School Committee: August 18, 2023

Transcript captured from MHTV’s Vimeo auto-captioning. No speaker labels; proper names and dollar figures occasionally misheard. Click any timecode to jump to that moment in the source video.

0:08 Is anybody here? No here. Hello Ann. I’m gonna call us to order at nine thirty seven. I apologize for that delay. We are working through some tech here. We now have one of our presenters that, um, has been able to join us. We’re we’re gonna, we and the other one, but I’m gonna kick this off to, um, the Vice Chair Jenner. Um, she has been coordinating with Nsda, um, to bring in this presentation. So Jen, if you could. Sure. Great. Good morning everyone. Welcome. Um, we, um, I reached out after our last, uh, meeting where we discussed this to Nsda, which is the New England School Development Corporation. Um, they are a nonprofit association that works with school committees, um, across New England. Um, we have worked, they do a number of things, um,

0:55 but we have worked with them in the past on, um, uh, permanent superintendent search. And I was tasked by the committee to reach out to our, um, connection there, Carolyn Burke, and talk about what our steps would be for, um, an interim superintendent search and a permanent superintendent search, or both. Um, so Carolyn Burke and David d Rue, if I’m pronouncing that correctly, who, um, is the executive director of Nsec are here with us. Um, and just wanted to take, uh, some time this morning to outline what, you know, what our options are in regards to a superintendent search and answer any questions that committee members may have so that we can move forward with next

1:41 steps. Steps. So I know we have David on the line. David, are you there? Yes. Hi. Good morning everybody. I think Carolyn May have logged in also. She might be, keep an eye out for us. She may be looking to get in. I just spoke with her. Okay. Can you, um, Your Volume up over here on the poly system? Thank you, Frank. Dave. So, uh, so sorry about the tech issues. There was a little zoom issues going on this morning, but not a problem. Um, so if you wanna take a couple minutes, um, and sort of walk through David, like what our options are at this point in regards to searches. Yeah, absolutely. I’ve, uh, Carolyn Burke and I have been, uh, speaking back and forth about, uh, the situation you’re facing in Marblehead.

2:27 Um, and I think you, you know, the interim superintendent search is something we could definitely help you with. Uh, we would take an approach with that. The scope of work for that would be relatively, we would post the positions for you on a number of our websites and re outreach that we normally do. Again, you can put those postings out for as long, you know, for, I would, we usually post four to six weeks. If you are in a position where you’re looking to speed this up, you could ask us to shorten that to three or four weeks to post. Um, and then Carolyn would be your lead person on this. And then what she would do is she would come in, work with a team,

3:13 your screening team, to look at the, we gather all the applicants, we’ll do all the, uh, checks on if they’re certified, qualified. And then Carolyn would take over, come in, work with a screening committee, look at who came in for the interim position, set up work with the committee, the screening committee to set up interviews, do the interviews, and then that screening committee would move it up to the whole school, uh, committee for the final choices. And, uh, interim, I know you may wanna move a little bit faster. We would understand that would work with you. And then the goal would be you go your screening committee interviews and then moves final candidates up to the, uh, school committee for final interviews and decisions on who would come in as the

4:01 interim. So that, in that, that’s how we could help you right now with an interim piece to this and long term, uh, uh, full blown superintendent searches are, are more involved. There were, it’s a longer timetable and, um, you know, we would go to you and put out, you know, focus groups and whatever you needed to do. But I think for the interim scope of work would be, um, we currently have a letter of application we would use from your last search with Carolyn would run this by whoever’s appointed on your side to, um, kind of lead this work with Carolyn and lead this. We’d put that letter out, let you look at it. If you give us the thumbs up, that’s our application letter.

4:49 We’ll have that out. And like I said, it’s up to you how long you wanna run those applications. You could be we, you know, four to six if you looked at me and said, whatever Dave, we’ll do ‘em three weeks and we’ll pull ‘em in. Yeah. We’re, you know, Carolyn and I will work with you. I know, I understand the position you are in trying to get an interim right now. You’re not alone. Yes. So, a couple questions and, and things I just wanna kind of go over. So Marblehead obviously is currently a member of nasdaq. Um, yes, we review the task of the permanent search, but you also have done a lot of work for us on enrollment studies and other, other things as a member of nasdaq. Um, is there a fee for the interim search? Uh, there would be no fee for this work. For the interim search.

5:38 We would come in. You’ve all, you’re right. Uh, you’ve been a, a member in good standing. My, I’m a retired superintendent. I’m a Northshore superintendent. I worked from Salem to Revere to Chelsea Marden in SGAs. Um, and I’m very comfortable with working in and around, you know, with Northshore districts because I, that’s, that was my entire career. I was on the Northshore as well as I’ve lived there. No, um, bobblehead we would come in with this scope of work, there’d be no cost to you. Um, we would give you our consultant and again, I would outline the scope of work, send it to whomever may, you know, to the whole committee to look at. But no, the interim would be, you know, it for us. You’ve been good partners and we wanna come in and help you if we can.

6:26 Okay. And then, uh, another question would be, you talked about typically this search would be a four to six week search that we could put it as a three week search. Do you, when, when pe when districts put out these, um, requests for, for submittals, if you will? Yeah. Um, do you typically see the vast amount of your submittals happening in those first few weeks? Do you see more happening? ‘cause I, we wouldn’t want to, you know, close out our field, but at the same time, if your experiences, you see the majority of your responses in those first couple weeks, um, it looks like Carolyn is joining us now. Yeah. Um, if you see the majority of your responses in those first few weeks, and you just have a few stragglers at the end that are kind of just shopping everywhere, um, then that we would take that into account that we’re not really going to lose a

7:14 scope by, by tightening up that window. So what is your No, I, again, yeah, my feeling, and I’m glad that, um, Carolyn Burke is, is on now. She’ll be a consultant through all of this. Um, when it comes to postings, it’s funny, it we’ll get requests, let’s say April because the superintendent decided they’re gonna resign at the end of the year, where that committee will say, all right, can we run this ad four weeks? As opposed to the full six. I think you, you’re pretty accurate that once it goes out, you’re gonna get your early interest fast. So if the posting sat out there for an interim for three to four weeks, you’d, you’d have all your interest up front. Okay. It would not be. And and there are stragglers that always come in at the back end, and we,

8:02 we kind of leave that open with whichever district we’re working with. If we got somebody last minute, we would reach out and say, this person just got in, missed the deadline by a day. Do you still wanna see them? And most districts would say, yeah, just send it to us. Okay. So I don’t think for interim, you’re handicapping yourself. Okay. Um, Carolyn, if you’re on, if you wanna just, um, unmute yourself and join in at any point, um, feel free. I, I see Burke on here. I’m assuming that she Yeah, that No, that’s right. Sorry. Okay. Um, so I’m gonna open it up, or do we want, does Carolyn have more to present? Otherwise we can open it up to some questions from the committee. I just wanna give Carolyn a chance. I would, if, if Carolyn could speak to the work of the screening committee.

8:50 I think that’s the piece to this that is important to make it happen. Okay. I just need her to unmute. Unmute. Oh, thank you. Okay. Am I unmuted now? Yep. There you go. All right. I’m on my phone. I couldn’t get on. I was on before, but, um, I got kicked off. Okay. Off you wanted me, I assume you’ve gone through the posting and everything now you want the next phase? Yeah. Talk about the screening committee for this, if you don’t mind. Alright. When all the applications come into nasdaq, we will present them to whomever you designate your liaison. And, uh, we would hope that you would pick 3, 4, 5 people maybe and,

9:39 and set up a screening committee. It could be two school committee members, an administrator or a teacher and a parent or whomever you want. Set up a screening committee to go through the applications and see if there’s any, any people that they would like to have an initial screening interview with maybe five or six people that the screening committee will talk to. And then they will recommend however many of those to the full board for an interview, full screening committee, school committee for an interview. I can go into a lot more detail if you want, but that’s the basic, you, you, you get one bite of the apple, you get one interview in executive session with a candidate. So if you want an interview in executive session,

10:29 then you set up a screening committee. A school committee can’t act as its own screening committee. So you set up a screening committee, you interview the candidate for an hour or whatever, and then you make recommendations. You could recommend all of them if you thought you wanted to, or to three, to the, uh, school committee for an interview. Now, Carolyn, from doing this prior with you, which was a very, very organized, um, experience, um, I recall the reason why you wanna have some of these in executive session or allow for that in, in executive session is your candidates are, are often employed somewhere else currently. Yes. And they don’t want to disclose that they are looking before

11:17 they’ve moved on to that next step. Um, and so by having the screening committee, you kind of have a, a greater field of candidates willing to apply. Correct. Right. And then they know if they’ve been moved on to the school committee, that that’ll be made public and, but that they have a one in three shot or whatever of, of getting the position. You also sometimes have candidates that look good on paper and when you come into interview them, they’re just not what you’re looking for. And this is a, this is an opportunity, depending on how many can, uh, applications you get, this is an opportunity to maybe screen some of those people out so that you’re not bringing them into the public before the whole school committee. And they’re, they’re just, you know, in the,

12:03 in the eyes of the screening committee, not somebody that the district would be interested in. Okay. And then is it the same way, I know during the superintendent search if, if the, the overall permanent search, if the screening committee says we recommend three individuals, you then have to get their permission to come forward and not all of them give permission, some drop out at that point. Right. But generally that doesn’t happen in a, in a, uh, an interim search because it’s a shorter timeline. They say they’re interested, we, you know, they apply. So generally they don’t drop out in the longer search after they’ve had a chance to go through the screening process and hear the questions and meet the people

12:48 and, and research the district. Sometimes they say, you know, I don’t think we’re a match. Allison, I see your hand.

12:57 Hi, thank you so much for being here with us. Uh, two a couple questions. Number one, I just wanna make sure and clarify that I heard you properly when you were talking about the requirements for a screening committee or if there are requirements for a screening committee. What I heard was that there is not, it just can’t be the full school committee, of course. So it could be potentially two members, um, along with the administrator or a teacher or a parent. Is that correct? But there are no, are there any requirements outside of, of course, not the full school Committee? No, not, not legally, but, um, sometimes politically or, you know, optics for the community. Oh, yes. But, but that, that’s up to, to the school committee,

13:43 you know, you want the process to withstand scrutiny and for people to say, I had some input, but it’s not a full search, it’s an interim. Right. I don’t know if David has talked to you, I’m sorry, I couldn’t get on about whether the position is going to go to this July or the follow, whether it’s going to be a six month or an 18 month position. If it’s going to be an 18 month position, then you really want to, to maybe have a, a little more of a screening committee and be a little more thoughtful about it, because you might get pushback. But if it’s going to July PE-people are sometimes more forgiving. Understood. I, I think my understanding is the recommendation would be ideally to have two school committee members, an admin, a teacher, and a parent. Um, and I,

14:32 I think that’s appropriate. I don’t, I, I’m interested. It sounds good, But I don’t, I think that is absolutely appropriate. And I wouldn’t wanna limit more than that. Would anybody? I don’t think there should be more than that. No, no. Not, I don’t think there should be more, but I would wanna put further limitations and have less. I, I think that’s, that’s good representation. Yep. I agree. I think so. Um, I think one thing, Carolyn and I talked about this offline that we do need to think about is exactly to Carolyn’s point just now, is how are, when are we looking to launch a permanent search? Are we looking to have an interim until next June 30th or, um, or longer than that? And that would determine when we would do this permanent search. Right? I mean,

15:21 Caroline, I think you and I talked at one point that we could almost be doing, if we were to do it right away, we’d be launching right into a permanent search this year, this school year.

15:33 If you did, I don’t wanna interrupt anybody, but if you launched a search, and David, you can speak to this too. Yes. If, if you, you would launch a search this fall and you would know your permanent candidate probably by January. Um, if you want, you know, it takes about four months to do a permanent search. So if you launch it in October, then you, you would be, you would know in February. So one question I have, Carolyn, and I’ve kind of tried to survey just anecdotally what’s going on. There are, in my understanding, there will be many, many searches, pursu, full-time superintendents this cycle. Um, that there was a lot of interims last, last year, this current year.

16:20 And there’s many districts that will be looking in this, you know, November to February cycle. Correct. So always, always every, Yes. If you wait till next year, same thing. Okay. Because I thought there was a, an unusual amount locally. Um, no, there’s

16:42 positions turn are turning over at a rapid rate lately. There’s so many open, but it, it, it doesn’t either enhance or, or, um, detract from your search. Whether you do it this year or next year, that’s an internal decision. You take a look at your district and say, mm-hmm. There’s some, there’s some considerations. Is your, is your interim going to be a candidate for the full position? Probably not if you choose a retired superintendent. But if you choose someone who would, who would welcome an opportunity to serve as your full-time superintendent, then um, that affects the search too. Because other candidates, when they apply,

17:28 will know that there’s somebody in there doing a good job and that the, it’s more than likely that if they do a good job that they’d have a, a front seat to get the full-time position. David, do you wanna speak to that? No, I, I think you’re in a position now where Carolyn and I have also talked. So the question she’s bringing up would be the questions the school committee has to come to terms with, if you went with your interim, one of the que, if I was coming in as an interim, my question would be, would I be a candidate moving forward if it’s a fit? So that’s something you’d have to understand among you figured that out amongst yourselves, starting a full-blown search. Um, if you even were to look at me and say, all right, what if we feel we,

18:16 we go the interim route, we have somebody we wanna give them. If you said to me, could we start a search in December for July 1st, we could still do that. You’d have plenty of time. The the, the candidates would still be out there. You’d have that pool. It also gives you a chance to see if your interim is a fit for you to try to run an interim search right into a full-time next year. Superintendent search. That would, that would be difficult because if I was a superintendent thinking about it, and let’s say I made it to interim, or I didn’t make it to interim, then two weeks later I see a posting Marblehead superintendent effective July 1st. Now you’re telling your interim, well, it could be a year,

19:03 half a year long, you know, job, we’re gonna watch you see what you do, and you can apply. But it may also tell me from the outside, I don’t know if I wanna apply. ‘cause I went for interim and I didn’t get it. So I think you wanna kind of space this a little. You, that’s just, I mean, Carolyn’s been at this game a lot longer than me, but I think you need a little bit of a spacing. I’m taking this from a practitioner’s standpoint as a reti, recently retired superintendent. If I went in for the interim, didn’t get it a month later, I see a posting for Marblehead full-time, then I’d be like, well, if I didn’t get it for interim, why would I apply? So, Uh, I I think Allison has a hand up. I don’t, but Yes. Yes. Thank you. That was gonna be my exact question. What,

19:51 what would be your recommendation? Because I think it is, obviously it depends on if it’s a retired superintendent or not for that interim position. Right. That’s a good call out. But that was gonna be my next question is what would your suggestion be for a, a time lag? Because if it is an interim superintendent that it’s not retired, that could potentially end up being a fantastic fit. And, and, you know, we would need some time to identify that. Mm-hmm. Obviously, uh, properly. So thank you for, for pointing that out. So you would, you know, is six months enough? Is that the recommendation? Um, if you are, it, it depends. Now let’s back it up. Are we talking about the interim starting October 31st or December 31st? Right.

20:38 Either we’re open to either, um, right now we have our acting superintendent, um, named as Michelle Krista, who is our business manager and assistant superintendent of operations. Um, the ideal for her would be that she stay in that role, um, through October 31st. That being said, she is been an incredible team player, um, so far. And I’m confident that if we were through the process and the person could not start for, you know, until December 31st, I, I think that there’s some wiggle room there. Um, one of the questions I have, and, and this all makes a ton of sense about the timing, is if we ran it as opposed through, um,

21:28 July 31st of 24, and we have an idea that we are going to revisit this in say, end of February and see, do we wanna extend this position for another 12 months, or do we want to at that point start the full search? Would that be a good idea? And would that allow us enough time? Because the other thing is we can be doing some of this work while we have an interim. Some of the work that, you know, took some time was an ideal candidate profile and things like that. So we could be as a committee doing the workshops to get that work done during that period. Um, and knowing we may be using that ideal candidate profile in say, end of February, beginning of March, or we may at that point decide we won’t be using it until November,

22:17 around November, at which point we could tweak it, but the bulk of the work would be done. Does that make sense? It, it does. If David, you wanna No, it does, it makes sense. And again, we, we would be willing to work with you through this process from, you know, wherever you needed us. I think you’re, again, you’re in a, you’re in a spot now. Where could you potentially have an interim by October 31st? I’m gonna look to Carolyn and I think we could make that happen November Probably. No. Yeah. So November 1st, right? So November 31st. December, December 1st. Maybe We could make, I think we could work with you to get you your interim.

23:02 I think the decision on, and it weighs on the school committee right now is, okay, what would be our next step? And I, and that, so I don’t know if you wanna kind of think of this as I always do in pieces, right? What’s, what’s, what’s the immediate right now we would like to get an interim, all right, Carolyn, NASDAQ, we work with you. We make that happen. While that process is happening, we would be more than willing to consult with you, talk with you as you begin to formulate your next steps. And then we would in and, and be, if, if you chose, we would be that, you know, search team that comes in and helps you through the next phase. And you would see, let’s see what the caliber of interim applications we should

23:52 be getting those in in September, right? And what the caliber of those applications are that might affect your decision. You can start a search for the next calendar year. You could start a search, say your interim came in by December 1st. I I maybe we, we can get them by, um, November 1st, but let’s say December 1st, you could start a search maybe February. Do you think if they started February 1st? That’s, I would, that’s, that’s the first thing that came to my head. If it, because now you have interim, you’ll have an interim on the ground for a little bit. Get a feel for that person post in February. We come back at it and, and then you’d be probably,

24:38 I’m just playing this out without a real timeline hot in front of me. You could have your person in place very march, April by May, and you’re still in a good zone where other districts, as they pop up, you’ll still be out somewhat in front of it, those March and Aprils and you won’t feel the pressure. I have a question for committee. You, if you had somebody start the job, say by December 1st,

25:07 you could then watch and decide and say to nasdaq, you know what, we don’t wanna do a full blown search until next school year. We wanna really watch this person. We think they might, they might have potential. We don’t wanna announce an opening because if we really like this person, we might wanna just go with this person. So you’ll have a couple of months we’d say to you, you really need to know whether you, if you’re going to do it by, if you wanna do a search for this calendar year, we would need to know by February one. Right? Otherwise, it’s too, I think it’s too late.

25:44 I just wonder is, so I’m gonna throw a couple things out here. I first, I just wonder is if it’s a December 1st start date for an interim, is eight weeks enough to formulate it? An opinion? You know, so to delay that, what I would think is, we have to remember, this is gonna sound weird, but all eight weeks are not created equal. That’s eight weeks of budget, season of budget development of really having to think on your feet, be able to present, um, you know, and not a full strategic plan. But why, why is this the prioritization in our budget? How does this play out long term? So, uh, it, it’s not like eight weeks at another time of year. I mean, it’s, we all know that, that, first of all, I, I would like to, you know,

26:33 the ideal obviously is to get someone in for November 1st, but I would rush it. So if it’s December 1st, it is December 1st, I would like to, so for me, just hear me out. I see your hand, Allison. So for me, depending on who we get as applicants, it’s gonna make a big difference. If on December 1st we have someone starting that is a retired superintendent that we know has no interest in staying long term, I would right then start the process of a whole superintendent search because we know someone is here, you know, in a purposely, in a short term position. If we have a field of people who are looking as this, as a way to move into our district or grow within our

27:19 district into a superintendent role, I would at that point want to a, see how they’re, they’re doing. And then I would want to see, okay, maybe we wanna look at this individual for another calendar year and see what is going on in our district and put off that search. But right away, if who we place is a retired superintendent, that’s our answer to me at least. Mm-hmm. That we may want to, you know, look sooner. I think it really is going to matter on who, what our applicant pool is and what the intent of the person we’re choosing is long term. Well said. Throw one thing out and then I wanna make sure I get to l Carolyn just as,

28:04 just as a, you know, just going off the, you know, o off the track here, is it an option to actually start a permanent search right now for January 1st?

28:17 Yes. Yes. That is option. Yes. It’s, I mean, it is an option whether it’s, it’s in our best interest to do that in terms of it’s an option who we who, um, Allison, I see your hand and I apologize ahead of time. You’re kind of by being the, this is just what happens when you, you’re, you’re not on muting. Yeah. And just shouting because we’re in the room, I apologize. No, that’s, no, I have a work meeting at 10 30, so I can’t be in person today. Um, that’s totally fine. I, I think what you said, Sarah, is what I, that, that was why I was asking my clarification before, because I think what happens initially is going to end up changing the direction of a timeframe of what we do from a, a second step and what, how early we can start that process. Because clearly,

29:06 if it’s a retired interim only here for to help right now, um, we can start that process even sooner. Would, is there any downfall to starting that process sooner? And these might be silly questions, but this is my first time going through a superintendent search on the committee, so I’m kind of taking advantage and asking all the, the potentially dumb questions and I’m okay with that. So, David, you want No, go ahead, Carol. No, go ahead David. No, please. I’ll chime in. So, alright. Um, we’d have to move fast. You’ve already got your successful candidate profile that I would ask the committee to be looking at and updating, but you’ve al we’d have to announce it, get the word out and start collecting. I don’t see a downside.

29:53 If you are ready to do that, you, you’ve got a, you’ve got somebody in there, uh, who’s willing to hold it on the fort. It, uh, it just depends if you’re, if you’re ready to get up and start thinking already about, right. Okay. You know, are you gonna dust off your profile and work on it as a committee or are you gonna go through focus groups again? You know, some decisions would have to be made, um, a really concentrated effort to do it right and do it well. You could do one. Yeah. Thank you

30:26 Again. I think you have to come to a, a decision as a committee, an interim track works. We can do that for you. And then decide if you want to hold off a little bit, see how the interim, I agree. If it’s a retired superintendent, then you wanna move. But if you may have somebody that works for you and might wanna be there, um, it’s, it will come down to the comfort of the committee. Right now, what are you comfortable with? Uh, you, you win lose or draw though, will your current, uh, I think you said the finance manager will, if you go full-blown search, are you looking to hire a superintendent by next January?

31:16 No. January? Or are you gonna try to, so I think that’s the other piece. Because now you, you’d be looking for somebody that would be coming to you on January 1st. I, that’s where I’m a little unclear right now. They did, they want somebody January 1st. Right. The downside of that is people are employed. There’s, you, you limit the number of people who can leave their current position and come to you by January 1st. Um, but you, but you would know we could do a search where you would know who the person was going to be. You would know that in January, but they probably wouldn’t start until July. So you would still need your interim to work through the end of,

32:01 you would need an interim to go through June 31st. But we could do a full-blown search and know who the person was by January. I personally, um, would like to do an interim search, use the data yielded from that, whether it’s in a retired person or whether it’s someone that’s looking to move into that role or maintain that role. And if it’s a retired individual, that’s an easy

32:31 jump to information. And if it’s someone else, then decide as a committee, do we wanna look at the data that is yielded from this person in this position for a longer period of time? Do we feel we have enough one way or another now? And make that decision, you know, in the February march timeframe, whether we would be extending that for another year or if we would be commencing a full search at that time. And also, you know, to that point, we, we could be doing some of that work that does take several weeks, you know, the ideal candidate profile, the, the focus groups if we need to during that time period. Because quite honestly, if, if we had someone who we felt, if we had someone in there that is looking to grow into that role or,

33:18 or maintain that role, that could be part of our focus groups of would you like to see more data on this person? So I, I think I would like to do an interim search and then have the information of who has been yielded from that to make next steps. Allison? I think it also depends. I think I kept myself on muted. Um, I think it also depends. I mean, isn’t it possible that we get an interim superintendent who’s not retired that maybe isn’t interested in the position? I mean, I think that’s, it’s also important to know that’s gonna be a mutual decision decision, you know, for whether or not they’re even interested in that also. Right? We, we could get an interim who says, I just like doing interim work. You know, I, I’m not retired, but I,

34:04 I just enjoy the interim and moving around and helping fix. Um, so, you know, I think that’s something to remember as well. Yeah, Allison, that’s a good point. You could have somebody who for this year would like something through say July, but would enter, would expect to be entering other searches for a permanent position in September. You also, it’s not uncommon for a retired superintendent to say, I’ll do the 18 months. So not every retired person will say, I’m, I’m a hard stop June 31st. So I agree with Jennifer. There’s so many ifs that I think we just stop the interim search, see who the candidate pool is. You have time to make these other decisions when you see, you know,

34:52 do we even have an interest and what type of interest is there in the district? Okay. Brian, do you have any? No, I think having the initial batch of interim candidates will give us a good idea how to go forward from there. I think that’s the best way we ought to do ‘em. I mean, I, I, I’m to, I’m torn in that part of me says just let’s just jump in and do it and, you know, we could have our permanent, you know, superintendent, um, and, and do the work, you know, now and, and get that done. I I also think that going for an interim, if we end up with an interim candidate who is interested in the permanent position, it’s a little clunky, right? Like it’s a little, I mean, it’s a, it’s a little bit more, um, I don’t wanna say work,

35:39 but maybe challenge is in terms of a search. ‘cause you’re gonna be searching for, you’re gonna have external candidates and you’re gonna have this internal candidate. I don’t know, it just, it, it is a little clunky, but, um, I believe, you know, just based on what, you know, everyone has said here, that’s probably the right thing for our district. Um, just for a whole host of reasons. We need a little bit of time to just, you know, get organized, figure out what, what our, you know, our candidate profile is gonna be. Uh, we do need someone, you know, in, in the seat, um, Michelle Hassman, uh, amazing team player, but, you know, understand what her, um, her expectations are. You know, so it probably is the right thing to go forward, do the interim, and then depending on who that candidate, who that successful hire is,

36:25 will determine the timing of our permanent search. Yeah. Because as I’m hearing here, we could say mid-February, March, we want to, we want to start the full search to be, to be hired for July one. Um, so I mean that’s, that’s, that is a possibility. Um, alright. So do, do we need a vote to retain Nasdaq? Aztec? Um, I, I mean, we can, we, you know, You, you can certainly afford us since we’re free. There’s no expenditure. So it, it does seem to be the consensus that we move forward. I, I, you know, do you want me to take, do you want me to make a motion? Sure. All right. So I’ll make a motion that we, uh, move forward with, um,

37:14 retaining nsda New England School Development Corporation, um, to, uh, uh, aid us in the search for an interim superintendent of marble public schools. I second, um, I’m just gonna read back a motion. A motion to retain Nasdaq to perform interim superintendent search. Um, moved by Jen Schaffner, seconded by Brian Oda. Discussion, um, roll call. Jen Schaffner in favor. Brian Oda in favor. Alison Taylor In favor, Sarah Fox in favor. Motion carries four zero. Um, the checks in the mail. Um,

38:01 So we need, we need to advertise it now, so we’ll, we’ll dust off the letter that we used. Or I, maybe I’ll turn this over to David. David, you can walk him through what, what they Yeah, what I, what what I’ll do now is, uh, as soon as we’re done with the call, I’ll give, uh, my right hand person, Christina, a call. We’ll dust off the, uh, the letter from two years ago. We’ll flip. I, who should I send any documentation to right now so I, it doesn’t get lost? We wanna try to move this fast. So You can send it to me, the chair. I’ll, I can, um, I have Carolyn’s cell phone so I can text her my email. Um, perfect. Um, and she can, she can share that on with you. All right. And what we’ll do is we’ll dust off that letter. I’ll send it to the chair to take a look at.

38:48 I’ll just send a brief scope of work so you can review it so you know exactly what we’re coming into do for you right now. And, uh, then we’ll get that, once we get the thumbs up on the letter, we’ll get that right out. Think about how many weeks you want it posted. That’s all. I wouldn’t say less than three, but you can keep it out there as many as six. And we can talk at some point on that. That’s not, well, I Just made one comment, um, David and Carolyn. Yep. Um, ‘cause I was involved in the earlier, um, interim search mm-hmm. We did in 2019. My recollection is that was a, a search really, I think it was, it was written, it it such that we were looking for someone to just come in on a temporary basis to, you know, sort of steady the ship and get us to a permanent search.

39:34 That was, that was Bill McCall this’s, like main directive was he was gonna work with us on our, our permanent search. This, I think is gonna be a little different. So I just, I throw that out there that we might need to work on it. Or maybe you’ve got, uh, something in your file. I think he’s talking about the i, the candidate profile we used for the Super, I’m talking about your application letter that describes Marblehead, who you are, what you are, and you’ll have to tweak a couple of like, maybe the highlights you’ve experienced. It’s not the candidate profile that’s a totally different animal. It’s the advertising letter that we, right. It’s the advertising letter. How many schools we have the number of graphics number students, but at this point, we’re gonna wanna communicate to candidates what we just discussed, right.

40:21 That we’re, we are going to be going into a permanent search that these interim candidates can be considered as a permanent. Um, or maybe that comes up in the screening process. Uh, you know what, I would be careful putting all of that in the letter. Yeah. I would, if a, if a candidate is interested in the position, they’re gonna call me or David, right? And they’re gonna ask that question and we’ll say the school committee, um, right now is open to the interim being a candidate for the full position. But those decisions Exactly. Still being discussed, right? Yeah. If I remember correctly, and correct me if I’m wrong, Carolyn and David, it literally was demographics. The number of students, the number of schools are location, the size of our town. Like, it’s literally demographics. I, That’s all it is. We were doing, um, a building project at the time,

41:07 which we would take out because we’re not right. But it was, it was literally just, okay, a welcome to Marvel. It, it paint, it paints a picture of the community and a paragraph and the school district. And that’s, it just gives me, if I’m applying a little background as to who and what you’re, It’s a, it’s a way of doing it so that people have to call me, have to call David, right? And we can, that way we get a sense of the interest. We get a sense of their interest and who they are. So if they’re interested, if you throw the bait, if they’re interested, and they’ll, they’ll start contacting us. It doesn’t, it doesn’t paint the school committee into a corner of having put something in writing that they really, I think you need more time to, to think this process through and decide, you know, um,

41:57 if a candidate calls me and says, I’m interested in an interim, and I would even do it for 18 months, we’ll say, well, let’s hold off right now. It’s till July, but let’s see what happens. Mm-hmm. Right. The thing I wanted to, um, question too, um, Carolyn, you and I spoke about this, um, um, we, I have been approached by, um, folks who have expressed interest mm-hmm. In this. And so I think you had said that once we have this engagement letter, whatever with you, that it is appropriate if, if any of us were to get, um, an in candidate to, to send them to you. Exactly. Direct Them Right. To the NSS EQ website. Let them, you wanna let them apply, let them do it all right. By the book. And that helps you and everybody around you say, okay, NSS EQ came in,

42:44 they took part of the control of this and they did their work. Right. So Yeah. You would direct them to us. You can, you can give them, you can give them my contact information. Yeah. If they’re interested in the position, say, you know, give Carolyn a call, she’ll walk you through the process. Give David a call. He’ll walk the process. Yeah. If there’s people, you say, oh, we really wanna know if Sally, you know, dies, she’s one of our consultants, we really wanna know if Sally Ds would consider, we’ll make the call rather than you making the call. Yeah. If, if we’re engaged and you say, I I think the, the superintendent four towns over would be perfect, tell us and we’ll reach out. Rather than you, you members of the committee now reaching out to people. Right.

43:31 And then if you know of someone, you know, David, you said you worked your career in the North Shore. If you know of someone, I’m assuming that you think might be a good fit, you’ll also make a phone call and say, listen, I’m working with this district. Exactly. We Do that. Yes. You brought up, uh, bill Mcco. I’ve known him forever, so I don’t know if he’s still doing intros. We’ll try to track them down. But, um, yeah, we do the same thing for you because we do get calls from different people saying, you know, like, Dave, I’m in. You see anything, let me know. We do the same. Okay. Um, so I, what I think I’m gonna need to, just so that we, we know every, everything is clear to everybody. What’s happening is, um, I’ll ask for a motion to enable the chair to approve the,

44:20 the paragraph of demographics. Essentially what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna reach out to Michelle and ask her to confirm the enrollment and can, because it’s it’s demographic information, um, to approve that so that they can get that out there. So I’ll ask for a motion to enable the chair to work with Carolyn Burke to approve the Announcement Letter. So move. Okay. And we’re, we’re gonna tweak it so that it says interim. We’ll do that little work before we Yeah, we’ll do that. We’ll, we’ll update it and send you a draft update. Perfect. Um, discussion, roll call. Jen Schaffner in favor. Brian Oda in favor. Allison Taylor in Favor,

45:05 Sarah Fox in favor. Motion carries board and zero. And as soon as I have that, I’ll make sure I send it out, um, to the committee. And also, um, this is, these postings are public, so the press, you know, can, can as well. Right. Um, and as far as the screening committee, the, I think what I heard was a recommendation is, you know, two school committee members and admin, a teacher and a parent. The teachers I think in the past have self-selected. Um, I don’t know if that is through their, their union rep or how that is. I think we can, Michelle Cresta can help. Yeah, we’ll ask her to do that. Um, and, and you know, I think admin may have done the same for parents. We’ll ask for letters of interest, um,

45:52 to be sent in. Um, they can send those to me and then we’ll, we’ll talk about, ‘cause the posting will be out for three weeks. Right. So we have time to, um, so at our next meeting we’ll talk about the selection process of what that is. But if, um, parents in the interim want to start sending out letters of interest, um, to be in that we can get a folder together of those. And that I would like to see kind of, um, why you think you would be a good fit. You know, perhaps you are hiring consultants somewhere, or, you know, what do you, what, what do you think would, would make you a good fit for this? Or why you think, um, you know, you should be chosen? And also if you can just note the, um,

46:39 confirm you do have children’s system. Can I, can those I, the whole committee? What was that? Can those be sent to the whole committee? They can, as long as everyone is really careful not to hit reply all and then make it a deliberation. And may I reply At all? We should be discussing it in open meeting anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, what I’ll do is I will reply as the chair to everyone and thank them for their submission and let them know we will be in touch. But other than that, I, I would encourage, ‘cause we sometimes get ourselves in trouble with when someone hits reply, Can I give you a a, a unsolicited advice? You don’t want the school committee, you don’t wanna put the school committee in a public position of,

47:26 of choosing people and of discussing individuals, you know, well, Carolyn might be good, but I don’t see this. Well, how about David? I don’t know. Well, I’m for David. No, well, I’m for Mildred. You get into, and that’s in public and that’s people, um, you can’t win. That’s a no win situation for the school committee. So before you ask for, this is just unsolicited advice. Now you can do what you want, but before you ask for people to apply for the, the screening committee, think of like what Sarah was talking about, the parameters and say, we would, we would appreciate, you know, the, someone with a lot of hats, you know, a special needs perhaps and all grade levels or whatever it is.

48:15 You can have a checkoff check all that apply to you or something that makes it so that when you, when the names come before you, you are not saying, well, she’s my neighbor and I, I don’t like her. You know, or he’s my, I don’t think he’d be, he’d do Well that, that’s the, that’s all I’m gonna say. One thing I, that would be important to me is to know if people have been involved in searches in the last few years. In the last three years, we have turned over I think 67% of our principals. We’ve done an assistant superintendent search. We’ve done a search for, um, our special education director. Um, so we’ve done a lot of searches and I have seen a lot of

49:04 repeat names on there. And I think it’s important. Yeah, I think we wanna have to see that we are opening it up, um, to, to some people who may have not been able to give their opinions, uh, recently. I agree. I think that this I’m sorry, go ahead Alex. Because Allison’s got, Yeah, I have to drop. So I’m just letting you know that I have to drop for my job. Nice to, nice to you. Thank you so much again for coming. Thank you Allison. Appreciate, appreciate it. Yeah, really appreciate it. Have a great day. Wonderful weekend. You too. Stay safe with the rain. I know, I know. Um,

49:44 I just realized I did not go livestream. So I do know that Jess Burton is recording. Jess, can you share, email your recording to me so I can get it to Frank and Steven and get that right up on our YouTube site. Recorded the session now? Yes, I can. You’re recording it, Frank. Yeah, I should know. Thank you. I saw, I saw hit the live button. Okay. Sorry. So we’ll get it ourselves. Okay. Um, I do think the screening committee process should be the subject for, or probably our retreat when we get that scheduled, that sooner rather than later, but not today. Yeah. Um, so we should get that firmed up at our, at our next meeting. And, um, yeah, that’s great. Okay, so, um, I will try to get us, um, booked for, you know,

50:31 further, further discussion on this, um, sooner rather than later. I know next week is a really, really busy week for everybody. We’re still trying to figure out, um, our retreat calendar. There was a lot of conflicts in people’s schedules. Um, so I haven’t been able to nail down folks, um, for the second week of school, the week of the 11. Yeah, it’s a little like hurting cats. Um, so I’ll do that again today and try and get folks, um, to, to nail down a date. Um, the other thing is, um, Megan Taylor wasn’t able to attend today, so I don’t know if you or one of us can, I just wanna make sure we she’ll, I, I, I continue to encourage members if you miss a meeting, all of our meetings are on YouTube. It is my expectation that if a member misses a meeting, that they’ll take the opportunity to bring themselves up to speed and watch the

51:19 meeting on YouTube and, and come to the next meeting prepared. That isn’t always what happens, but I think it’s, you know, what, what the expectation is. Okay, great. Um, so I’ll ask her to do that. Um, alright, thank you very much Carolyn and David, I will be looking for, um, yep. Yeah, I’ll send you that. I’ll send you a scope of work so you have an understanding of what we’re doing. So it’s official To the full committee. Michelle, Cresta and Michelle. Yes. Thank you both. Alright everybody, thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thanks. Thanks. Um, so it does bring us to public comment. If anybody has public comment, I’m assuming there’s no one making public comment in person. Um,

52:06 so just raise your hand and I will call on you remember to, um, say your name and uh, address for the record. Chris Rule real, I apologize if I didn’t pronounce that correctly. Hi, good morning. No, it’s, it’s fine. Chris Pool, uh, west Shore Drive. Uh, thanks for, for having us this morning. It’s been very informative. Um, I have a couple of questions. You’ve talked about, uh, and made very clear that the interim search is gonna be free. I’m wondering if there’s any information or cost related to the permanent search that will be made available to the public. Um, and my, my second comment gets to the fact that, um, as Jen just mentioned, uh, one of the committee members is not present this morning. Uh, I’m wondering if during the school year the committee meetings will be on a

52:54 more consistent basis at a set time as it’s been done in the past, so that not only can committee members attend, but the general public who have to work. Uh, another committee member just obviously had to leave for job purposes as well. That nine 30 on Fridays and noon on Fridays aren’t necessarily, in my opinion, I guess I should say, uh, the most conducive time to allow the general public to attend these meetings. So I appreciate all the work you’re doing and, uh, thanks. Okay. So Chris, typically we don’t re um, interact. We have a policy not to interact with, um, public comment, but your questions are really easy to answer and I think it’s in the best interest. So I will, I will break that policy and just let you know, um, your, the one about the timing. We, um,

53:40 have a standing meeting the first and third Thursday of the month, um, during the 10 months of the school year. And we don’t schedule meetings in the summer. Um, as, as a a scheduling purpose, we typically, um, have a retreat over the summer. This summer we obviously had a need to add extra meetings. And so we have done so when we can, all of our meetings have included outside professionals. And so we’re really working with what works for their schedules. We start there and then we take what their offerings are, whether our attorney can meet and things like that. And then we then cross-reference everybody’s schedules. Um, it is, I,

54:25 at one point I had a spreadsheet trying to color code who could be where when, and we just tried to find, um, a meeting that isn’t four weeks out when we, when we need to have one immediately that meets the majority of people’s needs. Thankfully for Zoom, I have found, you know, despite being out, out of state or in the hospital with a child or whatever, um, it makes it really easy to zoom in usually. So that is a hope. And then we always also record our meetings so that, especially where today was more informational based, um, everybody has the ability to, to, to zoom to watch that and make sure, um, your other question, can you refresh my, oh, the n p s, the, the cost so that the, there’s a process for that. Um,

55:11 when we did it last time, we put out a request for services and it comes back to us. Um, with the bid process on it. It really ran the gamut last time. Um, we had some that were, we kind of disqualified right away because they were, they were quite high. And then some were, um, I wanna say in the single digit thousands range. Um, it really will depend on next steps. If we, um, find in, in, in term that becomes a permanent, that becomes a permanent, there may be no cost. Um, if there, if we’re doing a full search, um, there would be a cost associated. We just don’t know what it is until that request for proposals come, goes out. So I wish I could give you a finite number, but, um, I, I don’t have one.

55:58 I apologize. Appreciate it. Thank you. No problem. All right. Um, I do not see any other hands, so I’m going to adjourn us at 10 33. Thank you. Thanks everybody.