Superintendent Search Round 1 - Andy Beaton

Just a minute. Please excuse our scrambling here. Sorry, they gave us too much of a break and we just run a muck when it happens. So, all right. Great.

Um, I'd like the Hopkins board to meet your next candidate. This is Mr. Andy Beaten. Andy, this is the Hopkins board. Hi, everyone. I think I'm gonna come around. Say hello. Hi, I'm Johanna. Hi. Hi. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, Andy. Nice to meet you. I was seeing a Maya in person. Yes. This is live. Hey, nice to meet you. Pleasure. Oh, nice to meet you. Yeah, absolutely. A little handle. Oh, nice to meet you. Thanks. Be funny. Say, I want that. Oh, great. I'm using it. Thank you. This is great. We're so we are like children. We're like, "Oh,

Good morning and welcome to the Hopkins Public Schools board meeting and also to our community here. Thank you for meeting with us about becoming our next uh superintendent. Today, our school board members will rotate asking you questions and we will all be taking notes. Please know that we are listening carefully um and just doing our due diligence to um uh record your answers. We have provided a copy of the questions to you. Please note there are 12 questions and our last question will be whether you have any questions for us. The interview is scheduled for 1 hour and MSBA will notify us when there is 30 minutes, 15 minutes, and five minutes remaining in our aotted time. I'd like to open this interview by inviting my board colleagues to introduce themselves.

Good morning. I think it's still morning. Yeah. Good morning. It's Joe. Um, I'm Johanna Hyman. This is my first year on the school board. Good morning. This is Jiming Jel. This is my third year. Hi, Brook Roer, vice chair, third year. Hello, Shannon Andre. This is my seventh year on the board. Great. I am treasurer Rachel Hartland and this is my fifth year on the board. I'm Kai Thompson. This is my third year on the board. Sarah Wilhelm Garbers. It's my first year on the board and I serve as clerk.

Thank you. Thank you. We will now get started with our first question. Tell us about yourself and why you are interested in becoming the Hopkins Public Schools next superintendent.

Uh well, first thank you for the opportunity to visit with all of you this morning. Um, it's truly a pleasure to be here. I can say uh over my 32 career year career in education. Um, as I served as a as a principal, you Hopkins was one of the school districts where I ever said, you know, if I ever choose to be a superintendent, where would I potentially like to be a superintendent? And this is one of the districts that I thought about. And now as I read more deeply into who you are, um where you have a very focused uh strategic plan, um looking at your financials and the tremendous community support that is out there, um you are near the top, if not number one, in terms of your local operating and capital projects levy that is coming in. It really speaks uh to the confidence and the support that the community has in the schools here. Um, I'm also a person that uh really believes in what you're talking about with your strategic plan about a holistic approach to education. Uh the combination of academic rigor and that wraparound support that you can provide students where students can feel safe physically, psychologically make connections um but also be pushed uh to new heights. One of the things that um I'm also appreciative of your district is um historically where you've been. You've had a superintendent that has been here for 9 years, is well respected in the community. Um and I feel like it is a great opportunity to have a launchpad to be able to go forward um from the excellent work that has been done. Historically, just my background of who I am, I like I said, 32 years in public education. I started out as a special education pair professional. Um, I was at Burnsville High School when it caught fire when they turned from the Braves to the Blaze. Uh after that where we were doing classes at 5:00 in the morning because the high school there had been arson at the high school. Um, very interesting time to my work as a teacher. I was a social studies teacher in the Robbinsdale school district. I was the first to bring advanced placement uh to that high school which is really interesting when you think about how much that has grown over time. In that role, I also became a teacher leader very quickly. I was department chair. I was invited to be a curriculum and assessment writer for both Cooper and Armstrong High School at the time. Uh so I did that in uh teaching and learning capacity. And then from there I was invited to become uh a dean of students at a middle school. So I gained a middle school experience um at Samberg Middle School in Robbinsdale. Uh and then from there moved to Columbia Heights where I became an assistant principal and principal at Columbia Heights which is a fantastic and very interesting and highly diverse community on the north side. Um, received a phone call during my tenure in Columbia Heights asking me to apply for the principal position at Bloomington Kennedy High School where I served for seven years and had tremendous results with a fantastic team of teachers and leaders. uh very diverse community much like Hopkins public schools uh and received a call uh in my seventh year uh to be able to open up really was kind of a new high school at Edina High School where they were moving from a 10 through 12 high school to a 9-2 high school. So I was part of the construction project to expand Edina High School, bring 9th grade to the high school with all the things that went along with uh curriculum and operations and hiring new staff, which is a great experience and we had great success at Donna High School. Um, the superintendent asked me to come into a new role to help uh open a Spanish immersion program at one of our elementaryaries. So at Countryside Elementary is a new Spanish immersion program. So I was hired on as a director of strategic projects. That was one of my projects um along with a big um HR pay study. So I got very deeply involved with the financials when looking at positions in the district. And then most recently my most recent position as I'm currently serving as an assistant superintendent in North St. Paul. It's my first time across the river. I've been kind of north, south, east, and west, but it's first time that I've been across the river. Um, I am so fortunate to work with such a missiondriven um, and approachable and transparent superintendent. She is great to work for. We always say that when we come into jobs, we um, we don't quit jobs, we quit bosses and we quit cultures. Um, she has built a tremendous culture. Very high poverty school district upwards about 70% free and reduced uh students in the school district of about 11,000 students. I directly supervise the secondary end of programs uh in terms of principles, but I'm also the E12 safety manager for the whole district. Um, I run the ran a recent referendum cap campaign. Unfortunately, we did not pass the referendum campaign which was disappointing. Um, and I've been really immersed in so many different things in the school district from finance to human resources, um, to safety and inclusion to now, um, helping build a new Spanish immersion program on the south side of our district, which I probably can answer later in a financial question. So, super excited to be here and um, appreciate the opportunity.

Thank you. Describe a time when you sought input from a broad group of stakeholders before making or recommending an important decision to the school district or district leadership. How did the input from those groups shape the outcome?

It was interesting when I saw this question in the other room about choosing which topic to talk about. And I'm going to talk about uh something that is newly forming that I have been out in front on which is an elementary athletic and activities access program in our school district. And I'll tell you how I got there. Um, one of my responsibilities is to provide oversight of activities and athletics in the school district. That's fine arts and sports and clubs and teams. And we have strategic metrics that would say we're looking for more students to be involved in activities, whatever that is. You can be on the basketball team, you can be involved in the Black Student Union, you can be involved in theater. Um, but our goal is to expand those possibilities and push more students into those. Um, in a community that has high poverty, some things uh related to traditional sports can often be cost prohibitive. You know, we like in a community that has a very high uh Hispanic and M population. We have two hockey rinks. Not a lot of history and legacy from where we were in North St. Paul 20 years ago. Um, but we have to find new opportunities for students to be involved in our school systems. Um, when we were looking at this group, I formed a district committee. Um, and that committee involved coaches, teachers, schoolboard members, community members, students. Um, and we built last year a process to really look at first what our goals were going to be and then look at kind of root cause analysis about why our programs um aren't as strong as we want them to be and what direction we might go. Out of that process, we came up with three big goals. One was to increase participation. One was to strengthen our feeder programs and one was to galvanize community support, get people excited, a sense of pride, brand reputation for your schools. People are excited about wearing the the red and black if you're on the north side and wearing the blue if you're on the south side. And so with that, um, one of the initiatives that came out of this was looking at, um, an elementary, um, athletics and activities league. And so how it's designed is we would have students in their own elementary schools participate in by season for example basketball in the fall or participate in um volleyball in the winter, soccer in the spring. Um, this would be a combination of staff support that would run these programs after school, but also bringing our high school students down as an opportunity through community education to serve as coaches, make a little money, and then also build that capacity within the program. Similar things we're looking at in terms of fine arts. We're having a discussion right now about an all district choir uh to be able to bring students from every elementary school together with an ensemble that is an all district choir that could also perform at high school uh choir concerts at both the north and the south side. But our purpose in terms of how we brought that together um and I'm getting back to the question here is the community input was very important for us to be able to guide the direction that we were going and now that we are proposing this elementary activities access program. I have presented in front of our education foundation to talk about piloting some of this program. I have talked to um a number of nonprofits and we're looking to potentially get into an agreement with the Sana Foundation uh to be able to help us financially jumpst start this program. And remember, this is in the midst of us making significant budget cuts. So, it's, you know, how do we communicate at the same time we're making significant bud budget cuts that this is something that is critically important for our future and the capacity of our students and the excitement about our students. So, um, going forward, um, we're hoping, uh, through the foundation, uh, dollars that are coming in, looking at where our fund balances this summer to see if we're in good shape potentially to jump start this program, at least on a pilot basis, um, we're ready to go and, um, I think this is going to be something that will build some brand reputation and excitement in our school district.

Thank you. How do you balance empowering others to lead with ensuring strong oversight and follow-through? Please speak to your experience delegating as well as holding others accountable.

Yeah, I'm going to speak about um one of our high schools and a a principal that I supervise. He is um just a tremendous uh school administrator. Strong staff support, cares about the people that work for him, very aligned administrative team, highly focused about how they do management in the building and supervision. The kids know that the staff cares about cares about them in the school. Parents appreciate the efforts that are there. But when I was also looking at another data piece, their graduation rate is not where I wanted to be. Some of the grades that students were getting, especially in nth grade, were not where they needed to be. So some of the conversations when I think about accountability and my expectations of working with that principal is saying how do we take all of the things that you have built, all of the capacity you have built with your staff, all of the capacity that you have built with your community and the relationships that you have built to push this school to new heights. And I have an expectation that that graduation rate will be over 90% in two years. Okay, we were about last round became 86.3. Um, we're looking at 90% two years from now. And part of that was making sure that I didn't overlay my own specific projects or initiatives on top of this school with an experienced and thoughtful um thoughtful leader. But what I did do is say this is the expectation and and here are some frameworks that you should think about. Instead of focusing on attendance and behavior, we flipped it. Your focus was going to be on academics first. So sometimes the conversation could be until students get to class, they can't learn. Until students behavior is better, they really can't learn. And we were changing the dialogue that would be when students perform better in the classroom, when they have a sense of efficacy, when they feel like this is a good place for me to be and I understand what's going on in math today, they show up more. There's fewer behavior issues. So, it was a flip in the narrative. As much as this principal was a great manager, we started to talk a lot more about instruction. And one of the things that they did and and I asked them to do is to start thinking about students in terms of the barriers that are preventing them from being successful. And we put it in very simple terms and try to make this as focused as possible. Was this an issue of skill? When a student was failing a class, they had academic deficits that needed to be addressed. Or was this a will issue? Was this a behavioral issue? Was this a motivation issue? So out of these conversations um I was blown away about what their team put together. Um, they put together a staff development for their teams. They talked about a profile and different profiles for students around will and skill about what the needs were, what was available to us, what we should do when a student is demonstrating this type of behavior and struggle. My insistence on transparency with grades that grades were pulled in our trimester system every three weeks and given back to teachers disagregated here's how many students are doing well and here's how many students are not in chemistry and world history parents were given information every 3 weeks about um Andy your kid is really struggling right now in world history contact us and here's what we're doing right now um a restructure of their student support team process where they were collecting data on a more timely basis and responding to it. Um, we kind of talk about that in terms of giving the right medicine instead of waiting until the end in the autopsy afterward when the student already has failed. So what came out of that and I'm going to give it a moniker because the principal gave it a moniker and he called it their 3x3 initiative and I love it because it's just super simple and I think a lot of things that really work well are simple and focused and this 3x3 initiative was a challenge in their school especially with research we had done about how starting strong makes a difference for the intent the entire uh trimester that they had a goal for students to have a 3.0 know every student in that building 3 weeks into the trimester. It was a simple one, right? And not based on not doing anything important, but after that first exam, after that first project to really have a student see themselves as I'm seeing myself as a B student for the rest of this term. I'm seeing myself as an A student for the rest of this term. I use this 3x3 because it also was more about culture than it was about one specific event. And in terms of my balancing um my need to hold people accountable, I think this principle I work with feels my presence and need, but also I think feels uh like I am going to be there for him. I'm going to be there. um I'm going to support him and when given the right given the right push, the right support um taking that school to new heights and their data so far this year have been incredible um in terms of how they've done uh the significant decline in students that were failing courses. And when that happens, these are students that take future elective courses, are not in credit recovery programs, are connected to the school, have fewer behavior and attendance issues. So, I'm really excited what that principal has brought.

Thank you. Tell us about a situation when you discovered a mistake, oversight or problem in your district or building that reflected poorly on leadership. What did you do? What was the result? And would you handle it differently next time?

Yeah, I think that it's really important to remember that um when you're talking about schools, teachers, we're talking about human beings and we're talking about um their passions, their talents, what they bring. Um, each school has its own culture in many ways. Um, I think that is built from the leader. But I'm going to speak to an example about a situation that I had to address. Um, and it tied into all the work we were doing recently around um, unfortunately around Operation Metro Surge, which really hit our community very hard from the standpoint of staff um, that were detained to students that didn't have parents in their homes anymore. Um, it was a really a dramatic time and and my goal with working with principles um was to try to lower the temperature uh in schools was trying to make school um that place of normaly for students with everything else that was going around in the community having our focus be around um academic performance relationships sense of normaly as this was going on. But I I will speak to um one issue I had to deal with um related to a staff culture piece and a principal who was highly determined and has been highly determined to continue with academic performance growth that they have had um at their middle school. Okay, which is tremendous. But when you think about cultures and schools, I always think about this combination of both expectations of success, but also humanity. Okay? And our our strongest cultures in classrooms, in schools, at the district office is a culture that I would call a rigorous culture. High levels of expectations of performance. Okay? You coach the basketball team in Hopkins, high levels of expectations of performance, but there all should be high levels of humanity. It should feel great to play for the Hopkins basketball team. It should feel great to be a teacher at this school. It should feel great to be a student in this classroom. Okay? Even though it's hard, even though it's challenging. The other areas where you have situations where you have high levels of humanity but low expectations. I would call that quadrant blind. Okay, where we are making excuses. That was not the situation with this principle I'm going to talk about. You also could have a situation where there is high expectations of performance and not enough humanity. And that's where the school was sitting. Okay? And I don't think it was because of anything intentional. I don't think it was because this leader did not care about their staff. I think they deeply felt that if they could just get the kids in school every day and if our teachers could focus on math instruction and literacy instruction and so on, this would maybe this would all kind of go away. Okay. Um, but unfortunately it wasn't going away and this is in the hearts and minds of the staff in our in that building and the parents of our building and so on. and mistakes were made in terms of um blind spots, in terms of listening, with cultural liaison, with parents. Um, that combination wasn't there that we had, yes, we need you to be in school, but we also recognize the dramatic fear that is happening within some families in our community and finding ways to be able to support that. And so getting back to this question, um, when I had to address it is because information was coming to me about what it felt like to be in this building right now. You know, where feeling like we couldn't express the kind of empathy that we wanted for our kids and families without feeling like we were getting push back from from leadership around what we should be talking about, what should we should be thinking about. So, I did a lot of um interviews with people in the building and finally addressing this directly with uh the school administrator about what needed to happen. I think it was a very eyeopening uh conversation with a talented school administrator about how you build trust by giving trust. you know, you give trust to people, your liaison, your parents, um, and not having to have so much control over every facet of of every day and every situation. So, if I was going to handle it differently, um, I think that the piece that I would have done is I I I would have addressed it sooner. Okay? And I think uh if I was made any mistake before it became something that was more dramatic for some people more feeling like um calls were coming to my office when I was recognizing initially in my conversation with cultural liaison about how they were having concerns. Um, that's one thing that I would have done differently. I'm I'm happy with the outcome and how it was addressed um in the end. Um, but I think that it was important that this principal knew that as much as we were focused on on performance and success of kids in the school, we had to balance that with the humanity that we have for our kids and families.

Thank you. Please share an example of a time when you used financial data to guide a recommendation or decision affecting programs, staffing, or operations.

Yeah. Don't we hate it that this is what we're talking about so often? Um, I was I was reflecting on my very long career in public education and then my career as a school administrator and a district administrator. I have had one year out of all those years where we haven't made budget reductions. Out of all those years, it seems insane. Um, but um, as you know and as many schools um in the state of Minnesota know that the cost of doing business has outpaced the revenue that's coming in. You know, Hopkins is doing everything in its power to be able to have that revenue come in in terms of its local support and so on. I mean to compare, you know, our referendum going down and it was interesting uh and disappointing this last year is all of our pre-ervey data said how much our families support our schools, but it also said how f financially strapped they were. And also when we looked at our voter participation after the election, very low. So access is a factor. I could get into a much larger and broader conversation about the disparities between communities and the funding that comes into schools, but I will speak to what I have done recently. And um, we have made about $12 million in cuts over the last two years in our school district. Okay? And school district of about 11,000. I have been at the table for every one of these conversations about how we get there. Obviously, our goals were always around trying to stay away from the classroom as much as possible. Um, being on the secondary side, I know that making reductions on the secondary side is a little bit easier from a classroom standpoint than on the elementary side. When you think about sections, you've got 15 sections of chemistry and you can decide you're going to have 14 sections of chemistry. That doesn't work so well when you have three sections of third grade. and and how do you make those reductions in elementary school? It's very difficult. But I was tasked with helping us get to a number and so collaboration with our principles about thinking about where we get to the numbers. I will say in our first year, my first year, our budget cuts uh were a little bit easier. Um, we have no more lowhanging fruit in our school district. Um, but I can say in the first year one of the things that I proposed um was a middle school schedule change. We were on a block schedule in the middle school and we switched to align with the high schools to a 6x3 schedule um because that uh significantly reduces costs and allows us to continue to run elective programs and so on. It's different instructional model is different and out of that change uh there's a lot of work to be done about I have been currently teaching in 85 minute classes and now I'm teaching in 55 minute classes what does that mean in terms of um how I teach instead of teaching for um a term or u two terms now I'm teaching a fullyear class so the dynamics of that is not as simple as just saying hey let's just switch schedules so a lot of that decision was a financial decision, but it was also an opportunity because we had gotten feedback and about the block schedule for middle school that some teachers uh were feeling strongly that they wanted to align uh with the high schools. So from a financial decision, we took that opportunity. I was much more deeply involved to make these budget reductions look looking specifically at sections. Historically in the district in many ways the schools had provided the district with what they thought they needed in terms of staffing like and I would have liked that as a principal you know um but they were basically saying this is what we need. Um that was flipped a little bit and and it was specific. We looked specifically at registration numbers and courses. I made proposals about what those sections would be. I did professional development with the board about how we made budget cuts here. So, if you were a board member and you had a section of 43 kids, is that one section or two sections? You know, um if it's two sections, um do you decide that you're going to keep those classes smaller at the expense of having other classes bigger? So, a lot of conversation and professional development and coaching about what uh this actually means when you're doing a master schedule and you're doing budget cuts. At the same time, uh, I was involved with teacher negotiations and through teacher negotiations, um, we made proposals around, um, an early retirement incentive that came forward tied to covering some health care costs going forward and creating a bridge for people in health care that they were close to retirement, people that had been 20 plus years in the school district. uh and again as a cost savings and an opportunity. So we did have some teachers that took us up on that opportunity and this is again budget cutting and negotiating our teacher contract at the same time and they did get a fair settlement and we settled um during that same time. Another piece that was going on was also looking at um was looking at our self-insured um healthcare program and I think Hopkins is self-insured as well. Um, but obviously when you're looking at um monthly to see what are our costs that are coming in, what's our what's our fund balance when it's looking at how much we have to be able to pay for benefits. Um in our district and through negotiations we had um one which was a co-ay model and one was a high deductible um model for teachers. Um, part of our negotiations was to incentivize and increase the district contribution if people switched to the highdeductible healthcare plan and we had many people move over which again was a cost-saving for us long term. We know the costs of health care have just been uh very difficult for all of us uh to be able to manage. But again, in the midst of how we're going to get to these budget numbers, this is a way that we did it through negotiations. At the same time, we're trying to build revenue, right? We went out for a referendum. Unfortunately, that did not pass. But also, uh another proposal that I made is that we do have a a Spanish dual language immersion program on the north side of our district and it's been very popular and and doing very well. But I also started to look at where those kids are coming from. It's a district-wide program and we would bus students from anywhere in the district to this elementary school. But I mapped out where students were from and essentially this is a neighborhood school. That's what that's what the trends are showing me that that kids are coming from this neighborhood to go to this school. They're not coming from the south side of our district and the south side of our district. Uh we have one area in our district called Landfall, which is a almost exclusively Hispanic uh community and we thought we would have had maybe more students be involved, but all of those students were going to their neighborhood elementary school, Carver Elementary School. And we also have a charter school sitting right in the south side of our our school district that does draw up some of our students in our district. So I propose to build a southside Spanish immersion program out of Carver Elementary School, which we are starting uh in kindergarten this fall, which is really exciting. So at the same time that we can do budget cuts, we can also talk about ways that we can try to build revenue. And um, it has to go hand in hand um to be able to maintain the programs that we want and and we also think a little bit about um what are the opportunities we are we are in the midst of budget cuts but how does this create opportunities for us with negotiations with a new Spanish immersion um program that we have in the south side of our district. So sometimes these things although they are negative they are a catalyst sometimes for things that you need to do.

Thank you. 3 minutes. Okay. Please describe a situation when you felt that transparency was difficult but necessary. How did you communicate with stakeholders? What was the outcome and what did you learn from that experience?

Excuse me. Okay. Well, I'm going to talk about a situation that's really kind of gross. I'm sorry. Um, I was sitting in a cabinet meeting last year and I got a call from the Maplewood Police Department. Okay. I stepped out to take the call from Lieutenant because I again I'm the safety uh director for the school district and he was telling me about a staff member um who was a non-licensed staff member who was going to be um arrested for possession of child pornography. Okay. And in terms of the the wheels and the things that started happening from a communication and a response standpoint, um, first determining where this person was, it was about 7:30 in the morning. Had they reported to work, which they hadn't, working with the police department to ask when this arrest was going to happen. he was going to be picked up before he reported to work. To making sure that we immediately sent um a leave notice to this employee to not appear at work regardless of what happened if he got picked up and released, not until we investigated. Um, from there it's the communication standpoint of looping in the superintendent, looping in the principles where this person worked. And there was a person who was a um, a traffic uh monitor at our some of our secondary schools and was a recess monitor at one of our elementary schools. So that was the starting point uh for this issue. Um, from there uh unfortunately uh it was determined that this individual had taken photos of students in the capacity at work and was using those photos and using AI to create child pornography. Okay. So this was through the investigation. And this is me having phone conversations with the Maplewood investigator to then having conversations with the FBI and the Secret Service and our principles that had to identify the faces of potentially students that were in their building to the conversations that the district had to have with these individual families and the FBI and Secret Service getting involved with this piece as well. Um, and this was almost 6 months this whole process. and when charged immediately terminated. Um, so that piece was there to the next step of how we communicate the circumstance um and community meetings that we had at these elementary this elementary school where this person worked. There was no real interface at the secondary schools. They're outside the building. But uh and there was no victims at the secondary schools. It was it was this one elementary school. And also we determined that it was another neighboring school district where this person had worked in summer programs that was doing the same thing. So another district was involved. So my collaboration with that district around communication and responses and so on um to um eventually um it led to some focus and changes that we had within our school district. Um, we were good. background check had been done. Never any performance concerns with this individual, but we started to talk about some some pieces that were loose in our organization in terms of do we take photos of students ever? Do people use their own cell phones when you're the basketball coach and do you take photos of kids and post it on on Instagram? Um, because again this was any image that could be potentially of a minor could be potentially um uh manipulated and used in nefarious ways. So uh we wrote new practices and policies around photos um permissions to take photos only photos that are uploaded in our school district servers. They're never meant to be on a on a person's individual phone. um even if it's for a yearbook, even if it's for sports and things like that. uh training that we did. We are fortunate that we have a community partner in our community called um um CAST um which is um a antisex trafficking organization that's in the east metro and I worked with their director around first curriculum um that we could put in our health classrooms related to boundaries and recognizing boundaries. All of our staff are now required to take sexual exploitation um prevention training as part of their onboarding coming into the school district. All of our coaches have to go through training related to boundaries. You don't put kids in your vehicles. You don't take kids pictures of kids. You um you are need to protect yourself and your students in these situations. Um, and then just last week I did my second annual community forum with CAST um and the our local police department around this very topic and it was a virtual meeting. I've had about 40 parents ca came on last year was more um but we are going to have this be an annual review. So getting back to this question about transparency being difficult. Yeah, absolutely. This is not something that you want to share with your community. Um, but one thing I have learned from the superintendent I work with is that she is very transparent and and believes strongly and I I agree with her that it's better for the community to hear something even when bad from us than it is for them to spot it on social media or hear about from their neighbor at Aldi. you know, we want people to know um even when things are um not great because it also demonstrates how we handled the situation. It shows the professionalism. Um humans are messy. Um there's things that are difficult that happen with employees, with students and so on. We need to be transparent about that communication. So there's my example.

Thank you.

Sorry, issues turning pages here. Okay. Um, equity is important in Hopkins. Will you please share a time when you've led a change designed to improve equity, access, or opportunities for students with differing needs and backgrounds? And over time, what was the impact of that change?

Yeah, I think the thing that pops to mind is something that I am um very proud of that I I did in Edina. That's we're having that conversation now in North St. Paul about the the same topic and and what it is if I was going to put a name on it. I called it universal accommodations. Okay. And the situation was I was in Edina High School. I was the principal and we saw that we had many students and families that were requesting 504s. Okay. Discussion about that for all different reasons about 504s. And so uh we were looking at that process about how who case manages 504s, how we do the evaluation process and so on. Um, but out of that I started to look at 504s themselves and the accommodations that were in 504s. And what I started to ask myself I said are these accommodations really accommodations related to a disability or a medical diagnosis or is this just good instruction? So this is the question I started to ask myself. And so the process what we did is we pulled together our most frequent accommodations that we saw in our 504s. And I surveyed the staff and I asked the staff, "Is this something that you always do? Is this something that you would do if a student asked for you to help him with or is this something you only would do as if this was a 504 IEP legal document? Okay, so we asked that question about a whole series of accommodations and the data was unbelievable. You can imagine it was all over the place. We had teachers in our buildings that would say sure I I provide this all the time or I I would provide this for a student if they asked for it. So even with the same questions we saw first the disparity classroom to classroom that we had to address. Right? This is not it's not okay that you know I go to class on this side of the hallway and get a different level of support than I get across the hallway. Okay. So with that, we started to look at all of those areas where teachers either said, "Absolutely, I'd do it to for all students or I would do it if a student asked me to." And we created a group of accommodations that we determined as a school would be universal accommodations for every student regardless of IEP, 504, AP, any class. And these over time were expected to be in everyone's syllabi. You can expect that these are the supports that I will give you in this class upon request and so on. The result of that was significant decline in 504 requests. That was one piece. But also it it aligned and strengthened instruction across the school. It didn't become something where it was a strange thing to to ask for some additional resources or a strange thing to to ask for a break. Um, things that we were putting into legal documents that should really be about helping students move forward academically and feel safe and comfortable in their classrooms. So we're having actually having that conversation. I am right now with with principles in um North St. right now because I think it is a simple nocost way to create strong alignment and to serve the needs of all of our students.

Thank you.

Yeah, academic outcomes are also important here. So, please share a situation in which you work to improve academic outcomes through changes in curriculum, instruction, or assessment. What was the impact of your work and how did it impact student outcomes?

Yeah. Um, if you'd look at my history and I think I have some of that in in my resume, um, I have found success driving graduation rates, improving MCA scores, um, reducing incidents of violence everywhere that I've been. Okay, different contexts. I know this is the time you get to brag about yourself when you're interviewing but different contexts um finding the strengths of the organization and helping us move the needle in all those organizations. Okay. Uh I will say on this answer the lenses that I look at when we're talking about school improvement is a management lens how we do operations in our school an instructional lens how we do instruction and a learning supports lens. Okay. So all those three three things have to come together. Okay. I spoke in a previous answer about um one of my high school principles that we were flipping the conversation to be about academics first. Okay. But one of the things that also um I'm bringing forward now is something that I would call um engagement drivers. Um, because I do think as much as aligned curriculum, standardsbased curriculum is critically important. I think often especially at the secondary level, we don't talk about instruction enough. How we deliver, how we create engagement for our students. Okay. So over time, over a very long career, I have determined um some engagement drivers. The first one is purpose. Students need to know uh what they're learning and why they're learning on a daily basis. And it doesn't have to be just like writing that on the board, your learning outcome is h nobody talks about it. It's a discussion with students. Um, every classroom every day should have student voice in it. And I can imagine especially when you look at Hopkins High School that's in the block. You imagine that if you're in an entire classroom and you don't speak in an entire classroom, what that would be like. So every day um and systems have to be put in place to actually create that student voice in the classroom. Calling on students directly, having turn-in talks, having students um work in groups, all of that has to happen um intentionally to create uh that student voice. The next is movement. Um, you all took a break after two interviews because it gets it gets long to sit in a chair and do something. Imagine if you're a student again for 7 hours that is not giving an opportunity to move and not move like say, "Hey everybody, let's quit learning and just do yoga and stretch." No. What are what are strategies that we use in instruction to create movement? We're going to do this four corners activity. Make a silent appointment with your classmate and go talk to them about this question. Use your whiteboard, your mini whiteboard, and go over and compare answers. Small things that create engagement. We know it's tied very much to brain research. So 15 minutes uh tied to brain research. So uh purpose student voice movement checking for understanding is the the next one is that every day uh teachers should be checking for understanding and that is both for uh determining if students have learned what you wanted and also it's data for teachers every day. when I determined that I asked three questions the students in the group and they're like I like your shoes or hey um you know what that's not what I asked you about. So if you're getting a sense that students were not getting uh what I wanted that's data for the teacher to be able to in to reflect on what their instruction was like that day and be able to make improvements. And that final one is community. Okay, when you're in a classroom you get a sense about whether students know each other. A good test is at the end of the term, does the student know ev every name not just of the teacher but everybody else in the classroom? You get a sense of whether there's community in that classroom. So those five engagement drivers are something that I have pushed forward and they're part of the walkthrough form that we have in our district now is that our principles are coming in and again what I like about it is that is across content areas. Those engagement drivers work for science. They work for third grade. They work for AP bio. They work. Content is content. And we have to get there. But the engagement drivers about how we do instruction. It doesn't mean you do them in order or you do them prescriptively one after the other or anything like that. But that thinking about that every single day and trying

To have this be a simple piece that the common language that you can have in your school around instruction. I have found that it has tremendous impact on how students find a sense of efficacy in their classroom and the data that you collect for teachers to have kids move forward. So, thank you.

How do you build trust with groups that may feel disconnected from, cautious toward or skeptical about district leadership?

Yeah. Um I am going to talk about um how accountability and trust go together in my opinion. But I also think that there are school districts that fail uh to build trust because they are only focused on certain data metrics. our MCA scores, our graduation rates, here's our data numbers, and so on, which that that quantitative data is critically important. There needs to be those kind of data metrics that are there. But I think that one of the problems with building trust is that if that's all you're delivering to your community is a green line that's going this direction or a black line that's going this direction or seeing where it's you're compared to Minnotonka or Edina, it doesn't tell the story.

And this is where um over the last two years I have been working with principles to be able to shift um the way we communicate both our strengths, our areas that we're working on and the things that we need to do right now. What are our do nows to be able to address right now? and they are tied uh to some research um that a gentleman named John Tanner did very interesting research when he is talking about accountability being tied to the hopes and dreams of families okay I'm a parent many of you are parents you think about what are the hopes and dreams for your kids right it's not about MCA scores no we want them to be reading and doing math but that's not the way you talk about the hopes and dreams for your kids. It's about their wellness. Um, do they have friends? Do they feel safe at school both physically and psychologically? Your kids in fifth grade, are they ready for sixth grade? Right? They're in eighth grade, are they ready for nth grade? They're a senior. Are they ready for their next levels? That future readiness, we should be talking about future readiness in that way, right? Um, community connections, the family engagement that we do as a parent. Do I feel like I have a two-way relationship with my school? Not just one way, not just getting the newsletter, but do I really have a two-way relationship uh with the school district, with my principal?

So, that's the kind of dialogue that I'm trying to bring bring in partnered with our strategic plan, partnered with the data metrics that we have to demonstrate. We clearly want our MCA scores to improve. We clearly want our graduation rates to improve. So this last year was really exciting is as I met with the school board at a work session to tell them you're going to you're going to hear some things differently from from principles. You're going to hear some things where they're going to be talking about both um the strategic plan and the data metrics that you ask for. But they're also going to be talking about these hopes and dreams and they're going to be talking about how they are addressing these very questions. They're going to describe how they're trying to address future readiness. they're going to describe how the things that they're doing to create a sense of wellness and belonging in their school. So, I think uh if you want to watch a board meeting um where the uh secondary and the elementary principles uh presented recently, you'll see an example of how we combine those things and and I think what it did at first our board I think really enjoyed it. I think it was it gave a much stronger inside look about uh the talent and the hard work and all the efforts that we're doing to try to meet the strategic plan which ultimately um is a trust building exercise you know and and I think when you have families that are talking about their schools you know they're they are running into their friend at Aldi and and their friend's like oh what's going on I'm hearing about the middle school you know they can speak to it. They can speak to it and said, "Oh my gosh, I have a great relationship with the principal. Their door is always open. My kids are doing great there." I mean, that is the most powerful marketing that we can do beyond our videos and brochures. It's how we build capacity uh with the residents and the families that uh attend our schools.

Thank you.

Please describe a situation in which your first communication on an issue did not land the way you intended. How did you recognize that and what did you do next?

Okay, I got to speed up. Yep. So, um I'll give an example of um a principal that was struggling with their uh administrative team. And I would describe the culture as again very strong principal, great with students, great with families internally in their own administrative team, not on the same page. And I would describe it as um if I was going to put it out there, I would say it was a lack of cander from this principal. Um a lack of directly addressing um the issue with two of their assistant principles and a and confronting some of the things that were happening. I was right. Okay. in terms of what I was seeing. My mistake and this is the question. My mistake is that I was far too prescriptive and directive with this principle. Okay. when I met with them outlining too many of the things that I saw and expectations that needed to happen and and so it came across in that meeting as directive from your boss disciplinary almost which was not the case. I think this is a dynamite principle okay and trying to help them be more successful. So, um, if I was going to do it again, when I recognized and first this principal kind of let me have it, which was great. Okay. About how that felt. Okay. So, I it was a great learning moment for me, uh, to be able to say, look, you're right. Um, there was nothing on this document that I created for Horde that I disagreed with. Okay. But the way I approached it when I when I go back to that previous answer, when I set an expectation for a principal and let them run with it and be creative, I didn't do that in this circumstance. And that's what I needed to do. And in the end, we're good. We're good. And this principal is also really doing many of the things that I described, but in a way that that this principal can own. Okay, that made sense to them. So my much more brief answer

In your current or in your current or past positions, how do you approach working with a school board in a way that's both cooperative and appropriately role conscious? In your opinion, what does true partnership look like between a board and superintendent?

Yeah. Well, the relationship with a board is critical with a superintendent. There has to be mutual respect and trust. This is what you do. You hire a superintendent to bring the vision into reality. That's what you do. And and the superintendent's job is to operationalize vision 2031, put it in place, create the data metrics, and do that. So, but also there's that transparency of relationship. I think the one-on- ones that a superintendent has with each board member, um the conversations, uh we have behind the scenes to come together. So, when we're when we're out in front as a group, um the arrows are going the same direction for the for the school board. And that's where you have power, not about just being passive and doing whatever the superintendent wants, but the discussions have to happen in those work sessions. Those discussions have to happen um in those one-on- ones. So then we decide and and we're not always going to be on the same page about everything, but when we are out in front and and demonstrating what we're doing in the community, the arrows are going in the same direction and and this community knows that we're on the same page. Um so other things that I had talked about uh previously is um you know my job if I am fortunate enough to become the superintendent is to match the adult behaviors in this community and what we do with the priorities that the school board has set.

Thank you.

Great. Our final question is what questions do you have for us?

I did such a good job speeding up. Okay. three minutes. Okay. All right. So, I I think we'll see the question as first as I wanted to ask and anyone can answer is maybe telling us uh why you decided to run for the school board and what are your hopes in your partnership with the new superintendent.

Great. Who would like to take that first?

Chair Andre.

Yes. Hi. Um, I initially ran for school board um because I sort of view my own career and journey as perpetually asking why. And I deeply invested in this community, deeply invested in the work of the schools and wanted to know why things are the way they are. And that has then since led to also chairing our legislative action coalition because why are things the way they are in the schools? Um, because of legislation. And so a relationship, a successful relationship to me would be one that explores those wise together and is constantly looking for ways to bring people into the conversation and ways that um we can continuously improve. and that that looks like different things in different buildings and for different students, but um to be able to have those discussions that you referenced and and to have it be a community effort.

Great. Thank you.

Yes.

Thank you for the question. Um, I ran for school board most recently with um, clerk Wilhelm Garbers and uh, Treasure H Heartland. And so this is probably top more top of memory I guess. Um, I think the primary reason um, I decided to run for school board was because I heard a lot of people complaining and not doing anything. And if you want to see change happen, you have to put your money where your mouth is. And I felt that a lot of people had a lot to say. Um, some good, some bad, but no one wanted to do anything. And so I view myself as an advocate and a representative of the community and felt that if I could put my seat in one of those chairs, um, we could actually move the needle on some things that people were genuinely concerned about. um instead of just you know open enrolling to another school district or pulling your kid or um complaining moving in intra district even. Uh there there are ways to solve problems but you have to you have to put the effort in to get the job done.

Thank you. Uh and to talk a little bit about that for me uh well I've got kids in the we all have kids in the district so um we obviously upbeat about the district uh or else we wouldn't be here. Um, I think I think we have something special here and I I don't think, you know, there's blemishes. There's things we can work on certainly, but I think that the promise of the district is uh, you know, at our core, you know, at our what our hopes and dreams are, I think we could be a wildly successful district and I think we can, you know, bring it to the next level and that's really what I'm looking for.

Thank you. I will say that I ran for uh school board because I wanted to be a part of shaping the innovation of public education. I see where it has been. I see where it's going. And I also believe in the promise of Hopkins. I see so many wonderful things about the district and wanting to be a part of um of narrating the great things about um our students and our staff who work so hard um regardless of some of the challenges that every district faces. And so my my goal was to make sure that I uplift those voices while also addressing the concerns that were um at the core of um you know our community. But overall, I wanted just to make sure I was an advocate for our our district in a way that made folks want to enroll. Um, but also I think the the relationship between a superintendent and a um and a school board member definitely needs to be mutual and respectful and have boundaries. Um, but also something that we're able to move in the same direction together, which you had mentioned during your uh last answer. So, thank you.

Thank you. I'll just take a quick opportunity um to talk about first why I initially ran was because I uh was was a deeply involved parent volunteer um across the board, a member of the LACE, but also um became a part of the task forces that shaped vision 2031 as a parent and community member. And that process really uh showed to me the promise and inspired me to to run for office um for this office because I wanted to be part of um dispersing the silos that education often finds themsself in. I have the privilege and honor of parenting um children who access services across the educational landscape and I saw the ways in which we weren't utilizing our resources across the district and through this um this time I've been on the board and also through um Dr. Mary Perry Reed's leadership, I've watched those silos become um open and flowing and we are using our resources for all students. um I think much more efficiently and effectively. So my hope is um and why I ran for reelection is to continue that work, that focus and that um that that really unfettered concentration on each student and their success and their future. And um I really hope that our new superintendent can continue that legacy but also fill in the gaps that we still need to work on in reducing disparities.

We're at zero.

Okay.

Sorry. Um thank you so much for being here with us this evening. I mean this afternoon. I don't know where we are. I've been in a room all day. Um uh just really thank you for joining us and we will be in contact this evening after the school board has finished our deliberations.

Okay. Thank you so much for the opportunity. It was really a pleasure to speak with you today. Thank you so much.

Next interview starts at quarter to 1. And if you'd like to grab something