Seattle Schools Board Special Meeting April 23, 2025

Good afternoon.

We will call the meeting to order momentarily and SBS TV will begin broadcasting.

um

Okay, the April 23rd, 2025 board special meeting is called to order at 3.03 p.m.

We would like to acknowledge that we are on the ancestral lands and the traditional territories of the Puget Sound Coast Salish people.

For the record, I will call the roll.

Vice President Briggs.

I'm here.

Director Clark will be joining us momentarily.

Director Hersey.

Here.

Director Mizorahi.

Here.

Director Rankin.

Here.

Director Sarju.

Here.

And this is President Topp.

All right, this evening we will be in our special meeting here reviewing the scores for our interviews that we had for our search firms.

We are joined by Assistant Superintendent of Finance, Dr. Kurt Buddleman, and our contracting services team who has been supporting us this whole time.

Thank you so much.

Earlier this month, we began review of proposals from executive search firms that responded to our request for proposals for our superintendent search process.

We completed individual evaluations and then joined together to review and discuss our combined scoring on April 9th.

This should all sound very familiar to board directors.

On our next step, we selected three finalists.

We interviewed those finalists last Friday.

It was a super exciting Friday night of spring break.

And then in preparation for today's meeting, directors were asked to submit individual scores for those interviews.

Directors who were unable to attend the Friday meeting had access to the recording and other materials shared, so they were able to also score.

Just as a reminder for fairness and to comply with state law for the evaluation of these proposals, we need to adhere to the following tonight.

We need to comply with our conflict of interest and ethics policies, the docusign that board staff had us sign at the start of this process.

We need to evaluate the proposals based on the criteria we as a board previously set and included in the RFP.

And finally, we need to document our reasoning through this process for any changing in scores that may happen through our discussion this evening.

In alignment with all of this process and requirements, we're going to work through, I think, roughly five steps tonight.

I'm going to go through the five steps real fast, a lot of me talking, but then see if folks have any questions about what this process looks like.

And staff, correct me if I get any of these steps wrong.

First, we're going to look to staff here to confirm that they have our individual scoring from the evaluations for each director completed and submitted.

Second, once we've got all those individual scores, I'll ask staff to report back to us on combined scoring for the interviews.

Third, we're going to look at the scoring.

And then our next step will be to move into discussion about why we scored the way we did.

After that discussion, we can change our scoring if needed, but we will need to document that scoring in writing for the reasons for those changes.

Finally, we will look at our final combined scoring with any updates and arrive upon a agreed upon firm.

And then during today's regular board meeting, we will take actions to authorize a contract with the selected firm.

So a lot of information there, a lot of like five steps, I would say, for this special meeting.

Any questions?

Okay.

I have one quick question.

This is Director Rankin, although I'm coming through Evan's phone.

Just for my own confirmation, we're selecting the committee to offer the firm to offer the contract.

Are all is the contract already.

I just want to make sure we have the flexibility to select an interim or a permanent superintendent with any of the three firms.

Is this the right time to ask that?

Look to contracting staff.

So the question is, are you locked into hiring a permanent superintendent through this process?

The answer to that is no.

Is that the question, Director Rankin?

Yes.

Yes.

The question is that whichever firm we contract with, that that contract would allow us to pursue either an interim or a permanent superintendent with that firm, depending on the needs of the board and what happens throughout the process.

You're online, but I'm seeing shaking heads from procurement staff.

other questions thanks all right seeing no other questions we're going to proceed to step one reviewing our preliminary scores so first staff has have you received all scores necessary we did and thank you to the board for meeting that deadline um then could staff walk us through the scoring sheet and where that leaves us i think can ellie put that on the screen or someone

While that's happening, just confirm each board member has their scores that they submitted, right?

Okay.

So you'll need that if you want to have a discussion later.

Do directors who are online have that by email?

We'll find out in just a second.

We are in the parking lot, so we'll be there in just a sec.

Perfect.

Can we make sure, board staff, that Director Mizrahi has his sheet if needed?

Thank you.

Yeah, and I'll be there physically in like 15 minutes or so, but that'd be great.

Is there a way to make it clear?

Staff is having a tech issue, so give them just a moment here and hopefully The suspense.

So I can read them if you can't read them on the screen.

Yes.

The highest scoring firm from the interview process compiling all of your scores was HYA at 72.14.

The second highest firm from the interviews was McPherson-Jacobson at 70.29, and in third of this interview scoring was Ray & Associates at 63.57.

So HYA 72.14, McPherson-Jacobson 70.29, and Ray & Associates 63.57.

Will you repeat that one more time?

Sure.

HYA, 72.14.

McPherson Jacobson, 70.29.

And Ray & Associates, 63.57.

All right.

So those are the scores.

Do directors have any interest in speaking to their scoring or This is our opportunity for discussion leading us to update any scoring if need be.

Do you want to repeat the scores one more time for Director Rankin?

I can, yes.

The scores again are HYA 72.14, listed there at the bottom of the screen, McPherson Jacobson 70.29, and Ray & Associates 63.57.

And that's the compilation of your scores for the interview portion of the selection process.

And I see Director Mizorahi has his hand up, so he will kick us off with discussion.

Yeah, and I don't have any strong opinion.

I'm not saying this to change anyone's mind just to walk through my own score.

You know, I first of all felt like I think some of the comments we made during the first round, you know, I felt like any of these three firms would have been great and acceptable.

So I think that that gives me a lot of confidence in what we do that I think each of these three had things were distinct that I liked about them.

So would be happy with any but um but i uh it looks like similar to everyone else picked mcpherson and hya as as my top two and i think i had this plate edge to mcpherson over hya but had those two very close i'll just say the two things that i liked about mcpherson and there are a lot of things i liked about hya as well i liked the um The fact that they have a local person, you know, that they seem to have a little bit, maybe not more, but just more emphasis on the local framework analysis.

And I thought that would be really helpful.

And I also really like the two-year guarantee framework, even if it's not something that would ever use or boards I don't know how often boards use that but just like the fact that it's there obviously shows their own confidence in in the work that they do so I I felt good about that firm but I also felt good about HYA so um I think like outcome wise would be fine with either one other directors director sarge director sarju

To echo what Director Mizrahi says, my comments are not meant to persuade anybody of anything.

It was my scoring, me reading, and so my score is my score.

What I remember from the interviews is that HYA, and again, I could have missed something because I was also...

the myth of multitasking, trying to take care of my 19-month old grand bean.

But what I remember is that HYA was the only entity that actually talked about kids and how important it is to remember that this job is actually about kids.

And so, The other, that's why the other two did not, I scored everybody the same in terms of could they do the job and their past performance.

But where they left me is there was no mention of kids.

So that's my rationale for my scores.

Appreciate that, Director Sarju.

Others?

Director Rankin, welcome back.

Thank you.

Yeah, something I wonder that it doesn't seem like we really need to talk about it, but the thing that I struggled with was the scale of numbers.

Like, I'm pretty sure we probably all fairly subjectively chose how to like what value to it like 40 points out of 40 points like I could have been like two fewer points for that or 12 fewer part like that so that all feels a little subjective in a way that I'm not super comfortable with and I if we had If I had stronger feelings about it, I might want to dig in more to that of like why, how we each as individuals used the number, the value of the numbers, if that makes sense.

But, yeah, I agree with Director Sarju.

I also scored the full points on the qualifications and the past performance.

They all have great track records.

They all have a lot of experience doing this.

I really liked the Ray and Associates approach and their clarity around the timeline.

But I think that's something that we could talk to any firm about if we had questions about timing.

I also know that a couple other districts in Washington are working with Ray and Associates right now and having a very strongly positive experience.

But again, it's not something I'm gonna...

Director Hersey.

Yeah, so just for clarity on the process for myself, we don't necessarily have to go with the highest scored person, do we?

Or are we bound to do that?

We have to go with the highest score person.

So this is our discussion now where we can update any scores that we feel like we need to update.

And we can update our own scores here, express the reasoning why after our discussion, and then staff will re-tabulate those scores.

That's good clarity.

I think that, for me, a big piece was just, you know, if you look at my tabulations going into it versus coming out of it, I was pretty surprised.

Just, do you have a question, Michelle?

Director Sargent, can you use your microphone?

I have a vision challenge, but I feel like I'm not seeing the whole scoring sheet.

Is that correct?

For the interview process, yes.

The questions are not included.

Yeah, but we can't see the whole thing in everybody's score.

Oh, now she, oh, they just adjusted it.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Director Hersey?

Yeah, no problem.

No issue at all.

Going into it, I was surprised just by the verbal presentations, how much I was really impressed by HYA.

And McPherson as well, I think going into, and I really want to lift up a point that Director Rankin said, like, the difference between those two are negligible.

And I initially thought that them working with other districts in the state was a strength because they kind of know the landscape of what we were dealing with.

on the flip side there's no guarantee you know that by starting up with them and given our timeline and we're a little bit behind some of the other districts that we would be getting the most premium applicant uh if that makes sense so that's just something to think about uh i think that the the major piece for me was the mention and a in a little bit of stay during the interviews on uh student outcomes focus governance um Just based on the conversation that I think only one other, I think McPherson, and correct me if I'm wrong, it was a Friday night, but I think McPherson was the only one that actually spent any significant time on it aside from HYA.

I think that's reflected in the scoring.

So, yeah.

I don't think that I'm particularly moved to change any of my scores.

I think that we will be in good hands with either.

I was a little bit more impressed with kind of the, given that we have also, if I'm not mistaken, worked with HYA in the past on the community engagement part of the redistricting, right?

Am I tripping about that?

last superintendent search okay i knew that there was something that we had worked with them on um but the reason that i say that is just like having context for the community already i think is a benefit and at least having some uh institutional knowledge of like who they need to reach out to obviously we would be giving them additional information regardless of who the firm was but That's just my two cents.

I think that we're gonna be successful regardless of who we go with.

I'm not necessarily inclined to change any of my scores, so yeah.

Other directors?

Go to Director Clark.

I wasn't sure if we were still doing the name tag up thing, but I thought I would give it a try, so thanks.

I saw Liza in the room and I remembered, so thank you, Director Rankin.

Yeah, I actually, I struggled quite a bit scoring between McPherson, Jacobson, and HYA.

I thought I was really impressed by HYA's level of detail on their community engagement strategy and it just made it seem so robust and the fact that it was ongoing throughout the process and just didn't have a termination date.

But it wasn't clear to me, and I probably should have asked this as a question, like, once we get into building the profile and moving forward with selecting candidates, how the community engagement influences it at that point.

So that was confusing for me.

And so I did score them a little bit lower.

And then with McPherson Jacobson, I I really thought that Dr. Herschel having so much experience with Washington state, working with some of our financial partners and also just having that on the ground systems knowledge of the region that we live in, it's really important because we're not isolated as a school district.

We function within a city that functions within a state.

And so that context can be helpful.

And, Yeah, so I struggled.

And I think also on the third column, the past performance on similar contracts, they all kind of listed similar size districts that they'd worked in.

And I think some of them talked about, like, we learned XYZ from this search.

But no one really talked about the cost control, like the things that are actually listed in this column for us to be scoring.

I didn't hear anyone talk about cost control.

I didn't hear anyone talking about working with a district that has a $100 million budget deficit, that has declining enrollment, that is going through a leadership change.

And then compliance with the performance schedule.

So it was hard for me to score in that category because I just didn't have the data that I wanted to have.

So I haven't decided yet if I'm going to change my scores, but just wanted to share kind of what my experience was with the process.

Director Rankin.

Thank you for coming back to me.

I, you know, in just reflecting and thinking a little bit more, and it's always helpful for me to hear from you all.

So it was hard to watch this in isolation, watch the recording, and not have my team, my teammates to kind of bounce stuff off of and give me a chance to process and hear things.

So I'm doing that a little bit now.

I do think Ray and Associates was the most frank about the challenges of our timing and what we're facing as a district.

That they were pretty blunt about there's going to be media challenges.

There's going to be scrutiny at all levels, perhaps even national.

WHICH THERE'S ALWAYS ATTENTION WHEN ANY DISTRICT HAS A CHANGE IN LEADERSHIP.

BUT THEY WERE PRETTY FRANK ABOUT UNDERSTANDING THAT SOMEBODY THAT THEY'RE RECRUITING IS COMING IN TO A BUDGET CHALLENGE, TO AN ENROLLMENT CHALLENGE, TO A STATE FUNDING issue to all these things.

And I felt like they were the most frank about that context.

I also think that any of the firms would be receptive to us talking about how to deal with that.

The other thing I really liked about Ray and Associates was that they, I think more than the others, I think everybody mentioned it, but more than the others, they specifically mentioned that the best candidate is likely not somebody who's looking for a superintendency, that they will actively go and seek out the people and say, hey, did you know that Seattle is looking for new leadership?

Is that something that you would be willing to consider?

And I think given the challenge that we're asking somebody to step into and given the fact that we are off cycle in terms of hiring super, like people are finding out now that they did or didn't get a superintendency for the fall.

We're asking somebody to come in awkward time um uh i guess it's sort of a pitch for me for what ended up being my top choice that seems a bit out of line with the rest of the board but more um i just kind of wanted to put that out there that like there we're already in a different challenge than um the challenges that already exist in a superintendent search because of our kind of off cycle timing.

And so being cognizant of that, having the firm that will help support us through that and that is going to actively recruit folks who will be ready to step into this challenge, who may not be looking to move somewhere new, but to say, hey, this is available and we think you could rise to the challenge and be a great fit.

Would you consider it?

I do think that with our timing, that's what we're going to have to look for.

Anybody who was looking for a superintendency for the 25, 26 school year was applying in January when other districts did that.

So, I appreciate the frankness that Ray and associates brought to that.

I think that the other firms we could, I don't think they would not be willing to address that.

It just didn't specifically come up in the interview.

But that's definitely something that I'm thinking about is that this in a lot of ways is not the standard search just kind of based on the timing and the level of challenge.

And I would be curious if people are willing to share, there's, and I'm not gonna say it, but I am noticing a couple of outlier scores that I'm just curious about.

That if folks are willing to share what their thinking was, I would appreciate the insight, I guess.

Just some, based on the numbers up there, there's like an eight.

or a 37. No, that's just a curiosity.

I'm saying I'm not, but that's a curiosity I have.

If there's something that we should be thinking about that people noticed that we didn't notice, I would love to hear that if people are willing to share.

We're going to go to Director Briggs because she hasn't had an opportunity, and then we'll go in order here for those who've had a chance to speak Director Briggs.

I honestly don't think I have anything really to add to this conversation.

I don't have strong feelings.

I use the exact same logic actually as Michelle and scored everybody the same in the second two columns and then the difference came down to me to vendor approach.

And HYA stood out to me from the beginning because of their focus on children and student outcomes and then also their community engagement strategy seemed really robust.

So I'm not feeling inclined to change any of my scores and that was my logic.

Director Hersey.

Yeah, so Director Clark's comments actually jogged something that I wanted to mention.

And again, I could be, you know, remembering an error here, but I really, what stood out, another aspect of HYA's presentation that stood out to me is the, not only the recognition that we're having budget challenges, but also like the mention of looking for someone with fiscal acumen that might be different than the approach that a couple of the other firms had.

I don't remember like, you know, At least it wasn't a clear enough connection between us being in a budget challenge and looking for somebody who has not only the experience but potentially specific experience in that area that might be useful that stood out.

And the reasoning that I have behind...

I don't know if I would call it a standout, but when I look at the...

And you'll see this kind of throughout my score specifically.

It's like if there were two instances...

I tried really hard not to give a perfect score just because nobody's perfect.

I didn't think that any of them hit the mark completely.

But if there were...

say for example if you're looking at my score for the last one i gave two 20s and a 23 that's because the two that ranked 20 for me uh were pretty similar and i thought out of the best out of them i thought that hya hit it highest there uh the same is true for my second one uh between professional and qualifications necessary i thought that they were all fine but i did think that um hya and mcpherson were probably comparable whereas uh Rand Associates probably lagged behind those two a little bit and then there were in terms of community engagement for the reasons that I kind of talked about before McPherson and H.Y.A. were close the fact that we worked with H.Y.A. before and other contracts gave them the edge there for me and then I ranked brain associates what I did because I ranked them what I did so that's kind of the logic that I use there.

Director Sarju.

My comment is related to something that Director Clark said, which I don't think I need to ask her to save her notes.

No, I know you do.

I said, I don't think I need to ask you to save your notes.

But the questions that you ask, so first of all, It would have been a miracle if they had all answered everything that we would have wanted to know, but didn't necessarily specifically ask about.

And so the points that you made, I'm not going to try to reiterate them, I think are As you're talking, it's like, well, that is something we would need to clarify as we develop a contract, like those outlying questions, because all of them didn't answer something for all of us.

Right, like that is, we can go around the table.

And so those things that we feel are important, that would be important with anybody we contract with, we actually have to ask those questions and make that part of the contract and the contract deliverables.

And so as we're talking, what I'm hearing is we are, What I'm hearing is a curiosity, and Director Rankin actually put on the table, and I said, you can't ask that.

That was my side comment to her, because it doesn't, how somebody, the eight, and I can't read who the eight is, I don't think it really matters, right?

Because the scores are not, except for that one, the scores are pretty similar, and we scored...

Well, I know, but I'm talking about the overall score.

So if we had an overall score where one was 20 and the other two were 72.2, then maybe we have some questions, but part of this is that when you have such a high-scoring number, there isn't objectivity, right?

I have done many, and President Topp knows this, as we built Best Arts for Kids, I created many, and I do mean numerous, RFPs and we tried to keep the scoring narrow so that it wouldn't boggle people's minds.

I think when you see a score of 40, how do you objectively break down the 40, right?

And that's how SPS does it.

It's not a criticism, but it is a fact that that large of a number doesn't leave room for objectivity, like real objectivity.

And without including what it means, that 40 means, then it's left up to us as individual scorers to make sense of what that means to us as individuals.

So all that to say is I don't want to get caught up in, you know, the fact that, you know, Liza scored higher than me on one and I scored higher than her on the other.

I think what we, as we do this, we need to keep in mind, like, what is important as we begin to contract with people?

Because I don't think, we can sit out here and talk about this for an hour, and I don't think we're necessarily gonna quote, unquote, budge on a score that is so drastically different than what we already did.

That it's worthy of continuing to churn about.

That is my opinion as a director, and it's not stated.

Well, maybe it's stated to influence us to keep it moving.

But it's definitely not, I'm not stating that to influence whether or not anybody changes their score.

That's a personal decision.

So I'll leave it at that.

And I will wrap us up here.

Just real fast, since I didn't have an opportunity to speak, I'm very similar with Director Mizrahi.

My first was McPherson and then HYA, but feeling very the same about either.

I liked the local aspect of McPherson.

HYA seemed a little bit more rigid, but appreciated their community engagement.

strength, which is where sort of Ray and Associates lost me a little bit as far as points go.

But I'm going to say, look now, there's some table cards up, but I assume directors have already had an opportunity to speak.

Now's the time that we're going to re-tabulate your score.

If you would like to re-tabulate your score, I'll give folks three minutes or five minutes?

Oh, yeah.

Director Briggs, do you have your?

I think she's left it up from previously.

I never put it up, actually.

That was the first time I put it up, and I'm just going to put it back down.

Sorry about that.

No, don't be.

All good.

Yeah.

Does anyone want to retabulate their scores?

all right so that means that our top scoring firm was hya and that means that during our regular board meeting we will move forward with hya just procurement want to or

If I can make a clarification.

So that was for the interview process.

HYA was the highest scoring.

Since you didn't change anything, I think, Ellie, if you flip to the next tab, they're also the highest scoring when you factor in price and the proposals.

So HYA is the apparent successful vendor here.

McPherson was second.

And Ray & Associates was third.

So HYA was 155.417 total points.

And McPherson was 154.601.

And Ray and Associates was 146. So your conversation reflected the fact that they were all very competitive proposals for this process.

So President Topp, I think that's your recommendation for the board action report is HYA.

All right, there being no further business to come before the board.

The special board meeting is now adjourned at 3.39.

We will join back together at 4. We are going to go into our regular board meeting at 4.

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