river and what if it concerns that i've heard expressed often is the process by which the candidates were  selected for interview and if that process was pursued so that everyone is clear that this tack only who is in charge of the search committee will explain of the faculty that was really alive to pick people who volunteered and so i met with the faculty and said how would you like to do this and they decided they would elect their representatives so they elected to represent us in the case of the staff at ground zero and i sent out to e mailing but there was only one person who volunteered for that and so that person became the representative for the staff regarding parents we sent out an e mail parents and community members we sent out an e mail using the grounds river e mail list which is the same list that it's used for the record rate or the weekly top location and i believe we sent out an announcement about the search the timeline concert excuse me and also asked for volunteers from that we received a good group of volunteers and we selected two people to be on the committee as far as school was the principal at campbell's not middle school we initiated the search by posting the vacancy in the buildings and by using school friends for those of you who are not familiar with schools brain it's a web based system of advertising application after advertising vacancies in education and it's a national problem it really attracts a national pool so it's used throughout the country so we use school bring about ten days into this search in monitoring the activity and schools bring it didn't seem like we had really a lot of that locations and so we made the decision to advertise in bo burlington free press in seven days and that added a little bit of volume to the applications but really not a lot of the search committee met and we had a total of thirty applications we went through those applications and selected seven for interview we interviewed six in person and one on skype when the committee decided reviewed the results of not only the application packets but the interviews it was decided that we really had more candidates that we could forward to the superintendent to reveal to one candidate we were flagging for the superintendent as a possibility for interest in other positions at c s u but felt that this person certainly didn't have the experience that they should be considered but we didn't want them to be lost we really felt they had some valuable experience and maybe someone that denise would have some interest in further on down the line so we really thought we did three individuals all of those individuals had questions from the search committee none of those individuals were forwarded within a unanimous recommendation for the second interview at that point john now beginning and i did some call a lot on the concerns of the search committee and did recommendation checks and made contacts with individuals who were used as references but also individuals who  forward in for a second round of interviews at that point john met with the board and reviewed the situation and the decision was made to look for an interim principal at that point we can and went through a process john was contacting some internal and external candidates and decided on howard wooden and asked that the search committee reconvene and interview howard reconvene we interviewed howard and janet asked us to go through all the not the same questions but somewhat the same process and see if we would forward howard would and with either of recommendations john we decided to have two sessions one for faculty and staff to meet howard and the second was for community members to meet with see how and interacting with faculty and staff and community members and parents and also how we needed an opportunity to see the faculty and also to see the staff that we would be working with and also to meet some members and so that those meetings took place yesterday i forgot one thing in really looking for parent involvement we had two sessions and that was really back at the beginning of december process one listed seven thirty in the morning and the other with at six at night and we asked parents to just come and talk with us about what was important in terms of middle school  did know their piece in the refrigerator and asking parents and community members to go to what's called survey monkey gave them the website address and to answer three questions it was a pretty quick little thing where you would go in and it was basically saying you know one of the things about ran through everything you want to make sure that we keep in this transition and what are some things that you would like to see changed and i will have about forty people responding to that this could certainly does so i would ask that as you speak to you to try to be concise expression or opinion if somebody else has already secretary in the office had to be at the meeting last night and so i was concerned about that and di and verified that those people where on the mailing list and the mailing had gone out so please i'm not you know trying to condemn anyone but we used we'll lose the mailing list that the school uses and if you get very rater and if you get mailings then i can't you know say can very much for clarifying it sounds as though there was an extensive process put together for the selection committee for the press will position my huge concern is the big jump that went conveniently left out of any communique and what that makes me as a community member question is on the impropriety or negatives and that is that may or may not be happening i mean we can shake our heads that i'm just telling you as a community member and especially again given i am educated myself my husband is an educator to have somebody who has had six months of a ministry mission experience be here to the basement it can't happen that fast and i'm just really really concerned about the process and the questionable process that  for sixteen years these new york elated basically that he brought himself up to speed by reading some articles over the last five months or so the various types of acronyms that are out there the president is quite  don't think that they approve of seven fifty three always so that the meeting that we have the amendments and the way there are and there are under discussion i don't believe they brought them to the believe that's not the present situation on the meeting with the senate education committee was actually the result of a letter that i sent to one of the members of the senate education committee who was a former colleague of mine someone that i knew probably thirty years ago i hadn't seen for many many years out of concern over both the by the nature of the amendment and the process by which it was done by anyone who wishes a copy of that letter i'm perfectly willing to share i was i sent that letter on thursday of last week five and quarter of twelve at four thirty i received a an e mail from the secretary of the senate committee asking me to come and testify on at the end of that hearing i heard virginia alliance say well this has already passed out of her committee because i spoke with her on the phone when the state evening which is why i sent the letter she asked me to send her an e mail and she said that it had already been passed out of that committee and now it rests with the senate finance committee that was as of tuesday i do not know where it is education ok as of tuesday it had not been passed completely and by the third request that it would that i made was to help the process completely at this point and table it for the session because in the nature of the amendment which established a partial read or a modified bread district actually changed the whole bill and i felt that that was too drastic a change to be made in this manner all of a sudden which was really begun by the testimony of a few people to the house education committee in january and i i had some serious problems with that process and as well as the severity of the potential effects that this would have on the whole state and and i felt that that the way education restructuring have to be approach was more from the point of view of how how children learn best to look at the best research of how children learn most effectively under what the sphere under what structure under what size schools at different levels of development and that that the main concern of a number of us who were there was really that the proposal  redistricting in general but particularly this modified red district that it favored efficiency over or emphasized prioritized efficiency over quality and we felt that that w was not right and that this was a decision that had happened without the public knowledge because the public had been led to believe as coverage in these reports  senators and you represented the house make that context but i've seen great it's all going to you know you know when you see that you have to see so many committee they do it day after day after day and sometimes there's a lot of back and forth and sometimes there isn't of course the thing is is that you're always welcome to go down and observe you can always walk in and be an awesome observer i suggest the committee no no i'm just saying i'm just saying i think you can always observe your government in action you may not be able to participate if you have questions about the process and whether or not they've got other opposing views you really should go to the senators and and to the committee people because chances are there was way more than the snapshot that you saw the snapshot that you saw may have been disturbing but the but definitely it's a good exercise for everyone to contact your local school board reps when you have questions check your superintendent when you have questions context your your house of representatives people in context or senators directly with traditionally the chair set aside some time right after the discussion or during the discussions with members of the audience where their car can take to the topic so that they have a chance to comment on what it has been you know you should be the criteria and the essential qualifications and characteristics that the community and the board and the staff gave that the candidates that were moved forward and with the reservations that came from this create screening committee that those who were mirrored the reference checks and that's why we hit the pause button i brought back that information to the board and talked about some other options at our last meeting they came out of the executive session after we talked about some confidential personnel information and made into the back to school spring and get to same people that we had just received but that i was going to look at some individuals that internally that i had confidence in that could do the job school that was in turmoil on in a good place to continue to build and grow that's on the account of the ministre toure's in the district including including the superintendent  who lives in our community and i gave him the highest recommendation that meant an awful lot to me based on those of that information i felt that he would be a good fit for brown's forever middle school just want to i want to say so he clarified that he did not lie which means that the inner principle candidate that you were putting forward with somebody who was not part of that original pool so i would hope that now that we are going back to look for him or you know our principle that it would make sense to read post since you've got some really since this last candidate that you dropped forward was somebody that was not part of the original pool that means the may be other people who are not interested in a long term principled position but who would might be interested in your hurtful position and who would be highly qualified and a good fit whether it's from within or what happened it would have in my opinion are year i don't see how it changes and while i can and i'll say this too that we would never not hire or hire somebody because of their spells is or is not a ploy of the school district just to be assume the people trusted the administration and you're right good point julie noted maybe that was naive of me but i did i felt like the people would trust the administration to make the right decision that we wouldn't hire were not my or someone because they were a spouse or not a spouse of the district i appreciate your feedback on a slate i felt like people have seen the fires that we've made and haven't made and would trust that we were going to do the right thing but i do appreciate the comment and i understand how that could be perceived i did not feel take full responsibility for that because there was no connection to next juniors and you can see that they both grew and you can see where they started eight green and where they performed in eleventh grade this past off and i took it so there's reading  but i can do this just to illustrate that in terms of where the students started and where they ended it's similar to the grades the cohort the cohorts that started lower continued in the same project trajectory so this is a state data about math there's a lot of conversation about matters by are six flights you just about math and that's why because of the conversation but mass corps across the state dropped twenty seven percent less than one half of our students have completed the appropriate courses in math what we can order to get proficiency on the kneecap you should finish algebra one freshman year restocked more than here so in the fall of your junior year you're in algebra two and these are students who scored below her official sin this year these are the courses that they're these are students who are refusing to take math a are going to the tech centers we have seven students in algebra two and of the seven students who didn't meet proficiency the cutoff score is forty they scored thirty nine so they were very close so i mean this is very interesting in terms of we know if the glass students successfully complete geometry by the end of their sophomore year they're not going to do well and they standardize so here's what we're doing about this district why focus on math next year this common core we're going to use money for professional development have a little retirement in there because some of the people money will come from retirement and changes and will do that for years to work out how we're teaching and then we'll do data data analysis and data base where what that means is student to really aren't understanding because they say many students don't fail algebra or they fail fractions and so if they're struggling with that while they're taking our we spent time looking at that data and focusing on that piece shifting from math to reading although reading was lower this year we do see continuous improvement we have several strategies in place to work with  students who struggle with reading again almost eighty percent of our students rick meet the standard in reading and then we're really emphasizing the analytical writing across the curriculum and we're using science social studies and math and  language arts to emphasize the critical analytical right reading scores approved we continue we have a common assessment across the curriculum to really focus on the same topics with  in the future of the new camp we kept going to be replaced in a couple years with what is called the best track for smart balance or we may end up doing a c t s which is a standardized test which is used for college and relation the number should be higher and it will be ok i have an overall concern here because it seems to me unfortunately that work every day to educate our kids the kneecaps scores of my students in my class the ones who did got ones are two zero three zero course there's a fundamental difference with those students ability to work conceptually and solve problems conceptually in general  students do a lot better on a confrontational part and some of the bigger rather thinking bigger questions larger problems multiple ways of attacking the problem of the ways of representing a problem or what many of these tests will will ask you to emphasize so skills as opposed to just you believe to take a break i could crank out thirty quadratic equations and tell you the numbers and the answers but do i know what that means and do i know what that means if i have a building to arch the bridge and the impact that i'll need or the weight bearings that i need and can i apply that information that's sort of a sophisticated problem but then you can't go ask things like that with assembly you know the growth of a tomato plant given this much water over time which is very different can you we're doing we're adding time but we're also really looking at our instruction to morrow we're doing a less a study in algebra two and instead of just introducing a concept of oh we're going over how to transform radical equation but but we're not just saying ok teaching our practices but what does it mean it happens so stupid to your question we need to really help people understand math not just do it for the test stage and the question about  the previous year so we don't have as many sections of the oracle we have all the same articles and there is that when you look at our maximum population which was attending a few years ago we're under nine hundred that's two hundred fewer students we have two hundred fewer u s history classes we have couple schools ahead of us in terms of that forty seven so we're better but nationwide understanding success is is not as good as it could be not as good as other countries and then the second part of  happens the student gets to get to his school and when they get to a problem now to the one they do they know how to add fractions but they did they don't have it really it's not as cemented so when you're working with variables they've got to go back to that and they've got to work on that and suddenly we're doing more sophisticated things with variables and they're still here so we need to work at really working as a supervisory human on all levels to really  wide and john i can speak to this more specifically because i can speak more of the high school as we are the map is really in focus and it's not at the expense of other things it's a deliberate and thoughtful and why are we teaching and how are we teaching  kind of go back to dave's question here where i'm standing and bring up that another aspect of that i happen to know a gentleman who lives in central mind who has a statistician for norwich university whose personal specialty is analyzing the various standardized tests that are given to school students around this country for the by a factor of ness the question the specific question as compared with their overall intelligence and achievement levels in other areas i he doesn't have much good to say about these tests and i think that that's one concern that some of us have that what do these tests measure anyway and just for kicks and drama ways a couple of years ago i picked up a third grade language  test and tried to to do it now i'm saying this not to be arrogant but i have two master's degree was in two different professions and of that are entirely different and i've talked for fort years and i consider that i have a fairly good command of the english language there were several questions on that test which i consider to be either ambiguous or of like they had these are the two right answers are no right answers and i don't know why a third grader is supposed to be able to answer this maybe i was thinking too hard i don't know but i i guess i have i'm not i'm in that group of people that have concerns about the amount of emphasis placed on these tests and i know that some of this is mandate but i just want to throw that in there i know it's got nothing to do with now but anyway i want to throw that in there as part of what they were saying i really think that my leadership polaski around mathematics in this testing is it is important for students to know have a right to create thesis backing up with facts and have a conclusion it is important for students to know what it means when their money is put in the bank and compound it quarterly or you're not just multiplied by twenty because it's in there for two years and you know i don't build the assessments but as we do this we we as a school are really looking quality learning and what the control over that this is a decision ed and there's two types of tests there's normal reference and their standards reference standards reference means you're come you're graded on do you wonder stand this specific we are getting much better it's an important part of it and the teachers to comes to our school and any school that you are in you get students from somewhere else and need to work and improve them john has worked very hard in our you know we have district school grades and my daughter is the middle school now and i'm not really matt parker and we constantly feel like we have to and i know you're not a middle school person but i feel like i have to constantly help  more and i and and the scores of the scores are going up that maybe the curriculum we're using in the great school in the middle school is a good i do believe that your concern is what prompts the question is is is that your chart seem to indicate that there is a very significant difference in the focused students who have succeeded here who have got into the algebra to l and not sure whether that indicates something that should be done decisive force and so i want to understand that from your perspective and if it is something that is there to work should we be doing something different so that students so that more students will reach that level succeeding or to answer your question to pieces what is what are we students at here which is she's feeling better about now and there's two reasons for a little conscious jar something committee was thankful very full for the work that those folks had done and so that if it was something that was going to come to life again that they wanted to give those folks you know the option to fair to say that they wanted to going well the public is under the impression that committee doesn't exist and it was published in this report comes from the superintendent's office i'm pulling from page thirty three have been under hawaii elementary school publication but the  others to that it says that following careful review of current statutes extensive committee and members are extensive discussions with officials at the my department of education but if we do consider we should consider it through a process that is open is inclusive to all viewpoints not just your points of people who support the people who oppose and that all communities need to be respected in that process and when i listen to people who have who have advocated or were read through through the years i don't hear them saying that's a process they don't want to happen in fact are here to the now there is a distinction of course of the positions but i don't think it has to do with how he and you who are the c s u operates there is a distinction people's viewpoints on what should be the state law and i think maybe to some extent  feel like i mean more towards dave's point of view that i think the clearest way forward is just stop what we're doing now and then just started start it over i mean there certainly was no problem starting it last time it  like the beginning of that process went very well and i don't see why that's an impediment later on thank you make this decision and by the time you figure out how to explain to them what you're talking about to get any action the only action is that we call a meeting that we would direct our executive committee members to call  quickly i think that this is probably the same situation the job is completed if we do need to set up an ad hoc committee that is going to be taking up the merger questions again and that can certainly be brought up and i think it will fall to all the boards to say yes with that in our representatives i don't think that this is really you know an impediment to the moving forward if there's stuff going on with the red probably to ninety percent of the meetings so the opportunity was there when the vote was taken the committee did meet again in and my recollection of what we decided was as long as the legislation stays the same there's no reason to revoke and we walked away now is where it gets murky because even though it may feel like  anyone off the street can walk into those rooms and sit and listen i don't think it's this board's shock to inform the public when the legislature has a hearing if you're interested in what's happening  they have a website and every day's agendas is available to you if you know they're talking about mergers and if it doesn't happen this year they're going to talk about it next year they're going to talk about it in the next why it's it's an ongoing conversation this is not a kid in east issue we're involved in it and the legislation may change i mean when george asked my opinion about you know if he went and said you know this or that to the committee all i said was you welcome to go there it may die in the committee i don't know what the legislature is going to do but we have to separate what we're going from what the legislature in the legislature is going to continue to the second message i gave them was that we had a history of trying to console the schools in this district and feel three times and five to hear them it always fail because when you schools offer so the people in the ivy district would have given up their school and for that privilege they were tactics and sort of the point we made to them in two thousand  there can be winners and losers right off the bat and from that came the idea of the tax incentives so one fifty three came out with four years worth of tax incentives and you know with one with a fairly strong went back to session this year not a single words are going to actually occur it's all that the committee had a committee bill which is was seven fifty three which they were deciding on how the further proceed and they were interested in hearing from various people various districts where they can try to and if they have and they want to know what they thought well we got could be done differently  everybody has to agree you're not going to get vergers and if your goal is to merge districts then there has to be a belief or if you will a coalition of the willing i think was the word that was used to proceed ahead the education committee that came out with a bill was a thursday night i remember as a thursday because we had a meeting that night and i looked at what they came out with and didn't look to me like anything that was going to be interesting  four schools outliers who didn't want to belong to that k four schools and the mount mistral district five twelve so that evening i told the folks i really didn't think that was going to be the interest to us but that evening we happened to have a board meeting and at the end of that board meeting i asked joe this is something that would interest and you know my reading this wrong is do you think there will be interest in this and pretty much universally everybody said no who understood what was being and so that you know once once a bill is voted out of committee here's a fairly short process between then and one you know when it comes to the floor you get what they have noticed that it's on the floor so we work for the next couple of days but the education committee the department of the commissioner of education trying to find something that might be more flexible and the committee was concerned to have something that was applicable to multiple places and we finally came to some sort of language that  the committee thought might work in the department head could be to be on board with it you know a number of drafts and fair amount of work to do that and what we came out with something which to my mind i'm allowed the people who  willing to pursue it but didn't in any way cause harm to the people who were not interested in pursuing hum in fact for the district that didn't proceed because of our particular structure towns that didn't join could still benefit from two thirds of the tax incentives and it you know we all looked to try and find downsize to this and it gave us the possibility of reducing to as few as two school boards instead it provided the tax incentives it provided the ability for the schools that wanted districts that want to merge to merge and for some reasons that are far beyond me you know there was this impression that there was some change of the rules for you know was the question and you know at this point we don't know what the outcome of it will be it's doing it in the senate now has been voted out of senate but it's still in the senate so we don't know where it will be but i think there's been a fair amount of misperception other people came to the meeting who were not part of the committee although i didn't i didn't know who was on the committee who wasn't you know truly you know and and i think the majority opinion that i was it does make some sense so go ahead and proceed you know when you come up for the legislature anything that you have to hear you need to explain what you're interested why you know why would you why would they want to listen  understanding of the question was did anyone think that this concept was a good idea and worth pursuing and why that was what i thought you were asking groups and i explained that in the letter that i wrote it i i truly believe it will have tremendous consequences that were not well thought out and i accept at its face value that everyone who was involved in this has good intentions and was trying to do the right thing but i think that it was done to hastily without full consideration and study of what some of these ramifications could be and that the public was completely unprepared for something as drastic as this if it changes the whole law and it's not just an amendment to and and i'm i'm just a much bigger than it looks i would just say that i i think once again you misunderstood the chronology and the work i asked this group about was not the amendment because that hadn't even been considered because when i asked this group does this concept make any sense to you it was about the proposal the bill passed out by the committee which allowed elementary stood joint kept you as it was ok so we never had a conversation about the amendment with this committee because there was never a meeting of this committee before that a minute before i proposed the amendment before i c