The following is the transcription of the Mahomet Public Library Mahomet-Seymour School Board forum with additional facts and figures regarding the state of the Mahomet-Seymour School District. The three candidates running for two in-township seats are Laura Eden Lang, Max McComb, Sunny McMurry and Rebecca Richardson. The two candidates running for one out-of-township seat are Justin Lamb and Patrick MacKay.
While accurate in content, the transcription may not be grammatically correct and may include typos.
Facts and figures provided in orange.
Question: With so much focus on excellence, image and branding of the district, we all know that every organization struggles in some areas and has room for improvement. Other than board functions, what are two areas of our brand that you feel the district could improve upon?
Rebecca Richardson (in-township seat): A brand is nothing more, well, I shouldn’t say nothing more, it’s an identity. It’s an identity that not only we own, but also it’s something that other people look at in place, and determine whether they want to place trust in that brand. And we have internal customers: our students, our teachers, the community at large, but we also have external customers. And those are the ones who are looking from the outside wondering: wondering about us, what do we look like to them? And does our brand deliver what we promise it to deliver? So I think we have to be careful that our brand isn’t merely just a facade, and that what’s behind, whatever is behind that facade doesn’t deliver on what our promises. To high achieving driven students, I think we absolutely do deliver on that promise, and we deliver in a big way. And I’m really proud of that. I think we really do prepare academically. We prepare students for post high school work. But I think to marginalized kids, the data shows that we really don’t, we really have a broader gap than even the state average.
Facts from the Illinois Report Card on the Achievement Gap between Low Income/Non Low Income Students (2019 data was used, 2020 data was not available):
ELA
Math
Source: MAHOMET-SEYMOUR CUSD 3: IAR. (2020, October). Retrieved March 24, 2021, from https://www.illinoisreportcard.com/District.aspx?source=trends&source2=achievementgapiar&Districtid=09010003026
(continued Rebecca Richardson): The Illinois State Board of Ed ranks us in a lower category because of that fact. Because of our students who have IEPs, and because of our low-income students, we are commendable districts. So we’re good, but I believe that we can be exemplary. We can be better. So I want to see us work on that over the next four years if I should be elected; that would be huge. Greatschools.org ranks us on a 2 on a 1 to 10 scale for diversity, inclusion, and equity. That’s not good enough. For me, I don’t think it’s good enough for any of us. We don’t want people that us as not a welcoming community. Very quickly: I just want to be sure that we not only hire but we retain the most talented teachers and staff who are experienced and who come here to a district that they expect to be stellar and they aren’t disappointed. And when they are cramped for space, when they have too many kids in their classroom, when they feel overworked and underappreciated, those are not things that retain teachers, we do have a good retention rate for teachers, but I would like to see that continue in the future.
Mahomet-Seymour Teacher Retention Rate from the Illinois Report Card:
2016: 83%
2017: 86%
2018: 89%
2019: 86%
2020: 86%
Source: MAHOMET-SEYMOUR CUSD 3: RETENTION. (2020, October). Retrieved March 24, 2021, from https://www.illinoisreportcard.com/District.aspx?source=teachers&source2=teacherretention&Districtid=09010003026
Max McComb (in-township seat):I guess if I looked at this question I looked at how can we get better, right? What are the areas that we really need to improve in? And in my mind, the top two first of all, we’ve got facility issues. We have spent the last 10 years or so, since the 1% tax for facilities became available to us, busily doing upgrades. We’ve got air conditioning now in Lincoln Trail. We got restrooms and some of that stuff on Lincoln trail. We’ve done a lot of work to the core of the high school. We put music additions on the junior high. And of course we built Middletown Prairie. We have spent a lot of 1% money on those things. We’ve not had to come to the taxpayers. We’ve been able to re-up and reshuffle some existing debt. We’re about out of what we can do on our own.
It has been estimated that taxpayers would have to approve a tax increase to fund approximately half of what the Mahomet-Seymour School District would need to build a new building, the junior high, specifically.
Source: 2017 Interview with Superintendent Lindsay Hall and former Chief Business Officer Trent Nuxoll.
So we’ve got a committee in place right now. It just started meeting a few weeks ago. It’s called Bulldog Blueprint. It’s got 20 community leaders have been appointed for the committee chairs.
Facilitating Team:
Community Members:
• Nakia Benson
• Jeanne Campion
• Leah Davis
• Matt Difanis
• Jama Groeteleuschen
• Justin Lamb
• Geri Melchiorre
• Cory Mitchell
• Adi Puckett
• Amy Randolph
• Jim Risley
• Jennifer Soderlind
• Russ Taylor
• Jill Tompkins
• Andrew White
• Sean Widener
Board of Education Liaisons
• Max McComb, BOE President
• Merle Giles
District Staff
• Dr. Lindsey Hall, Superintendent
• Heather Smith, CSBO
• Steve Curtis, Director of Facilities
• Nathan Mills, MSJH Principal
• Derek Halfar, MSJH Teacher
Architect
• Damien Schlitt, BLDD
Financial Consultant
• Kevin Heid, Stifel
Consultant
• Rod Wright, Creative Entourage
And pretty soon folks are going to be asked to participate in the community-wide roundtable to see what we can do for facilities. Clearly the junior high is our biggest opportunity. That’s where we get the most crowding and the least functionality.
The other area that I think we need to look at as we look at diversity, we know we’re not a very diverse district. There’s not a lot we can do as a school district to change the makeup of our community, nor is that really our job. But as we continue to, we’re more versatile than we were 10 years ago. And as we continue, we need a way to help our teachers, be prepared to deal with that. And to work with that, and to coach that. And then the other piece that I think where we are more diverse than a lot of people realize is socioeconomic. And Rebecca referenced this, we’ve got a gap, a larger gap with those kids in learning and retention. And we’d like to have, we need to work on that. And we’ve got things in place right now to keep us going down that road. But that’s certainly an area we need to continue to prove them.
Sunny McMurry (in-township seat): This was actually a really tough question for me, because when I look at our district, and I look at what my kids have experienced, and what I’ve experienced as a teacher, not currently in this district, this is a pretty incredible place to be. And when you look at the data, you look at where our schools are ranked throughout state, this is a phenomenal district.
The following is a look at how Mahomet-Seymour has ranked on Niche, Great Schools, Chicago Sun Times and US News since 2015. The information has been pulled from Mahomet Daily data. Each site has been checked for 2021 updates.
NICHE:
Mahomet-Seymour District:
2016: Ranked 25th in the State
2017: Ranked 28th in the State
2018: Ranked 30th in the State
2021: Ranked 32 in the State
Mahomet-Seymour High School:
2015: Ranked 89th
2016: Ranked 74th
2017: Ranked 69th
2018: Ranked 93rd
2021: Ranked 45th
Mahomet-Seymour Junior High:
2015: Ranked 42nd
2016: Ranked 50th
2017: Ranked 136th
2021: Ranked 134th
Lincoln Trail Elementary:
2015: Ranked 77th
2016: not ranked
2017: not ranked
2018: not ranked
2021: ranked 590th
Middletown Prairie has not been ranked since opening.
US NEWS (Looks solely at AP Tests)
Mahomet-Seymour High School
2018: Ranked 32nd in Illinois
2019: Ranked 56th in Illinois
2020: Ranked 48th in Illinois
CHICAGO SUN TIMES:
Mahomet-Seymour High School:
2011: 90th
2012: 36th
2013: 34th
2014: 28th
GREAT SCHOOLS:
Mahomet-Seymour CUSD #3
Mahomet-Seymour High School
2021: 6 out of 10
Mahomet-Seymour Junior High
2021: 8 out of 10
Lincoln Trail Elementary
2021: 6 out of 10
Middletown Prairie Elementary
2021: no rating shown
(continued Sunny McMurry:) So I really had to think hard about this. And I thought a lot about conversations I’ve had with parents. And as a parent myself, if you asked parents what they want for their kids, ultimately, as an adult, parents want their kids to be successful. They want their kids to be well served, they want their kids to be passionate, they want their kids to really be content in their life. And to me, what that says is that we as a district need to continue our initiatives to focus on not only the academic success of our children but also the social-emotional success of our children. And we need to be really looking at how we can educate the whole child. Obviously, that’s going to positively affect the individual learner, because as an individual learner, the more you have a better understanding of feeling successful is going to help you both academically and in life. But once you start implementing a strong social-emotional learning piece into database school, Pre-K all the way through high school, you’re going to create a more inclusive, welcoming environment, where you are going to be able to really establish and maintain.
Patrick MacKay: (out-of-township seat): Alright, great question. So I’d like to flip the script a bit on this question by saying that, you know, instead of the board focusing on branding, I think the board should focus on working together to solve the district’s challenges of which there is a growing list. And I say that because if you don’t tackle the issues, the Mahomet-Seymour brand, which is built on the excellence and reputation of the schools, will suffer regardless of how much time, effort and money you spend on external branding. To put it bluntly, no amount of flashy branding will ever supersede or be more valuable than the things we accomplish together, of which there are many: the awards won by our students, the praise received by our teachers: that is our brand. That is powerful, that is impactful. But if you ask me a couple other things that I think we can improve on with our brand, if you will, I’ll give you three real quick. So we’ve talked a lot about facility planning, and what to do about the junior high, for example, because of capacity issues, but a lot of those conversations have been focused on the long term, building a new Junior High School, for example. I’d love us to tackle the short term Facilities Planning, what do we do in the near term to actually alleviate those concerns? Second, I’d love to see an increase in the amount of dollars that we actually spend per student across our schools across the district.
Amount each Champaign County School spends per student according to the Illinois Report Card:
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(continued Patrick MacKay:) And then finally, and this is a consequence of obviously something that none of us saw coming, which is COVID. I call it COVID catch-up. What can the board do to empower and put in place, or put our administrative staff and teachers in a place to be successful in encouraging and actually mapping out how our students can play catch up over the last year and a half? And obviously, that’s much more important with students that are older in the high school and junior high, as opposed to the little kids because they have a shorter runway.
Laura Eden Lang (in-township seat): I don’t know if I’m misreading this question. It’s really fun to hear how everybody else read it because it kind of threw me for a loop for a little bit. But when I read this question, it reads to me like an external brand new marketing tool. And I understand we have to do some branding, but I don’t think this should be the core central value of what we really focus on is the school district. So we really need to focus on educational foundation. And I think a strong foundation in a school district really speaks for itself. So as a school district, we need to be at educating our students to the best of our ability. And that means to me when I think about it whenever possible, meeting students where they are having a curriculum that has enough breadth and depth to do that. And then having staff really with appropriate tools and support to do that, and acquiring new tools, so that we’re constantly moving forward and being cutting edge. If we’re doing that, well, I think it really speaks for itself. I love our Bulldog logos. But at the same time, I think what we want is this depth of a great education, which we’re known for. So we’re a town that does that really well. So we just really need to enhance and add depth and breadth to where we’ve got some maybe shallow areas.
A good example of this is we do a great job already with foreign language in this district. But we really have an opportunity to move that up earlier in the timeline. It has been proven through studies, this is just an idea, that when you do it earlier actually makes the brain more malleable to acquire information for core competencies: so like math and science. And once you learn a second language, the third and a fourth, just fly. So I love that one thing leads to another. So it’s really thinking about what are those things that we can be giving our students so that they are being set up to really be successful within these fields as they head out into the world and into college.
And then I’d love to see improvement as well, for our staff or teachers having access to really great training. Things are constantly changing in the field of education, and so for our faculty and staff to really understand: what are the rules that are changing, being able to be kept up to date, they’re really in on the practical level, which is great, and give them some time to pull back, grab some more tools and go back into their arenas well-equipped.
Justin Lamb (out-of-township seat). So as a small business owner, one of my best friends and I started a business 17 years ago in this community. And we’ve always obviously experienced the highs and lows and different struggles along the way. So we’ve had to work through those. We’ve leaned on each other’s strengths and got through those times. And as for our district, I believe we are doing an excellent job. That’s supported by the continued growth in our community. With that being said, I’d like to see more opportunities in the area of career and technical education for kids that maybe aren’t planning on attending a four year university, and they don’t really know what the path they have planned out ahead of them is. So this goes back to my high school experience, I really had no idea what I wanted to do with my life at that point. So we have this great resource nearby with Parkland College. And they have a lot of opportunities for kids that don’t know what they want to do. They have the technical and career education, vocational resources and stuff. I just think that would be a huge help for kids to engage them in learning in high school. I was in high school, because I had to be. I mean, that was where I was, I didn’t enjoy it personally like the academic part of it anyway.
But once I finally found something that I liked to do, I was engaged. I started putting time and effort into my studies. And once I got to college, I had a path and had things figured out and really flourished from there and built on that. And proud of where I’m at today with my life. And also the other thing I would like to improve on that has just started with the facilities team, the community engagement team that’s been put together to figure out how we want to proceed with our facilities and space needs. I think it’s a great way to hear what that community is going to have to say. And we can go from there and get a plan together for that.
Question: One of the responsibilities of the school board is of course to hire the superintendent. Should this position become open during your tenure on the board, what are the must haves you would look for in a candidate?
Duties and Responsibilities of the Superintendent per the Illinois School Code can be found here.
Duties and Responsibilities of the Superintendent per the Illinois School Code can be found in board policy 3:40.
Max McComb: My must have for a superintendent is leadership qualities. We live in a community where first of all, there are high expectations. The job of leading Mahomet-Seymour Schools is very demanding because of high expectations. We also have a lot of strong personalities in our employee base, on our board,our community. The Superintendent needs to deal with. And so we need someone who’s a leader. I’ve helped bring in two Superintendents so far, Rick Johnston and Dr. Lindsey Hall. They’re different. Okay. Rick was a real task-oriented, and was able to manage more projects at one time then I’ve ever been able to see anybody deal with in their life. But he also had great leadership qualities. Dr. Hall is more in the HR side and staff development, and curriculum development and those types of things. A little different than Rick was, but still stellar leadership qualities. And that’s the common trend, we have to have. Both of our both those who perhaps I’ve helped bring and have been ideal for the time that they were brought in. They were just what we needed at that time. I’m not sure exactly when the next Superintendent change will happen. And what we will exactly need at that moment, my guess is, maybe someone who’s experienced facilities and growth work might be something we need to look at. But we’ll know more when we get there. But one thing I know we will need is someone with great leadership qualities because that is just the number one essential thing that we need here, in my opinion.
Sunny McMurry: So I’m going to piggyback off Max just a little bit. In superintendents, when it comes to superintendents, they generally fall into like one of two camps: you have superintendents who are business focused and financially focused, and they kind of take on that role of CEO, like a CEO of an organization. And then you have superintendents who are more curriculum focused or best practices focused. There’s not one or the other, that’s better. Like Max was saying, between Lindsay and Rick, they have different strengths. And they both have those, each category brings different strengths to the table. What I would like to see from a superintendent, is regardless of what their strengths are, an acknowledgement of the area that maybe they aren’t the strongest in, and a willingness to delegate those responsibilities and delegate those tasks. Max is talking about leadership qualities, and I think a huge piece of leadership is the ability to listen, and the ability to say, I don’t know; I’m gonna find out, I’m going to find out who can tell me and I’ll let the experts handle it. So that’s a huge piece for me. Making sure that each superintendent, whoever the next Superintendent might be. I think it’s also really important that we find somebody who understands how to use data to drive decisions. We can’t be making decisions based on emotion or return feeling or reason, the loudest voices in the room, we need to be looking at what data is showing whether that’s facilities, whether that’s educational improvements. Whatever it is, that needs to be driven by data, I feel like if we could find a superintendent who has experience with building buildings, you know, with some of these things like that, I think that’s gonna be an added bonus. At that point in time, I really hope that we would be on the up and up with building something, or renovating or getting our facilities taken care of. And the last thing I really would like to see is a strong communicator, somebody who’s easy to talk to, but very good at communicating out to the board and our families.
Patrick MacKay: To appoint, support and evaluate a superintendent is obviously one of the most important responsibilities of any school board. In terms of a superintendent for this district where we call home, I would look for the following qualities and characteristics: servant leader, effective communicator, quiet listener, strategic thinker, empathetic manager, dutiful organizer. And, this is something that I’m sure, you know, Max and Sunny have already touched on, I’m sure everyone else will as well, that person needs to be readily available to our district for dialogue, debate, and discussion.
Laura Eden Lang: Yeah, I love this question because a lot of times we can talk about school districts or companies. But Mahomet-Seymour School District is just a name. And a district is only as good as its people. The name is a representation of the teachers, the students, the administrators. And hiring good people all the way from the top to the bottom is essential. I love what Sunny said. So Sunny, thanks for pushing that out. Because I think it takes a lot of strength of character to be able to say, I really don’t know, but I’m going to look for that. You know, here’s where I’m weak. Here’s where I’m strong and looking for those key people to build you up. But I think the other things that really, really matter, tie into that collaboration, being able to work well with others and see where the strengths are around them. Communication.I think part of that, this is big for me, having a sort of open door policy, where it creates an environment and empowers everyone, students and staff. I think the role of the superintendent is such a strategic one such a vital one, because the superintendent also creates the environment with each of the building administrators. And those building administrators need to be able to have that ability to come to whoever the superintendent is, as a sounding board and really a safe place professionally to be able to work through these things. And what I mean by an open door policy is not just saying, hey, my doors opened to you come on by, but actually walking through buildings, making yourself accessible to staff and student voices too. To have your pulse on the state of the district. This is really part of building a culture where information gathering, data gathering is really the focus. And you can do that a lot of ways, surveys, meetings, they can be informal coffee gatherings. But I think it’s having someone who is going out and not just waiting for the information to come to them. So really to build a culture of trust is a pillar. When you look at the best organizations, the best school districts, they’re built on this pillar of trust, that comes from authentic communication.
Justin Lamb: I’ll start off by saying that we’ve been blessed by some great leaders, great superintendents over the years here at Mahomet-Seymour. We didn’t get to where we are at today by chance. Just really happy with the leadership we’ve had over the years. There’s endless qualities that you would look for in a new superintendent. But some of the ones I’d like to just point out, are definitely a good communicator, a good listener, someone who’s going to be there to talk with you and just hear you out, feel things out, figure out ways to proceed with issues and whatnot. You’re gonna want somebody who’s a strong, bold leader, somebody who can be firm in what they believe in, and someone who can handle the tough situations. Obviously, we have been dealt some pretty rough times over the past year with COVID, and been through things that we’ve never thought we would be through. And the last thing is someone who’s always looking to improve and grow the district and themselves. There’s always room for growth. And that’s something that we should continue to work on and build on. And just that’s very important for the leader of our district.
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Rebecca Richardson: I ran across this saying at one point when I was looking through the internet, and it said, “ What should you want out of a superintendent?” And I think the tongue in cheek answer is, I think most people want God on a good day. So that’s really what the expectations I think for Superintendent are. It’s an amazingly powerful and onerous and heavy responsibility. But I think our school board looks to that person for a lot of things. And mainly, one of the things that I haven’t heard talked about a whole lot is the school board’s role in determining and developing the vision for this school district, which completely sets the tone for everything. And the reason why it’s important that a superintendent understands the importance of the vision is because they’re the person who implements it. And so it’s really up to them to make sure that the vision and the objectives and the goals of the district are implemented. And then also, we need to make sure that, you know, that’s part of evaluating the superintendent is to determine whether those things are being met.
And so, to me, the highest level of importance in terms of characteristics, which are many, I think, is for a person to understand the importance of vision. And how powerful that is in every way when it gets implemented throughout the district. Also, of course, leadership and competence are really important. You need to have a skill set and you need to have experience to be able to meet the needs of the school district. I can’t stress listening. Listening is by far, to me, such an underrated skill. And listening to understand rather than just simply to respond is a really important characteristic that I look for in a superintendent. Honesty, flexibility, sense of humor, building trust, all those things to keep also important.
Question: Currently, school boards are only responsible for completing a job evaluation for their employed superintendent. Recently, a board member presented a policy where board members would be involved in job evaluations for administrators and more involved in teachers’ decisions. The policy was pulled but the board member said it would be brought back later. What is your stance on school board members being involved in administrator evaluations and teacher level decisions?
Sunny McMurry:
I’m sorry, I’m going to use part of my time just to clarify the question a little bit, because I think what ended up happening in this question was that two totally different issues ended up getting combined into one issue. So at one board meeting, there was a proposal from some board members about changing contract language for administrators, so that instead of the administrator sharing the goals directly with the superintendent, who is their evaluator, the administrators would need to share their goals with specific board members as well. So that’s one piece of it. The other piece of it was that there was a policy that was brought forth that basically a board member would be able to go in and ask any employee of the district for any information, and that employee will be required to provide them information. So those are two separate issues that I think are combined into one. So, ultimately, I think this is a question of what is the school board’s role in being involved in administrator evaluations?
And the short answer to that is, you shouldn’t be. We have one person to evaluate as a board, that person is the superintendent. The superintendent then has the task of evaluating the administrators and we need to trust her to be able to do. Or him if he would happen to be male. Now, I think when it comes to teacher-level decisions, we again have to trust the fact that we have hired incredibly competent staff and administrators for making decisions at the building level on a daily basis. As a board member, we cannot be dictating what’s happening in schools day today. That’s not that’s under our realm. So sorry for that long, long-winded answer, John, but I kind of wanted to clarify that.
Patrick MacKay: So while I don’t believe it’s the school board’s role and responsibility to evaluate administrators; it can and should periodically review the evaluation process, alongside a third party expert, if that’s deemed necessary, in order to essentially hold that process accountable. Moreover, the board will not be directly involved in the evaluation process of administrators should receive those evaluations in a timely manner, because these must be used as part of the evaluation of the superintendent. Because one of the superintendent’s foremost responsibilities is to encourage and empower his or her administrative team. And if those results are not positive, he or she must be held accountable. Now, the board must be involved if there is a situation of gross misconduct, either by an administrator or teacher, but I think that’s a completely different issue. For teachers, I also don’t believe the board should be responsible for dictating, demanding or mandating how a teacher actually should teach, or what material they choose to augment. For example, state mandated curriculum really to foster learning and enrichment. However, in terms of evaluation, just like administrators, I think the has an obligation to review and hold those internal processes accountable. But I think the purpose here is not to micromanage, but rather, I think, to really make sure that the process itself is fair and balanced in the first place.
Laura Eden Lang: I just want to get out of the way that I would be opposed to the board doing administrator evaluations other than the superintendent, as has been mentioned before. The superintendent is the one and only employee of the board, and that’s who they evaluate. But I think I’m hearing a common theme throughout this entire election. over and over and over again, of micromanagement. And I guess it perplexes me a little bit. I think there’s a little bit of confusion between micromanagement and accountability. Micromanagement is saying you, I want you to do this, this and this, and overseeing every instance of that process. Accountability casts vision and then asks responsibility for one’s actions. So, for example, this happens in our school district and is a really easy way, where building administrators meet with their teachers on an annual basis. And they bring a portfolio and they get to show them, Hey, this is what I’ve done. and they get to really talk through the process together. And I think that’s a really just a really proactive, wonderful, relational accountability system. So in the area of staff reviews, the jobs board is really it’s twofold: to do employment, annual review of the superintendent, but then also to be informed on the evaluations the superintendent has done with other administrators. So I’m going to read it, I apologize, because my memory fails me without coffee, but Melinda Selby, the IASB General Counsel, said the board must also review evaluation information in order to be informed as to whether principals and staff members are being effectively evaluated. So this isn’t meant to really put a chokehold on school leadership, but to gently ensure quality of performance and possible areas of need of support. So I’m saying very clearly, I really don’t want micromanagement at that level, but just accountability. And this is why we have these wonderful guidelines to really help us to make our structure work.
Justin Lamb: So yeah, I would agree with what the previous candidates have said, the board should not be involved in evaluations of the administrators or the staff and teacher level decisions. There’s a chain of command in our system. And That should be followed that way. The board should never be involved in the day to day decision making on what goes on in classrooms. The teachers know how that best works. Their administrators know how they’re building their staff and their buildings work best. They can oversee that. The superintendent who does the valuations on the administration’s handles that and then we oversee the superintendent, so we evaluate her and her performance, his or her performance for future, but we just continue to watch over that and let the operation work as it should.
Rebecca Richardson: It’s pretty clear, you know, answering this question last it’s going to seem redundant. But I agree. It’s pretty clear what the role of the board member and the board is, in this regard, the board hires and evaluates only one employee, and that’s the superintendent. Part of that evaluation, however, is how well the superintendent is meeting the needs, and evaluating and reviewing other administrators, teachers and staff. So it does end up being a reflection like others were mentioning accountability. I do think that is an important piece of how you think about and reflect on the skill set and how the superintendent’s work is being conducted. And so I think, while there’s no direct role for the school board members and teachers decisions or evaluation at all, that will be reflected in the evaluation of the superintendent.
Max McComb: Sunny hit this right out of the park with her answer she was to a spot, and others have kind of confirmed the same thing. It’s not the board’s responsibility to do that. There certainly is accountability. The board has there’s accountability function, there certainly maybe some process and procedure involvement, maybe. But it really is not the board and shout to evaluate those people. Now, frankly, in our district, this has worked well. You look at our buildings right now. All the principles, all of our buildings were developed in our system. Three of our principals were in their second year. They’re pretty young. I think that speaks to the great job we did when Rick was here as far as developing people. And then Dr. Hall, as I mentioned early, kind of a development person, ended up two years ago, we put three years, three new principles in place, working with that and guiding them and directing them. And I’d put our team against anybody out there. Any other district I really would. So the board needs to stay doing what the board is supposed to do, let the professional educators, not the people who are realtors, bankers, UI employees, small business people. We’re not professional education developers. But we’ve got people on our staff that do that that are great at it, let’s let them do it.
Question: There have been some common themes, identifying some challenges and or opportunities by the board candidates, including finances, space and facilities, diversity, inclusion, and board relationships and communication. In your opinion, what is the current board done well? How would you do things differently? And what do you think that board could or should do differently? Or better?
Patrick MacKay: Great. So thank you very much for the question. So COVID-19, its impact on public education has presented a monumental challenge to say the least. And it was completely unexpected and unprecedented. As such, I applaud school boards across the country, including ours, for tackling it head on when there really was no right answer in terms of policy. And there definitely wasn’t one that everyone would agree with. Specifically, I applaud the district for the testing regimen that it introduced this semester, that allows students to receive rapid tests every Monday. I know that myself and our family we’ve benefited every Monday, we’re there in line, getting tests. And it adds that kind of peace of mind as we start the week ahead. So kudos to Nita Bachmann and her team for putting that together. I think the obvious improvement that the board can and must make is treating each other with the respect that their individual seats deserve. I think if we continue with the status quo, we will struggle to address the important issues that are coming down the pipe to get things done, which is the principal expectation of the voters, I think, the board must find common ground, must be willing to compromise. I will work to do just that. Finally, and this is probably, you know, rightfield ideas, or maybe some blue ocean types ideas, but maybe the new board could consider term-limiting the role of board president or even, you know, limiting the consecutive terms that a sitting president could serve moving forward to essentially give more folks on the board the opportunity role, to provide their perspective and see if that would actually help the board move forward together.
Laura Eden Lang: Thank Patrick for bringing up the COVID testing that should have popped straight to my mind when I was thinking about this question, but it didn’t. What an amazing feat. But the strength of this board that I really saw was making the board proceedings more accessible to the public, which I think is pretty enormous. Before this last election, really, the only way to attend a board meeting was by going in person and this board has been able to capture the attention of the public. I’ll be it not always the way we want to capture the attention of the public, but it’s upping public exposure and public involvement, which is great. So while I would love to see this take maybe a healthier form. This current board is really taking time to hear more voices. The relationship has expanded out of the boardroom into the community, I think regardless of the cross-sections of constituents. But I think this is also a place where we can continue to improve. Like for example, while I’m super excited about the community engagement initiative, I think we need community involvement, our constituents should be involved in talking about what our facility future is going to look like the school district.
I don’t know that the team that was put together accurately really demonstrates our entire community. It was really by invitation only. And I think it really needed to include more people within our community. Are there parents on there with special education kids; are there people of diversity; other people with different roles in the community, lower-income, middle-income you know, and I feel like that’s sometimes where we fall short. So I think as a district, we’ll know, we’re really successful when there’s one person having a super unique situation or difficulty, even though it seems like they’re all alone and isolated, but their voices being handled and really heard with care by our board and by our district. And when someone comes with an issue, that they’re not met with the responses, well, that hasn’t happened to my child, and then the issue isn’t really addressed. So as a board member, I view all these kids as my kids, you know. I will not stop until I can do my best for every single one of them. I’ll do my best to listen, to understand it to do as much as can be done.
Justin Lamb: So one of the things I’m very excited about under the current board is the community engagement team. This has been put together to help guide us with our needs for facility growth and space issues. I’m very excited that the community can be involved in this, there’s going to be lots of opportunities, forums, meet and greets for the people of our community to get involved in this. This opens up a whole new avenue for people to get their voices out to let us know how they would like to see things progress in our school district in our community. One of the areas that I feel needs to be improved upon on our current board, it is the communication or lack thereof, sometimes happening outside of the open meetings.
Open Meetings Act (5 ILCS 120/1)
Sec. 1. Policy. It is the public policy of this State that public bodies exist to aid in the conduct of the people’s business and that the people have a right to be informed as to the conduct of their business. In order that the people shall be informed, the General Assembly finds and declares that it is the intent of this Act to ensure that the actions of public bodies be taken openly and that their deliberations be conducted openly.
To read more about the Illinois Open Meetings Act, visit click here.
(continued Justin Lamb:) And that goes along with how I would try to improve the board has been. As a new board member, I bring the opportunity for a fresh face, if you will. And I hope to bring more teamwork and collaboration to the board. I’m pretty easy to get along with. And I think it’s very important to hear all sides of the issues, the things that we’re looking at for our schools, not only to hear them and listen to them but to actually investigate and look at it as a whole. That’s what we’re here for. We’re a representative of our community and constituents. So that’s how I would try to address bettering our board.
Rebecca Richardson: Well, I don’t I don’t hold misconceptions, that being a school board member, when it’s done thoroughly, and when you take it seriously, is a hard job. I know
it is a hard job. I’m sure it has a lot of responsibility. So it’s not something that I’ve even considered doing lightly. It was with a lot of thought, a lot of commitment. And so I think one thing that I have really been puzzled by, this board, this particular board, or any board, really, each board member comes as an individual, and they have their own strengths. But that’s why it’s important to have people on the board who come from different places and in different parts of our community, because they do bring their own piece of experience and perspective. I can recall what the board does well, when when they work, when they function, they do make some really good decisions. I can recall one recent one where the school board really properly vetted, discussed and came up with a good compromise. And that was the decision on paying for dual credit classes through college. You know, I think they did a really good job with vetting that and coming to a very, really good conclusion on behalf of students and their families. I think the board could be better at vetting issues for the betterment of the students in a productive way. Much like others have said, it is the leader of boards responsibility, the sole responsibility to minimize the division of the board and to stay focused on the business matters of the district, and again for the betterment of the students. I don’t see that happening. What I would do differently: I would support the concept of a parliamentarian who would be able to clarify and is well-versed on procedure. That seems to be a lot of the sticking point with this board, and all boards really. And I also would support continuous training on new policies and procedures. I don’t know that the board has had a group experience training, it’s not been a meeting anyway that we’ve been able to participate in, in terms of open meetings. I’ve not seen them participate in training on the Open Meetings Act. So I think that seems like a no brainer. I’d also fill the agenda with more substantive issues at the front end of the agenda rather than the check off issues because I think we tend to get side-tracked. I would communicate the importance of preparation and encourage board members to come, all board members to come better prepared. And I think they should ask questions for clarity prior to the board meeting. So it’s more smoothly run and people are prepared. So those are a few of the things that I would do. If I were on the board to try to help change the just change the culture a little bit and change the outcomes.
Max McComb: First of all, just for clarification, we started making these publicly available on YouTube almost three years ago now. So it happened way and in front of the recent change in board. But we regardless, just so we’re on the record.
Availability of Mahomet-Seymour School Board meetings prior to the 2019 Consolidated Elections:
While the Mahomet-Seymour School District does have 10 meetings from 2018 posted to the website, the district did not post the following videos on their YouTube page until after the 2019 consolidated election. The district has only consistently been streaming board meetings since May 2019. Prior to that date, the Mahomet Daily began providing videos of the meetings since 2016. The following is a list of Mahomet-Seymour school board videos as posted on YouTube after the date they were filmed.
The sources used are Bulldog TV on YouTube and the Mahomet-Seymour website.
On YouTube: Bulldog Dialog 11.26.18, posted July 9, 2019
Meeting 7.16,18, posted July 9, 2019
Meeting 1.29.19, posted July 9, 2019
Meeting 7.16.18 posted July 9, 2019
Meeting 1.14.19 posted July 9, 2019
Meeting 11.19.18, posted July 9, 2019
Meeting 2.11.19, posted July 9, 2019
Meeting 11.5.18, posted July 9, 2019
Meeting 10.1.18, posted July 9, 2019
Meeting 10.15.18, posted July 9, 2019
Meeting 4.15.19, posted July 9, 2019
Meeting 3.6.19, posted July 9, 2019
(continued Max McComb): Board members are responsible for individual behavior, and board members are responsible for treating each other with respect. And we struggle with that right now. And that’s not something that we can mandate. But I think it’s something we should and ought to expect of each of our board members. Something that I think we need to look at: prior to two years ago, we had Superintendent advisory committees, two board members were on each committee, they would meet with a Superintendent, and they would talk about issues. And that did two or three things: in involved conversations to happen; it involved board members to develop a relationship with the superintendent and other central office, core leadership staff; and board members to develop a level of trust with each other because you would if you were on the facilities committee, you would know more about facilities probably than other board members because you’re on that committee, you’d have more expertise in that. And we would kind of lean and rely on those people more. Two years ago, the decision was made that we needed to be more transparent and have all those public and run them like regular business meetings. I can’t fault the need or desire to be more transparent, that was appropriate, in my opinion. But what that did is it took away the opportunity for board members to bond together with each other, for board members to really develop a rapport with the superintendent, and to ask a lot of questions about really what is going on and what is going on behind the scenes. And so now that transform to some of our board members, I don’t know if they’ve met with the superintendent, individually. Maybe once. Maybe, and I’m not even sure about that. So there’s not a relationship there.
Mahomet-Seymour Board Committees:
According to the Open Meetings Act, (5 ILCS 120/1.02)(from Ch. 102, par. 41.02)
Sec. 1.02. For the purposes of this Act:"Meeting" means any gathering, whether in person or by video or audio conference, telephone call, electronic means (such as, without limitation, electronic mail, electronic chat, and instant messaging), or other means of contemporaneous interactive communication, of a majority of a quorum of the members of a public body held for the purpose of discussing public business or, for a 5-member public body, a quorum of the members of a public body held for the purpose of discussing public business.
“Public body” includes all legislative, executive, administrative or advisory bodies of the State, counties, townships, cities, villages, incorporated towns, school districts and all other municipal corporations, boards, bureaus, committees or commissions of this State, and any subsidiary bodies of any of the foregoing including but not limited to committees and subcommittees which are supported in whole or in part by tax revenue, or which expend tax revenue, except the General Assembly and committees or commissions thereof.
The Mahomet-Seymour School Board has operated with three committees for some time: facilities, finance and policy. Although committee meetings by law are to be open to the public, prior to 2019, committee meetings were not. Since 2019, the Mahomet-Seymour School Board committees have met:
Facilities: 2 times
Policy: 6 times
Finance: 4 times
(continued Max McComb:)
There’s not the relationship with board members working together and speaking to one another, and relying on one another because certain board members are more versed in one area that maybe the rest have a more depth understanding. And we need to put some things in place to get that back. So board members do generate respect and understanding for each other. So there’s an opportunity for discussion with board members kind of off-the-record, off-camera out of the public eye. And I really did an opportunity to build better relationships. In an attempt to be more transparent and open to the public, well, we sure did that. But we broke down the ability of the board really just to communicate and work together.
Sunny McMurry: So I’ll try to be brief. What has the current board done well. A couple of things. Actually, in my opinion, the first thing I’m very excited about is our Facilities Committee. When I looked at the list of people who were listed on there and actually looks like a pretty diverse group. And from my understanding based on what I’ve heard in board meeting, they’re going to be held where anybody who wants to can join in. And I really appreciate that that has finally taken off. I know that that has been in discussion for a couple years now of trying to get a handle on what the community needs for our facilities. So I appreciate that the board has done that. The other thing I think the board has done well, but it keeps getting twisted as negative, having really meaningful discussions. Are they heated? Absolutely. Are they emotional, absolutely. But I really appreciate the questions being asked, that conversations are happening. That doesn’t always happen. Can we do it better? Sure. But I think it’s great that people are asking questions and that board members are challenging ideas and bringing new Ideas. And saying, well why can’t we do this way? Or have we thought about this? And that’s great. What can we do better? I think part of the reason that some feel a little bit heated is because the board hasn’t set a strategic plan. So going back to what Rebecca was talking about, if there isn’t a clear vision, then it’s really hard to make a decision. If you don’t know what your end goal is, it’s really hard to make decisions along the way, because you don’t know where you’re supposed to be heading towards. So I think that’s one thing that we really need to be focusing on. For myself, what would I do, just like I think it was actually set it I can only control myself. I cannot dictate to anybody what they need to do to contribute or change about themselves, I can only control myself. So for me, I would elect to make sure that our comments and conversations are rational. Not emotional. Even though I can get emotional, I will do everything in my power to not become emotional. But to have rational conversations that are driven by data and not what somebody feels like.
Question: During a normal school year, all the buses are overcrowded. What can’t be or could be done differently than the district has done in the recent past to its to improve bus riding safety and experience?
Laura Eden Lang: Kudos to our bus drivers and Nick York who really take care of our kids to and from school. So certainly the buses are really an easy place to see our challenges that we have as a district with resources that we also see in the classroom: class size, facility shortcomings. So this is just a theme that constantly has to be addressed, you know. So I think the focus needs to be on prioritizing how we educate our kids overall and pairing these resources with that. But it’s kind of interesting how this year has almost taught us already, to solve this problem. This year has taught us a lot about staggering start and stop times, which other districts are using as well. So I mean, this isn’t something that the board really has a say in our their fingers in. So I’m sure that Dr. Hall and Mr. York will use these lessons from this year to learn from an implement in this coming year. We talked about bus monitors being a possible solution, which is interesting, I didn’t know this was coming up and had an awesome conversation with Mr. York a couple of weeks ago about this. But as a board member, my job is to make sure that the policies and procedures put forth match together and then we budget. And right now we actually have some of these bus monitor positions on our district website.
So maybe this is a point where we really dish up, maybe offer a little bit more money for these positions. If bus monitors is a solution? I don’t know. But I’m going to leave this in the hands of the competent Nick York and Dr. Hall to really advise on different ideas that they’ve come through this year with constructively and creatively.
Justin Lamb: Yes, I’ll reiterate what Laura said on. This obviously is a subject that the board is not going to have much say. But Nick York is more than capable for handling the bus situations. He’s done a great job, especially with the pandemic and just dealing with all the new situations we face, new routes, new schedules and stuff. But I mean, whether the monitor to be on there to help with the safety of the kids. We’re not talking about like kids getting in accidents and when we have outstanding bus drivers and stuff. We’re talking about probably some stuff that goes on with discipline on the buses, if there’s any other situations going on where kids are feeling threatened or whatever. But I think we just have to leave it up to the people that we hire as a school district put into their hands, they’re professionals, they’re able to handle the situations that they were hired to do. That’s about it.
Rebecca Richardson: Well, this is obviously an issue that many school districts struggle with. When you have 50, kids enclosed, long, tube for 30 minutes you’re asking the impossible. But, I think there are a lot of different ways that and I agree the transportation people, the administrators, they’re the ones who really know the specific issues. And some of those issues can be handled in a one-on-one situation, and it doesn’t really require a change of policy. But I think there might be some really kind of innovative ideas, if you look at other districts, and what they’ve done, to try to alleviate it. This all kind of goes back, in my opinion to long-term planning, and trying to think about: what’s it going to do to our town to build a new building in a place where we have to turn around, circle drive currently within MPE. I think it can happen, but I mean, these are all long-term planning issues, kind of philosophically, but also for the short term. For example, considering the student fee exemptions for carpool clubs, or trying to figure out how to schedule classes maybe later and earlier, before school, and after school, it would require more miles, but maybe there’s a way to, in a long term plan to be able to do that. And ultimately, I think, really quickly, as far as behavior on school buses, we’re never going to completely solve that. But I think that social and emotional learning techniques and skills about how you learn to not why shouldn’t bully, recognizing differences in a positive way. And those are long-term approaches. It’ll take a while to make a difference, but I think that’s a really important thing.
Max McComb: This is the first time that I’ve personally heard of an overcrowded issue on the buses during the normal year. So I hope the person that submitted that has kind of reached out to maybe someone in transportation or one of the administrators. As someone has pointed out, as a board member, I’m happy to ask questions and look into these things, and then kind of report back and see if there’s anything that needs to be done. But the actual taking care of the issue is probably going to be a staff thing. It’s probably going to be Nick York, Dr. Hall or one of the administrators. I have learned more in the last several years about busing and transportation than I ever probably thought I’d ever need to now. We have a very sophisticated computer model that runs that entire operation. It helps us; it knows how many kids get on at each stop and which child gets off at each stop. We key in if there is a child that goes home on a different route, to a different place than they come from. It knows the capacity of buses, and we’re not supposed to be overloading the capacity of the buses. So that’s why this question kind of surprises me. The model knows that we’ve got 66 passenger buses, we’re only going to put 66 kids on it. It knows what the capacities are. We can tweak, so if we want to put more miles on some buses and watch miles and other buses or the same miles on other buses, that software helps us accomplish all those kinds of things: track maintenance, the whole nine yards. It’s very complex, very sophisticated. So I can’t believe it’s letting us put more kids on a bus than should be there. But if there’s a problem, you need to reach out to somebody, and I’m happy to investigate but I’m probably not going to be the one that’s gonna solve it.
Sunny McMurry: As a lot of the candidates already have said, this really is going to fall to our Director of Transportation. Nick York’s perfectly capable of addressing it. I think as a board member, what I would want to know is what would be the financial implications of whatever changes are going to be proposed, and what kind of effect would it have on families. So when we’re thinking about staggered start times, we do have staggered start times across the district for different schools. If we were lengthen those; in our house, we’ve got three different schools and our kids are leaving at three different times. And thankfully, it’s our oldest one who’s home alone, because my husband and I need to be at that work by 930. When you have different times, you need to think about how that might be impacting families. Any type of decision that you make, you need to think about how it is going to impact families. And as well asimpact us financially, but ultimately I would turn to Mr. York as the expert in this.
Patrick MacKay: So we actually live well outside the district, so the issues that we have had, personally, with buses is actually related to the driving time of the trip itself; which we just found simply too long for our little kids. We’re talking about 60 minutes, One way. I think that the district’s transportation planning must match and evolve with the growth of the district. I think that’s obvious. As more families move into the district, enrollment numbers, such really increase across our schools, that planning needs to evolve. Does that include more buses and more staff? Or does that include, an additional staggered start of Start and End Times at the schools? I don’t know. But those could be possible solutions that we can look at. But just like what everyone else said, I would not anticipate this being a board-level matter to be decided by the board. Rather, we already have folks that are experts in that particular field and area. And I think if they want to consult with the board, if they have questions for the board of the board, I think that’s perfectly fine. But the actual decision-making for this topic would be with them, obviously.
Question: How many meetings of the board Have you attended last year? And I would assume with COVID in-person or virtually.
Justin Lamb: I have attended one in-person. And I’ve attended probably 10-12 virtually over the course of the last year.
Rebecca Richardsom: All of them.
Max McComb: I was at every meeting and I was in-person.
Sunny: I attended nearly every meeting. I missed two meetings in person and had to watch them later. One was because of a surgery I had and one was because of my grandfather;s passing. So those I felt like I probably had a good excuse. But I’ve also attended every committee meeting that the board has had, as well as the different studies sessions.
Patrick MacKay: Just about every meeting, but obviously not in person, watching via the livestream.
Laura Lang: I’m sitty here because I haven’t tallied it up, to be honest with you. I think I’ve missed two would be my guess because I’ve been at most all of them. But, like Sunny, I love that we can at least go back and rewatch it and take notes on it.
Question:
- ISBE recently passed the culturally responsive teaching and learning standards where teachers will be expected to cover concepts such as implicit bias, historical inequities, and student advocacy. These standards have been met with criticism regarding pushing a political agenda onto teachers and therefore students. State officials have stressed that they do not dictate the curriculum for public schools and it remains in the hands of school boards. As a member of the Mahomet-Seymour School Board, are you in favor of implementing these new standards into the current curriculum? Please explain why or why not.
- Culturally responsive teaching is a topic many are talking about in education. What is your understanding of CRT? How have you educated yourself about cultural responsive teaching, as the district is faced with decisions for the district around this work?
To read the ISBE Culturally Responsive Learning Standards click here.
Rebecca Richardson: I can’t help but go back to my learnings, I guess. Even in my youngest Sunday school classes, and that was, to try to be able to treat people the way you think they want to be treated. And I think that, to me, that’s why part of cultural responsiveness is; is to try to teach kids who maybe have not been as exposed to different kinds of cultures and don’t understand, more of just an uncertainty about what needs to happen better, to help them manage themselves and their behaviors towards others. And so, part of it is a positive perspective and a relationship with parents, that’s a really big piece of this. And, looking at the context of the culture that you’re working with, when you’re teaching kids how to respond to one another and respect them. It is very much about a student-centered approach. So
Basically, the saying of meeting the kids where they are. I think that’s an important component of this and it’s very much based individually on where, what experiences and culture that the student or students are coming from. And then lastly, I think probably the most important thing is a constant review and consideration of curriculum issues. And so I think that if we take a look at how things were; and the big thing now is the Dr. Seuss issue, and, some of his books have been taken out of publication. But thankfully, many of his books are still in publication. So I think this is just a matter of trying to figure out how to treat each other with respect and with equity. And I think that some of the things that the culturally responsive teaching methodologies are about is very much that philosophy.
Max McComb: So this is coming down the road at us, and it’s fairly politically charged. People have real strong feelings about this. And one way or another. From talking to Dr. Hall and Dr. Rummel, at this point, it appears to me from talking to them that most of what has been passed so far, deals with teacher education, and how teachers are going to be educated. Will that effects their approach in the classroom once they get to the classroom? Sure, it will.
And that’s, whether you like and what’s being proposed or not, it’s going to affect. Where it comes to how things are implemented locally, and we have always kind of taken the approach that we need to implement things like this in a way that makes sense for us, and works for us. Sure. We want everyone to be able to respect, we want equity. We need those kinds. There are some folks out there that think that parts of this may be very extreme, they go too far. Those are things that probably we would look at, and how are we going to present those, how are we going to be fair, and represent all sides, and all the different stakeholders in our community. So it’s going to be an interesting process as it’s unfolding. But again, as my understanding right now, that what has been implemented with these ISBE standards is mostly at the educational level. It’s not anything that we are directly doing here. Although, certainly, once the teachers are educated, that’s going to affect how they teach. So that’s what I know about it right now. It’s obviously something we need to keep an eye on and see how it develops. And see what else gets mandated that we do. And then when it gets mandated, we have to decide how we’re going to handle it, how we’re going to implement it. We can’t ignore mandates. I mentioned this to one of the groups I was talking to the other day. I love Bulldog orange, and Illini orange, I don’t like prison suit orange. Okay. So if a mandate comes down, it is the law we have to follow it. But often, we look for ways to interpret It and do it in such a way that it works for our kids. And is respectful, of all the different ideas and values of our community.
Sunny McMurry: As a teacher, I feel like maybe this is kind of an unfair question, because this has been my life for the last several years. I think there’s some confusion out there when you say CRT people think critical race theory, not culturally responsive teaching. And those are two separate things. And I don’t want people to get confused by that. Culturally responsive teaching is really actually a lot of what teachers have already been doing. It’s coming from the student-centered lens, that you are taking your child as a learner, the student as a learner, understanding what their backgrounds and experiences have been, and combing that to make a good teaching experience for that class. So it might be something like having an understanding of perhaps a culture that child’s coming from collaborative in nature. As Americans, we are very independent and we’re very competitive. Not all cultures are like that. So if you a child in your classroom, who, maybe it’s coming from a more collaborative culture, then perhaps having a highly competitive classroom where everybody’s competing to get the most points for the day, is actually going to hurt that child as opposed to supporting that child’s learning. So that’s really what culturally responsive teaching means. The political ideologies that are included, I’m not entirely sure how that would play out in an actual public school classroom. I am a firm believer that we are here to teach kids how to think, they need to take multiple sides in issue, understand all the different pieces and all the different angles and then make their decision based on that. But when you’re talking about culturally responsive teaching, it really is what our teachers are already doing. It’s best practice and its differentiation.
Patrick: I think it’s important to note that the bill that was passed last month in the Illinois House, will actually take effect in (20)25. And it will be primarily related to teacher education and training. The bill itself, it’s not, I think it’s important to know, because I think about how politically charged this topic is, this is not a response to the last 12 to 18 months. This has actually been a years-long process and had been a knee-jerk reaction, so to speak. I think that in terms of its implementation inside the district, I think that we will need to take our time, we will need to try to see how it actually fits into the district in terms of who our community is, and more importantly, where we’re going as a community; how are we evolving demographically as a community. But also, I think, we need to be mindful and respectful to the fact that this is a hot topic. It’s not it’s it’s not something that we’re going to be able to solve overnight. And I think that that’s why I think there should be serious community engagement and dialogue with both sides. I think as a board, you need to be able to listen to both sides, approach the issue holistically, and then be able to act. Right. So I think it’s very much early days, we’ll see what happens. Like I said, it’s going to take effect in 2025. I think the first reverberations you’re gonna see are actually in October, or later this year. But we’ll see what happens. I think that it will require a lot of dialogue with teachers and staff and the experts in this area.
Laura Lang: To some degree, I mean, everyone’s concerned that this was going to be a court-mandated curriculum change. And that is not the case. Thankfully. So as they said before, this is teacher preparation and training, which of course, influences how teachers will probably teach and think but they are still individual. We hire these wonderful individuals that come in with their own credentials and their strengths and their backgrounds. As Patrick was saying, we’re gonna have to watch it and just see it unfold. But the beautiful thing about a school board and a school district is that it is meant to reflect the community in which it is placed. So the board sits there, is able to take in information, really understand it, and then filter through mandates the state has given us. They will to be able to make it something that really fits within our community and isn’t really disjointed. So I know, I started reading like crazy before it went through and going: what is this; how’s this gonna work? And when it passed there were a lot more questions. But I’m optimistic that this is something that actually could help us. We just need to see, how does this work within our community? And how does it reflect our community?
Justin Lamb: When this first came out, I was like, wow, this is like really extreme from what we were hearing from the media outlets and stuff. But Sunny has said, our teachers have been doing this for many years. This is how they assess their classrooms. They try to include all the kids and in how they teach. We want to teach our kids how to think, not what to think. We just want everybody seen in the curriculum, to be inclusive and have equity in our classroom. I think we’re doing a good job. With these mandates that are coming through, we have to evaluate them and learn as we go and just constantly monitor it and do what’s best for our community and our schools.
Question: Justin said that the Community Action Team was basically to address facility needs. While that is important, shouldn’t that team or a team like that also address other needs such as curriculum, special ed needs? Use of funding? And other critical needs.
Max McComb: Well, this point No, because the board hasn’t asked them to do that. However, when we came up with this, originally, I was really excited about the opportunity to do a very comprehensive strategic plan. It was all-encompassing, it would encompass some of these areas. I had trouble getting board support for that. We had board members that wanted more board involvement, and less community involvement. In the end, the most critical thing we’re facing right now is facilities. And so we were able to get that through and say let’s start with facilities, and see where this goes. I am hoping that we have such a great, great, great response and experience with what we’re doing now that we’ll be able to move on from this and do another five years strategic plan. It’s been about eight years since we’ve done a five-year plan I’ve been trying for three years to get another plan moving. It’s been very difficult at the board level to get that done. First, we wanted to wait for the election (2019), then we wanted to wait because we have COVID, now we’ve got people wanting to wait because the board may change again. Again, we’ve got board members who want way more board involvement and way less community involvement. I’m a believer that we need community involvement in this, particularly in facilities, because whatever the community is at the board for with facilities, the communities are going to happen, figure out a way to help pay for it. But I’m hoping this first step to taking us where we need to go.
One June 24, 2019, Board Member Ken Keefe talked about his interest in a 5-year plan, stating that after talking to McComb the district did not have one. When McComb responded, he said that the district had just completed a five-year plan with Middletown Prairie in 2018, and he looked forward to the community engagement effort that would include facilities, academic and finances. He said the plan would be a “comprehensive” 5-year plan.
According to Board Policy 2:110, one of McComb’s role as the Board President is to “focus the board meeting agendas on appropriate content.”
Sunny McMurry: When you look back at what the purposes behind the recently created committee, it really is to get community input into those facility pieces. A big piece of that is because if the community doesn’t understand what teachers and staff actually need within the schools, it can be really hard to make a case to come as all as taxpayers to say, hey, we’re going to put this referendum on the ballot and we need more money. So if the community has input and has an understanding of what’s going on with facilities in the district, it’s a lot easier for people to understand what’s coming. So for that specific committee, no, I don’t think those pieces would fall into that. However, I think some of the things that we’ve seen, especially through this election are the amazing ideas that the general population has for improving our schools. It’s incredible. And you put a couple of minds together, and you’ve got a whole new idea. So I think that community involvement does need to continue in some form or fashion. If this committee turns into some kind of Advisory Committee related to curriculum or extracurriculars or anything like that, I think that’s great.
Patrick MacKay: In terms of directly answering the question: should the existing committee address these other concerns, I think the answer is no. I think that the committee needs to have a core focus if you will. And also I would say that this is based on conversations we’ve all had with folks across the district. People want to beat you in the head with the facilities question. They talk about it constantly. So I would worry if we start to load additional topics, no matter if some of them are related. I think some of that will be discussed. The use of funds will be tied up into that discussion. But I wouldn’t want to dilute the actual purpose of that committee by adding more on top of it. So I think right now a core focus on facility planning with the outcomes of the five-year strategic plan. I think it’s perfect. It’s just enough. Obviously, there are probably other topics that would probably warrant additional committees, but I’m sure the board will actually take those up.
Laura Lang: Yeah, no idea of having other topics that the community can engage with. But I agree that right now, we’ve got this focus right now for the community engagement Initiative has to stay focused, because it’s a really large topic at this point. So I think they’re just going to need their time to buckle down and look at that, and all the options. Yeah, I’m excited to see what they come back with. But I think this is a good question, and really think about what is the future, and how we utilize the community. Because our community is just full of amazing professionals, people in the community that have different perspectives I would never be able to see on my own. To have that come together. And to be able to hatch out and really think through those. Also, just be able to do more of that in the future , sitting back and saying, Hey, you know, who do we have in our community? How can we make this more open instead of just hand picking a group. But allowing it to be more open and allow open dialogue in there and maybe utilize people who wouldn’t have traditionally encouraged to join us before.
Justin: I think this committee was put together specifically for the facilities concerns in our district to get the plans together for that. So with that being said, I mean, this day and age, there’s so many more opportunities to communicate, whether that’s via Zoom or social media and email there’s multiple avenues of communication. So going forward, I think we can engage the community more and decisions made on issues in our district by just encouraging them to reach out with questions, making ourselves available for answering those questions. And meeting in the community of great establishments we have here in town, it’s very important to take that into consideration since we represent those constituents. So with this facilities team, I think they need to focus on their main job of creating a plan for our facilities, and then we can address any future needs of their committees or anything else that we see as a great way to communicate with constituents.
Rebecca Richardson: I guess I kind of see it from a little bit different perspective. I think looking back on how our newest building was built, and I spoke with several teachers and staff who work in that building and they expressed concern and disappointment that they were not included in a lot of the discussion and planning for that new facility. And so I think that there’s more to this question than really meets the eye. I think that if you’re building facilities you do need to take into account Special Ed needs, you do need take into account functionality, you do need to take into account population growth, capacity issues beyond just, bodies. So I think maybe discussions in the committee will probably end up taking those things into account anyway. I don’t agree that this is a linear process, and you can only do one thing at time. Facilities are important, the curriculum is even as important or more important. So I think that while this committee specifically won’t take on curriculum, for example, I still think we can do curriculum, we just need to, clearly keep our eye on, because it is something that always evolves. I’d have to give this issue even more thought to have a better answer but that’s kind of my initial thoughts.
