Episode 34: Denver school board member Kimberlee Sia on her hopes, vision for the next two years, and beyond

Transcript

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 0:08

Hi everyone. Welcome back to the Board Hawk podcast. We are so excited to be welcoming a school board member on this week. That is Kimberly Sia, who was elected in 2023 to represent Southeast Denver District One, which I am incredibly biased and I will share it. That is the best district because that is the district that I live in. So Kimberly, me too, is my, me too. Oh, nice. I didn't know that Alan. So we have our own elected official, and Kimberly is getting interviewed by two of her constituents on this one. Kimber or Doc, I'm sorry. Director. Sia is a former educator and school leader and most recently has, was serving as the treasurer of the Board of Education. Kimberly, welcome to the podcast.

Kimberlee Sia: 0:48

Thank you. I'm excited to be here with you today, Alan and Alexis. I appreciate you having me.

Alan Gottlieb: 0:55

Great. How would you, let's just start with a really broad question, Kimberly. What, how would you describe your vision for the district over the next two years, I guess while you're on the board and like how, what that sets the table for longer term.

Kimberlee Sia: 1:09

I. I'm really excited to continue some of the work that we have done in my first two years on the board, just in terms of how we're really thinking about engaging the community in ensuring that the work the board is doing is aligned with what our students need. I am. Excited about how we're thinking about the academic outcomes for our students, as well as how we're focusing on ensuring that they are ready for what happens once they graduate from Denver Public Schools. As we worked on. The superintendent's reasonable interpretations as part of his goal setting process for the year. We also added in some goals around how much access students have to things like arts and music and to internships, work-based learning opportunities. And so really it is exciting for me to think about how we're supporting students writ large in terms of. A well-rounded education.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 2:22

And for those who don't know, Kimberly, can you explain what the reasonable interpretations are?

Kimberlee Sia: 2:27

Sure. Now the reasonable interpretations are the superintendent schools that he set, he sets each year that are aligned to our INS policies. And I like to talk about the INS policies for the board and for the district as a whole as. Are North Star. So they're really the visionary goals for the district in terms of what we want to see as it relates to. Academics as it relates to the safety and wellbeing of our students. How they show up and how they're prepared to be leaders in their community, and then how we think about sustainability. Those are our four ends policies. And so then the goals the superintendent sets his reason, he has reasonable interpretations of what it will take operationally to be able to achieve those ends policies.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 3:23

Thank you so much. So you as treasurer have more probably insight in spending more time with the budget and the finance team than most people on the board. So as we go into a world that we continue to see declining enrollment within our district. What do you and the unknowns that exist at the federal level, obviously with the state budget, there's some concerns. We live in a world that is dominated by Tabor, the taxpayer Bill of Rights. What do you see the future financial outlook of the district looking and what does that look, what does that mean for declining for schools that may be facing declining enrollment?

Kimberlee Sia: 4:02

I think that we are gonna continue to see a tightening of belt, the belt, so to speak across the district. While at the state level with the School Finance Act, there were some changes. In the positive way to be able to really support students based on their needs. And Denver Public Schools was able to benefit as a result of that in terms of how much money we receive per pupil. However, if you look at what's happening at the state level. They're potentially having another billion dollar deficit that they have to address at the state level. And to your point, Alexis, the Taxpayer payer Bill of Rights does continue to impact how much money the state has available to be able to go not only to schools, but to other social services and needs across the state. And there's not more money at this point with the way that our, that things are currently set up. There's not more money that's gonna come from the state to the schools. And so then we as a district have to really look at, if we continue to have declining enrollment, where are we gonna have going to have to make cuts. And I think I look at. Jeffco schools who just announced that they are having to cut 150 positions in their district because of a decrease in the amount of money that they have, and they have already closed more schools than DPS has. And because of the way that the School of Finance formula is set up. Our per pupil is based on enrollment over a three year period, and that's been beneficial to us over the last couple of years because we had the increase in students due to the new to country families who came to Denver, however, starting in 20 27, 20 28 school year. We will be receiving our per pupil funds based on the decrease in numbers. We lost approximately 1200 students this school year and we anticipate that trend will continue such that by. In, I think it's 2029. We're anticipating to lose almost 7,000 students in the district. Wow. And roughly what does that translate to as far as dollars go? So it's$15,000 per student. And so you do, sorry. I'm, even though I'm the treasurer, I

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 6:39

cannot, Alan's pulling up the calculator people I see. He has this

Alan Gottlieb: 6:43

15,000 by 7,000. 15,000 times 7,000 is 105 million. That sounds like a lot.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 6:54

Yes. Over how many years? Over three

Kimberlee Sia: 6:57

years, essentially. That's a lot of money if you, it's a lot of money. And as you all know, when we did this. Last round of school closures in the last school year it was approximately$30 million that was saved. I say saved with a bit of hesitation because obviously I know all of what goes on, what goes along closing schools, and so I don't wanna sound insensitive to the families and the staff that were impacted by those school closures, but. At the end of the day, that$30 million we were then able to use in all of the contract negotiations we had with all but one of our unions over this last school year, that we were able to still provide compensation increases. And I bring that up because to your initial question in terms of where do we see the district going with the continued declining enrollment? With continued, without additional funds coming from the state, I don't anticipate additional funds coming from the federal level. Or if they do come at the federal level, they potentially will come and block grants. And then what that means is states decide how they wanna spend them, mon that money. And we don't know what that means for us at DPS. And so we are gonna have to make some really tough decisions as a district. To Alan's math that he just did. If it's a hun$105 million that we're losing in the next three years, that's th let's say 30. Million dollars a year that we could potentially be losing. And where are those cuts gonna come from? Oftentimes folks say we can just cut from central office because we're heavy at the central office level. But if you talk to principals or other staff who work at the schools. Because of the number of cuts that have happened at the central office level, it impacts schools. And I think folks don't think about that when you have less people working in food service or you have less people working in transportation, or you have less people working with the Family and Community Engagement Office. Those are resources that schools use daily and families use daily. And when you don't have people in those positions. The support services that go to schools also get cut. And so unfortunately, I do think even though EL 18 was amended last year to have a moratorium on school closures, there is a caveat in that executive limitation where the superintendent, if there's a financial.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 9:46

Emergency.

Kimberlee Sia: 9:47

Emergency. Yeah. I was like I feel like it's so hard to say that, but yes, if there is a financial emergency, he can bring the recommendation back to the board to close more schools.

Alan Gottlieb: 10:00

That was one of the things I wanted to ask you a couple of quick follow ups. One was about that, whether that's gonna probably have to happen, but the other was, there's also been, and I'm not sure where this stands, I know you do that, that there was a real move against having school performance. Have any say in which schools get closed. And then the other is that I know there's a big push and a lot of the new board members ran on a platform of reducing class size, which has been an issue. I'm not, that's the first one I want to touch on. It's like I'm not sure if I understand how the potential decline in enrollment and the subsequent. Decline in probably the number of teachers that would also happen, is it possible to reduce class sizes in this environment or is that hugely difficult?

Kimberlee Sia: 10:44

It's interesting when you look at the class size reduction conversation, because the schools that are small due to lining enrollment are not the schools where they have a class size. Problem. They're not the schools that are over the limit in terms of what is happening there. And so it's this really interesting conversation because if you are gonna do if we're looking at class size reduction and we're reducing the number of students per class, it actually does take staff away from those schools. Because if you have fewer students, you need less staff at those schools. And interestingly. It then also creates less funding for those schools. And so when you're reducing class si. When you're reducing class sizes, not only could you potentially right lose teachers because you. You wouldn't necessarily lose teachers because if you're going from 35 to 30 or 35 to 25, you still need a teacher for that classroom. But because you lose funding schools, then lose support other staff. Because they don't have funds for them. So if you have an intervention teacher who helps kids with reading, or if you have extra teacher's assistants in classrooms just to help to have another adult in the room, that's where you start to lose. That's where a class size reduction, I think we have to talk about. Yes. Teachers. I have been a teacher. I know what it is like to teach 42 sixth graders math all day long. I did it for several years. That is a lot of students in the classroom. And then I also had a classroom one year that had 17 kids in it, and that is, I understand the night and day of what your class size looks like. And the reality is there are financial implications of making that decision, and so we want class size reduction and we don't wanna close schools. I'm, I would love to hear from folks who are really in support of both of those things, what they're thinking in terms of how that gets funded. It's a

Alan Gottlieb: 13:04

great question. And what about the school performance? Yeah. What about the school performance piece? Is it a wise policy to say we're not even gonna consider that when we take a look at which schools have to close? Should it come to that because of the financial situation?

Kimberlee Sia: 13:17

We, it is one of the items, if you look at EL 18, it actually is one of the items that is considered in the list of items that the superintendent is presenting. Now, if the superintendent came and presented a school that was low performing academically, and it, but it didn't have low enrollment. Then that actually would not be in line with the executive limitation. He actually wouldn't, right. He wouldn't be following what we asked him to do. So I think there's a per, there is not currently anything in EL 18 that says he can recommend a school foreclosure solely based on academic performance. What's in interesting though, Alan, is that we do have the school transformation. Plan. STP, the STP and that is for schools that are on the state accountability clock, and those schools actually can be reimagined due to their academic performance. And so I think, and that is not something. That comes to the board. That is an administrative policy. That is something that the, from an operational standpoint, the superintendent has worked on, has actually presented to the Colorado Department of Education as a way that. DPS actually wants to get ahead of states of schools having to go on the state accountability clock. And so it's interesting to think about that because when you reimagine a school, that can be everything from turning it into a charter school, replacing the entire staff, turning it into a new model. Many of those things are very similar. To closing a school. And so I think when you ask about the academic side of closing a school, there's actually a mechanism that exists already in the district for that to happen. It's just not one that the board has. We are informed on it, but it is not, it's being run. That would have to be a conversation with the superintendent.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 15:32

That is really interesting. I don't know that the average person would know that. The school transformation process is an operational decision based on the school account, the state accountability, and I love the word that you used, the reimagine back in my day, we would talk about, it was a school restart or school closure process. And yeah. And so if you were on the accountability clock and what, just so those who are listening who don't know what that means, the state. Has passed something called the education Accountability Act, and it created basically a system that holds school districts and individual schools accountable to academic performance and having to meet certain specific indicators. And often those are aligned with the school performance, the state school performance framework. And if a school is low performing based on those indicators for a X number of years or however much time. Then they are put on a watch list by the state that requires, a certain level of inter or a watch list. And if they're on the watch list long enough, then they require a certain amount of interventions. And those interventions could include if the school isn't, doesn't improve in performance, a restart, a closure a call for a new school, things like that. Did I get that right, Kim? Yes. That was a great explanation. I'm trying to do better of giving what does this, that was

Alan Gottlieb: 16:51

very good.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 16:52

Thank you.

Alan Gottlieb: 16:53

And I find it ironic that this whole system that was rolled out to much, fanfare earlier this year is so similar to what was happening maybe 10 years ago in the district with, under a different name and under a different administration. So I guess everything old is new again. I have another question unless you have one you wanted to ask Alexis. Go ahead. On. We had Jen Holiday on our last episode and we talked at length with her about the sort of history of Denver's portfolio management system, which is essentially bringing district-run schools, charters, innovation school under one umbrella, even one system for parents choosing which school to send their kids to joint accountability system in many ways. And really agnostic about the governance model of the school, in other words, which has been whittled away in the last several years. And. Appears likely under the new board or I'm curious how likely you think it is under this new board to continue to be whittled away that the autonomy of innovation schools and zones and perhaps even, the creation of new charters, especially in the declining enrollment or the reauthorizing of charters, how likely is some of that to continue to be whittled away from what it was in its heyday like six or seven years ago?

Kimberlee Sia: 18:04

It's really interesting to think about. What is happening with school choice in Denver Public Schools in terms of the different types of governance models we have for our schools and. You did make the point that with declining enrollment, we haven't seen new schools opening in the way that we had in the past, and so I do think enrollment would really drive any type of new charter schools that would happen. If a school is an innovation school, that is something an existing. District run school can make a choice within their school community to become an innovation school. And since I have sat on the board, we have approved a few innovation applications. And so that has continued for schools to become innovation schools. Additionally, we have also approved. For in a school that was already an innovation school, to become part of an innovation zone. So the Luminary Learning Network is the one innovation zone that is in the district as of right now. And so to think, so innovation, at least in my two years on the board, has continued to happen. It will be interesting to see with a new board makeup, what happens with that in the future? There, during the campaigns, I listened to the candidates and for some of my new board colleagues, they were very supportive of school choice and also supportive of traditional district run schools. And so it will be interesting to see as we start to have to take votes as a board on. Innovation plans, innovation zone plans, which start to come to the board in January to see where, how folks educate themselves about that. How they start to think about what is happening there. The charter process, her state statute, the district does have to have a period of time for a call for new schools that is required as part of state statute, and that process also will start, I actually think the application comes out sometime, or the call opens up sometime this month and then that process typically makes it to the board in makes it to the board in June. By June. I don't have a sense yet of what is going to happen with that, but I do think in the coming weeks we will start to understand that better as things come in front of the board for a vote.

Alan Gottlieb: 20:48

And I think it's important to point out to everybody that the new board members were just sworn in and there actually hasn't been, other than the election of officers that happened earlier this week. You guys haven't actually sat down and had a governing meeting where you take votes or anything yet?

Kimberlee Sia: 21:01

No, we have not. Our first work session will be next Monday on January 8th.

Alan Gottlieb: 21:07

December 8th.

Kimberlee Sia: 21:08

Oh, sorry, yes, December

Alan Gottlieb: 21:10

8th. Okay.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 21:13

Kimberly, something that a lot of the new board members ran on was improving trust and building more transparency with the community and the district. What does the relationship between the Board of Education and members of the public I in your mind, what does that ideally look like?

Kimberlee Sia: 21:36

I'll speak from my own experience in terms of how I have thought about this and my interactions with the public. As a board member, I am elected by my community as we mentioned at the top of the podcast. You are both constituents of mine and so I see it as my responsibility to be available to the community and to be able to interact with them. And I. Hugely appreciative of the policy that we implemented for, to have more purposeful engagement with community in terms of board members going out into the community to meet and not always requiring the community to come in for public comment and to have and not actually be able to interact with the community that we have. I. I also think a lot about, because I, when I ran as a candidate too, I ran on, I will be engaged in community. I will, I want to be able to have community voice. What I think will be interesting, again to see how new board members navigate this is what is happening in community and then how we as a board can actually impact that. It's. It takes a while for that to be able to happen and with our form of our governance model as a board with policy governance, depending upon if what community is bringing forward, if it is something we can dictate through policy versus is it an operational issue my favorite is. Snow days, obviously since we just had snow, where people, I have lots of emails from students who are like, you should be able to call a snow day. And so those, I appre. I like the voice, I appreciate the considerations and. We, I, as a board member, cannot, even my own children are like, mom, just tell the superintendent that we need a snow day. And so it, it does not necessarily work that way. So that's what I think I would hope, I am hopeful that my new board colleagues will. Be as open to C listening to community, but then also ensuring that commun, when we are in board meetings, when we are having conversations, that we can have the hard conversations publicly because when that's what transparency means to me. You asked about the transparency piece, and in order for the community to really know what is going on, we have to also talk about it. In settings where they can hear the conversation such that if they don't like what we have to say about it, they can come to us and they can tell us that. And I do, that a number of decisions that I've made or a number of recommendations I've made as we've talked about policies or I've done votes are based on what? Has happened in a work session and then I get text messages, phone calls, emails where someone says, I don't like this. Oh, I really like that. That is if you are transparent in having those conversations, it helps to create that dialogue with community. Absolutely.

Alan Gottlieb: 24:55

Just a quick follow up, Kim, in just talking about the relationship to the community, this may be an issue only for me of anybody in Denver. But I continue to be a little disappointed in how limited public comment has become. It used to be a free for all and you all, sometimes, I don't know if, I don't think you were on the board when this happened, but there would be public comments that would just go on for hours and there'd be like, organized groups that would've 40 people come to speak and they'd basically all be reading from the same script. So I can see how. That would get really tedious if you were sitting up there in the diocese having to listen to that. But it seems like now it's so limited that very few people actually sign up for public comment anymore. And would you, do you think there needs to be some sort of a modification of the limitations that are in place?

Kimberlee Sia: 25:36

Interesting, because I cannot figure out. Why the number of folks who have signed up for public comment has decreased. And I don't know if it is this perception, to your point, Alan, that folks think because of the time limits we have now, because of the limit we have on the number of people per topic as a result of the policy that was created around this. I don't know if that means less people are signing up because I oft I ask. Marlene Delarosa, who was our board vice president pre previously she is the one who keeps track of all of our public comment and she helps us with the follow up and all of that. And so I would ask her every few meetings, Hey, was there anyone who couldn't come to public comment? On the rare days that we do have more than, two or three people. And since the policy has been implemented, we actually have only had one time where one person was not able to get on for public comment because of that. That said I think that there are certain topics where if we as a board have to sit there for six hours and listen to public comment, I also see that as part of my responsibility as a board member. And so I would support changes if there were a need for that to happen. It's interesting. I don't know if you all paid attention to this in one of the forums for during the candidate forums, there was a question about the public comment and if folks supported the current public comment, PO policy, and I don't think a single candidate. Regardless of if they are now a board member, I don't think a single candidate supported the current public. The current policy

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 27:19

for public common, it was noted by many people. I heard, I got a lot of calls from, it was the CVS four and Chalk beat one, and it was, they all got asked the same question and it was that like, do you support the existing policies for public comment and. The incumbents all also did not raise their hand even though those incumbents voted in the policy changes. But nobody ever called that out. So at least not in the forum. I definitely, it was called out on my phone when people were calling and complaining about it.

Kimberlee Sia: 27:53

So that is to say, may, maybe there's a, that is a place where as a new board, if folks are in agreement that. We don't like the policy that currently exists. That feels like a great place for folks to come together and say, Hey, we wanna make some adjustments to this policy because we want to hear more from the community.

Alan Gottlieb: 28:14

Yeah. And it's not a either or. It can be a both end. Going out into the community more and doing more public comment. Yeah.

Kimberlee Sia: 28:18

Yeah. Yeah.

Alan Gottlieb: 28:22

I wanted to ask another question that wasn't originally on the list, but I just thought about that and, you've been talking about policy governance quite a bit, which is, the system under which the board and super the board operates in its relationship with the superintendent and really is an effort to stay, have the board stay out of operational issues more than necessary. There have been times when the board has gotten way, way too involved over the years, not recently but it's. The current form of policy governance seems to me to be rather extreme in how limited the board is in its ability to even ask for data or information, or at least the way the administration is interpreting how policy governance is running in the district. Do you think that policy governance is working well in serving the community right now, or would you like to see some modifications to how policy government is being implemented by the board in the district right now?

Kimberlee Sia: 29:13

The place where I, there are two places with policy governance that I think some modifications could help for us, for it to work a little bit better. The first is that the process of policy governance takes a really long time. So the purpose of policy governance is to be able to create a policy either a. Governance policy that talks about how the board functions or an executive limitation, which is the way that the board can give direction to the superintendent. And between writing the policy, talking about it at board meetings, depending upon the policy getting, how we get community input on that policy, how we go through various reads of the policy. It can take six months, it can take nine months. It takes a really long time because it is pretty rigidly set up. There is a way, if a policy is introduced, the board could choose not to do readings of it and they could vote, they could it suspend that policy and then vote on it immediately type of thing. There's been maybe. One or two times that has actually happened and it's been on previously existing policies. And so that is something, I don't know how to fix that, Alan, but it is something that would be interesting if we really wanna move things and make work happen quicker, I think we have to think about how we do that. The second place where I've personally struggled quite a bit with policy governance is that. If you go to the board's website, you'll notice that it says board policies, and then it says administrative policies. And if you go into the administrative policies, there's a whole section about the school board. And so we have board policies. Example that I will use is the requirement that if a board member wants something on the agenda, they need two other board members to join them. That's actually an administrative policy that's not a board policy. And so it's interesting to me that we haven't moved all of the board related items that sit in administrative policy into. Policy. Policy, and so it's a little bit of a hybrid of policy. What would be the

Alan Gottlieb: 31:49

practical effect of doing that, like of moving it from an administrative to a board policy? What would that change and why is it,

Kimberlee Sia: 31:54

and why does it matter? I, the reason that it matters is because if there is something that's in administrative policy that falls under the purview of the superintendent, so we can go back to the school transformation process that we talked about, right? That is in an administrative policy that is the superintendent's under the superintendent's purview because it's not board policy, the board, and there's not an executive limitation, right? The board essentially. Doesn't touch that. And so it's interesting to me that we, so we follow that for that. But then we also have a po the policy around the agenda. I'll use the agenda setting. We also have that in administrative policy. That's not a board policy, but we treat it like a board policy and we follow it. And so it's this kind of, this world. To me, the reason it makes a difference is because. Sometimes we can't do what's in administrative policy and sometimes we can, and it's confusing to say we're a policy governance board. Shouldn't we be just using the policies that are in policy governance? And then what does that mean for those other ones that are not, haven't been moved over to policy governance?

Alan Gottlieb: 33:12

In other words, if you, as the board wanted to say. This is stupid. One board member should be able to, or at least two instead of three, should be able to get an item on the agenda at the moment. Because it's an administrative policy, you don't have the authority to do that, is what you're, is that what you're saying?

Kimberlee Sia: 33:26

We don't, no, that's

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 33:27

That's it. Yeah. Yeah.

Alan Gottlieb: 33:29

Interesting. That's very interesting.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 33:31

Thanks. Thanks for explaining that. Sorry, it's a little wonky. I apologize. You said hey, but

Alan Gottlieb: 33:38

I

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 33:38

didn't

Alan Gottlieb: 33:38

realize that one I think was, that was clear. I think that was pretty clear. That's interesting and

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 33:42

a good example. So I do have a question. As you're reflecting on the last two years and moving into the next two years that you're on the board. One of the last things that the previous board did not unanimously, I will make point that out since you, you voted against this was to center your colleague, director John Youngs. And you're about to have a new board working together with a board member who was previously centered, at least by some members of that board and some who didn't get to weigh in on that. How do you foresee this board moving forward in a productive, respectful collaborative manner when this is looming over the board?

Kimberlee Sia: 34:29

Something that. I am really excited about that we're doing as a board that we didn't do when I joined the board, is that we are coming together for a board retreat next week to start to build relationships as a board and to talk about how we as a board work together. I'm gonna pause for a second. To be fair, we did do that when I joined the board. We just didn't do it in December. We did it late in January. So I'd already been through several board meetings and I actually think that it's, there's some advantage we will have had one work session before we have our board retreat, but it is much earlier in the time that we are working together as a board to start to get to know one another and to think about how we are gonna work together and. To the question, Alexis, I think that allows a time and having spoken with the facilitator who's gonna be supporting us in this board retreat and knowing a little bit about what's on that agenda, there is gonna be time for us to be able to talk about, to get to know one each other, one another to get to know how we how we think about collaboration, how we think about conflict, how we think about moving work forward, what are our goals for the district, both individually, and then how do we think about those goals as a whole? And so I think that is a really great opportunity for everyone to come in as we are a new board working together. This group of seven people have not been a board, and as we all know. The board does not function on one person. The board functions as an entire body. And so that to me feels like the timing of that, to have that opportunity to do this so quickly with the new board members coming on, I think gives. Both the board who was ENG involved when the center happened of Director Youngquist and these new board members, the opportunity to essentially start with a clean slate.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 36:49

Thank you.

Alan Gottlieb: 36:50

Great. Thanks. I'm also interested in your thoughts on. What you think the relationship, I mean I, in an ideal world, what the relationship between the board and the, and this isn't really getting to policy governance, it's more in terms of the role of the board vis-a-vis the superintendent as its sole employee. What should be the relationship between the board and the superintendent and do you feel like the board you were on up until now fulfilled that? And what are your hopes for the new board that now is in office? Yeah.

Kimberlee Sia: 37:23

So I had a former board member someone who had been on the board years and years ago. I was talking to them about this very question and they said to me, they said, the superintendent is really the eighth board member, and which is very true, and I hadn't actually thought about it that way because I haven't always, with policy governance, I haven't felt like that, right? I haven't I've always felt like there's a very clear dividing line. This is the board's responsibility. This is superintendent's responsibility. He's our one employee. That's our responsibility to hold him accountable which are all true facts. But I do as someone who has been the executive director of two different organizations and reported to a board, that concept of the eighth board member just made a ton of sense to me because I think about when I was most successful in my leadership roles, when I reported to a board, it was when I sat at the table with my board and knew them as people and could have those tough conversations and. I knew how they liked to challenge one another and to challenge me and knew how we would celebrate successes together, and that is not something that I think the previous iteration of the board in my first two years. We didn't do as much of that. Something I am also really excited about at this retreat is that we are gonna do that. So Dr. Marrero will be joining joining the seven of us to be part of those conversations. And I think that's also a really great start for thinking about how do we as a board and the superintendent work together to be able to do everything that needs to be done for those students in DPS.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 39:15

I really like that. And as I think about and I brought this up in a previous episode or a previous podcast episode I was very fortunate to recently hear Dr. Katie Anthi be'cause our former commissioner of education. And she didn't use those words, but being able to sit at the table as. The, the employee of the board and being able to understand and navigate the complexities of how the board members not only interact with each other, but also interact with their employee and how you're saying it as the eighth board member I think there's a lot of truth to that and I think she navigated beautifully. A very divided board with very different viewpoints. A and she did it in a way that is very similar to how you're describing this eighth board member. Yes. And I hope that is something that the board really does take into consideration. And I think it would be a, my opinion is a much better way of working together and governing together than how it, how I've seen it in the last few years.

Kimberlee Sia: 40:16

I am really excited about the new board members who are gonna be joining us and the possibility of us starting on a different foot in terms of how we are coming together with the superintendent to get to know one another, to get to understand each other with the common goal of making DPS the best place possible for every single student, it leaves me really optimistic about what could be possible in the next couple of years.

Alan Gottlieb: 40:49

Great. Thank you. That seems like a helpful note to end the podcast on, which we don't always do, so that's good. It's a new era, so let's hope that comes true, Kim. Thanks thanks so much for coming on with us and it's been a great conversation and we'll be back with another episode very soon.