know like that eliminates all of your staff right and you know when you think about all of the like that's a really tight net right and they said well you know like we don't care that's what we think is needed to do this job so that will be part of the conversation that you'll have as a group too or kind of do we want to cast a somewhat looser net right from the beginning and then we can kind of tighten it up as we go through the process or are there certain things that we want to make tighten right from the beginning um so those will be things then that you will um need to consider so in terms of you know and I talked about this just a few minutes ago I guess looking at how this process um has changed somewhat with with the need for for confidentiality and so you know we say that even if the board is the only group sitting at the table the search is just not based on what's important to the the board so the board could not possibly pick the right person for do if you don't know what your students want if you don't know what your staff wants if you don't know what's important to your parents in your community you know someone described it almost kind of like putting a puzzle together how the board interacts with the superintendent is one piece of it how the students interact is another piece and you have to be able to put all those pieces together before you can find the right person for Dober so essentially say a lot of times the board doesn't even see who's applied until they've gotten the feedback from these input sessions so and from the surveys and so that you can look at the applicants through the lens of not only what do do what do we think is a board but what did all of our stakeholders tell us and make sure then that that's the lens that we're looking through when we're considering considering the candidates so you know and again talked about the importance of communication and making sure that that we are involving um our community in the process and I know that in your in your RFP you did identify um you know quite a few groups and I and I thought it was really great some of the groups that that you identified as saying you know what this is really these this is really important that we have that we hear from these groups um so so it's um was really a good thing to to see because the more voices you hear um the greater your understanding and the greater your chances of being able to select the person you know that's right for um your community so then people will say okay well if I'm not sitting at the table then how am I making a difference so really the way you're making a difference is again helping inform the board but so helping then you know that will make a difference in let's say you know in in your search pool a usually a typical pool is about 40 people that apply for the search so who of these 40 people are you going to bring in for a first round interview so based on what you've heard back from your staff in your community and your students that would be helping to identify who those you know who they would be it would help you determine what kind of questions you're going to ask it would help determine who you're going to move forward through the next rounds throughout the process so those are ways that you are you know using your community that you're all kind of working together um you know through that knowledge base that's been shared with the board um so this I guess is I guess I should be better in sync with where what my slides are right so this is kind of that that difference of kind of showing the the required and the preferred so like typically in an ad you know in the beginning is just kind of a descriptor of saying like what are the the things that we're looking for kind of some descriptions in the leader um then kind of talking about um kind of what our our overall thing is our kind of our overall goal and then giving some basic demographic you know like this is how many buildings we have this is how many students we have this is what our budget is um you know this is our relationship we are in a send receive relationship so just kind of giving some basic information about who you are as a district because you know we say that as much as we are trying to find the right person for do people also need to consider if Dover is the right place for them right because of the importance of this relationship so we really need to make sure then that we are helping them understand who we are as well um and then this is an example again of like kind of using how you might use that required and use that PR preferred so so you'll pretty much always see in every ad that certificate that the state requires um and then saying if I'm you know maybe saying it would be great if you've been a superintendent but maybe I'm not going to required or in this case in this example here said okay three years experience in any one of these roles recognizing that you need to have had some kind of administrative or management experience um you know some kind of in the in this example it was saying okay it would be great if you also had some special education supervisory experience but again we said we would just prefer that not require that um it in this case said it was required that the person had been a classroom teacher so just kind of looking so as a board you can see then how you now have kind of painted a picture to the candidates who are looking at your ad to see what you're looking for so that's why kind of that initial conversation with the board that this is some of the things that you would um you know identify together as a group minus your conflicted member right yeah um so in terms then of that now we've got our ad together what are we going to do with it where are we going to put it um so again you would have that conversation you know you'll find that there are a lot of free opportunities um there's different professional organizations websites um so just kind of finding out and understanding what those opportunities are from whatever search firm you use to understand how your position is going to be advertised um and and then you'll be asked from there you'll be you know identify from there whether you want to add some paid um additional advertising on top of that and some of that can depend on your scope that if you want to do an National search you probably would need to advertise like an education week or some other publication that has a national scope um you may also choose to um there are certain Publications or certain ways that you can also advertise to attract diverse candidates if that was something that was of interest to you um you can you know not so much you probably don't see print So Much Anymore there probably you know most is um you know did digal in some format um so um those would be the things then um that you would consider and then also like one of the things that will sometimes like distinguish that some search firms will say that you know part of what distinguishes them sometimes is their ability to to recruit candidates so it may not only be advertising but it may be whatever networks or whatever kind of database of you know candidates that they have based on the work that they've done in the past um so all all different options for you to consider so the other thing too is looking at you know she should be asking what kind of information am I going to be receiving on each one of the candidates and am I going to see information on all of the candidates there are some um groups I've heard from that you only are given the information on the candidates that the search firm um forwards to you and then you don't get to see the rest of the people that applied there are some firm you know there's some places that will give you all the information about everyone um some may only just collect a resume and a cover letter and maybe ask for other things later some may have you know application that needs to be filled out and additional information so you would need again to find out what kind of information are we as a board going to receive on each one of of the candidates um that applies for our position then so you know so then once you've got all that information once you've got all the applicants then you know kind of the next piece is putting a profile together right and saying okay you know we we've got all these survey results came back we've we did our input sessions we heard from our community we've got feedback on what's important to them now what are some of those common things things then that Rose to the top like what are some things that our our parents said they wanted the board said they wanted the staff said they wanted things that really kind of help identify who that unique or right person is for over because the same person that's right for you may not be you know someone that another District might not even consider but it's based on what a kind of what is that profile then that comes out of all of your input sessions surveys and you know information that the board had identified so that we now can look at the applicants um from that perspective so there's usually anywhere from like two to three rounds so just kind of wanted to show you what it usually looks like and in some cases it may be that the consultant is the one doing that first round for you um in some cases that can just be kind of a preliminary and then you're still going to do three rounds so I guess you would need to find an understanding of what the interview process looks like and what those rounds are um so usually kind of the the the first round like I said if the board um if we say we typically get those 40 people or so we've kind of found as a rule of thumb the first round is usually about 8 to 10 people or so and then it's usually a structured interview and that's just to make sure that everyone gets the same exact opportunity so that let's say if you move forward and I don't I can't come back and say well you got easier questions than I did or you were treated differently than I did that we need to make sure right from the beginning that everyone had the same exact opportunity so that's usually um what we see and then by the end of that first round then you you know you won't have enough information yet to know if this person can be your next superintendent usually at the end of the first round what you're able to identify is do I want to learn more about you do I want to bring you back and continue to learn more about you did like did we connect did did I feel like you were communicating with me with with us as a group effectively you know when we had 10 questions for you did you only get through two or did you were you able to get through 10 because you understood the spacing and the timing and the communicating so those will be all things that you might take into consideration um and then from there then the the next round is usually more comprehensive you usually cut it in half and then this time this is really where you're doing your digging I have seen um all kinds of the different things um you might um ask the person to kind of give them some scenarios ahead of time about what's going on in your district and have them come back and present to you as if they are your superintendent I have seen requests for like perhaps additional information like maybe share with us a letter that you wrote to a parent that was having a difficult situation or share with us a letter about how you responded to a crisis situation or and I kind of continue to give the board more information for the board to be able to better identify again who you know because there's things you can learn Beyond just asking questions right and hearing them how they answer your questions um so ideally then by now you should be hopefully be able to answer the question okay can I see you sitting in the seat right now um have you demonstrated enough that you know that I could maybe see you being our superintendent and then you might say that to more than one person you might say that to a couple people um then you would would maybe need to have another round with just your finalist then and sometimes even if you only are down to one person it would not be unusual to have that person come in and again just have one more kind of sitar around conversation with them just to confirm that what what you know that what you thought was right it continues to demonstrate that um so assuming that the process has work the way it we would hope it would um that one person would emerge as your finalist and you know oh always tell the board like don't like don't settle right like don't let the calendar drive your process don't say okay we we've gone through all of this already let's just pick somebody like you know don't don't let that happen that as a group you need to be enthusiastically unanimously excited about the fact that like that you found your person like you know for those of you that have gone through this I know you like you feel that energy in the room like you just feel that connection when the when the right person that you've selected is there with you um so as a board you need to feel that and if you don't then start all over again um and you know and that might be another question to ask the search firm is what happens if we go through this and we don't find someone what you know what happens next so making sure again then that you have an understanding of that as well I just don't want to jinx it but it's fair to ask that question um so assuming like I said that it worked as we had hoped it would um then we are now down to one finalist so again we're now to the the point in the process where we are doing that those reference checking background checking um like if You' mentioned you know a social media check perhaps like what information do we need to know to make sure that we want to continue to move forward with this person um and also if we can um we would like to and again it comes down to that confidentiality piece so you know like now if you are the final one um kind of the the risk has gone down a little bit right about your name kind of getting out there it's um so you might be more prone to allowing that to happen but you also may not so you're going to have to see where you are when you come to this point but kind of making it clear that we would like to share with our community we'd like to share with our stakeholders as much as possible before we're kind of signing that you know that contract and approving them so if there's any opportunity to bring them in for either like a day in the district and set up a day where you meet with like students and staff and community members and parent and and then and sometimes we've also seen the board go to that person's District to spend a day so you know whatever opportunities you can to just continue to make sure um to help validate your selection then um and then you know also we'll be undergoing contract negotiations I mean it's usually kind of the the board attorney negotiates with the candidates attorney is usually what happens most of the time um and you know usually your attorney will have um you know a contract that they use um and then you know and New Jersey school boards one of the things we can help with is data in terms of what the salaries are of other superintendents in the state so so that again you have that information um and then assuming that you go through this you have a contract drawn up it goes to the county superintendent gets approved um then you would be um appointing your new superintendent um with them you know starting in your District um based on whatever um the notification Clause is to their current district and then you know would like to say that um you know you should also hope that the process isn't over then that it should have some kind of a transition that again most um search firms have some kind of a transition Workshop because you know we want to make sure that we're helping set this person up for Success so we want to make sure that we can do everything we can to help them and that you know kind of agreeing on communication protocols right like these are the things that board needs to know about right away these are the things that you can tell us about like when you send us our updates or so kind of having that discussion early on about the things that are important to both of you to help Forge that relationship and do what you know and have the board do what it can to help this person be successful in your District um so I think that was my last slide it was so I just wanted to see if there is anything else that the board um had any questions or first of all we can just give Miss Peterson a round of applause for that awesome presentation thank you thank you Miss Peterson um pleasure I learned so much from that presentation um uh board members do we have any questions Miss towns thank you for being here my pleasure and providing us with this information um when you were talking about visit the csa's current District how do you do that if like you're just talking a few slides back about uh confidentiality so everything is dependent on who your finalist is so if your finalist says as an assistant superintendent somewhere they may be willing to do that so that's why I said you have to these are different options available to you but you may not be able to exercise that option depending on who your finalist is we just kind of want to you know always make the point to our community and you know to everyone else that that we we'll try and put the the person out there when we get down to that end but only if we can um so just making you aware of things that are available to you if you can for recognizing that you may not be able to you know I some superintendant will say like not until I've got those yes votes at you know that the new board's appointing me do I even want anyone to know you know my name so you you'll have to see what happens when you are in that situation any other questions from board members uh Miss Peterson I have a question sure um considering um the T the sample timeline that was presented tonight um and you know thinking about our board's um current situation can you talk a little bit about um what if any preparation and or um leg work needs to be done in terms of um hiring an interim Andor Acting Superintendent because based upon the timeline you know there's no way I mean like to cross my fingers and hope for that but I don't think there's any way that by June 30th we'll have a candidate um in place so I'm just wondering like historically has there been input from stakeholders for an interim and acting and or Acting Superintendent or like what does that look like so I haven't really seen there be input from stakeholders in that process but I have seen you know kind of the board go through an interview process of perhaps asking people to submit you know either if you have an application cover like whatever information you're asking for and then conduct um you know conduct interviews used for that process um you know again the kind of the you're not bound to the same confidentiality piece if you've got someone who is either retired or you know or is you know acting whoops acting through the you know coming for the acting role so you might have different opportunity to involve other stakeholders in the like so you have more of a control of kind of what you want that process to look like you would just have to kind of be clear Maybe about kind of what your timeline might look like because some people as they're you know again like is it right for the other person so I've had some people say I'm interested in being in acting but not if the board only wants me for one or two months versus if the board is looking for someone who's going to stay the full year so you'll kind of have to think about you know what your timeline is and recognizing that that might be important to the the person as well and typically for um that position right of interm or Acting Superintendent um what have you seen as far as the interview process is there more than one round is it just one round of interviews it really depends how many people you are able to attract like I've seen um heard some boards say we only got a few people or I've heard some boards say got more than they expected so it depends so it you need to have the information like if at the end of the first round somebody has just you know demonstrated to you that this is the right person it's more kind of the Comfort level of the board and the number of applicant so you again you have more flexibility in that process so the first time you bring them in you may say you know I a couple people really interested me and so I need to bring them back again to decide which one it may be that one person was clearing away the person that you want to move forward with so the the the board will have to it's kind of more knowing what you're looking for and knowing what you want in a candidate to then make sure that then so that's how you'll know then if you need to to dig further and find out further so so would you say um in terms of I your slide I think described it as board input and criteria would you say that that is um would you use that same um input and criteria for the interim and our Acting Superintendent candidate or is it or should there be a separate criteria for that well I mean I guess it depends again how long you want the person to be here right so and and what you want that person to do like some boards will say you know what like we don't want like we don't want them to rock the boat like we just want them to keep us floating until we find someone other boards are saying you know what like we are in a situation where we need some help and we need someone to come in and these are the issues we see oursel facing and so we before we bring a permanent person in we want someone to manage these things and take care of these things so those will be all things that you know the board will have to decide and then that will help you determine kind of if is the same criteria if you're looking for a long-term person so that may be closer to that criteria versus if you're just thinking we're going to have someone here for a month or two and you know don't want them making any major changes or anything then that might be a different set of criteria so thank you any other comments or questions see none thank you so much Miss Peterson um I think we're moving mov along into public comment yeah the board recognizes the value of public comment on educational issues and the importance of allowing members of the public to express themselves on school matters to ensure fair and orderly expression of such comment each statement shall be held to a time period of 3 minutes public comments not restricted to items on this agenda shall be entertained for approximately 30 minutes upon the discretion of the presiding officer for those who wish to provide public comment remotely a Google form was posted on a district website at 6:30 p.m. remote comments will be read by a member of the Board of Education the Board of Education will alternate between in-person and online comments please understand that public comment portions of our agenda are not structured as question and answer sessions but rather they are offered as opportunities to share your thoughts with the board the board may or may not respond to public comments however all comments are cons considered and will be investigated and addressed as appropriate please be courteous and mindful of the rights of others when providing comments comments may not be abusive obscene threatening or irrelevant please understand that students and employees have specific legal and privacy protections the board is not permitted to respond in public to comments about students or employees please be advised that you are commenting at your own risk any public comments that are directed that are directed at a particular ular individual or individuals could subject you to Legal liability for defamation public comment is now open hello good evening board education system of Dober my name is paa Cora I live in 16 East coer and over and um I'm here in high school we are here because a number of parents we are concerned about the number of incidents incidents of fights that happened at the do high school last week in four days there were how many five fights um five fights yes there was a threat of a student having having um a gone or you know and it was another fight without counting the number of fights that happened last month most of the incidents we found out through our um children or the posting on social media I'm here because it's obvious that the Administration has this issues out of control out of their hands we would like to know how you're going to um address this and how you could help us as a minority because most of the kids what was the last we are Hispanic what we could do to improve the security in our schools thank you thank you so much for listening to me thanks thank you uh Miss Phillips are there any remote comments no is there any other member of the public in person wishing to speak Miss Muno are you aware of any of the others wishing to speak good evening hernandz my name is diand Hernandez West blackw 92 West Blackwell Street I'm very concerned about the incident that happened yesterday because my son told me that the teacher did not close the door he didn't want to provide me with the name of the teacher he he didn't want her to come here and speak in public a girl stood up like you know got up and closed the door but the teacher continue teaching the class and the rest of the class said oh we have to hide we have to hide but she didn't do anything thank you for all your attention good evening thank you uh Miss Phillips are there did any other comments come in no is there any other member of the public in person wishing to speak no okay with that uh public comment is now closed uh Dr mlan I will hand it over to you thank you uh I'd like to thank both of you for coming tonight and expressing your concerns uh I want to assure you that before anything else Safety and Security is at the top of the list uh of things that we have to provide uh before instruction before any of the things that we provide to students we have to make sure that we have a safe and secure school and I do want to say with confidence that I believe we do I do know that within the last recent days of school there have been three different uh security responses at the high school uh going back to last Thursday there was a shelter in place for a hallway cleanup um on Friday there was a shelter in place for broken glass now both of those events did occur because of student disputes uh and on Monday uh just yesterday there was a lockdown while a security check was conducted uh and I thank you for what you shared in regard to the lockdown we we do drills every month not every security drill is a lockdown but we review our protocol and we will do that again to make sure that everyone is following the protocol for a lockdown because that is critically important that that occur uh in every classroom there are charts that indicate clearly what the response should be to a particular event um so that hearing that type of input's important so that we can revisit that with our staff uh I want to say that the close proxim of the events I just mentioned and the need to invoke a security response isn't typical it's not typical that we have those concentrated periods of time together um but I certainly understand when that happens that it can really heighten concern uh security responses however do allow situations to be dealt with in the safest manner possible uh and in the case of these three incidents our staff and administration and I've reviewed each of the incidents uh acted no matter consistent with uh best practices and address the situations appropriately I want to assure our community that our schools are safe environments for our students we've invested in Staffing uh not only security staff uh a uh SLO which is a uh school-based uh police officer uh training equipment and oversight that provides us with the ability to have both proactive and reactive respon responses to situations that arise and it's always a priority to provide communication about the events to our parents and I know that this was mentioned in the first comment sometimes the communication we give may not be as specific as parents would like and I I understand that as a parent myself um however there's both student privacy considerations but and also sometimes the need to ensure that our security Protocols are not ones that we um give too many specific spefic details with because obviously that can be uh compromise uh some of the reactions that we have in school uh I am open to any parent who'd like to meet with me uh about their concerns I've offered uh to a parent recently and I'll offer it again today that if a parent would like to make an appointment come in Mr Nunes or one of the administration will walk around the building because I want our parents um to to feel abs absolutely comfortable that their children are okay in school and I walk the building frequently I feel that way I certainly wouldn't say it today if I didn't feel that way uh we do have we have over a thousand students in the school and unfortunately students uh do get into conflicts with each other sometimes they start in school sometimes they start out of school and then end up in school uh but our uh attempt is to try to diffuse those situations if we know them in advance and uh if we don't know them in advance to to quickly qu them uh but certainly again I want to reiterate that I'm happy to meet with any parent uh we are happy for parents to come in if they come in will be during school session you'll see things as they really are we we don't have the ability to control the environment to make it look like something it isn't so uh I think that might for some parents go a long way to providing that type of reassurance thank you Dr MCL um um I'm wondering can we perhaps get your um response or your comments translated and shared with the parents so miss Munos oh I was going to ask maybe if Miss Muno if you can maybe collects um their email addresses and then you have it okay perfect um uh any comments from board members misso uh Dr mclin I know that districts do things differently um and I'm I'm not I don't want you to uh breach any security protocols or anything like that but can you explain to the public the differences between a lockdown a I know in my district called passive lockdowns or shelter in place can you tell the public what that means because sometimes they don't know what it means yeah thank you for that so uh lockdown typically occurs as as it was mentioned when uh doors are locked and students are uh asked to move to a place of less visibility in the room uh and that is if we feel that there's some type of imminent danger occurring uh within the building uh a shelter in place and two of the events I mentioned were shelter in places that's where we ask classes to stay where they are instruction can continue as normal but uh students do not leave the room or staff don't leave the room and that can happen for a variety of reasons most often it happens if a student for example might be having a medical episode maybe a student fainted or uh someone has to uh the U ambulance core has to come in and have that student removed we don't want anyone getting in their way uh they also tend to be um shorter in duration uh so uh a lockdown is a more significant event a shelter in place tends to be a a less significant event because we're allowing instruction to continue we have other um less used uh interventions as well uh there might be an evacuation for example an evacuation could occur um for a variety of reasons as well um for example if there were a um some type of suspected hazard in the building we um couple of um couple years ago we had a chemical spill in one of our science labs so we evacuated until that could be taken care of and we made sure that there was no Hazard for anyone uh so there are um different protocols the most two common would be Sheltering Place probably the most common and a lockdown and then as I mentioned before we do drill on all of these during the course of the year when a drill is done uh each of the principles do send out a message so hopefully you see those uh just so you know it was a drill and that's just to be prepared um because sometimes especially with our younger children they may go home and misunderstand that that wasn't an actual emergency um just another question um does the state require um lockdown drills um at least once or twice a month uh the state requires every emergency drill to be uh conducted throughout the course of the year and one emergency drill each month there have to be two lock of those there have to be two lockdown drills so um I can I can actually share and and post on the website uh the types of drills that have to be done over the course of the year and when they're drills you do you usually inform the parents that that's a drill or that's yes we do after the fact we usually send it out around 3:00 because even if it's just an advisory that it was a drill if we send it during the day parents tend to uh call right away because it makes them nervous so we we usually send those out as soon as school is over uh and that is required it's required within the same day to tell parents that you had a drill all right thank you Miss nutting um Dr mlum can you just answer this one question um I understand that there were a lot of talk about the fact of parents calling during a lockdown can you just clarify and the reason why we do not answer answer the phones during those times yes thank you so uh and and that happens when there is a lockdown I know it can be very frustrating to parents that no one is answering at the school but that is actually the guidance that we are provided uh from the Homeland Security office in New Jersey uh if if we were to first of all engage in phone call reception uh during an actual lockdown event uh it would take the attention away from the event itself but it would most likely also result in in many parents coming to the building which is a natural reaction you know again I'm just going to reference myself if there was an event happening I might want to go and get my child right away however if if you have a large amount of parents coming to a building while emergency Personnel are trying to intervene and enter themselves it can compound the situation so during a lockdown event uh phones are not answered there's no like status calls that go out to parents saying uh the school's in lockdown uh but as soon as the lockdown event is over as happened the other day uh the the principal issues a statement so that the parents have as clear an idea as possible that there was a lockdown why there was a lock down to the extent that we can share and how long that lockdown was and always a statement that students are safe because that's critically important I hope that will always be a part of our statement that everyone is safe and one more question with the lockdown being at the high school and with North Rover being so close can you just clarify why they wouldn't be you know informed of or have lock down themselves right so every uh principal every principal in the district yesterday was informed that the high school was in lockdown so they were all aware of that uh whether or not to put another school in lockdown all depends on the situation yesterday was a very specific situation that uh we did not feel in any way needed to lock down any of the other areas uh but we have had lockdowns uh for examp in in in Geographic proximity uh where we would say the high school and North over need to be in lockdown yes they just didn't fall into that category perfect thank you it was the same question that uh Mrs nut asked thank you thank you any other comments in regards to information um what is the Avenue that the parents should check first if they want to know there was a lockdown well uh the the uh yesterday for example the message that Mr uh nunz sent was sent by email and text and placed on the website so uh I would say if a parent is looking to verify that there was a lockdown um the easiest place to go look would be on the website but they should also get those other we did not place a call because again that uh we have found in our experience that calls really tend to provoke rather than help uh we would certainly send out a call if we needed to for another situation uh for example if we had to evacuate or if there was a parent response necessary we would certainly put out a phone call if kids couldn't be dismissed uh from school I was in a situation in a different District where we actually had a lock down at dismissal and um there was a message that sent out that said you know your your child's not going to be home on time um so uh a lot of these are situation dependent thank you it just occurred to me um just another question so suppose that the lockdown is at the do at do high school right is that are the parents from do high school are the only ones who are notified or is that a districtwide announcement on the website so um this actually this was a suggestion that was made uh after yesterday that even if the event happened at Dober high school that it would be beneficial to communicate that throughout the district uh yesterday's was just to do high school but uh certainly sending that message out uh throughout the district is easy to do and has benefit so uh we're certainly going to take that and make it a part of our protocol thank you any other comments from the board I just want to um in reference to the um uptick or increase um fights that have been happening at the high school lately and Dr ml I hope you don't mind CU I know you're going to um dive into this in a report um at our next meeting but miss Phillips actually did a um did some brief research based off of the reports that we receive as a board and from that research Miss Phillips you can correct me if I'm wrong but I believe um since the school year started there's only been on average about one fight a month at the high school based on the the reports that we've gotten yeah that's right that's about right yeah and I would say at um as you mentioned Miss bendz uh twice a year uh the I'm required to provide a public report it used to be called the violence and vandalism report I'm not quite sure the acronis they use but it's still the same information uh where I report on the number of HIV incidents the numbers of uh incidents for vandalism violence Etc uh I will be providing that at the March meeting and then there'll be a report at the end of the year which I will provide uh at the June meeting uh so that both both ends of the year are captured um but I the board absolutely sees the information um on a monthly basis because I am required to provide the uh the board with any reports of suspension and any fights or assaults result in suspension as a result of our code of conduct so uh there wouldn't be a fight that didn't have a suspension attached to it in some way even if it was an in school suspension although most of the time it's it's out of school for a genuine fight uh I will say that I do not see and this is not based on research but it's easy enough to research and verify uh since I've been providing these reports I don't see an uptick and fighting here um as a matter of fact I think um as a school I feel we uh are the safest we have been in at least in my experience here uh We've invested and I thank the board for this in a um increased security staff our security staff uh particularly our new hires have had background uh in uh either law enforcement or in security uh which is great we now have the leo3 offices which are tremendous help and our um particularly our new security director has really added another Dimension uh and from an equipment point of view um the interior cameras have really helped our safety uh in the in the uh in the in all of our schools uh our exterior cameras um they allow monitoring they allow us to look into situations that are occurring verify whether or not even students may appear to be in a a verbal altercation uh that all provides help with the um with with prevention as well as re action uh We've instituted the threat assessment teams which uh the state model had come out a couple of years ago we did do that in advance of the requirement uh all of our administrators have gone to that training uh our therapeutic staff have been a great help in terms of both remediation of student conflict but also working with students who who might be uh susceptible to conflict because of issues that they're dealing with so I think all of these elements um have helped uh our schools to be safer uh and we continue to work on that uh as as the board knows in the updates that I provide uh we are we are adding all the time to the layers of of security and work that we're doing uh both from a personnel and Equipment point of view Dr mlin thank you for your attention to detail on this matter and certainly thank you to our entire um security um Team to our parents that um shared comment this evening thank you for being here and sharing that feedback I hope that you um take advantage of the offer by our superintendent Dr mclin to um tour some of the um to tour the high school um and see firsthand What's um actually happening so please connect with Dr mclin thank you um with that I will entertain a motion to adjourn at 8:39 p.m. so moved second I have a motion by Mr Miller Miss nutting was that you yes and a second by Miss nutting all in favor say I hi any oppose meeting adjourned good night please stay and help clean up if you can