Joe Brown, superintendent of Grand Meadow Public Schools, has been interviewed for the Albert Lea Area School superintendent job.

The school board conducted in-person interviews Wednesday evening. The personalities and styles of the three were clear to see for the board, district leaders and the small handful of people in the audience.

The same questions were asked of each of the three, and they had the same time limit on the length of the interviews. The six finalists, selected from 17 applicants, were announced Monday.

The next three finalists will be interviewed today starting at 2 p.m.

Here are what the finalists said Wednesday and a slice of their background:

Cathy Bettino

She has been superintendent of the Pine River-Backus School District for five years. Before that, she worked 11 years as director of the Pine River-Backus Area Learning Center. She has held various teaching positions in New Jersey for 13 years.

Bettino holds a specialist degree in educational leadership from Minnesota State University, Mankato.

Accountability, collaboration and facilitation were key words she sprinkled through her interview.

She touted the Minnesota Rural Education Leadership Program for helping her district see what it can do better because it is rural. She said she has a passion for strategic planning as a result of research and wide input.

“I pride myself on strategic planning. I am a huge strategic planner,” Bettino said.

She said Pine River-Backus updates its strategic plan every other year and makes a great effort to engage the public in the process. The district had a campaign called “Catch the Pride.”

The district developed scorecards to measure how well it was meeting the plan’s directives.

Bettino said it is important to be visible in the community. It is a public-relations tool.

“It give you credibility as a real person who is part of the community and it builds trust,” she said.

She said the district had a monthlong community read, a John Hassler book.

“The message went out that learning is important,” Bettino said.

She has been the lead negotiator for her school district the past two rounds, she said.

“I am a good negotiator. I think it goes back to being fair and honest,” Bettino said, adding that it helped at Pine River-Backus to have quality negotiators on the other side of the table.

She said she was enthusiastic about Q-Comp because it was another funding stream. Pine River-Backus already had the performance requirements in place. She said she dislikes some of the required hoops but supports the initiative.

Funding priorities for her district at budgeting has been keeping class sizes at elementary levels low, having college credit classes at the high school, and ensuring instructional space.

Pine River-Backus is in a state of declining enrollment, like Albert Lea — which impacts the per-pupil funding formula — and she said she has the experience of “right-sizing” the district.

She said her district is not ethnically diverse but it is economically diverse. She said she and officials use compensations with at title funding to deal with the challenges, such as keeping all-day-everyday kindergarten.

Staff development is important for effective education, she said, but “it must be purposeful, ongoing and relevant.”

She was elected the chairwoman of the district’s professional development committee, an indicator of her passion for the subject. She also is part of an economic development team for the area.

She said everyone working in her district has evaluations annually.

To meet a math deficiency in the Annual Yearly Progress results last year, the district required teachers to contact parents and went through the Department of Education’s hoops to change their approaches. She said the district already is preparing for next year’s results.

“I can’t imagine there will be anybody who is not on the list come July,” Bettino said.

She said the district will shift students to receive extra doses of the deficient classes.

Bettino said she is happy in Pine River-Backus but was encouraged to apply by her husband. She said what drew her was the Albert Lea community and the amenities it offers. Her children reside in the Twin Cities, and Albert Lea is closer than the Pequot Lakes area.

John Chalstrom

He has held the superintendent spot for Cherokee (Iowa) Community School District for four years. He has been in principal and assistant principal positions in Clear Lake, Iowa, and Muscatine, Iowa, for a combined 10 years. He worked six years in Jefferson, Iowa, as a social science teacher. He possesses a doctorate in education from Iowa State University.

Chalstrom said his best strength is a weakness, too: determination. He said he has a passion for education and its importance. He said a strong public education allowed him to advance in life. And he said he finds complacency frustrating.

“We really cannot maintain the status quo,” he said.

There is a disconnect in how students learn and perceive the world and the world the teachers are using to teach, Chalstrom said.

Leadership qualities, he said, include being a listener and being understanding. He said he welcomes dialogue and civil argument.

He said he wants people “very willing to tell me when I’m wrong. I don’t want the yes pat answer.”

He said the best motivator for staff is intrinsic motivation.

“I truly think an organization might fall if only one person is instilling motivation,” Chalstrom said.

He said as an administrator he can identify when staff needs improvement. He uses data and research a lot.

When he was at Muscatine High School, the third largest high school in Iowa at the time, he worked to establish an advanced placement program that now is nationally recognized. He said he had to sell the data to get it rolling.

And he said when harsh cuts were needed, they were made based on data, even when they were popular programs.

Chalstrom said community visibility is an extension of what a superintendent does and he would be comfortable in the role.

“It’s amazing to me some of the most active superintendents I’ve known are always considered not active in their community,” he said.

He added he would be accessible and approachable and he would engage in local economic development.

Iowa’s school-funding formula is simpler than Minnesota’s, and from a budgeting standpoint the school boards know by Oct. 1, when enrollment is certified, what the revenue will be for the following fiscal year. He said the last two districts he has been with are dealing with declining enrollment. He said developing funding strategies during cuts has become a strength.

He said he spends a great deal of time in Cherokee educating the staff, faculty and community on why funding decisions are made.

Chalstrom said some school districts see diversity changes as a burden but he believes in welcoming the influx of students from various backgrounds and ethnicities.

“In Muscatine, our district chose to celebrate diversity and embraced it,” he said.

He said schools are preparing students for a global economy. He said students don’t simply go to an Albert Lea school or a Minnesota school anymore. “You are part of an interdependent world. You need to be an active participant in this world to be successful.”

Chalstrom said staff development must be meaningful to fulfill its purpose and it needs to be aligned with the district goals. He said he would coordinate professional development with the curriculum administrator.

He said it is key to spell out to voters the ramifications of what will happen when levies fail and said the school boards must follow through on that outline.

“Sometimes there is public distrust that there will be a follow-through,” Chalstrom said.

He said wide input is needed in the creation of a strategic plan for the district and it is the superintendent’s job to facilitate the talk.

He said Iowa has a state-mandated evaluation system that recently changed. The old one required checkboxes beside terms such as “needs improvement.” The new one, he said, is focused on coaching and growth. He said he would implement meaningful evaluations.

He said all districts are going to fall behind in AYP as they inch closer to 2013.

“This was the first year we had a building on the watch list,” he said.

In dealing with it, school officials need to collect data and then align resources and teachers to address the deficiencies.

Chalstrom said he wants to be superintendent because Albert Lea possesses tremendous qualities in facilities, staff and quality of life. He said he has two school-aged children and attending Albert Lea would provide diverse opportunities for them.

Joe Brown

Many locals know Brown because his wife, Robin, is the state representative for District 27A. He has been superintendent at Grand Meadow School District for four years. Before that, he was the principal at Austin High School for five years. He worked a year as the head of a charter school in Chicago and has five years of being a principal in LeSueur and Barnum. He is a former state senator in Iowa and is a former teacher in the Montezuma, Iowa, school district.

He said he looked at the board’s preferred requirements and says everyone is a good fit except for one: He doesn’t have a doctorate.

Brown said he is good at asking the “Why not? question. His strength is his embrace for life and his weakness is not getting enough sleep.

He said it drives him crazy when students say they are bored.

“Do you know what the biggest complaint of kids in Chicago is? ‘There’s nothing to do.’ It’s a city of 3 million people,” Brown said.

He said with the present economic and political climate, the only way to increase revenue for a school district is to increase enrollment, which is happening at Grand Meadow.

He said he motivates staff by working to find the resources and needs that allow teachers to teach. He cited how Austin High School had a 20 percent failure-to-graduate rate. He said he implemented a ninth-grade transition program that produced results because he found research that if a student can make it through ninth grade they can make it through high school. The best teachers were made part of the program and 98 of 100 students in the program graduated.

Brown endorses Q-Comp and said Grand Meadow was the first small school district awarded the alternative teacher-pay structure. He said he doesn’t believe that because an organization is large it cannot change.

“Public schools can change as fast as leaders want us to change,” he said.

He said even with Q-Comp and a growing district, hard cuts had to be made at Grand Meadow to get the district in alignment with goals.

He said enrollment went up in part because standards went up — such as all-day, everyday kindergarten, preschool programs, four years of required math and science in high school, giving every second-grader a laptop.

“Whatever it takes,” he said.

Brown said he loves being part of the community. He and his wife often attend fundraiser breakfasts in Albert Lea and enjoy going to music concerts.

He said he goes home late often because he goes to student activities almost nightly. And he said he loves town meetings.

“If I am selected as your superintendent, you’ll get tired of seeing me,” Brown said.

He said to attract good-paying jobs a community needs “citizen-scholars.” He said he liked how in Austin the high school staff visited Quality Pork Processors because it was important to understand where the students’ parents go daily. He said he would ask economic developers what they seek from the school district so the local economy can expand.

He said not all children come to school at the same level and he wants to recognize some students need more instruction time than others.

“Not everybody’s the same, so why do we treat them the same in terms of time. I’ve never understood that,” Brown said.

He quoted hockey great Wayne Gretsky: “I always skated to where the puck was going, not to where it’s been.”

“That is the role of a superintendent. You have to be skating to where the puck is going,” Brown said.

He said he admired the Albert Lea City Council’s comprehensive plan, noting that cleaning up properties will help with local growth, and said he intends to be ahead when it comes to strategic planning.

He said a great secret of Minnesota schools is the lack of administration and teacher evaluations. He said he implemented evaluations in Grand Meadow and started staff development that was tied to the curriculum goals and teaching standards.

He said his district dealt with AYP deficiencies by having students double up on math and language arts and expanding the title program.

He said he builds a climate where people are physically safe and psychologically safe, too

Brown said he wants to be superintendent in Albert Lea because he has committed to staying in Freeborn County for life. He said he loves Grand Meadow but Albert Lea makes a great fit for him.