Personnel, Student, School, and Community Support Committee - Regular Meeting

Welcome to the Personnel, Student, School, and Community Support Committee meeting for May 6th. Coming in as your fourth string chair. I didn't say fourth. I can read the list. I'm the fourth string chair. Pinch hitting. I'll call the meeting to order. The members are Steve Gallin as our chair, Mary Blanco as our vice chair, Dorothy Bendros-Mendigal, myself as members, alternate members Robert Alonzo and Joe Geller, Ex-officio, Marietta Ross, Monica Lucci, and non-voting, Luisa Santos. First order of business is the minutes. May I have a motion?

Seeing no other opposition, may I have a motion to bring the D items to the floor?

Board Member Alonzo, do you have any comments on the Ds? Seeing no comments, entertain a motion to approve the D items.

Motion to bring the G items to the floor, please.

That's my comment. Additional comments? Board Member Geller.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to echo the Board Chair's words, Mr. Harvey, about what a terrific job you do. And as somebody in the business, I recognize things that may not always stand out to members of the public. Probably my colleagues have been here long enough to be able to appreciate them, but others may not. In fact, an item that will be coming before us next week, I may as well mention. I don't think it's... letting the cat out of the bag because it's a matter of public record, but you're seeking good cause. And I can't say how pleased I am that we've got coming before us a settle

Thank you so much. Seeing no comments, I'll just add that, like Board Member Geller, we've both had the opportunity to practice law in a public setting. It's a very interesting way to represent a client with interesting public dynamics, internal dynamics, and I respect the work that you're doing, and I appreciate everything you've done.

Thank you very much. Entertain a motion to bring the H items to the floor? Move it. Second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. H7 is mine. Actually, colleagues, I think somebody mentioned, and our board chair did, and board member Geller mentioned the fact that there is quite upheaval in Cuba right now. And as Secretary Rubio said, I believe, yesterday or just the other day, you have a country being run not by communists but by incompetent communists. And at this point, it seems that Cuba is on the verge of an evolution, hopefully a positive one. So with that in mind, we certainly have seen upheavals

Thank you, Madam Chair. So I will be adding a number 11, continue review of the student influx guide in accordance with your recommendation. Okay, perfect. Any other comments? Seeing none, yes, Board McGillard.

Just a great item, and I want to cosponsor it at the appropriate time. It's very much needed, and thank you for bringing it forward.

Thank you, sir. Motion for cosponsorship?

Motion to recommend the item as amended. Second. All in favor? Okay, thank you so much, colleagues. That exhausts our main agenda. On to new business. I'm going to take them a little bit out of order. Staff follow-up, Agenda H-7. I'm sorry, new business for the board members. Forgive me.

Thank you, Board Member Santos. I was looking forward to this. I really was. I mean, I had heard first, I'm sorry to interject, but I had first heard through comments at ABC that we both had expressed to the administration some challenges that we experienced during important transitions in ours. Does anybody want to go ahead and speak first on the item?

Yeah, I mean, so I encountered almost all of these things that you mentioned here. I think one of the biggest issues is fine, they get caught off guard. You can potentially catch them up. But then even when they buy into the idea of the fact that it doesn't get approved until June left parents with a lot of concern of just, well, am I going to be able to get in? And so for Miami Springs, which will now be Miami Springs Preparatory Academy, it's a school-wide magnet with an attendance boundary. So the kids are, you know, if you're in the boundary, you're getting in, and if you're not, you can j

From my point, I welcome taking that feedback and running with it, Board Member Santos, and seeing what you come up with, and we'll make the sausage next month.

Any preliminary feedback from the administration? I'm not going to hold you to it, it's okay.

Thank you, Board Member Santos. Appreciate that. Any other Board Member items for discussion? Seeing none, let's just jump one ahead to follow up for agenda item H7. I believe this is your item, Board Member Colucci. Any comments on that?

Colleagues, any other comments? The only thing I'll say is I had an opportunity to speak to the superintendent about this, and specifically about the items that were discussed at the last meeting. And again, I tend to be very candid up here, and it's just, I think bringing, to use your saying, with you on the takeoff, with you on the landing, I think that was a premium example of that where most of us, especially with regard to your items, weren't on the takeoff, didn't even get brought in until we're about to land, And as we're screaming towards the earth, you know, people wonder why. I mean,

But before we get to that, if you can just lead us in. And then what I'd like to do, board members, is hear his presentation, have discussion, and then when we're ready for it, bring the presentation in.

Thank you, Mr. Harvey. What I'd like to do is... So in my mind, there are two things that we're talking about here. One is the contract with the facilitator. The other thing is... the dates and process for the remaining part of it, because really I thought that ultimately they would be synthesized as opposed to accepting somebody else's as you've gone through this process. So first on the concept of the facilitator, this was a continuation of the item that was approved, so I'm willing to entertain any comments on that portion. Board Member Geller.

I have some real trepidation about what's been presented to us. that has nothing to do with Mr. Lechner personally, with the firm, or with their ability or reputation. And it certainly is not my reflection on your judgment, Mr. Harvey, which I always respect. But if the term mission creep is familiar to anybody, that's what I'm concerned about here. You know, we voted... twice that we did not want to use an executive search firm. That was the policy that we've established and I hope that we're moving forward and not in any degree moving backward on things that we've already decided. When I fir

If I can, the only reason I said to speak first is because, the board members to speak first is because Talk about a transparent process. I know that it has taken long and been sometimes protracted conversation, but everybody can see exactly how we're getting from one point to the other point. This would be the first time in our process that something external comes out and says, this is how we should do it. So I personally had consternations with it, and I figured that we would have a discussion first because, for example, when I get an opportunity to speak, I have an idea which ultimately co

Thank you, Board Member Rosales. I'm going to go ahead and jump in since there's anybody else willing to speak. And I had a conversation with Mr. Harvey where I also... like Board Member Geller said, anticipated somebody coming in for oversight and for an independent third party that would have a role in coordinating and liaising, but this took it a step further. And as I mentioned, this will be the most transparent superintendent selection at least in the last two. I can't speak before that because I wasn't paying attention. I mean, I was in government but doing something else. And everyone c

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Vice Chair, you had a comment?

Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. I concur with that. I mean, the only thing that I would say is, and I agree with everybody's saying, I go, I, the only thing I would say is the fact that, I think you might have said it, either you said retread or go back or something, and I agree with that. I mean, every time we make a decision, it should be the beachhead for the next one. And so, for example, we said no to a search firm. And this is a facilitator. That's fine. We'll make that distinction, and the scope and roles will be adjusted accordingly. We said no centralized meetings. What you're saying, Bo

Yeah. Like I said, I think the timeline that was advanced by the gentleman is fine. It matches what we said. It lines up. It's critical that we do what the Vice Chair just said, which is that we get this vote in and so we can move this. I mean, same with the placement. To keep an alignment on it, we have to, you know, take this next action. I don't have any particular difficulty with who Mr. Harvey is selected. It's up to us, not to the gentleman, to define that role the way we want it. That is on us and certainly Madam Chair is right and she says we need our nine members and hopefully that wi

I'm going to take particular pride of authorship in it myself.

It's very nice. I got two nits to pick with it, but, you know, I think that's expected.

Yes. It was mostly that, those of us who were color challenged. You know, and I can't name a couple of these. I think I see a chartreuse here, but I'm not really sure. In the interest, again, and I want to, to the extent I can, I try to be consistent here. I may be wrong, but I'm at least consistently wrong when I'm wrong because I try to be consistent. I do favor a fairly broad screen, and I think I've made that clear. So in the lilac, if that's correct, it says that each board member should advance two semifinalists. I know there are nine of us, but let me assure you from a lot of searches,

Board Member Alonzo, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought you had said when you were advancing the facilitator that the facilitator would assist in that recruitment.

Hold on, I'm sorry, Madam Chair had a comment beforehand. But thank you, Board Member Alonso, appreciate that.

is not whether or not to have public interviews, is whether or not to have one or two rounds of it, meaning a semifinal interview round and a finalist interview round, both of which, or one of which, if we only did one, would be open to the public.

Thank you. Board Member Geller, and then we'll hear from our friend here who is like a guest at a family dinner. Sorry for talking about family business.

I think we have to be guided by some practicality, much as I hate to bring that topic up to the board. But If we have 25 semifinalists, which we won't. I mean, if everybody advanced three and the max was 27, I assure you, you're not gonna have more than about 15 because not everyone will have three. And more importantly, a lot of them will be the same names. So maybe we'll have 15, maybe we'll have 18. We're not gonna have 25. It might be cumbersome if there's 20 to try to schedule Public interviews with the semifinalists, although, you know, again, some of them may be unavailable, some of the

Thank you, sir. Thank you. Is it Adam Lechner or Lechner? Lechner. Mr. Lechner, thank you so much for indulging us. for your patience. The floor is yours.

Thank you. Colleagues, any other comments? Board Member Santos.

Thank you, Board Member Santos. Look, I agree with you. The only thing I will just bring up, just a slight different perspective, is that while the revised H-2 didn't exclude it The replacement, there was a Section 8 that said scheduled town hall meetings in North, Central, South, and we decided to strike that. So the exclusion of it essentially in the new item is its exclusion by extension. So we didn't have to prohibit it if we just took it out. But listen, to your point, from my perspective, you need facilitation to do your stuff, and if I do stuff over the summer too, I have no problem wit

On that one point, maybe there's, again, I always try to see if there's middle ground. I don't think we need four of them, and I don't think we need a north, central, and south. Maybe what we could do, though, in deference to Board Member Santo's point, what if we simply had, at some point in the course of these few months, we had one particular, could be after a board meeting, could be when public comment is otherwise scheduled, just open it up, say we're gonna have a public hearing, we'll have one, for the people that come to the board or want to come to the board. And we still all have our

Just a point of clarification. I mean, so there's a difference between his engagements and our number of engagements that we might have that he might facilitate. So what he's saying is this is an engagement, next week is an engagement, we have two more under that $30,000 proposal. You know, it didn't necessarily mean workshops within that engagement. It would mean that within the remaining process there would be two additional meetings at which he would be present. which if you look at it, there's an opportunity for at least two, because there's a special meeting, to at least screen to the sem

And, Mr. Chair, I don't think it, in deference to Board Member Santos' point, if one of those we just make clear is open to the public, then we're having a chance for the public to comment without having to schedule all these other, you know, one in every corner of the county.

I mean, I guess that's like a polling question, right? I mean, is anybody, as we're sort of, this game of inches we're playing, just trying to move the ball down the field a little bit. From my perspective, if it's part of the portfolio of services they're providing, I do think that there is a limited pool of people that would take this job. And so to pick up a phone call, post, you know, they want to post it on their website, that's something we wouldn't have had access to previously. If they know, because this is what they do, have access to put this in front of people to get their attention

I agree. Thank you, Madam Chair. You're welcome. Madam Vice Chair.

Perfect. Thank you. To Board Member Sandoz's point, what I'd like to do is just sort of check off some of these things. Is there consensus to add recruitment to the scope?

Well... Additional recruitment, I don't want to substitute what we've already done or wait on them to get that done. It's not, if they don't get it done, we can't move forward. If they want to add something and supplement, that's fine.

At the end of the day, this is simply to get to tee it up a little bit, and we're not taking any definitive action here. This is going to advance the board anyway. So the additional comments were Board Member Alonso wanted a board update on the 13th where we receive the final package. One item that, of course we have the timeframe, one item that Mr. Lechner brought up is, which we can bring up now, well actually hold on, before we get to that point, public interviews on the semifinalists, yay or nay?

I agree, but the question is, does the collective that we have here right now, do they want two rounds of interview or just one? It's the difference between interviewing... 20-something candidates potentially in public, or as was done in the past, one round of finalists? Madam Chair.

Okay. There's Board Member Geller. I'd rather keep a little flexibility on our part. Let's see how many semifinalists we have. I'd prefer to have them interviewed publicly, but if there's 20 of them, it's not very practical.

So let's leave it at public interviews and semifinalists optional, and if we pull the trigger on it, we pull the trigger on it. If not, we don't. There's one point that Mr. Lechner brought up that we haven't brought up, which is a rubric, if you will. I mean, so the idea is that we have criteria, and it's not pass or fail, but there'll be checks next to each one of those things. How do you typically... compile that screening material for consumption by board members.

Dr. Bagelos, what was, what's been used in the past? I mean, is it just simply. A check box or a dozen or from a scale of zero to five meets all the criteria, meets none of the criteria?

Okay. Yeah, I mean, I would, colleagues, I don't know about you, but I would not like a scoring that prevents us from identifying semifinalists where essentially we get equal billing to advance those particular individuals because somebody that may, have something less than another, maybe the person we pick. Maybe we pick the most qualified because they have everything checked off. But, I mean, I think part of the conversation we've had up here is that there'd be, and I think you said it, no filtering.

I agree with what you just said. The way I understood what Dr. Bagos said, I'm okay with it. If there's, you know, five that are minimum criteria or however many there were that were not just very general and we get a checkmark for each, I don't mind if they say, here's a candidate that met four of the five but was deficient in this one by a month or something. That's fine, but what I don't want is I don't want to see numerical scoring. Certainly I don't want to see it coming from any staff, but even from us. Let's just pick the semifinalists. If that's, quote, pass-fail, I'm okay with that be

Board Member Geller. And I agree with that. And let me just say, Board Member Santos, I appreciate what you said. But when you say not published, it's all public record anyway. So I just assume not getting – get us into some situation where somebody is going to say, oh, you didn't take the highest ranked. person, how could you take the person who was ranked number four because we're stuck and everybody's going to end up looking at it. I'm just a little nervous about assigning numbers even informally. I'd just as soon not do that. I like whoever said pass fail. If it's somebody that I want to s

That's all right. And, again, we each can individually deliberate and use whatever metric we want. I think we're at the point where we could probably entertain, if it's the board's, will to recommend approval of the contract with the understanding that there will be a modified framework with our input leaving it general enough because there's still input from other board members at this time to still obtain and incorporate move it is there a second all in favor say aye aye all in favor say nay oh sorry i'll again say nay seeing none that's recommended to the next board and uh do we

have any role or is it strictly the chair that determines whether it's good cause? Can we recommend to the chair that it would be nice if she found it to be good cause?

It'll be on the 13th as a good cause item. If not, we'll just browbeat her. Okay, I think that exhausts the items for the personnel committee meeting. May I have a motion to adjourn? Do I have a second? All in favor say aye. Aye.