interviews with our candidates are two finalists for superintendent earlier this evening we've met with mackenzie and john failon and who is currently the assistant superintendent milton john went through the same process that our other candidate in the stevens went through of last week was here for a long day of meeting with students and staff leadership council members the school committee and also the community  at our meeting on monday night the school committee decided to move forward both he and john failing so we're here for the second part of this and this evening thank you very much what we're going to do is open with a statement from you and then we're going to go into  very well i first of all i want to thank everybody for having me back here and having me here as a finalist is a is a privilege to be considered for the superintendent to the belmore public schools i am very excited about the possibility of coming to beaumont and i know that at the discussions we had last week in the interview process that we had last week in meeting a bunch of folks from beaumont i think it was at the town open session i said to the group that they're seeing if i'm a match for this community as much as the other candidate is a match and i too was trying to figure out whether i was a match for this community for the next step of my career and i think the time between sessions is very helpful to reflect on  everybody involved as to who's the best candidate is but for me personally i definitely have come to the decision that belmont to just a great community that i'm fortunate to be in the seat tonight that i would very much be excited  eager to come to the belmont public schools i do solely flock to today while reading the school committee's goals for this year our talking about students talking about providing an environment for a well balanced educational experience for all children looking at the mission statement of the school system again and finding out in reviewing that the plan that goes through next year the talks about think create serve and i very much feel comfortable with all those parts of what makes come on a special place and promise as people in the community sit back and say what would this gentleman bring to the table service that might exist for the community bringing someone brand new into  their school community to leave it that i want to get emphasize my long tenure in my two positions my consistency that i bring to work every day which is being fear and respectful and collaborative with how i go about the work of the belmont public schools in always doing so putting the best face and the best foot forward of this community on behalf of its schools so i'm very excited to be here i can't thank you enough for this opportunity and i look forward to another  any plans before july first you would take office and how you would spend your first few months a superintendent after july and specifically how you would engage in conversations with the different constituents throughout the july first to meet with dr king since he volunteered that to be available and i would taken full advantage of that i believe that the town would benefit by some partnering between the new candidate or the new superintendent in the current one to make sure that there's a smooth transition with any and all information that needs to be transferred from one person to another from the leadership team to the new superintendent and in what i would spend time doing this quite frankly doing a lot of listening i want to hear from the administrative team i want to hear from central office i want to hear from the leadership team to get a feel for what it is to work in belmont every day and then i would actually start to branch out to the other time department heads  and i would absolutely want to have an over house where i would meet all of the teachers in a more significant way the night i did last week and very much have coffee hours in events that would provide the community a time to  come and visit and talk and meet and hear as much as possible and i think i used the reference to tip o'neill in my previous meetings and discussions to be seen and not heard to really listen and to be present when i'm meeting with people and to hear what's important to them and figure out how it fits into the current strategic and make sure i place high value on what they place a high value on it's my job to integrate myself into this community it's not my job to come in and change the community it's my job to find out what's important belmont how can i use my skills to facilitate to guide and nurture the folks that are here already doing that good work and how do i need to be have moved forward on behalf of the town so the town administrator all the department heads obviously all the school staff and teachers and most importantly the parents know what's important to them what's important every day to a parent when they drop their child off and that will take through july one and then beyond the summer and then it will kick off again in the fall because people have different attention spans of different times for these types of transitions so i believe will be more internal between now and july one with staff in municipal folks but the parents like to meet me early and then maybe get an early summer but then they're going to want to  know if you look at any of the enrollments to six our classes have been growing the last couple of years and i wanted to get your opinion as to if there's such a thing as a tipping point what would be too too high at what point do we need to address this and how you would go about the schooling knowing that of course we have limited resources well i do read through the data in reviews of the going public schools that it's happening at every grade level it's not just one area so we have an influx of students coming in and why wouldn't they want to come in this families buying homes of folks who maybe are retiring and i think that having a short term planning having a long term plan is the way to approach it the tipping point is in first grade you really shouldn't have any more than twenty two students in a room so you really want to start thinking about first grade you can't get first grade back it's a very very important time that early literacy period of kheta great too is essential for having small group experiences for children so they can break the code and they can learn to read so when they walk into at the middle school in the high school where you have students who are scheduled differently and you can have programatic changes or programatic schedule changes that you might look at and get creative with that might be able to balance the most class sizes in every class is important so it's hard to say the chemistry is more important than math and that is more important than the music class that you may have i was in a music class in the middle school it was a small space and there's a lot of folks in there in the pianos you want your pianos were on top of the tables and they had to write in clipboard on top of the pianos and they were doing it they were fully engaged but that class can't get any bigger just like the math class can get any bigger so being creative with how we may be rotated a schedule obviously the first person asked that question is the principal of the middle school i believe it's missing george and say what are some of the things that we can do to alleviate these issues and let the folks at the middle school start to talk about what those ideas are and then brainstorm with the other ministry it is to kind of have that system where they're they're saying things out loud and they getting feedback from the rest of them initiated team but the middle school folks really need to start to work on that and they'll have the best ideas about moving forward as with the high school as well can i just do you have any experience district that has done redistricting he has and you have to tell things a little bit about that it's a very very difficult process for the community to go through we did it in my district of milton when i was principal they had to redistrict the elementary schools and i was not in the central office position at the time and when i was principal even before that we brought in a specialist from brown university who happen to live in milton and volunteered  after going through the process we learned a lot but we kind of left everything the same because you want to have neighborhood schools with all that was very very important when we started to have unrolled and shifts we started to talk about whether or not changing the district lines of certain elementary schools  keeping the neighborhood theme as the mean priority and shifting a couple of streets to once this school and shifting another few streets to balance off the in rome and ultimately the superintendent before i came on board central did do that it took a little while to educate the community make sure that they feel comfortable with the prioritization announcing a lot of questions and giving a lot of answers but right now i think that we're pretty good shape i would say that we do have a slight high in rome and at one of our schools and so right now we're looking at that data over the past five years and finding out what is that data tell us what what is the reason for that and do we want to respond quickly with another maybe changing of the lines just a little bit too to alter the enrollment or just to hold tight because he's in rome a trend seem to go as houses empty and they move in children and families i have a house next to me in milton a young couple just part of my neighbor of sixteen years on force we passed away with you and that's tremendously important security to everybody who lives in the town so whatever you do to change that needs to be very very slow very transparent and very open in the process that you use and we've had the benefit of reading their observations their questions their impressions and and so a couple questions i have are go channel rated from natural let's see one was several responders noted that you talked about wanting to craft your own fission and your own team and so my question is if you could elaborate on what you meant by that and how it might and changes you might make if the superintendent i think that any change that is going to be made needs to be decided in a grassroots effort by the community of belmont i believe my job is when i say team obviously there's one person who superintendent that holds a certain position and then there's people who are assistan superintendents and everybody has a role in this principals and as teachers and as parents so i would like to lead that team and when i say a vision i think you'll be more of a vision around how my style will fit into that that work  my vision of what milton would want public school should look like will only be determined in developed by the parents and the teachers that have been here for a long long time so i don't have any specific changes that i would have in mind at this if my other friends ok ok you decided to initiate a lunch with the superintendent opportunity for students in the district could you please describe the first lunch meeting between you and one belmont students what grade  school is the student and what are one or two questions you would ask and what would you hope to achieve as a result of the french experience sure well i'd choose middle school because you always go to the high school guys in high school always gets to meet the new principal as in the officials and be part of the school committee team and i am a middle school teacher and principal by by my experience in whatever you ask a middle school student anything they're going to tell you exactly what they mean or what they feel it's going to be it's going to be the truth so what i would try so i would that's a great idea i would love to implemented and i think middle school students are bright and insightful and energetic questions i would ask is what's important to them what do they look to  do beyond middle school and high school do they have an understanding of what that looks like to they know what the high school looks like and what we can hard for them and when i say what's important to them i want to make sure that they feel safe i'm looking for things like well what's important to me is my friends is probably the first thing you'll hear because in middle school the only thing that's important is themselves and their friends the adults really in the equation but i want to hear them talk about how adults make them feel safe i want to hear how adults are working in interacting with them about being respectful to them and that's part of their engagement and i want to hear that they're actually engaged i want to hear them talk about maybe i have a lot of homework which they could consider to be something that would we'd want to talk about us at too much or not enough and i'd want to hear them say that they enjoy school and that they enjoy their community and that they know where the teachers are so i would be assessing culture i would be assessing rigor i would be assessing engagement of the of the middle school by talking to the students i think it's really important to go around and observe teachers and we do learning walks you know the way that you can engage a student and how students are responding in being part of the lesson and doing some of the work you have to look at how students are working and behaving in a classroom when you're determining if learning is happening so it's not just about the teacher to about how the students are learning so how they feel and so i've been looking for those types of answers double lottery developed this mission statement as well as the vision statement collectively and it focuses on goals and priorities that we hope to meet by two thousand and seven and we've developed as you know a strategic plan with clearly defined  could you select one of the strategic goals and you don't have to have a member have thank you thank you for that reflects one of your own professional passions and describe how you would help the district continue to advance in this area of cour through a series of engagement opportunities the second one is to support continuous improvement in overall program and fiscal stability in the third is to ensure students receive instruction from consistently high qualified staff so all three of those are are incredibly important and you can't really have one without the other so i'll start with number two which is we really have to provide the programming that we really have to be at the superintendent level very very aware of the fiscal concerns that we have year in year out and how can we provide some medium in long range planning sochi just don't have to worry about where they're going to be next year so parents can be assured that if they have five children like john failing does that his twenty year old who had a good run in the school system is is going to have a the same parallel experience this is eleven year old i would have see anything that my eleven year old couldn't have the same experience or so fiscal stability in the sense that we're reaching out where being active in the community as a school system and representing it well how you have been to ramma that was all over the web site is a great example of letting the community know how important music is and that it's a flagship piece of the district so taking that type of public relations for lack of a better term and building on it with relationships with townhall working in partnering with the war committee who's next to a working hard  any other time department to ensure that we are moving the district forward everybody understands our goals and i think it's important to have the goals because when the word committee asked what are you doing with that money in why is that important you have to be able to set clear goals that have benchmarks that you're trying to hit and be very transparent about where you are in that process when people know that there's a plan and that people are measuring that plane and working hard towards it i believe a community like belmont will support that budget they can only support much as they can the pile of money doesn't get really that much bigger every year but how in certain times and you can you know i just how much of that fund goes to one department core and other can really be determined by a work committee deciding that we really we're really really behind with the belmont schools about we think this year is important for them so i would think that working with all the stakeholders to ensure that we continue the high rigor high expectation high student outcome high well balanced educational experience that the students at belmont have been used to over the years that that continues and i think that the parents need to be assured that that's going to happen and i think that that would be the one that i would  choose i wanted to and just as he we know that the role of superintendent is places huge demands on your time i'm so the question is how would you manage your own work life balance and what were the expectations what would your expectations be for members of your leadership team well i i put a tremendous amount of time into my work and the reason why i do that is a enjoyed a lot so it's hard for me to say otherwise because when i go to work every day i'm a very happy guy i work with wonderful people and i enjoy when i'm there and i like the work i do i've always been able to prioritize my family with my work i feel like i have been fortunate to raise five children with my wife of twenty five years and do that well despite the fact that i couldn't some weeks work seventy hours a sixty hours but maybe shoot home for dinner or maybe be available that next day to drive if i was out two or three nights in a row my would have got to school to make sure that he and i have a lot of face time i believe it's important to have that same kind of comfort level in culture with a central office people that you work with especially because you're going to be working together hand in hand on these issues and you could be in some weeks when it's a work committee week or to budget week working long hours with the assistant superintendent for business and or these and superintendent of personnel and human resource person  peterson who seems to be working about one hundred fifty hours a day because every time i call her phone in she answers it whether it's seven o'clock at night or six seven o'clock in the morning so i plan on being in beaumont and being present in being visible and being and the kids really like to see it it's it's important to the children and the coaches and in this so i would prioritize my work out prioritize my time in belmont it's only fifteen or sixteen miles away it's not very far and i believe that i can be a niche that  prioritize that and with the help of the very able ministry of assistant staff my my energy would have to be organized a little bit so i always come on people who i work with to make sure that we have a plan that we have a calendar that we keep and that we always are scenario here is a couple of years in the future we've offered you the superintendent seen you've come in and and you've done fine and so forth and you know there's a there's the financial constituent and i'm going to encounter you and i just want to i want to do something different than just ask you questions i want to actually engage you as if i am that person should and how you would respond to me this is a different scenario than the previous one  watching and that's why i'm not taking my writing so i'm a forty two year old professional and my wife and i moved into belmont three years ago because we heard how great the schools are we're committed to education we supplement our three kids education with tutoring club sports and other enrichment opportunities we contribute to the foundation for a bellman education all right and are heavily involved in various p t a as we learned this district like so many others has financial issues so we've been intensely involved in organizing the effort to put an override on the ballot because we believe in social justice and a living wage we're glad to have our teachers paid what they really deserve i think you'll agree with me there is the most important job in the world so with all this i can't tell you how disappointed i've been by what i've seen happening in the schools in the past few years instead of making a stand to get more money for the schools changing the split between the town and the school for example or fighting for an override you've actually cut programs and range fees and have considered slowing the growth of teacher salaries in the negotiations you say you have to say oh we can't afford it i don't understand that belmont is a well off community i look down my street and i see beautiful colonials occupied by successful professionals and their families we have the money i'd gladly play pay more in taxes i look to a superintendent to be an advocate for the best education possible for our children i want someone who will fight for the progressive values we moved into belmont for with your i don't know how to describe it conservative fiscal policies though i'm beginning to wonder if your more of an obstacle an ally to the goals that i see for the system so can you explain to me should my why shouldn't i regret the fact that the school committee chose you to be our superintendent well first of all i want to thank you for all the things you do for the belmont public schools your advocacy your work with the p t o s your work with the belmont foundation for education all of that goes to securing and supporting the public schools so first of all thank you very much for being an involved parent nothing  is better first student achievement that having a balance between good teaching good buildings in a strong house so thank you very much i want to let you know what i've done over the years and i want to let you know in belmont what i've done to ensure the long term success about my public schools we work with our committee we work with the revenue set that we have that is determined by a law called proposition two and a half and i'm not sure if you moved from another state outside of massachusetts but two and a half is something that is a reality in the state of massachusetts in the revenue picture changes every a so i want to give you some numbers in and just let you know what the town works with each year as with thinking about how we can move the schools forward and how we can provide those opportunities for students very much moved here for when we do that in the long term growth of the district where i have to do when i go in to advocate strongly for the budget of the of the belmont public schools is i have to come up with a plan and  here's my plan we had a strategic plan that ran through two thousand and seventeen here's the new plan that we made when i came with the constituency some parents like yourself teachers and in and in administrators and in this plan we do need a basic funding source to make sure all these happen but we also have to keep in mind for the long term growth of the district in the town that we partnered well with our town department leaders there are there are police folks in this town who also deserve that living wage and we do want to be in a place where we feel safe every day for our fire and our police and there are essential functions that we have to be respectful of but at that table i guarantee you when i'm with those time department heads there is no biggest cheerleader for the for the belmont public schools  in that when i bring a budget to the table and you want to say to me when you want to say what it's going to take to move the belmont schools forward i'm going to give that number i'm not going to give a short number i might end up with a little less but i'm not going to go in with any less i can understand  that i might have to work in balance the budget with the other departments but it's my job on behalf of the parents of the students the teachers to put our best foot forward so those programs and are in that initial budget ask and we should them take no shame in asking for what we deserve but what we think that your students deserve and don't want but i ask for your trust to say out loud that it's my job to also balance that at certain points year to year with the other departments that we work with so i am the biggest cheerleader of the belmont public schools i do appreciate all the work that you do on behalf of the children and the teachers and i will continue to carry out the plan that this community made the strategic plan and came up with in create funding sources that are not just on the backs of parents but maybe going to the war committee with some creative ideas like if this free cash in a certain media when we've had a good snow year or a bad snow year in the offered free cash and we can say it was a one time items that we could purchase for the belmont public schools is in a brand new math set of textbooks is technology that will last several years is an infrastructure that we can put in place so those who create a budget ideas that i would bring to the table and i guarantee that if you have any i would love to put them in place as well and if we feel you feel on the playground that this is an issue for the parents that i think that we might need to set up some community coffees to make sure that i'm hearing from parents like yourself and really take the temperature of the of the district has i think that we're in the right spot but just because i believe for our team believes that we're in the right spot and moving forward doesn't mean that every once in a while we have to take the temperature even after three or four years together about what's going on in the district and what your concerns are so i really appreciate your bringing them to me understanding that what motivates this is year desire to ensure equal access for all students how would you balance this push of a p classes with the fairy real and significant culture of stress that exists not only at our high school but the wellness there was a well this convention at gillette stadium just yesterday and i was asked to speak as a minister and the wellness folks the a were focusing on activity in nutrition and i decided to make sure that i included the social emotional aspect of what makes a student feel safe and strong and confident and have good personal interactions and relationships with their peers and others because i think that that's a piece that's left out sometimes you all want to have breakfast we will all want to eat move was the for middle school and high school is ensure the clinical work that's done in our schools is well supported and has is well resourced since i have been at central office we have added five four for adjustment coun the district we now have nine point five when i was principal of the middle school we only had one it just becomes a so we went out to a local agencies and we recruited agencies to come in to do that work with us and students would have their health plans charged and it was a win when we had extra resources insurance is paid for but we were always making sure that our students were feeling safe engaging in appropriate behavior making good choices feeling confident so that social emotional piece i think is very important because you do not want students to be overwhelmed flooded stressed because the no learning can take place it's just as valuable as having a good breakfast in the morning it's just as valuable as being fit in in active the other part of that equation is making sure that we're academically scaffolding everybody's instructional or rigorous academic experience so they feel prepared so they actually feel like they're confident enough to walk into that class and do well and i believe that when you feel confident in and that confidence is based in that day to day success of doing well in class in six seventh and eighth grade and having this culture where you know a p exams are high expectations are very important but everybody doesn't have to take nine of them it's ok to take wanted to whatever you choose the only reason why i like to have that as a bar as an example of rigor is that the college board will tell you that just taking an a p exam not only supports you getting into maybe better colleges having better options but completing your politics periods because you're being you're interfacing with college level material so  it's a bar that we would like to set it's one that we set with support around academic preparation and more importantly always taking the temperature of our students in regards to their stress in their social emotional health and that's a kind of a climate and culture this different ways to measure that it's through attendance it's through trips to the nurse it's through building a student support team in every single one of the schools which we have in milton where his guidance counselors just because it's is get together with administrator and talk about students that are hitting the radar screen for different reasons so paying attention to that i think is very important in high high expectations and high rigor should not be at the expense of anybody's sense of feeling unsafe work in concert is there is there messaging and learning that goes on in each elementary school that's consistent or there is no curriculum so what the it just committee and so that's kind of with the themes would take place so we obviously have a bullying prevention curriculum and so that's where that work in terms of the consistent messaging would take place at every grade level throughout the district not not necessarily the guidance curriculum or secretly so i was recently reading the editor's introduction in my copy of radical school reform from one thousand nine hundred sixty nine and the editors there contextualize the critics critiques of schools saying quote what they find in the classroom is oppression irrelevance inhumanity manipulation and the systematic style to fixation of most of what is promising in children and you so over forty years later the education landscape is mired in such an accountability how would you communicate to belmont citizens that teaching and learning are first and foremost human endeavors i believe that the more we could have students do the work in learning groups and learn in small groups and it should not be a teacher who holds all the information and knowledge and decides when they want to share it with students that students are doing the work in that they have multiple ways of engagement and they have multiple ways of producing results for showing assessment portfolios writing problem solving  sometimes for some populations of students like maybe yes students when i piece that there's a struggle in there that you have students who are super smart i q wise but they may be dyslexic or they may have a certain challenge that prevents them from being school smart and everybody should be able to be smart smart not school smart so it's a coming upon school to identify how to scaffold that learning and how to provide learning opportunities for students in a variety of ways that they can be presented with material in the material  standard and how they can show their knowledge of that standard that expectation and i think that unlocks that suppressive and environment where students sit and people tell and then they tell  back this is really about it's almost like that tom sawyer model where i from pin the fence and i want to get it done i can ask couple folks to help me now i have a couple people in the fence so let's let everybody paint the fence let's let everybody learn let's everybody in gage what's everybody take risks let's everybody somebody research let's everybody come up with how they learned in let you know how they learned and how that's hard that's a lot more work for teachers so someone might say well is it easy for the teachers if they're not in charge all the time to have to do all the work if they're facilitating wouldn't that be easier because the students are doing all the work the preparation for that type of a lesson is is ten fold of what it used to be it would be a much easier prep for me to come in and do a social studies class and talk about the u s constitution and tell you the facts and the date and the people then it would be to have you create your own constitution and that you create your own constitution we find out what that looks like and why in there we have that written on the board and we start to have dialogue about it that that planning takes a lot more work that our teachers are really finding that to be a challenge but it's a very very worthwhile endeavor to take on that kind of prep and that kind of view of teaching and learning that unlocks every child's ability issues of course at the middle school is being considered for a living what means you use to engage the community staff and families in the decision making process itself and then how would you explain the decision that's been made to parents and staff to making making change dialogue with you so as superintendent i think that when you sit around with your leadership council that's the first blush of ok here's our budget number here's what we'd like to do here's what we're thinking the budget will be for the following school year and a lot of those ideas and a lot of that prioritization a lot of those decisions are made by that logic group of twenty four folks that's how my previous practice has been in milton and that's what i see is a collaborative way to make those decisions at that table your middle school principal should know the budget of the high school as good as she knows the budget of the middle school and should know the budget in needs and challenges of the elementary school because we're all together in the room where the big white board we're writing down what we're prioritizing so as superintendent to say a lot of why i may have cut or not cut a certain middle school program would be rooted in the dialogue of all those individuals and then i would want to make sure that the principals would go back in this case a middle school principals a principal would go back in the st george would say all right guys there's going to be a certain reduction across the districts if we do have to have a reduction in this this is our share this is an unequal distribution of reduction unfortunately the elementary schools are going to face this type of concern a challenge or reduction the high school is going to face this type of reduction and this is this is what i'm thinking is our production for this year that is rooted in conversations that she has had with her mistreated seen with a middle school and has been brought to the bigger table so i really  conversation is based out of the middle school because it should be the air coming about with the reduction and why now the superintendent shahbaz to sit above all that as the twenty four folks get together because you want to make sure that it's equitable across grades you want to make sure that you don't cut out of the middle school if you're not cutting in at the middle of the high because you want all these things to be k to twelve important in effect of so you're really looking over it as as your team does all that work and they have that debate in that dialogue and you have to say  we have to have some prioritization and we also have to have some what we would call items or programs that are off the table that we're none of us are going to reduce and we have to decide what they are so i would explain to parents that if i was the one answering those questions and we go out to every single p t o will do it in january next month with our current budget and i as a superintendent would explain each one of these reductions and someone said well why did you prioritize that music teacher or that math teacher i'm sure it would be based on a then knowing that this was a team approach to this reduction and that it was rooted in data and that it was really maybe class size and roman and it was rooted in a bigger picture of what the district is trying to do not just someone's idea that they kind of want to cut that because their child doesn't take are so why why kids to be the art teacher so it's bigger than that it's more grounded in grassroots than that of that at the district level but truly but one of the really glad it shows to be the budget yes my focus area i was looking over some of the materials that you submitted with your application and there was a reference to helping raise money from private donors to support milnes foundation the link we happen to be in boston dot com last week we have worked with our belmont foundation which would be the name here but i built a foundation and we put a plan together we raised one hundred fifty thousand dollars just for technology in schools in the saturday figuring out oh my gosh be careful what you wish for you know we have to buy cases we have to buy storage we have to make sure we can charge these how do we implement that so we have a plan for all that and it's rooted in when we work with folks who would like to be active like the belmont foundation you have to understand what's important to them so it takes our relationship building process into how do they want to enhance the belmont public schools so the be in a program grew when we were struggling with with athletics at the high school and we have a beautiful field house that was brand new at the time and we decided that because we rented out a lot and because a lot of folks come to music events or their sporting events or their graduation it's rented out to a lot of different community members coffee and we just sat and we started to talk about what can we do to raise money for us beyond what the boosters do in the biggest program is we have beautiful pianos about the size of this white screen across the perimeter of the field house and we charged about five thousand dollars per banner and we went out solicited businesses which we don't have a whole lot of community members maybe politicians and folks who work in businesses outside of the town but they'd be the president your own and we created our eighty thousand dollar revenue source that year and it was very exciting and the work was well worth it every saturday morning you got to know a group of thirty people that you had never met before they were all invested we broke it out we got a grassroots if you know five people call them up come back with your information check them off yes or no yes no maybe it's a maybe let's go back we have brochures drawn up we had pictures taken and we were very fortunate to find a very incredibly gifted in hard working set of parents to do that work so that was the easy part believe it or not the difficult part was how do you continue it and how do you keep that in the other difficult part is how much of that you want to build in the budget every year because that's really soft money that's not money that you can guarantee that will be in place every year so we didn't spend that whole sixty or eighty thousand we only spent some of it that year because you want to keep that revenue source alive in a revolving a that we could use to supplement the sports when we needed to throughout the last couple years we did put that committee back to get to last year with the support of the budget director and a new group of folks in we reengage our folks who had been hers and we probably raised about thirty forty welcome from from your being i feel i feel confident that you know how to administer district from central office and so forth but i've heard a critique that i want to share with you and get your response through and it's actually two two parts of this question so the first part i'll just ask the first part first that's a good lesson well there you go it would be i'm like  but there's a question of you're clearly competent but the question is some people have said it don't feel that you're very inspiring that there's all that that that you know you create a vision for them and you and you and report how would you respond to that criticism well i i tend to lower my energy level in these meetings i'm a pretty energetic guy and i feel it's my job to come across as professional and thoughtful and reflective because when you're in charge of forty million dollars and over four thousand students and you really need to present be someone who can be responsible for all that that's a very important task that i'm taking orders and superintend it in and i take it very seriously  if anything needs to be said about to be inspiring or to be visionary which i think the two separate things i think inspiring is getting in the music room with a gentleman in the back and talking about shirley temple with the class i think is really enjoyed that and that's inspiring  going into a canoe garden class last last week as well and sitting with kids in the rug i think is inspiring to the students of the district and i think teachers enjoy it ministries especially the superintendent being in their classroom and knowing what it looks like i know how hard they're working and that's inspiring to the staff visionary it's a question about what's good for what does windows belmont want to be in ten years and i would say that every school district at a high caliber the dominant is needs to be in a place where students are engaging in a rigorous activity and academic experience with twenty first century learning opportunities which is a word that we can all debate what it means but what it really means is  the combination of research technology collaborative work where when they go out into that pathway of college and beyond in that world that they were able to go into a community that doesn't speak their language that has different cultures they could be working at state  bank in boston but they could be an off hours because their client base could be in brazil and that's a reality of what they could be doing so understanding those cultures so i think that the vision is how do we put the students experience in you have it as one of your goals for the school does that the school their life is going to look a lot different than ours did that's one of the core beliefs of the belmont public schools that we all agree that our children right now going to have a different life when they get to be our age they don't think the river going average but it will be our age and and i think that to support parents in painting what does that what do we want them to look like and belmont is in new facilities is a technology is it grinding out the the real good experiences in the classrooms and supporting that so we have students walking away with well developed well balanced experiences and i said this is the high school students you're going to miss this place and you're not going to miss it because of the math curriculum we're going to miss it because the teacher who taught you mouth for the coach who taught you track or your drama teacher the relationships that you build i think that's inspiring piece so the vision is how do you provide that in a way that continues the high growth that you have this does a lot of high growth and this is this is a district that has great great student outcomes with great satisfaction from parents so the vision is high he continued that in what is going to look like continues and how do we make sure that we incrementally get there which is the budget question and if that's not inspiring enough i'm sorry but i think that the day to day stuff that we do inspires kids and teachers and as long as we have a plan for incrementally getting the schools district to where we think it should be because you can't wake up in ten years and say oh we're behind you really have to have a plan and you have to kind of get their commitment my vision is to move the district forward in three to five year chunks that put us in a good place to always be an environment that produces the best and well rounded students and i think the state takes part in budget some of that's facilities some of that's instructional models some of that is technology but you know our business is students are consumers and parents and our workforce are all teachers so we're about ninety six percent human in what we do we don't make anything you know and i think you really have to keep that in mind that the vision is to always remember that movie district forward in that way thank you for letting me ask that question are you a secondary question not directly related to that but i think you know the same way as the central office administrator talking about the workforce  know you will need to create a certain relationship with the people that that work with you but do you what is your image of how you relate to them is it for example mentor in chief like are you are you into mentoring and cultivating and or is it more that everyone has their role in you executed or what how would you describe your relationship to one of that third which is the staff the teaching staff you teach that so i'll start with  leadership stephanie quickly and then i'll be at your question so when we have the twenty four folks in the leadership team in someone asked what their what my expectation was for their district wide input or participation in the district and we do so a lot of things by committee and built by committee in milton and you might have an elementary principal working on something that's maybe involving the high school or middle school curriculum but that administrators getting to experience a very very wide of the district and i believe that that's good for them because if they want to move forward in their career they want to see the district in a different way so that is how i would like to see all of the folks who are mistreated in this district that i hope that they all want to get better at they do at what they do  hope they have some aspirations that i can support them with and if we can keep them in belmont to do it that's great but if they want to go somewhere at a at a novel another level of their career or another pathway because it's what they want i think we should always nurture that it's always great to say that  assistant superintendent or i school principal is now the principal of or the superintendent of this neighboring community they came from belmont they cut their teeth in belmont and they were nurtured here my my way of doing business with the teaching staff in the faculty in the in the food service folks in the custodians is i'm a very friendly person i just met ramiro outside he's a very nice guy he's been here for about six years and he told me that we went to contract cleaning three years ago that he thinks they do a good job that he's very happy here and that the gentleman who's today senior who's been here almost twenty eight years is a very good and hardworking guy so i took the time today to have a conversation with him while i was waiting for my turn and that's that's how i would be engaging to all of the staff i've had won jeopardy in milton so i've hired almost everybody that works there i've been there for sixteen years so i have an advantage in milton because i've been there for so long that i've gotten to know so many people and watched them go from mrs smith and miss smith to mrs jones to having children to being on maternity leave to know you know so i've watched a whole generation of teachers go through the process and it's very gratifying to know them professionally and some of them are more than that some of the move i'd be friends with  so i enjoy that the other part of his i like to have a little fun and i like to enjoy the staff so we have a staff talent show that at the high school runs we got the middle school involved and i actually saying in each of the last few years to demonstrate that you know i can have a little fun here too and i think everybody gets a kick out of it and so that's the kind of leader i am it's about relationships about getting to know people it's not a it's not a business where you don't know who you work with because those are very important people thank you we're going to sort a say on the central office thing you had mentioned to us when we were having dinner last week just an informal dinner at that as the superintendent of our assistant superintendent of curriculum to be well that the good part of that role that i have enjoyed is that i've been able to experience a lot of superintendent meetings decisions and been a part  so the role of assistant superintendent to me that that person should be a part of all those decisions but she might not have to he might not have to go to all those events with me because she may have a lot of work to do on her own so i know that her work is vital work is very important when i met with her on thursday she is a busy person so i would like to ask her a what her involvement would like to be how much would she like to shadow that she have a new career aspirations that she would benefit by coming with me to these meetings and always welcome her in the gentleman who is the assistant superintendent of business to do so but also be very respectful of what her day looks like and what she needs to accomplish in the things that she needs to get done so that would definitely be a flexible relationship that would be what's important to her but also what's important to getting the work done in the district so if i do i would i would ask her i have these three things this week i see fitting in this one i really could use your eyes on  this issue with me with parents i believe one of the issues might be curriculum or assessment let's go together so we can look at it together it's not something that i want to explain to second here and i think you need to experience that so it would definitely be a flexible lot but being very respectful of the work that she has to do that's separate from the work that i have to do but if she has a role and a desire to want to be in a superintendent's role at some point she may want to be a little more connectivity and i would encourage that i actually think that she should want this environment i have more ok what's going on and other thing looking at your application you mention that you're working towards your doctorate and have a very close or you know in that direction i just wanted to see how you see completing that work fitting in with the very full responsibility to superintend all my coursework is done which i'm very happy about in in preparation for writing my dissertation of which i have three of the five chapters done one of the things that the need to speak being such a large part of my life is i graduated three children of high school and had to prepare them for the college process which absolutely was a lot of work as a parent and supporting a speaking about stress with students it wasn't just like making sure they filled out the application of making sure they looked at a certain set of schools it was actually supporting the emotionally through the process which is very stressful time and i quite frankly underestimated that it i wanted to make sure i prioritize that over the last three years so i have i have three children college so i have done a three out of the last four years and unfortunately my son transferred one year so i actually did four out of the four years and so that was the priority i am currently going back to teach it you must boston my dissertation chair is going to teach the same course that i'm going to teach so i'm hoping that that partnership in the spring semester of two thousand and fourteen will  created an energy that i need to put back in place and prioritize a little bit by writing my three older children are thankfully healthy and in good shape in college my younger guys are just showing off that they're not that busy with a lot of high school things right now i was a freshman the sixth grader and i do believe that in the next year and a half i might be able to make some inroads on that you everybody has to prioritize in life what's important and i prioritize my work and my family and unfortunately my dissertation took third  i'm going to ask you to fast forward two years from now so it's december eleventh twenty fifteen and what do you envision your typical work day to be i expect my typical work day to be one me evaluate that decision i hope to come in every morning before my before maybe a few other folks get in so i can have that time to center my day i hope to have a full calendar of meeting with principals and teachers and students and doing work that has been done in a positive way but also in a part critical way that you know geez we're really doing well in this john but we still need a little work here and in the challenge that i enjoy about this work is always a challenge and you always are creating ways  to meet with people figure out what the next set of work might be to get a little better to move ahead in a certain area of your district so i see myself meeting with parents hopefully watching some teaching and learning during the day ensuring my visibility throughout the community if it's a school committee night being here late if it's a sport night making sure i head over to an event before i head home if there's a play or a music event being there to greet people as they come in to be present in the community  demonstrate my pride in what i have just hopefully been a part of as a as a superintendent along with the other folks that have helped make that work happen and then after that long day of returning calls and making sure that no one call that i miss i'm going home and seeing my family and getting up and doing it again thank you you're welcome i have another question as you mentioned a few moments ago in your sixteen years there you've done most of the hiring of law in the district as you many people who report you know be put to actually to you or were hired by you can you describe in your time a conflict that you might have had with an employee and how it's resolved and did you learn anything about the interaction between the interpersonal relationships and management of how those things connect sure when i came in to milton a kid entered the system as an assistant principal from boston public schools and i worked very closely with teachers at a at a different level that was i was just making they enjoyed my style we were just getting things done it was very very collaborative and so it was informal some it was for want to and i didn't know them in a very in a different way i decided to when i became principal that same school which is hard because you're going from kind of one of the guys to now in charge of the guys and i decided to moderate my interactions with staff just a little bit like i said i would go to the holiday party but i would only walk in say hi enjoy some conversation in leave i would  make sure that i was supporting staff and knowing who they are and what they needed if they needed time off or they need to leave a little early for thoughts when all those things i always continue to do those are good practices but i've removed myself just slightly to make sure that i understood that you always have to be prepared as the person in charge with your superintendent of charge of everybody or school principal in charge of your staff that you do have to have it and keep a little bit of space because you have to have hard conversations sometimes in those hard conversations could be around work performance or a situation that may be a discipline issue with it with the teacher so you always have the kind of keep those pond and i'll take it a step further living in the town and being next to a person at the soccer field to the basket court and having suspended the child makes you really aware of the fact that however you do that it needs to be done respectfully at all times and so i can go anywhere in the town and i have had  that no one can ever say oh he just did that because he didn't like me he did that to my kid because maybe he you know it my son played more basketball on the team so i think that really keeping space keeping distance keeping relationships in perspective  in my time with parents as well as in the work environment with teachers so you don't lose that ability to create relationships and work relationships but there is a little bit of a difference where you have to know and you always have to repeat confident that you can have a hard conversation n p r s with you with your staff member faculty member a fellow administrator and i think that that's a it's a discipline a little bit that you have to make sure that you that you work at maintaining good relationships but work at keeping just a little question sure absolutely popped into my head i was at my other question it seems sort of redundant ok i was at the harvard museum of natural history today because the fourth grade wellington went on a field trip and as i was leaving one of the docents who had stopped to talk to a couple of kids said to me you're from belmont right and has the greatest students and she listed a couple of reasons why she felt this to be true so i just was thinking what might she have noticed about these elementary school students to give her that impression if there's nothing it's almost like a proud parent hearing that if you're the teacher of the principal the superintendent you always want your students to  be you know to shine on behalf of the school system so what i would hope that she would see to drive me to that conclusion would be polite respectful students who has great questions there's nothing better than a student asking a great question how come why  that go who made that where did that come from so the questions that they ask in in the the confidence that they may have in their in the respectfulness by which they conduct themselves in in  media which they do i think all that would lead to say well what you guys are just great great kids and i do that when i walk into schools in the students walking down the hall in elementary school and don't be a good reader for lunch in that kind of walk and what a great mind mrs jones that's you know when you can see that there are greater and that's really important so good for the docent to be able to recognize the students it's a big part of what i think students feel really good at and i think human beings feel really good about when they hear that they're when they have got a compliment  had a school committee retreat every summer at the end of the summer we get together and just sort of country in a room like this for a day with the superintendent some of the central office staff so i was going to ask what would be your idea of topics you'd like to see an agenda if you were stepping into your superintendent  july and we were to get together you know for that initial retreat i would i would like it to be very much a time where we where we get to know each other and there's a little bit of a team building piece to it because you really have to build trust and you have to trust that the decisions that are making along with the other administrative staff jointly with those folks that are being made with your that you understand what my values are and that we have a shared understanding of who we are as people i think it's really important if you trust that my values are similar to your beliefs and values so a team building piece of it and they also i always like to retreats because you it's a nice time to look back and say what were some of the things that we did well this year in why and how come and really be reflective and then start to turn the dial up towards what september means and so this is all good stuff and we had we had some great work it's enough time to pat you on the back to prepare all of us holes in the back just a little bit but then to start to be forward thinking in the hope would be this year in july fourteenth that we've seen build that we all sit and talk about how well the first couple of years of that should teach a plan has been working in what it's going to look like in its last year and what some of that timeline in process will look like for creating that next three or four years as a group of school committee in ministry to folks on behalf of the belmont public schools so looking back learning reflecting moving a little team building in the first year and i do just want to interject a quick comment here that when we talk about a retreat it's not like we're going to the white mountains and staying in fancy hotels or anything if it's a day of  my closing statement be similar to my introduction which is i am very very comfortable here tonight with the with the five of you and i'm sorry that there are six members not here i'm very comfortable with the interactions in the conversations that i've had in belmont as you have been making calls about me i have been making calls about the town and every time i hear it will bell was the word collaborative came up with the three or four folks that i've talked to one was in teaching one was administration and that fit feels really comfortable to me so i'm here to say that i am very very interested in being the superintendent in would approach that work with  great energy great collaborative nisson respect for what all the parents and belmont want for their children that there is a high flying flagship of a district here that really needs to be respected and valued with all the different pieces that are in place already but you're trusting that to someone that you don't know and that's a hard thing for a community to do in i ask for that trust in advance that i will build in gain the trust of  five in six of you of the staff of belmont public schools in the community i will work hard for that trust i will work hard on behalf of every single child in this district you know work hard to make sure that the belmont public schools continues to grow forward in in in a way that is respectful what has happened in the past and it moves forward in a manner that the community is comfortable with in supporting in values i have a track record of being able to do that the district it almost looks like dumb one six schools around four thousand students around forty so million dollar budget for affectional development challenges student achievement challenges social emotional challenges budget challenges parents to really support and put energy and blood and sweat and tears into this system on behalf of the children and in harnessing that work of volunteer in fund raising to support the things that we can't afford from year to year through the regular budget i do that work every day i am not the superintendent of the mill public schools same only the assistant superintendent benefited from a great relationship with my superintendent that has give me a lot of those experiences so i know what that work looks like it's not new to me i am someone who has seen that first hand for the last six years and have lived it in my other ten years as a principal an assistant principal in as a parent if five children i know exactly how parents feel my six grand i went to the school that i was principal of this year and i was nervous he had to change classes i knew that would be a challenge for him it wasn't a challenge for my first four but i knew it would be a challenge and so i know that that feeling of a parent when you send your child to the big middle school or to the high school will be rigorous enough will i be able to take those courses will he or she be happy so being a  parent fortunately has give me another in additional lens to look at how people view what's important in schools and i'm a taxpayer and i know that my taxes are high hamilton and their taxes are probably high in belmont and so there really are things  need to understand about how father town can push out and how far the town can bend with their budget and how to really sit and get creative with the war committee and the folks in movie district for no way that you know everybody gets it and i'm sure everybody does get it but what i mean by getting is they understand the challenges but then after everybody and since the challenges i really feel comfortable with building relationships and talking to people i talked about the scenario with the director of the park and rec board and having it all try to be and that takes time so i feel very privileged to be here i feel my skill set my academic experience my work experience is a great fit for a district of this size and of this level of expectation  i feel that the way i go about my work what how i interact right now with you is how i will interact each day that i work in the belmont public schools i'll have a little less pressure because they can actually sit in my front stairs now if i get a job  not and i don't have to worry about everybody coming by and say here is the fail and how i missed a failing you might say it is the old timer who may be no longer with most public schools but i will be in this community i will make sure that this community sees me and i am visible here that ari the parents feel comfortable confident that i'm representing them well and that our principals and our teachers and our faculty feel that i am advocating for them in allowing them to do the work that they have been hired to do i can't say enough about the responsibility you feel when you are principal of a school and i remember the first day of being principal at the pierce middle school and i said oh my god these thousand all these thousand kids are mine the guy i'm responsible for me this is my job and that's that's a very big job and so each one of those principles deserves the support and the you know guidance and the nurturing and the resource allocation that we can give them to be successful so let them do their work provide in that framework i know how that feels as a building principal i have been one i know how it feels to be the assistant superintendent and have to get work done but also be a district level issues in and in events in balancing that and being very open  flexible with all the folks that we work with but most importantly your community will decide who do i trust this big job to because it's very important commodity that we're giving over to someone to leave that we haven't met for a long time and i very much respect that concern i very much are in prepared to build and gain the trust of the day to day shake type of approach and i ask for your trust and i would love to be the superintendent of the belmont public school so i appreciate your time it's been a long couple of weeks i appreciate mary's time it's been a couple weeks for mary's well and i'm very very proud to be considered at this point in time so thank you very much for all  know recognize that there are these color coded forms that we have a good process in place we will be meeting on tuesday the seventeenth at seven thirty to do our final deliberations and extend somebody if people from the community want to contact me i'm happy to hear more input from people or any of us so thank you very much thank you jon thank you and i will entertain a