School Committee: May 10, 2024

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

0:02 assume that’s not one of us I would assume it’s not one of us I’m just um all right so we are recording yeah your streaming we are gonna be recording for one right I’m just going to confirm that everybody got the recording to YouTube

0:49 message right I did yes okay I see Brian we’re just waiting on Allison we’ll give it one more minute then I’ll admit everybody and call us to order um

1:08 hello Al you back I am how you feeling you rested pretty pretty jet

1:17 lag travel was Japan and that was a tough to come back from too yeah yeah I was typically 12 hours ahead so my body thinks it’s 1 in the morning right now oh God all right we’ll be quick no worries Sarah it’s one o’clock do you want me to let everybody in do we want yeah we’re going to admit all and we’re just waiting on Allison um and then we’ll I’ll call us to order in a minute um just so everybody knows we are recording um the live stream and um we’re waiting on one more Committee Member so I’m going to give us one more minute up I see her just pop up here oh I’ll call this to

1:58 order all right um so Jen if you can continue to um set people in people and I give that to Alison too um all right so I’m gonna call us to order at 101 um first of all I just want to apologize to everybody for the that we’re meeting here today um and apologize for my error and the clerical error um I spent good chunk of Wednesday and Thursday playing phone tag and finally got back with the secretary of state yesterday um and ultimately he said the the clerical error I had made on the posting was a judgment call and it could go either way um he could an argument could be made either way to to either hold a meeting or not and I

2:44 thought given you know where we are in our community I wanted to air on the side of caution so we’re meeting here today so I apologize to the public and the committee members for making that um error in the posting and I appreciate that everyone was able to scramble last minute and make this work because as we know our candidates some of them are interviewing elsewhere and we don’t want to let this go too long um so I will open it up for public comment um we did receive some some feedback in our surveys which is nice we’ll we’ll get to that next um don’t see any hands so that brings us to our school committee communication discussion items the interm superintendent search discussion

3:30 we did receive um 14 feedback forms one was entirely blank so um I did include that because you know I think it’s important for people to see that that’s you know that is blank and then some had more feedback than others um so I I you know we will get those up on the website our Tech director and our Administrative Assistant today at Central um were not are head today as a scheduled day off so I have emailed those and got the auto reply that they were out of District but we’ll get those up as soon as they open are able to open their email and get those up online um I wanted to leave the feedback forms open as long as possible hoping maybe we hear from a few more people um the number hasn’t moved in the last couple days

4:16 unfortunately so we didn’t get any last minute folks are you gonna leave it up Sarah or you gonna We gonna take it down or we I mean well I think that will come out of this discussion so so just to move on to the next item what we’re going to start with is really a discussion from the committee on if you feel very strongly that you know the one candidate you want to move forward if you’re thinking you want to hear back for multiple candidates um and maybe have bring two or three even three to the next stage where is the committee um so I’ll just go through each person you know we’re not we’re not talking about who our candidate is that we want to move forward yet more rather you know if you feel you have enough information or if there’s some more information you want from from

5:04 a limited group um so I’ll start just from who’s on my screen first with Al yeah I I have uh I think if I understood correctly Sarah I think I have one candidate I you know I think they’re all good candidates but I do have one that I would suggest and that’s John Robo okay we weren’t we weren’t jumping to Nam yet but sorry about that that’s okay um I have a person who will remain unnamed put the top we we’ll get back to that um sorry about that if I wasn’t clear with it um Brian do you do you have one or two candidates you would like to see move to the next stage I have at least two yeah okay um what what happened to the fifth candidate did we never hear back from that person um I

5:51 have not heard from Glenn that he was able to to move forward and we did talk at our last meeting about if we wanted to you know hit pause on this and move forward Ward and it sounded like everybody um really felt this was time sensitive and we because we knew other candidates were interviewing that we didn’t want to postpone this another week so that’s kind of where we landed on that one um Allison uh I have two that I would like to bring forward again okay and Jen um I have two um that I am interested in I guess the word is bringing forward I think that’s something we should talk about what that would look like what that looks like yeah um yeah um I would also say just to to Brian’s point I

6:37 know we had that fifth candidate which um you know we all you know agreed that would be a um a a candidate um but I think if you know if that candidate also didn’t reach back out to us I mean I I know it’s a two-way street but you know I think we did indicate we would we didn’t dis dismiss that person based on their not being able to make that those two nights one of those two nights but if there’s been no additional communication either directly from the candidate or through Glenn I I think you know that’s there’s not much more we can do about that yeah um all right so it sounds like the majority people had want to go to the next stage looking at two candidates um we had talked about the next stage

7:25 potentially being what about you Sarah um you know what I’m kind of stuck between like I I h i i there’s someone I I feel pretty strongly about but then you know there’s another person that I feel could also be a really great candidate so I I would say I’m probably at two but it definitely looks like you know the majority were there um and so the next piece would be um who those people are and then how we want to use the next tool of evaluation so um Al shared that Don robodo was who he wanted to move forward to the next stage um Brian I had um King and

8:13 [Music] [Music] Thompson just doing ital as we go um and then Allison who would you like to move forward uh I had Thompson and Robo and Jen I had um Barbara catalo and John Rob Robo um and I had Caldo and Robo oh um do you need my second for the math to work I do uh Barbara okay all right so um it sounds like four of us really want to hear more from Robo um which how to say his last name would be the first thing because I think we’ve all done it a different way robao is what I could be good wrong I

9:00 could be wrong okay um and so we would move him forward and then um King had one Thompson had two and catalo had three so that would bring um Rob robodo and catalo forward both of those um individuals sorry I just saw someone else in the waiting room I just let someone in I think it’s Caitlyn oh yeah I I hit admit too just so Caitlyn knows maybe just recap because she just okay so um we had decided we’re gonna move two candidates forward to the next stage one was going to be Barbara catalo and the other one was John robodo um and we’re just talking about what that next stage will look like both of those candidates are

9:47 currently employed in their districts so we would be able to do a site visit we had talked about that um just to be clear you know when we when we’ve had site visits here it’s a full eight hour day it’s a very very large scope when you go to another districts um to see a candidate in another District particularly when it’s an interim that that’s not the expectation um you know when we went to go see Teresa um Jen and I went the other members at the time were were scheduling just wise not able to do that um and she had put together a compilation of people she thought we might like to talk to which was nice to see what what she thought

10:33 were the important roles to talk to and we spent you know 10 15 minutes hearing from each of them about their experience um working together and so on and so forth so my recommendation would be that we we look at doing that day in District but I want to open it up to the committee for um discussion day in the candidates District again I just want to mention Cindy uh Tower Loan just jumped on and Cindy the two candidates are Barbara catalo and John Robo who we talking about bringing forward she was the last one that enter in there okay um thank you so so does that sound like it works for everybody does every anybody have

11:20 alternative feedback or want to add more to that I think it makes sense um I think we ought to have a conversation with each of the candidates as to what they think that looks like um just because again it’s not a permanent search there is an expectation that’s all part of the discussion upfront I think in you know in the um screening process and that’s not you know we didn’t necessarily communicate that so I think probably having a conversation with each of them as to what um also they’re I guess comfortable with um to have some input on that um because you know again maybe we’re there for an hour or two maybe we’re there for you know an hour and then we have lunch I don’t know something that’s that’s not

12:07 uh that gives us enough time to um get some insight um but I don’t think we can put a tremendous um um pressure on them in their workday for an interim spot but that’s just my thought I I would agree with that um and when I called each candidate to explain to them what that we would be deliberating today and just get back to them um I did tell them that at the end of the meeting the consensus seemed to be that we would be doing some type of day in District and we would I would be reaching back out to kind of discuss the logistics of that so the next step that I would do is you know obviously call all candidates thank them um we were very lucky to have you know so many wonderful candidates um and then with

12:52 the two that we’re going to be moving forward I I’d like to start with what works for them their right now very large roles in their District it’s you know mcast are going on the end of the year is going on so I don’t want to pigeon hole them to one or two days I’m going to get some dates from them and then I’ll work with the committee um I’ll come back to the committee and see about scheduling because we are allowed to do scheduling offline um and then from there after that we will have our next meeting um where we’ll bring back that information and if everybody isn’t able to attend you know the people that did will give a report report and we’ll decide you know what our next step is are we going to allow are we going to

13:39 have like a parent and staff meet them the two finalists or is that something well that would be the next step after this this step um would be to do some interviews um in person here they would come to our district and do a day in District here okay um we would finalize the vote until they’ve done a day in District tier the pieces of that would they they’ have one meeting with the admin team one meeting with the teachers meeting we typically do a meeting with the students at the high school as well um then there’s a parent and community meeting and you know so we would do all those steps but that’s the final step before our decision um we typically

14:24 would do this step then heavier reference checks and then if they’ve kind of passed through The Gauntlet with all of that then they go through and and do the community student staff interviews good um all right so I will um ask for a vote to move Barbara catalo and John robodo to the next phase of the interm superintendent search a motion so moved moved by Al seconded second Jen Schaffner um roll call vote Al Williams in favor Brian Oda in favor Allison Taylor in favor Jen

15:11 shaffner in favor Sarah Fox in favor motion carries five to zero and I’ll be in touch about this um the scheduling on all that um the next thing we have is two assistant superintendent contracts to approve um this is really exciting we’ve had interview teams that Julia Ferrera headed up she did a beautiful job of doing that um I believe Jen and Allison were on the interview team for Mike piffling who will be coming in as our assistant superintendent of finance and operations and um Brian was on the interview team for our assistant superintendent of student services Lisa Marie iolo um both are come with very high praise um the interview

15:56 interview interview committees absolutely raved about them um one thing one piece of feedback I’ll give is um I had the opportunity to be the person to negotiate the contract with them and you really see a lot of someone’s character when you have to come back and say you know actually no on that thing and but can we talk about it and they were just sometimes that’s when you see people’s teeth come out a little bit um absolutely professionals gracious just wonderful wonderful people to work through this process with and I am so excited to have them on board um it feels like the teams really coming together are ready um I hear chatter when I go up to to sign bills how excited you know various staff members are to be building this team and

16:42 bringing everybody together so it’s it’s really great um you everybody had the draft contract or the the finalized contracts pending our approval emailed out to them um Liz Valeria our attorney had drafted those we’ve gone back and forth and she’s made some tweaks on that um and the candidates have all signed off that they’re in agreement with the final version so I will ask for a motion to approve the contract with Michael piffer uh piering for assistant superintendent of finance and operations so moved um moved by Brian Oda seconded second by Allison Taylor I know Allison’s very very excited our Mike on board you he’s on

17:29 with us today hi Mike okay oh didn’t even see the list of who was on um so roll call vote Al Williams in favor Brian Oda in favor Alison Taylor in favor Jen Schaffner in favor Sarah Fox in favor motion carries five to zero Mike welcome aboard I will be in touch about just putting wet signatures on everything all right thanks um next I’ll will ask for a motion to approve the contract with leis Marie iolo for assistant superintendent of student services so moved moved by Brian Oda second second by Allison Taylor

18:15 discussion um roll call vote Al Williams in favor Brian Oda in favor Alison Taylor in favor Jen chaper in favor Sarah Fox in favor motion carries five to zero and I’ll reach out to Lisa Marie um brings us the next item was can I just make one quick comment a big shout out thanks to Julia Ferrera assistant superintendent ferera she has really been doing an amazing job with um with helping us um recruit and manage interviews I mean we’ve obviously been moving along at a pretty fast clip here and hiring some great folks um and she has been instrumental so thank you to I don’t think she’s on with us but um she’s been really wonderful and you know the Committees that I’ve had the opportunity to serve on what I’ve heard

19:00 feedback from the parent reps and the staff on there is how collaborative everything’s felt Julie has been very very organized so it’s it’s been great I’m very appreciative and she’s you know doing going above and beyond and I think she’s here almost every night doing interviews till eight eight or so o’clock at night um so thank you for that uh principal contract approval I put this on here as a placeholder we are in the Pro process right now we um are doing interviews at Village um have some great candidates there we we are not that far into the process so there and then um I know that Dr mcginness has been working with a candidate for the Glover school um so I just I put that on there in case we were we were done with

19:48 contracts and we had next steps um we’re not though so uh that will you’ll you’ll most likely see that on next agenda as well um It’s just sometimes it takes some time to work through this um all righty so that brings us to closing business new business school committee announcements and requests I just wanted to make a quick oh go ahead Brian sorry go ahead I just wanted to let the committee know that when I talked to Steve quiek the other day we had 566 responses to the survey on Communications so I’m yeah it’s a lot that’s pretty good so I’m going to meet with him next week he’s out today so I can’t set up a meeting and then Alice and I Al and I will meet and look at the uh results and then we’ll present it to

20:34 the school committee I hope by our next school committee meeting yeah i’ like to I’m gonna ask Stephen for a I’d like to do my own analysis so I’d like um Stephen to send out I mean he can share it with all of us it should be shared with everybody but um I just want the copy of that I don’t I don’t need to meet with him to go over it I would just rather um get a copy of that raw data okay and then um I’ll just leave it for the two of you to organize what you’re doing on that and work with Stephen um whatever day you’re going to post for your subcommittee meeting and then just let me know if you want me to put it on for the 16th agenda I may put it on just as a placeholder and if you guys aren’t ready to present yet that’s fine we’ll just we’ll just kick it out to the next

21:19 meeting but I’ll probably put it on as a placeholder that’s fine I obrian um our response on availability so okay no problem and no rush we have we have a gigantically full agenda next um next week on the 16th so if you need might be smarter to wait then if you need whatever you guys want to do I will put it on there as a placeholder but if you if you need to wait whatever you you to land on just Loop me in um that’s an amazing response Brian I mean uh just trying to think I mean we probably had 500 people between on you know between both forums and online but still that’s a pretty high percentage of folks to respond so that’s great yes I mean statistically you know it will be

22:07 meaningful um and I don’t need the raw data S I don’t know if you’re talking or Alison to I’ll wait till okay you guys do the announ I didn’t want anybody to think it was being like kept from you know no I’m happy to wait for the responses um and then there was a question on there that the league Women Voters had asked us to put on so if you just make sure that we provide them with the data they were looking for um that would be great too too yes you don’t have the contact information for them just let me know I can put you put connect you with them yes I talked to her at the town meeting and she said Yep they’re looking forward to hearing what the say so all right great that’s wonderful I’m happy we got responses there I was a little disappointed we didn’t hear more from the public on the superintendent search it’s such an

22:53 important role but you know I understand people are are busy well also if well yeah that was for the first round but um you know if we do do a day in District or Community a chance to meet with the one or both of final candidates then there’ll be another opportunity yeah there there definitely will be um I don’t know if we would do a survey after the day in District at their District because there’s no data really that people could get back but the day in District here absolutely we will be soliciting um feedback so in in and that survey will look probably slightly different we will because there will be different meetings whether you’re administrator or teacher we’ll

23:39 ask people to to check off which Avenue you’re responding from so we can see you know if if they’re better fit with one group rather than the other so I’ll be working on that um with Stephen as well all right no yes Sarah one quick thing I just wanted to let the committee know we had I had brought up a couple of meetings ago um the possibility or the idea of H of um requesting the state auditor to come in to do an audit of the school district um I did speak to um her one of her Associates online um uh in at the state house um we had a sort of lengthy conversation and the process is um interesting so if we were to decide to move forward with this I’m just going to kind of give you the sort of the logistics um we would need to take a

24:25 vote in the affirmative um to make that request um but that would also need to be approved at town meeting so um which I thought was interesting and that is by Statute so there or whatever like that is a um must a must and when I had this conversation I guess it was maybe two weeks ago um clearly the warrant was closed um for our town meeting and there didn’t appear to be any way and I think it would have been hard anyway last minute to try to get on get on there so um I did speak to Tyler that that’s his name at length and what he indicated is that um if we were to get if we were to approve the school committee were to approve it and we got town meeting approval we would then meet with the auditor’s office they would sit down with us there the the team there and

25:12 they would um sort of interview us if you will to determine and that would be the school committee the scope of what we would be looking for um for an audit and so we would be the ones to determine what we wanted to have them review whether it’s strictly Financial whether it’s programmatic um uh whatever part they can do an entire um uh uh you know sort of District audit at any level um there is a cost involved um so they do charge for it um so he wasn’t able to give me any kind of an idea of of scope because it would depend on what our scope of the audit would be um he did indicate it would be less than using a private auditor um and that the broadest audit um that he had seen done for something

26:00 like this our size would be in probably less than 20,000 at most if it was very extensive it might be 10 to 15,000 so I don’t think it’s I’m not looking to take on that cost but I I you know if it was $100,000 I think we would you know be out of the running so anyway I’m just bringing it forward I’m not asking for you know a vote or anything I’m just bringing forward the information um and just want to determine if this is something the committee’s interested in the only reason I do bring it up um is that given the town meeting we had this it is this week it’s been a long week um it’s possible not necessarily guaranteed but possible that there will be a special town meeting this year later in the year in the fall possibly um so in that case we would you know the art the warrant

26:47 would be open and we in theory could put this before town meeting so or a town meeting so um anyway I’m just throwing it out there for thought and I will take the direction from the committee going forward maybe we can talk about this is something we definitely should put on a future agenda to talk about especially when we have our new admin team on um because a factor we’ll have to look at is how quickly H do we we’re we have some retirements um and departures in our finance department um we just brought Mike on but how quickly Mike is on boarding to replace some of those roles because we also want to make sure we have the staff to provide the the raw data that the auditor would be asking for well the other thing I’ll to just to think I know Mike’s probably going what

27:34 haven’t got a signature yet Jen we are all about transparency here so this has been a conversation we’ve had a couple times I will say I did speak to Mary Deli about this I just she’s our our um interim uh uh director of of finance and you know her her response also was um we also could look at like we’re doing our special education review We Allison’s working on that right now um there it is also possible to do reviews or if you want to call it an audit or review of different parts of our district you know with individual you know with private vendors um and have that also be cost-effective versus a sweeping you know District audit so a lot of things we can think about and talk about I just wanted to give you the update okay um and if there isn’t a special town

28:20 meeting then it wouldn’t even be a possibility till next year so you know just throwing that all right no it’s good to have and we’ll definitely get it on a future agenda probably you know not in the next couple because they’re a little full but once we we have the new team on board and everything that’s something I think we should definitely have a wider discussion on um all right well I will adjourn us then Brian has one too I forgot to ask a question um sure CPAC when I attended the meeting today asked if we ever used an outside consultant for the hiring of a superintendent I said I wasn’t sure so I would ask this um did we do that with Dr Bucky was it an outside consultant or um were

29:08 using yeah we used nesda for Dr Bucky we used um Carolyn gosh what was her name Carolyn Burke um with nesda and and um uh Bon Court um art bet Court art beton Court he was the director nezda is the no England school district oh my God Mike might know that I always forget the the ACT but it’s a it is a um nonprofit um Association um that we belong to that many public schools in New England belong to they do a lot of Consulting they also do um uh which we do get every year is projected enrollments they’re very um involved in enrollment projections um but they also do searches so that’s who we used and we did pay a fee for that um and work with

29:53 them on the permanent search School Development Council development yeah and we use them uh the interim search as well and then we’re using masc on this search um in the past prior to that um I know the town when uh they found Jason when Jason Silva came to us that was through the Collins Center another place that does that um so there’s there’s three that meain ones that are out there um that there was a firm that we we interviewed firms when we did um the search for for Jo John Bucky Dr Bucky in 2019 we interviewed there was one um sort of traditional type recruiting firm that is that works in this area um it was a

30:39 privately held firm out of Connecticut they were out of Connecticut I want to say yeah um the it was ayp and it was the three Partners last names but um I remember the issue with that Fir and they do do a number of um searches in this area they have expertise um but their process which appeared to be non-negotiable um was that they did all of the ini um screening of all initial applicants um from the posting and then they would present a slate to the selection or screening committee that would then do a smaller slate that they want to interview and then eventually work its way up to um one or two candidates to this to the school committee and I remember at the time there was not a comfort level with having the initial screening of all candidates being done

31:26 without um the the our screening committee seeing it right okay but we did use NASDAQ for um John okay yes I’ll get back to CPAC with that information perfect thank you and thank you for working um Miss Le on with them all right um so that I will adjourn us at30 thank everybody in um the junior proms tonight so if anybody has anybody going off to that I hope that goes well and everyone has good not raining so that’s good I know um all right thanks