Captain of a Glen Lake ship adrift: Q&A with Sander Scott
Glen Lake superintendent Sander Scott (right, in the blue sweater) fields questions at the Dec. 10 meeting.
By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor
Glen Lake Community Schools administrators and staff represented by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) signed a 3-year labor contract on Thursday, Dec. 13—three days after a dramatic and packed School Board meeting where embattled superintendent Sander Scott fell on a sword and apologized to the board, staff, parents and citizens for what he called a lack of leadership. Scott said the ongoing contract negotiations, which dragged through all of 2018, represented the biggest failure in his 25 years of work in public education. The contract dispute, in part, helped create a caustic atmosphere at the school. In the past two years, 19 employees left or were pushed out. Community members described what they perceived as gag orders and fears of retribution if they criticized management.
Following four months of working without a contract, the deal signed by the Board and AFT will give teachers a 1 percent raise for each of the next three years, $35 per hour for two additional hours of staff meeting time per month, and a $600 bonus for participating in what Scott called “a unique project, curriculum or program.” AFT negotiator Gary Wellnitz confirmed the agreement, saying the breakthrough came when Scott and the Board decided to stop using “a downstate attorney, and bring things in-house.”
The Glen Arbor Sun interviewed Sander Scott the day before the contract was finally signed. He spoke candidly about: Glen Lake’s reliance on federal impact aid; the board’s desire to cut costs; how much the school spends on football; promoting the arts; locally-sourced food service in the cafeteria; school of choice and keeping enrollment steady; the labor negotiations; staff departures and suspensions; a heightened legal environment; a hierarchical and adversarial relationship between administrators and students; and how Bob Sutherland helped “coach” him through this process.
[Sutherland is best known as president and owner of Cherry Republic. He’s also a Glen Lake alum and parent whose father Dale was principal at the school. Sutherland wrote a critical op-ed recently in the Leelanau Enterprise, in which he stated: “I understand from past conversations that the school leadership is more involved in getting contracts signed, building infrastructure, changing curriculum and balancing budgets than building trust and appreciating and valuing their employees. But how many more of our staff (which are, let’s not forget, beloved and valuable members of the Glen Lake community) will we lose before the board and administration considers having some heart to heart conversations with them.”]
Portions of this interview will publish in our December 20 print edition. Read the entire interview below:
Glen Arbor Sun: I would assume that most board meetings are not packed houses like this one was on [Monday, December 10], or is that standard?
Sander Scott: That’s not standard. We’ve had a couple. A previous meeting earlier in negotiations was fairly full but not like this week.
Sun: Has there been an effort to shrink the budget and rein in costs? That’s the sense I’ve gotten.
Scott: Yes, the board has recently set financial goals. Two goals for school system: one is to control costs; the other is to maintain quality. The board wants to continue great programs, wants to not have the educational environment or the students’ learning suffer in any way as the result of cutting those costs. That’s the classic leadership challenge in any organization, right? Maintain or increase quality while you control costs.
Sun: When we say control costs, is there a percentage cut or cut from money per year? What are we talking?
Scott: We rely on 92 percent of our federal impact aid just to balance our budget. This has been a part of a couple presentations I’ve given to teachers and staff. As the costs escalate in really every facet of the organization since 2008 to present day. It’s climbing at an unsustainable rate. That’s what the board has had concerns about for quite some time. So the challenge is, we need to seriously grapple with this issue and that was demonstrated in the board goal of, let’s within five years let’s not rely on federal impact aid, not rely on 92 percent just to balance our budget.
Sun: What is federal impact aid per year that’s allocated by Congress?
Scott: $3.2 million. … We think it’s fairly stable. However, every president since Bill Clinton, when they put out their budget (which Congress has to approve) has sought to cut federal impact aid. The Trump administration did some unique things in terms of pulling in vouchers and a different approach to “attacking federal impact aid”. I think that raised more than a usual amount of concern about whether we could continue to count on federal impact aid. In the end, the budget Congress came out with … doesn’t give us any more money [than previous annual allotments] but it gives more money to the program which other schools in the nation that have federal lands in the school district benefit from. So in the end federal impact aid was more funded for federal lands. But there’s a fair amount of trepidation about how shocking to our system it would be if we lost federal impact aid. And so we want to try to bring that under control. One of the balances is, because at some point in the future this could happen, the shock to the system could happen, it kind of feels like we want to shock the system now. And that’s where I need to do a better job of communicating this internally and externally, helping people better understand and come to grips with how we got here, and then involving more of the stakeholders …
Sun: The push to reign in costs in the event that impact aid went away, does this originate with the board, or with you or your predecessor? Where does that start?
Scott: I think it’s fair to say that it starts with the board. The board really, I think that’s also outside of a contract negotiation. It’s unfortunate this came out together. The communication around it was viewed as a negotiation strategy, and I would say that’s really not the case. What I really noticed is that we’re discombobulated in a lot of ways as a school district, and I remember having been part of a district in the past where we looked at financial projections at least five years out. Really beginning a process outside of a negotiation, helping communicate the needs of the budget. That would have been a preferable approach to the way these two things collided at once and added tension to an already tense teacher negotiation.
Sun: Has this federal impact aid question directly been part of the labor negotiations, or more implied?
Scott: It did get directly involved. A part of the final language in the contract [which was signed Thursday, Dec. 13] is a clause that says “if federal impact aid drops below this amount—I think that’s $2.7 million—that means we’re going to do different things with compensation. The concern on the part of the board before committing to a three-year contract with potential legacy costs was having some assurance that if we lose this substantial funding source, from which we rely on 92 percent of it to balance our budget, that there would be a shared thing in the contract.
Sun: One more question about federal impact aid? Is there any correspondence between Glen Lake Schools and Congressman Bergman or Senators Stabenow or Peters about the importance of this to Glen Lake?
Scott: We visit them twice a year, usually one or two board members and me. And Jason Stowe from Leland, too. They get around $600,000. We go to Washington, D.C., twice a year. Federal impact aid consists of … the program has three different divisions under it. There’s federal lands, there’s Indian (they still call it that at federal level), and military families. So Suttons Bay gets some federal impact aid through the Indian Education Act part of it. Those three are federally impacted children, because they’re part of sovereign nation. Or they’re military children living on a military base. That impacts the local districts ability to educate kids. So two times a year all three of those groups meet in Washington, D.C. under NATHAS, National Association of Federally Impacted Schools. Then there are divisions within that. We are the Federal Lands Impacted Schools (FLISA). We meet two other times a year to coordinate our efforts to educate legislators; to lobby, if you will. In January, [board member] Patrick Middleton and I will travel for FLISA.
Sun: One of the concerns the audience raised on Monday was this perception that while school-wide costs are being reined in, the school still spends a lot of money on sports—the new turf [on the football field] almost to the tune of $1 million approved a year and a half ago.
Scott: Over $800,000.
Sun: Yeah over $800,000. What can you say about that perception, over $800,000 to fund a new turf for a football field? I know there’s been talk of a new press box, too. Is that right?
Scott: A press box is one component of an overall facilities master plan that we’re trying to develop. I think it’s the desire of this community to have a comprehensive school for our students, to provide great performing arts opportunities, athletics opportunities, and the meat and potatoes of an education and everything else. So yeah, a press box is a part of that, but also a lot of things in the classroom, refreshing our classrooms. So that perception, I went through my own exercise.
First of all, I’ve mentioned this enough, ever since I became a professional educator. I’ve been trying to get away from a jock image from my high school basketball days. I kind of get it with the board a little bit. I tell them [begrudgingly] “the first major thing I’m going to be involved with as superintendent is an artificial turf.” The fact that it’s artificial also adds an element of controversy. It took me a while to understand the current condition of the football field.
My experience as a high school athlete playing soccer on football fields was that when I walked the field, it took me a while to understand that it was basically an unsafe playing surface. But once I accepted that we needed to have a new field, whether a grass field or an artificial turf field, then the decision … we could have just left it alone, but what phys ed teachers and [football coach] Jerry Angers would tell you was that there were parts that were really hard to repair and you just needed a new field. So once you accept that premise, then you look at costs associated with grass and costs associated with artificial turf and the ability to use it. Back before it was grass, during football season they can’t practice on it because they’d chew it up too much. So they’re practicing on the baseball field, which then chews up the baseball field. And you couldn’t really have phys ed class on there. So if I accept the premise that you need a new field, one of the grass experts, one of our board members recently admitted to our parent advisory council group, the grass expert at the meeting said if you want to use it this much, then grass is not … If you want to use it a ton, you should go with artificial turf.
But I also appreciate the juxtaposition right now—our whole reason for existence is to educate kids. That employee group closest to executing that mission has been working without a contract for several months. Juxtaposing that with an artificial turf field or other projects we’ve been doing … we need to take a holistic approach for a comprehensive school system.
Sun: So I know it’s hypothetical, but if federal impact aid left, the school would have to decide what to cut back on. How might that impact football and sports?
Scott: I think it would dramatically affect. Right now we rely on 92 percent just to balance our budget. So it would dramatically affect every part of our organization, thus the concern from the board of setting a goal to gently rein this in so as to avoid any kind of future catastrophe. And/or saying, here are some unique things that are awesome about Glen Lake that we’ll continue to do. Make that transparent and visible to ourselves and our community that we will continue to do as long as we continue to get federal impact aid. These are the special things we can provide our students because we’re fortunate to get federal impact aid. But also, in that same message, if we ever lose federal impact aid, these are the things we would have to cut in order to balance our budget and remain sustainable.
Sun: Is there a list, whether it’s official or unofficial—projects, infrastructure improvements—that would have to wait or be cut if federal impact aid …
Scott: Well that’s the work that, that’s the crux of, when I say discombobulated, there’s not a current strategic plan, there wasn’t a financial plan, there wasn’t a facilities plan. So we’re trying to do all this at once. Currently we don’t have a school improvement plan. Getting better in the area of learning, and how to fund all of those. In the middle of our three year strategic planning process, that’s the idea of involving a broad-based stakeholder group, about what kind of vision our community has for Glen Lake Community Schools. What do we want a Glen Lake grad to know, understand, and be able to do, what kind of citizens do we want them to be? What kind of opportunities do we want to provide our students? And of course a facilities plan works into that a little bit. Some of the feedback we’ve gotten is that our current performing arts space is less desirable than a lot of other schools in the county have for their students. And so that’s being considered as part of a possible future facilities master plan.
Sun: Is Bill Dungjen part of that planning?
Scott: He works in our performing arts, play director and musical. We have a parent who has been part of our facilities master planning process and is head of a parent group who’d like to see a dedicated auditorium, rather than an auditoria shared with the cafeteria. That’s a part of the overall effort that we’re trying to go from being discombobulated to being more thoughtful, more organized and strategic for the planning for our future.
Sun: I wanted to transition over to food service. My understanding is that Jackie Cobb has stepped down or resigned. She was the food service director and trained chef, right? Is that still the case? I know that you cast doubt on that Monday night [December 10]. Is she coming back?
Scott: As of Monday night I was hopeful that Jackie would reverse her decision and decide to stay. She has decided not to stay. She is going to leave us.
Sun: What’s behind that decision?
Scott: Well, as a part of the effort to begin to gently rein in costs, turned out that it wasn’t gentle, what I began to say to our leadership team, when we have someone leave us, and that happened with one person in food service, who left for a chef job at a restaurant. I said ‘is there a way for us to absorb that from within?’ That is a strategy that’s often used in schools that need to go through financial belt-tightening. You stop and ask ‘do you really need to replace this person?’ By us going through that, especially related to our food prep and providing the awesome meals for kids, my perception was that Jackie felt like she was not able to do that. Upon reflection, felt like she was pushed too hard, too fast, to begin that process in an unexpected way. She was a part of the conversation about understanding the need to do it, yet it felt to her like a surprise. So we said, hey, we learned our lesson and are going to put you back to full strength, and then it was 2-3 days later that she decided to take this opportunity at NMC and return to the Culinary Institute. At Christmas break she will leave.
Sun: So how does, or will, the belt tightening and her departure affect locally-sourced fresh fruits and vegetables?
Scott: In every facet of our organization the board expects us to maintain or improve quality while controlling costs. As I mentioned earlier in the interview, that’s a classic leader’s challenge, whether that’s a nonprofit or in the public or private-sector. So we keep all those commitments for locally-sourced, farm-to-table, and the quality of the dining experience that kids get in there. We wanted to know if there were process improvements we could make within the kitchen to be able to maintain or improve that quality. But we still want the same … not just grab it and heat it up for the kids, instead of the scratch cooking. We still want scratch cooking for kids.
Sun: So that’s not going away. Bardenhagen or whomever will still bring local apples.
Scott: That’s gonna remain the same.
Sun: Local nonprofits that got the farm-to-school movement going about 10-15 years ago … my understanding is that Glen Lake was always one of the leaders, one of the shining examples of this.
Scott: Absolutely, and there will be no reversal.
Sun: Even without Jackie?
Scott: Even without Jackie.
Sun: How many food service staff will be there starting in January?
Scott: This is a natural part of continuous improvement. The challenge for us is the financial charge of the burgeoning expenses since 2008 are escalating at an unsustainable rate. So we have to change something about how we’re operating. This also feeds into our three-year strategic planning process, and gathering input so we can understand at a deep level what are the priorities. The answer can’t be ‘we’ll change nothing’. Changing nothing, the costs continue to escalate.
Sun: You said 2008. Why 2008? What was unique about that?
Scott: The board’s goal is to be independent of federal impact aid for operational expenses within five years. Salaries and benefits are fixed expenses. Whereas, building a library or media center, once that money is spent, all you spend on is how to maintain it. So in the case of when we did LED light upgrade, that’s not a fixed expense. It’s actually gonna help our fixed expense because of energy savings. Like with the solar. We think it will help our fixed expense because it will save on energy costs. So the board is not concerned about using federal impact aid for special projects, one-off type of expenses. They are concerned with using it for day-to-day operations …
Sun: For salaries.
Scott: One board member said that federal impact aid was supposed to be the gravy, not the meat and potatoes.
Sun: Why are we talking 2008?
Scott: 2008 is when, I believe, the big increase in federal impact aid came to the school district. Otherwise you just wouldn’t be allowed to grow like this. You wouldn’t have the money.
Now the caveat is that this is per-student. You’ve read about school-of-choice. In the short-term, this will be exasperated by limiting the number of students. When I was first asked, ‘what is your plan if we lose federal impact aid?’ it was kind of an off-the-cuff remark I made in a casual setting in a board meeting. I said, you should really think about not taking all these schools of choice students because we’re an out of formula district and receive no funding for pupil for them. And yet we must staff extra. There are all kinds of expenses. My salary would be same if you spread it over 3,000 kids than if you spread it over 500 kids. But once you make a commitment to a school-of-choice kid, you are obligated to educate that kid through graduation. … So that was another concern. Since over 30 percent of students are schools-of-choice, if we lost federal impact aid, we can’t just say ‘sorry, now you have to leave so we can right-size our staff to the new financials.’ So that’s another concern. So we said until we get this figured out and get where we’re going, and get a strategic direction, let’s restrict and be more thoughtful with what we’re doing about schools of choice. But the yin to the yang is we know we need student numbers to be at a certain level to maintain certain programs that we offer. Will we have enough students to have great performing arts programs, dance, choir,and theater?
Sun: And sports, too.
Scott: And sports. We have a lot of fall sports. That is kind of atypical …
Sun: Football requires a large roster.
Scott: So those are tough issues where you feel like you’re between a rock and a hard place between maintaining cost control and maintaining quality programs. Glen Lake has been insulated from that since 2008, from having to have those tough conversations, those tough decisions. Because you had the buffer of federal impact aid. What the board is concerned about is, we keep using that buffer. 92 percent of it we rely on to maintain.
Sun: School of choice stops when?
Scott: We do open up slots for younger siblings of school of choice kids. But all sorts of new families, if you don’t live in district. Which is the way it was when I was a kid. You lived in the district you attended. There were not schools of choice. That’s an outcome of Proposal A.
Sun: So contract will be signed [Thursday, Dec. 13]. What happened since Monday night, or recently to get to the finish line?
Scott: I think a lot of different things. I think we hit a point, a combination of fear and leading us not to talk to each other as much as we needed to reach middle ground. Fear, at least on the side of the board, about making a mistake in negotiations. This is my first teacher contract negotiation that I’ve been a part of, other than when I was a teacher, and I wasn’t smart enough at that point 20 years ago to get on a negotiating team to experience it. So I was unfamiliar with how it works. When it really began to find pinch points. I knew this was coming and had gone to a number of different conferences to get as educated as I could be, to be prepared as I should be, to represent the district and be that intermediary. What I didn’t know was the closer you get to mediation the more technical things can become and the more concerned you need to be about making a procedural misstep.
So we meet and started to rely too much on a district attorney. And I think the perception of that is ‘we’re bringing in the big guns’. From my standpoint I was fearful of making a mistake. And so that Monday night you saw me saying, hindsight is always 20-20. In order to continuously improve, you have to reflect on the past and the missteps. I think that was the big misstep on my part. It’s been a sticking point and that we hadn’t been communicating as much as we need to in order to get consensus. So we’re going to get back to working together as a community school and as a family. Working to communicate more. Then in fairly short order we were able to get through some of the sticking points.
One of the suggestions I had for the GLFT was, I’d received coaching from my board about how they’d like to be presented with options. I said, maybe follow the advice that’s been given to me as superintendent. Right now your counterproposal was this 2-year deal. What about having a 1-year deal option, a 2-year deal option and a 3-year deal option? That you know your membership would support any one of those options. That would help the board be able to pick from a menu of different options that are suitable to the teachers. So that was a pretty good key in us breaking free. The board was really interested in us having a 3-year deal and settling things down for a longer period of time than what a 1-year deal would be. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. The option the GLFT presented to us prior to Monday night, they looked at that. Still continued to be very concerned with burgeoning costs. However, they also know that these are our frontline educators that carry out the mission. We do need to get a contract settled. They just had a couple of concerns. After the board meeting I heard those concerns, kept the dialogue going, way into the wee hours of the morning actually. After midnight Monday night, after the board meeting, I was texting with Federation representative Gary, and said, ‘hey the board has this concern, this concern, what do you think you can do?’ The next morning those two concerns were addressed and brought to the full membership Tuesday for a vote. And the GLFT teachers had ratified it. It’s a done deal; only a formality.
Sun: So you didn’t get together for pizza and pop [as suggested at the Dec. 10 board meeting]?
Scott: We never had to buy pizza and pop. [Laughs] I think that would have been an approved district expenditure. (You heard my comment about cakegate.)
Sun: You had said at the end of this marathon you thought it was less about the money and more about the atmosphere here. Going back to what I heard Monday night, parent Timothy Young talked about a “gag order, fear or retribution.” How, if at all, does that all get changed by signing a contract? Is this the same conversation?
Scott: Well, they’re separate, but also intertwined. It’s all part of. I think a big thing is a lot of misunderstanding has happened in the negotiation process, misunderstanding in the void of us talking, which got especially exacerbated once an attorney become the point person for the district instead of me. In that void a lot of misunderstandings and wrong assumptions began to grow. I think that the same thing has happened over the last two years. The previous contract only had a once-a-month staff meeting. When you’re trying to improve, and to manage change together as an organization, it’s really important to talk together about that. We began to make improvements and manage this change. I believe that the restriction of being able to meet only once a month and discuss and hear concerns, as much planning as you do, with any project … Murphy’s Law is ever present. You need to be communicating with one another. The big thing for me is we’ll have a routine now that everyone can have on their calendar for us to communicate better. Instead of one hour a month it will be three hours a month. I was originally looking at once a week. That was my experience as a teacher. We had once a week staff meetings. Good concern on the part of the teachers. So far their experience of staff meetings had been me just talking at them. And they don’t know, didn’t experience the staff meetings I facilitated when I was an elementary principal, where we’re all about soliciting their input and really involving them in the collaboration of setting the direction for the district—seeing their involvement in a lot of things. I said this at a recent staff meeting. I said give me a chance at these staff meetings and I think you’ll come away finding them valuable, not a waste of your professional time, and you’ll see how it is at a venue to hear your teacher voice as a big part of how you move forward.
Sun: Correct me if I’ve got the number wrong, but I believe it’s 19 staff, teachers, custodians, bus drivers, food service people have left in the last year? It’s a significant number.
Scott: Yeah, that’s the number that’s been quoted.
Sun: Is that (because of) the contract negotiations and working without a contract? Or is that atmosphere, and to quote what I heard on Monday, an atmosphere of fear?
Scott: Well, as I mentioned Monday night, some of that has been natural attrition—retirements, getting a different job, moving. And I think some of it has been accountability. There have been a number of different things … the elephant in the room is, we talk about what’s best for kids. Sometimes as a school system that means if reasonable expectations are not being met, we have a responsibility to address those. That can cause discomfort. It’s always been considered distasteful and not really part of the code of the road, if you will, to share details about that stuff. I think a lot of different, the void of that information. Rumor starts to go around about how accountability affected one particular person, and it’s kind of distasteful for a supervisor or superintendent to say ‘here’s what really happened’ and share details. It’s not something that’s typically done. You’ll hear coaches of professional teams say, ‘that stays in the locker room’. That’s kind of the approach that we use. I’d say there have been a number of them, and I think that in the void of us sharing details about them, people’s fears began to grow. At a recent staff meeting we had, I said ‘let’s talk about this.’ I’d share details. I think that any professional educator, any parent or any community member who knew details about what we had to look into. Sometimes it’s looking into something that doesn’t end up coming to anything. Sometimes it does come to something that needs to be addressed. Those people would say that would be expectation of supervisor or principle or superintendent would have obligation. The community would expect you to look into it.
Sun: I know that in addition to 19 departures, there have been suspensions of teachers. Has that increased lately? Is that part of this difficult atmosphere?
Scott: I don’t think it has increased. There was a recent one. I do think it has contributed—certainly in the void. When you only hear a suspension and you don’t know the details and the perspective and were a part of the discussions, the frequent interaction that led up to that. Part of the fear that has grown is feeling like that was unexpected, that came out of the blue. One of the things I’ve been reflecting on. First, I would dispute that. In each one of these suspensions, there were many frequent meetings, saying this is an issue we need to talk about, we need to change. They did not come out of the blue.
Sun: You mentioned a recent one, how many suspensions of teachers or staff have there been this fall?
Scott: This school year two. One teacher, one support staff.
Sun: They’re still here?
Scott: No, one of those two support staff did end up leaving and getting a job.
Sun: The other was a teacher? Suspension did not lead to termination?
Scott: No, it has not.
Sun: You mentioned, I think the expression you used on Monday was “uber legalese” in terms of the atmosphere that you found when you took the job here. What does “uber legalese” mean in the context of this school, this community, and being an administrator here?
Scott: Well, I cited the example of the “cake gate” where, because when I first arrived here at the time there was an active lawsuit with a previous superintendent. Some of the things that were germane to that lawsuit were spending district funds on food. I really haven’t spent a whole lot of time digging into those details. I kind of wanted to break free from the past. My understanding is that was about putting on staff parties, buying adults food, which is not allowed under the school code. This, when a concern was raised by a board member at the time, I saw it differently because it was for a student,a student signing their college letter of intent to go to be a student athlete at a college. And I said, it’s fine, because it’s for a student. There was still a heightened concern about that because of an active lawsuit. So next thing is we have to consult an attorney.I playfully said ‘it probably cost $1,000 for that cake instead of $25.’ I honestly haven’t run the numbers on that. That’s kind of demonstrative of the uber legalistic environment. With most schools, if there was that concern I would just take $25 out of my wallet and move on. But there wasn’t that comfort level to handle it like that at the time. That’s what I’m speaking to. The combination of my inexperience as a superintendent, my desire not to repeat any mistakes of the past, and an overall trust issue with the office of the superintendent that was exacerbated by the fact that the board, although I was their top choice, still knew that I hadn’t been superintendent before. I was an associate superintendent.
Sun: In terms of the need for open dialogue between the top administrator and employees, has education changed in this country, in this region? Has it changed to the point where it is a hierarchical, top-down structure instead of, for lack of a better term, a democracy?
Scott: Um, I think that we need to work together as a team. But one of the frustrating factors about how schools are funded now, it used to be back, pre-proposal A when I was a kid, if you felt like you’d like to pay your teachers more, then you went for a millage. And you heard through voting, a raise for teachers or not, you heard through voting what the will of the community was. It didn’t pit the superintendent or the board against the teachers. The board and the teachers all collectively got together and said, hey let’s go for this millage, and if it failed in the public’s eye, then I think as a team, board all the way down, you reacted as a team. Now you can’t go to the voters to get a pay increase, and so you automatically set up an adversarial environment. That’s what’s changed. I think schools structurally are very similar in terms of the bureaucracy. I think it needs to be more democratic. I’ve gone through a lot of different trainings. The only way to see improvement is to constantly be hearing the voice of your internal and external stakeholders and hearing that. I go back to having that planned time of a staff meeting to do it. That was the one piece of this contract negotiation that was really important to me because of my fundamental belief that you have to have that routine of connecting and talking. Certainly there are other ways. Surveys. Should still do those surveys. You can communicate via email. But you have to have that dynamic human interaction.
Sun: In this learning process for you in these weeks and months, who have you gone to? Anyone you’ve talked with, consulted with in the greater community, be they under the greater umbrella of Glen Lake school or not? To help your evolution?
Scott: I’ve been transparent with other people that I’ve been meeting regularly with Bob Sutherland and his leadership team.
Sun: How long have you been meeting with him?
Scott: Since the beginning of the school year, I believe. Have to go back and research my calendar. Some over the phone.
Sun: How has Bob helped?
Scott: He used an analogy that really hit home with me. He said you, the board, the teachers are on a canoe trip. You’re paddling feverishly fast, you’re crashing into the sides of the river on the bank, and maybe if you just chill out a bit, maybe you’ll get to your destination just as fast, and enjoy it a lot more and enjoy each other’s company a lot more. That was how I was feeling. He was very intuitive and perceptive, that we were all working extra hard at cross purposes in a lot of ways that was leading us to function in that way as an organization. And he was giving me good insight, as he would call it, reach across the aisle. I know maybe I didn’t give him concrete examples. That’s what led to his op-ed. Part of contentious negotiations. The feelings I was getting was that the timing may not just be right. I thought
‘we’re at a deal’. I really value and respect Bob’s perspective. There have been others who reached out to me and provided me with good advice who had experience in these kinds of situations. But I think Bob, because of the op-ed…I’ve been transparent with the staff that I was meeting with Bob. I consider him to be a friend.
Sun: Did it help that he was a distinguished Glen Lake alum, leader of the community, obviously, but not on Glen Lake’s payroll now? Did it help that he was independent but knew Glen Lake very well?
Scott: Yeah, and it’s Bob Sutherland. Yeah, Bob cares deeply. Lot of relationships with the staff. Kids go here. And his dad was the elementary principle. We’ve got a monument to his dad that’s onsite. The Sutherlands have been intertwined with Glen Lake. I know that he only wants the best for Glen Lake, despite the frustrations and the current state. I think he still believes in my leadership, has seen me trying to find my rhythm, so to speak.
Sun: Do you plan to continue meeting with him?
Scott: Absolutely. The first thing I told him (jokingly) was, he needs to open the taps at Cherry Public House to celebrate the signing of this contract. But I do plan to continue the interaction. One of the things that I’ve heard from different superintendents is that you talk about getting your “kitchen cabinet”, meaning the people you meet with in their kitchens to discuss, folks that are highly involved in the community that you’re consulting with, how am I doing, get different perspectives on. Bob would certainly be one of several that I think can really provide me with perspective, advice, mentoring, coaching, to keep me on the right trajectory.
