a little bit after five and i'm going to call the meeting to order it for this evening it's so little bit of a different kind of a meeting we may have this evening is to be discussing the three finalists for the superintended tonight what we'll do is go around the table talk about each one of the candidates what we saw during the interviews what we have on our feelings about their strengths maybe some of the challenges that they might face and then back i don't since i don't know who the candidates are that are moving forward i can't tell you the order in which that will happen but we'll start at six o'clock about an hour and a half for at that meeting a little bit of time for a break and then into the second an to see if he can turn it on it is disruptive and it does go off to magically by itself i think we'll just have to talk to touch more loudly so did you hear what i said which led me to feel so we're going to go round the table talk about each one of the candidates i know that the microphone is picking up for the viewing public maybe i particular role but just as a person she seemed fully together and capable probably of succeeding in whatever domain she chose to operate i do have questions about  match to the needs of the district at this point i'm not presuming that she couldn't meet these but i have it as i look forward to wednesday's meetings to deter to turn learn a little bit more about  kind of my overall take or anything else that and first you know people jump in when they want to as well so and one other thing i'll say is that the it was useful to hear that if she were given the vin she probably would come into the district as a as opposed to commuting which i think is very it's important to me that someone be close physically close to the district very taken with dr mckenzie i thought she was very personable and a great listener is one of the things that struck me and i think as i was reading through some of the forms that were turned in that was another quality that seemed to cut across many of the groups  think she's had a lot of administrative experience which is another plus and one of the things again like kevin was saying i if if she comes back on wednesday one of the questions i'd like to pursue a sort of how the folk tech experience would translate to a k twelve system the least traditional candidate because she is coming from and education collaborative however she has tremendous administrative experience with that she's also you know worked in traditional schools but where she lee has tremendous respect for structures and teachers in the classroom and curriculum directors and and i think in addition to what her preferences said as well as what the community and for the people watching by community i mean the leadership council was is the principals curriculum directors director of technology and others and then faculty and then students there were high school students who interviewed each of the candidates and then the community so there was a lot of sometimes there were conflicting things between what one group heard or one group and other groups said but there was a lot of consistency favorable consistency towards her  i i feel we're fortunate to have strong candidates and i consider her a very strong  s in terms of the strongest match i i like i like very much the way she spoke about  process about social responsibility i'm impressed with her publications and the fact that she's gotten some accolades for her interesting budgeting models  d that she puts a strong emphasis on social responsibility and the ethics of of her role i think she would take it seriously and i liked her  concur with much of what has been said dr mckenzie struck me very much as an academic and of the three candidates she does have a terminal degree at this time i found that she dropped a lot of references to statistics and readings and so on which at times i found wonderful and at times i found a little off putting because i wanted to know what the connections were beneath the references citations and so forth  i do think she's a very strong candidate and in my tallies yes she did have very very strong responses from all four constituencies who responded i think our third candidate was a close close tie in that regard i if she does come back on wednesday i would like to inquire more about her specific role and much of the collaborative work that she did i found a lot of emphasis on teamwork and team building and giving credit where credit is due to the team and so i'd like to delve a little deeper you know what she herself did to be instrumental in those successes well i i was very struck by her her poise and her engagement with the different communities that she spoke with me and we didn't see any of the candidates speaking with the students or the staff or the leadership council but i did have a chance to talk with them at the school committee table and then  a dinner table and also listening to the responses they gave to the to the community i was very struck by some of her ideas when she was for instance when she was talking about twenty first century skills and talking about the fact that you need to have making sure that we're students and the school district itself is both emotionally and intellectually prepared to handle technology and that it needs to go beyond handing a tool to a student or staff member that really need to be able to know how are you going to affect this and are you ready for this like the fact that she talked a lot about being very specific about the goals and the process for making decisions and the importance in making sure that everybody understands that first of all talking to whatever the constituency is about what the priorities and goals and process is and top develop it but then also explaining how it's being used and kind of doing  check to making sure that we use this criteria when when making decisions i like the fact that she has a lot of advocacy experience and though maybe most of the advocacy work she does is through special education that it's important to be able to have sort of a voice at the state and the federal level about what the mandates are and how they impact the school system and that we need to have a conversation sometimes about how we can use this to make sure that we are fixing a problem and not just addressing what seems to be sort of a hot topic at them at the moment but she was very very thoughtful  discussing that in the conversations that i had with some of the references that i've checked this was also mentioned a lot that she the board members that worked with her on the lower p value education clabbered of had forged very positive relationships with her and she seemed very open to suggestions from colleagues and parents and supervisors and people suggestions were made she didn't take it as a criticism or didn't take things personally she took them as a chance to have a dialogue and to make some changes one of the people i spoke with said that from being a principal to being the collaborative director that she had the specific conversation with this person i can't quite remember right now that might have been one of the one of the superintendents that what she needed to learn was how to listen with an open ear and to make sure that she didn't have a preconceived notion about something that she was really willing to communicate and actively listen and make some changes whether it was about where she was addressing something or way the system was they did say people to talk about the fact that she had taken the lead a crust region working with school committee members and superintendent evaluations the person i spoke with about this quickly said i'm not suggesting that the school committee needs to needs to have help in that regard but she does seem to have a bigger focused and it isn't just in special education that she understands a lot about the education system she has positive heard i do think it would be interesting to talk to her if she's brought forward about as as lisa said that with that collaboration and working with other people means and certainly to talk about the consistent people referencing the fact that he has the most central office experience that he's very action oriented student and teacher focused placing a value on the arts on staff it seemed to strike a chord with people my sense from mr failing is that he's the type of person who would roll up this his sleeves and degree in struck me as a very personable gentleman i thought he asked very intelligent questions in our interview as well as ones that were referenced in some of the writing that people provided us with so from where i stood at some of the  focused on could he you know translate his knowledge to our district which is i think it's a question for all three candidates so i feel pretty confident and mister john i thought i thought john filan was lovely he was easy to talk to i thought he was a good listener and very honest and respectful i think is his his experience as an assistant superintendent was very obviously translatable especially in light of how he explained the way they work in milton where he is basically the shadow to the superintendent so he clearly has a good knowledge of what of what the job would be and i think it's important that he is an experienced negotiator and bergner and has training in traditional bargaining which is going to be something that we need to do and milton is not a district that's very dissimilar to  about perhaps his one of the comments he made about getting more kids to take a piece and his sort of understanding of maybe the stress  level there is that our high school and whether that's actually the direction we would want to go to be pushing more so that's something we could talk more about if he moves forward and  other than that i think is a very strong candidate i'll add to that comment about about making the a p classes and the exams more accessible to a broader group of students i had the same reaction in terms of i know we have  we have a lot of stress associated with achievement but when i was also sharing a was for any individual student to  stretch themselves him or herself to take something that they may think that they're not qualified for when in fact you know they may do very well and so so that piece of it i  appreciated and i understood where i think he was coming from and we have our own experience and so hearing it stated created the initial reaction but but i thought his purpose was  straightforward he's chatty and i think that with that i mean that i think he is used to interacting with many people and getting along with a variety of people and in his current role he certainly has he does have building experience although we learned it dinner that milton was able to do their six buildings getting a ninety percent reimbursement from the m s b eggs so those days are over but but nonetheless it's a tremendous experience to have on your  focus again directly on the teachers and the students it was a very public thing and i guess i would just close for now saying i think he's a strong candidate and there would be questions to ask if he moves it's hard going for if i have to say that i agree with my colleagues over here and don't have too much more different to add i did feel that he would raise a high bar hold the bar high for all students and try to make it successful and give them the support of the scaffolding i think was the term he used a lot to be sure they could achieve as much as they could i also like the way that while he did have the budgeting in the negotiations skills and experience with all that which i think is a plus he also seemed to enjoy the walk through in the classrooms and he was explaining to us when he went through don't i still remember which of the elementary set was perhaps wellington that he went into a kindergarten class and really seemed to very much genuinely enjoy the interaction that he saw there  and i think the way he said the focus is really the classroom the teachers and students i mean for all three i have to say when we were wondering whether or not they would focus on the students and the kids that was sort of thing it said in the very genuine in that passion came  through and with all of them i guess thinking just about how us style matches with the existing leadership council and all that we have in place is something that we would consider for him as well as the other and the others that would be put forward building on what everyone said i want to say at a slightly different way though so we expect nothing yes yeah i just was talking to him into you know during the interviews and stuff and i found myself repeatedly just feeling like i'm already talking to someone who's who's here and is understands the issues in the same way that i've come to understand i'm not saying like i have my own peculiar mindset which i do and he matched that particular mindset what i'm saying is that as a school committee member who's come to learn over several years what the ins and outs of the different offices are and components that didn't know before i felt like finally i learned things and i was talking to him and he was responding from the framework that was the natural framework to discuss those things and i'm sure from being clear in other words a kind of building on the idea that he could you have just come in not saying that he's the person that we should go for necessarily but i got the sense that he could come in and all the dimensions of the school he already knows how to operate in that space k twelve central versus peripheral students versus teachers not versus but you know him saying i had the sense that our budget the budget subcommittee of all the candidates he seemed the one who had expertise in each of the domains that we needed to have as opposed to specialty and one and then we'll have to learn others it seemed like he had the broadest experience if you see what i'm saying  so i felt it just felt natural to me to engage him about stuff about our district in a way that didn't come naturally to the others so i found that's my way of saying that it seems to me that he already lives in the space students and staff and parents that he really enjoys talking to people communicating with people and and i love the engagement of education i think that  budgets and he certainly is the the one who has the most the broadest experience of being a teacher of being an assistant principal principal an assistant superintendent he has a char experience he has human structure experience he likes the fact that he talked about making sure that we're preparing our students is what you were talking about the scaffolding of and whether it's a p or not just what i was assuming that the students can be doing really really well and working to try and put into place the infrastructure to make sure that students are achieving it's like that a lot i liked that he when he was talking about the connection between extra curricular activities and academics that make you use the music an arts or mental gymnastics that help then end up supporting academics and academic achievement for students and that also for many students that's the way of really connecting to their school experience i also like the fact that he talked about letting the principals run the buildings that he seemed to have a clear understanding of the difference between central office administrator and the building administrator and and so he's talked about collaboration and working with people in town and he talked a little bit about experience of trying to get  ball through the parks and rec the partment how sometimes you just really need to sit down and work out a deal that's going to end up being the best for the town but he seemed to have experience with with town issues and issues that are beyond  the school day and the school year so i appreciated that in the conversations that i had with people in the district they talked about the fact that he was a team player that he and his district  yet that he did have a district system wide budget experience which which i think is very helpful that he does seem to recchi does recognize excellence in other staff and does try to share is the credit he doesn't micromanage i think one of the things somebody talked about in his community is the fact that he he has each time he's moved into a new position it's been because kind of what's a figure out what's going on in that level and understanding how it all fits together somebody did say the fact that one of the things that she'd had conversations with him about was when he became assistant superintendent that he didn't have that experience all the time of being with the kids as much and he loves that and that might be a little bit of a challenge for him of moving a little bit further away from from sort of the day to day contact with many you know positive comments about being very personal being passionate confident reasonable realistic all these lovely adjectives and things of that nature that english major is at a loss for words and accessible and things like that and for me the glaring difference is the readiness and so for me my reservations about moving mr stevens forward really centered around his level of experience so comparing apples and oranges if we're choosing to for me the major negative is is the limited amount of experience and  that was reflected in many of the comments so you know some answers i thought could have been more articulated better which was sort of funny since he spoke very much about being able to articulate and i feel like that would come with time and building that experience so that's where i stand i think he's a wonderful wonderful educator and i'm sure a fantastic principal but i think my reservations only end in the limited experience r yeah i think it was a very telling that i think he had one of the highest marks from students and i think you know as a high school principal meeting with these students i mean he really obviously connects well with students and and with five to found him very engaging and i think the word charismatic was thrown around more than a couple of times  t like like lisa i i do have concerns about his readiness at this point in his career to take on this role at this time i think a few more years and maybe some more experience and i think i have no doubt he'll move into into a higher administrative role if that's if that's what he wants i also was a little would be a little bit concerned about his distance from the district in marsh living in marshfield and and commuting so i would agree to start with  sorry about that that he has a very transparent passion for students families the whole public education or education  process i liked that he talked about relationship building that he invests in mind of his professional efforts in doing so i think that's important obviously in this that the lack of experience and relative experience for this position puts him at a disadvantage  again i agree with my colleagues i like mr stevens a lot i thought he was very personable and warm in a sense of humor i thought he had a very nice presence with him i mean clearly as you said connect well with the students and i thought everyone that he dealt with and i thought the duxbury actually probably is a very similar profile as many ways to belmont which was a plus but i did share the concern that he doesn't have experience in the central office and i think that it was telling when he was a very honest and i appreciate the question this is this is the downside or how would you help me learn and and that's just something that i think that unfortunately is in the system like we have which is so lean we really need someone who can jump in first and we don't have a lot of resources i mean i do think you know he would i'll say this but this is not a this doesn't take him away from the possibility of being our superintendent i got the real sense that he was optimized for the environment he's in now like he really is fully fleshed out in that environment and he's and he's and he's excellent in that environment but we're transferring him to our environment would would take a whole long period of time to have him grow into that and i believe that he could become optimized in such an environment but he's not he didn't seem to me ready to just operate in this environment in an optimal way and so as you were saying just in terms of the resources we have to support that and what we need at this time i see him as an excellent educator and leader in education and not necessarily a great candidate for us at this time i thought i mean one of the things that you get from him is such energy and positive energy  size you know but he is obviously invested in teaching and helping move a district along and making sure that students have have access to a rich experience i appreciated that that he talked a lot about one of the difficult things in terms of of budgeting is making the rationale for you having to do the cuts it's much easier to go to a system and say well here's what we're going to do it isn't that great but to be able to explain thoughtfully and carefully why you have to make cuts is is a skill because it's something that not everybody has i like the fact that he talked about in his experience of a school where there were a level three students and kids who are sort of tracked and not given access that that he was really committed to making sure that students had access and that you weren't marginalizing one group of kids who may not be advancing as quickly as possible as others but part of the reason for that is that they were given the resources so i i really liked that the people i spoke with in du were very enthusiastic and talked about the fact that he he had been working as a mentor to principals in other districts so he does have that kind of administrative experience i talked about and people there talked about the fact that he has this up and door policy and that he loves to talk and engage with his peers and with teaching staff i was concerned about the lack of experience in the central office and so that his experience is centered on the middle school in the high school so he doesn't have the teaching or administrative experience with with the younger students and they he also has experience with budgeting is with with the building and not the town wide experience so that my concerns were also about about the experience and and whether  not just was he a good fit for belmont but would it be a good match for him to be here and sort of learning on the job not that i think he couldn't do it so that was my concern  i don't know if anybody wants the same thing else final about any one of the candidates something that you might have forgotten to say otherwise we'll take a vote with each individual to see about moving them forward to the wednesday interviews for andrew that means that we've all voted twice yes we've all voted twice but i also do want to say to all the candidates to everybody who's been part of this process the candidates the staff at the central office who shepherded air people around to the community for coming out know this is a really really busy time of year but there's a lot of invested interest in this from the community to the students the students came out more then than some of the other groups and looking at what the state they everybody did a really thoughtful job of valuating the candidates and it seemed to me that the responses that people gay to some comments about them work from a preconceived notion and you've got the feeling that they each one of these individual sat and listened to each candidate and we didn't see the questions that were asked but you could tell from the evaluation that people really take the seriously and and that's something that i think we should be really grateful for each of the candidates when i call their districts which was after they had come here each of the people that i spoke with said oh yeah they talked about experience it was and it was pretty grueling but it how great it was to be able to talk to the different groups in town and how how invested everybody seemed to be in this and how collaborative the town seemed to be so  i think that that says a lot for this community but it also shows how important this position is to the community that people are really engaged and considered so we have thirty six hours or so before our next forty eight hours before our next meeting where we will interview the candidates but at this time i will entertain a motion to adjourn and people can go to the band room some of the second