School Board fine-tuning evaluation for Superintendent
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- Published on Wednesday, 14 November 2012 14:04
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The King George School Board has spent portions of its last several meetings in selecting and then tweaking a new evaluation instrument to be used beginning this year to formally communicate its satisfaction with new Superintendent Rob Benson’s performance.
Benson was hired earlier this year, and took over the position effective July 1.
Benson has said he wanted clear direction on the School Board’s expectations for his performance. In fact, the refining of an evaluation tool has been a collaborative process between all members of the School Board and with Benson.
At its last regular meeting on Oct. 22, Benson was asked what he thought of the current version of the evaluation document that is expected to be used in his upcoming evaluation in December.
“I appreciate your thoughtfulness in this, I really do,” Benson told the School Board. “And I particularly appreciate greatly the rubric. That’s going to help me collect artifacts that you will need to consider when you then read through each descriptor and determine where you believe I fall at that point in the evaluation process. I think that was a thoughtful addition and it certainly helps me to define what’s expected and I imagine it will help you all as you try to determine which box to pick, so to speak. So thank you.”
Chairman Mike Rose said, “This is a living document, we can make changes as we go along.” In the meantime, School Board members are expected to set a meeting for the first week of December to go over the evaluation form with Benson one more time.
They will then use the final evaluation instrument to perform a formal evaluation of Benson, currently scheduled to take place at 5 p.m. on Dec. 10 for a closed meeting session prior to its regularly scheduled meeting set to begin at 6 p.m. on that date.
EVALUATIONS
School Boards are required by state law to evaluate their division superintendents on an annual basis.
The evaluation instrument used by the School Board is a public document. The current version of the evaluation tool has been expanded from the one used to evaluation the last superintendent, Candace Brown.
That tool was one and a half pages and confined to a general assessment of Brown’s effectiveness in the following areas: Planning and Assessment, Instructional Leadership, Safety, Management of Resources, Communications With the School Board, Communications Within the School Division, Community Relations and Professionalism.
NEW EVALUATION TOOL
The new evaluation instrument is a five-page document which cites the following areas as noted above on the old form and follows a similar format, giving three examples of what is expected for each area and a space to score the superintendent and also provide optional comments.
The big difference, as Benson noted, is the use of a rubric, which more clearly provides for specific performance criteria.
The last page provides space for comments from each member, including overall comments, strengths and areas of improvement. The evaluation form is expected to be filled out be each School Board member individually, with discussion of their scoring to take place behind closed doors.
The current evaluation instrument planned to be used can be found here.
