001Appoint school board workshop. We are going to be you got it. We're going to be talking about this workshop is about our superintendent evaluation uh that we have been working on and uh that is that is the point. Why don't we start with as we always do the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. All right, with that I think we've got a PowerPoint presentation. Next slide, Steve. Here we go. All right. And just by way of background and introduction before we get to the actual form itself, um obviously our superintendent is our chief executive officer and tasked with ultimate responsibility for everything that happens in the district.
002um from curriculum to staffing, the finances, the facilities, transportation, whether we have a snow day or not. Um it's his responsibility. He reports to us. And so you could argue really the the buck ultimately stops with us, but but he's our hire. And what we have been trying to do for a while now is come up with an evaluation uh form that uh we can use to I'll say evaluate capture look for ways to improve what's going well where do we think there's areas uh that need improvement. So we go to the next slide. Um, historically the school district has not had a formal evaluation process for the superintendent. Um, although the board is ultimately tasked with monitoring all aspects of the district. In 2023, we began the process of creating a formal evaluation. And
003so that's what the rest of this presentation is kind of going to review. And you know, I'll leave it to my fellow board members. I'll just go through the slides, but if you have questions or comments or changes you want to make, I mean, just just charge right in. Um, and I know you will if you do. So, the next slide. Yeah, just want to say for those who like just joining us now and haven't been along for this ride since 2023 that we did acknowledge that the board did not have formal evaluation tool and then so we took on as a board to establish a superintendent evaluation tool. um trying to be pretty thoughtful and intentional about including the voices of all five individuals on the board and we tried to align what was
004the evaluation tool with the strategic plan. I will say that as a brief introduction. Throughout that process, there have been delays because of things going on with the school district. Delays because there's parts of this we can talk about in public like this like a workshop. Parts we need to talk about in an executive session because it also not only is a tool, but it involves personnel in our district. So, we've been trying to find this happy medium and happy balance. Um, we normally meet once or twice a month either with a regular board meeting or a workshop. And so sometimes that timing has delayed things. Sometimes it's been delayed by asking for feedback and not getting it. And sometimes it's been delayed by getting feedback that then we couldn't measure or evaluate or put
005um put structure to. So a few months ago, we presented a tool that needed minor revisions and now tonight we're discussing a different tool entirely. And the tool that we're discussing tonight is primarily the creation of one board member instead of five board members. So I think it's just important before we go forward that we acknowledge that I only have a month left to serve on the board. So I can say those things but knowing if it's important to my other board members that it's going to fall on the rest of you to then champion what changes and things need to be made. I don't think this is a board policy. So, I don't think it has to have a first reading, a second reading, and a final reading. That will be up to the
006board to decide as well, but we need to decide how proactively we're moving forward with this. So, it's not 2026 and you guys are still discussing what should be a part of it. But I do very firmly believe that because, as was outlined by Mr. enforced and the role of a superintendent is so important. It really is the only employee I see that the board has that I think all five board members should be represented in the creation of the tool. So I will leave it at that if anybody has anything else to add. Well, let me just respond very briefly. I mean I first off I prefer just call it an evaluation, not a tool, but that's just nomenclature. Um this I mean to say this is totally my creation I don't think is
007fair but if you like it I'll take it as a compliment. Um what I did was I took the earlier form that we had been working on and all of those um all of those points or all of those criteria from the early form are in this the dissatisfaction that I always expressed as we were working on the earlier uh first I'll say first draft of that evaluation was that it didn't cover enough. I mean there is a lot of things. Can we go to the next slide, Steve? So what I tried to do was expand that earlier form to cover what I thought were all the different areas that we want to or we should be evaluating uh the superintendent on. And you know, in my experience doing evaluations for younger attorneys over the
008year and for staff and others at at my firm, I mean, you know, the annual evaluation to a certain extent, indeed, I think to a large extent is designed to outline areas where we think there needs to be improvement, areas that we think are really going well, all that sort of stuff. And you know, I said I've I had consistently said last year I didn't think that the form that we had captured enough. So I've added to that form and I've restructured it perhaps, but I don't I don't like the suggestion that somehow I just ignored everything that happened before. I don't think that's particularly fair. I think if we're going to do this, we ought to do the best job that we can. And I took what we had and I added to it
009and I'm trying to make it better because I want the evaluation to be thorough and comprehensive and that's all I can say. But we are where we are. I'd like to think that we're getting really close now. Unfortunately, Norm can't be here. He had a family emergency. Uh I should have said that earlier. Um so I do appreciate the efforts that you put in. I just want to make sure that if we go forward with the public that everybody feels like they had a part. Well, we're never going to have a forum until I think we're all satisfied with it. But but again, I mean, I was trying to do something that I thought incorporated everything that we needed that we would want to sit down. If I was sitting down with the superintendent one
010on- one, this would be the list of things I would review with him because I think it covers all of his major responsibilities. And you know, I mean, I tried to put them in something of an order in the sense that we always say students come first. And so the first three items on this list are curriculum, student achievement, student life, and discipline. you because again I want you know as we always say at all our board meetings um you know we always do what's uh what's best for the students is our overriding um concern. And if we go to the next slide, Steve. So the next slide is curriculum. And you know, I listed um four kind of points to consider when evaluating the superintendent and it comes to curriculum. And I know Toshiba,
011you had mentioned um during one of our earlier meetings, you know, a liker uh scale. And that's what I thought made the most sense. And I should also say there are over 10 there are over 10,000 school districts in this country. And there are probably each school district has its own way of doing this. There are 10,000 examples. I went and had done some research and I had handed out at our previous meeting um you know some samples that I found on um online from different school districts and most of them use some sort of liyker scale. Um I have an odd number on this that ranges from unacceptable one two needs improvement three acceptable four exceeds expectations five superlative. I don't like liy like scales that are even numbered. We can debate that. I
012mean, and I'm happy to, but I I like five point or seven point scales. Um, but you know, and again, we can talk about this at some point if this were to become the form or something like it. And I know this is the rule at our firm. If you're going to say anything other than um exceeds expectations or superlative, you need to say why you're not giving that score and do it with as much specificity as possible. So, you know, sometimes we'll have an associate and they really need to work on their writing or they really need to work on their legal research or they really need to work on some other aspect of their job and you know, part of the review is to tell them that. And conversely, if they're doing something
013really well, nothing wrong with saying, "You do a great job. In fact, you know, the brief you read in such and such case or the closing that you handled involving such and such was um was really outstanding and well done for the following reasons." But that was my thinking there. And I don't know if anybody has any thoughts about that. I know you were the one who first brought up a liyker scale. Yeah, I um to your point, I I like odd um rankings as well. So, I agree with you there. I just wanted to align in thought. So, you said um your point of reference is your firm. And so, anything three and below, you must write a comment. Is that what you're proposing is the standard here? Well, I wanted to talk about
014that. I mean, that's kind of our But is that is that your recommendation? That would be what I would do. Sure. Okay. So, we would only have comments if it was three or below. No, you can have comments regardless, but our rule of thumb is if you're not giving a four or five, you have to say why. Because basically the message, even if you're telling an employee what you're doing is acceptable, I think you owe it to that employee to say, "Yeah, what you're doing is acceptable, but here's how you need to get better, or here's why I'm only saying what you're doing is acceptable." And of course, if you're telling somebody that's what they're doing is unacceptable, you need to really tell them why. Um, there. But there's I mean, we could have the
015rule just give comments regardless, but at a minimum, you're expected to give comments for I'll say a three or less because again, the whole point of this is feedback and trying to make performance better. How do you measure these though? like what is a measure for curriculum is appropriate and designed to impart expected knowledge and skills to students. What's the measure for that? So I would know where it falls on the five scale, right? And so the answer is there is no clear measure. I mean and I don't mean to be flip in saying that but the fact of the matter is like one of the things that we review associates on is their writing, right? I mean is their writing good? Is it or not? You know, is it one through five? And sometimes
016you can say, well, look, your paragraphs are horrible. You don't have transition. You can point to things about writing that need you need to work on, but I can't, you know, feed a memo through have it scanned by a computer and have the computer skit spit out a score and say this rates a 90 or this rates a 50. Well, you can. You can just put it in chat GBT and ask it to do that. Yeah. Okay. But so then if you're every section is evaluated in the same way, then it's really just the opinion of the reviewer with no data to stand on. Well, that's why you have to give written comments. That's why you're not allowed to just say to someone, "Sorry, that's unacceptable. I'm moving on." You have to be you have
017to set forth why you're saying that. You have to defend your work. In other words, and there's five of us and you know, so we'll each fill out this form and you know, sometimes you have a hard grader, right, who doesn't grade on a curve. And sometimes you have someone who is an easy grader who does grade on a curve. And you know, you might you might know that someone and so same paper might get a 95 from one teacher and an 85 from another teacher. Doesn't mean either teacher was wrong, but you're scoring it against a rubric or a grading scale or maybe it depends. That's my point. For writing, we do that for everything else. Pardon? You do that for everything else. We don't just look at a kid and go, "H, you
018get an A because I find your work superlative." Um, if you're turning in written essays to a class after reading a book, a book report or something like that, I can't tell you why the teacher gave there's a rubric they send out in advance asking you did you have, you know, is it a fiveart paragraph? Did you have a title? Did you have did you site it the correct way? There's always rules and right, but look at what we say before we get to the one through five. We say offers courses that provide rigorous instruction and access for all learners. We say curriculum is appropriate and designed to impart expected knowledge and skills to students. Curriculum is regularly reviewed, updated as needed. Staff is trained in current curriculum. You're either doing these things and you're
019doing them well or you're not. It's not like we're just making it up and saying, "Yeah, curriculum, uh, I'll give that a three." So, how are you going to measure it? How are you, if you were doing the evaluation right now? And number one offers courses that provide rigorous in instruction and access for all learners. Are you looking for like a certain number of AP classes to be offered by our school district and that's a measure for Matt? Um, that would be part of it, I would think, but it's not the only part. But what if that's not part for me? Then we're not scoring in the same way. I don't think we have to score in the same way. I think that I mean, we all have to be comfortable with the job Matt
020is doing, and we all need to be able to say that he's doing a good job or not. Um, and we're all going to have to write comments if we don't think he's doing a good enough job. But there may be aspects of his performance that you like that don't lose me. And there may be other things that Matt does that Michelle likes, but you know, I'm indifferent on, but I may think that Matt's doing a good job because of this. Um, you know, everybody evaluates everybody else differently. We're not all automatons, but I think I would not I mean, I don't know how you do an evaluation that's all rated by some set criteria. You really can't in my uh experience. That's how we give kids grades in classes. But it's not. That's my
021point. Do a book review on a book. Have the whole class do a book. They'll all get a grade, but what's that grade based on? I mean, did they read the book? Did they I mean, a certain certain level of competency, sure. But what makes a great book review different from a SOS so book review different from a book review that gets an F? So, a few a few comments. I think um one of the points that I'm I think I'm struggling with is the the crosswalk of your version and the January 28th version that Michelle had mentioned. Like I'm literally like sitting here paging through this trying to crosswalk some of these and I'm not seeing that. So that's the first point. And then I think the other piece is that I'm struggling just
022a little bit with the metrics that are listed here. curriculum is regularly reviewed and updated as needed. I guess, you know, just to be a little bit critical, how are we defining regularly, right? Um, and I think one of the points that Michelle is trying to make is what tools do we have that will allow for us to fairly assess Matt's performance with each of these metrics. And so maybe if I better understood that I would know or I could probably easily accept some of this. But like if I sat down and I I just would ask you Matt like okay what tool would you use to assess whether or not the staff has been trained? I'm sure there's some training records that you guys all have, right? So check there. How uh curriculum is
023regularly reviewed and updated as needed. I'm sure you'll probably tell us. You guys talk about it in a meeting and you know, whatever you do with your cabinet, you know, I'm sorry, we have a curricular review site. Yeah. So, all of that. So, I guess that's some of I think the details that I need and to better understand this unless you've already vetted this and you know that you have the tools to support some of this and we just don't know that yet. Um, but it's it's hard for me to kind of wrap my mind around this and sit in the seat to fairly assess his performance without knowing the tools that we would use to do so. And then I think the last point, and I don't I don't know if this is even
024appropriate for this meeting, but I would like to hear your feedback, Matt. It's about you. And so, um, well, let me answer the first part of your Yeah, absolutely. in the original draft and for some reason it didn't carry over to the PowerPoint I had taken like I put four sometimes five maybe once or twice only three items under each of these headings but if you look at curriculum number one offers courses that provide rigorous instruction and access for all learners. Yeah, I see that on the first page that comes from the very first page of Yeah, I see that one. Uh, and so about how you measure that and that was what we were looking to Brandon like an example of how many AP classes are over like there that has a measurable but
025yeah but but are we really going to say oh Matt we used to offer 20 AP classes and now we only offer 17 so obviously you're failing. I mean that's part of it. We've got the you know the course catalog that's the envy of the state and many other states. I mean, and that happened on on Matt's watch, and he was instrumental in in putting that together. I mean, there's a lot of things you can look at. I mean, this just says evidence advanced standing course opportunities for all students. So, what's that mean? A there's an AP class for everybody. And it then it says aligned with goal one of strategic plan. I don't even know what that means. I mean, I have enough trust in the people on the board because I think you're
026all conscientious and thorough that, you know, we're all going to take this seriously and we're all going to look at this and I I'm not troubled by the fact that there might not be uh measurables because I think a lot of this stuff is not something you can measure anywhere in a in a fair in a uh in a way that you can like test as if it was a student taking a spelling test or a history fill in the I would argue that's unfair to Matt. Then if he can't be measured then why is he being held accountable for I would say the same and I would echo that I think Matt's doing a great job. That's my opinion and I think that's what this all started from. We all think Matt's doing a
027great job and we want that on record that Matt is continually doing a good job, a great job, a superlative job, however you want to call it. But there's nothing for us to sin on that other than I mean every single schoolboard training you go to is that video of the guy saying he does a good job. That's not enough. It's not enough for the five of us. But that's not but look at the four items that are listed under curriculum. Item one offers courses that provide rigorous instruction and access for all learners which comes from our previous form. Item two, curriculum is appropriate and designed to impart expected knowledge and skills to students. I mean, I don't think we have to have a metric that somehow measures that. I'm not sure you can measure
028makes curriculum appropriate and especially when you're talking about the current state of education and people pushing back on what curriculum should be or shouldn't be. You might think one thing, I might think one thing. Toshiba might think something. Michelle Norm, that one is up to big interpretation, especially given the current vibe of the world. And that's why we have evaluations and that's why basis I like the update that you use um Richard but I do think that um it does it does require a metric like impart expected knowledge like how do you how do you determine expected knowledge? Well, I mean that's what the um that's what the learning standards are. I mean every class, every curriculum at the end of the class, these are the things we want the kids to know, right? I
029mean, and you know, in third grade, maybe you learn about topic sentences for paragraphs and the way a paragraph is kind of structured, right? A topic sentence, two or three supporting sentences, and then a conclusion. And you expect the kid to know that at the end of third grade. So, is that curriculum designed to do that? Um, we know we can measure whether the curriculum is regularly reviewed, updated, and updated as needed. If we if we're not regularly reviewing our curriculum, if the last time we did it was 10 years ago, I think we'd all agree that's something that needs to to be looked at and improved. Is the staff trained in current curriculum? I I think we can figure that out pretty quickly. Um when you are you asking Matt that then and then
030you're basing your answer on that or are you meeting with one of the other district professionals to ask that to measure Matt? It's however we want to do it and it may be that we do it differently at times. There is no one this sizefits all for an evaluation. There is subjectivity in any evaluation. There's just going to be there is but the point is that I think these four things but if we want to cut one and add one I mean I'm not wed to the language or the choices but I think the point is we list what we're looking for when it comes to curriculum and then we say you're doing one through five and if you're only doing one through three we explain why and then at the next year's evaluation if
031we explained why you only got a two or why you only got a three and that's still a problem. Now it becomes a bigger problem because we gave you an evaluation, we asked for improvement in that area and for whatever reason either you you tried something and it didn't work which okay that's fine or you just ignored what we said to you which is not quite so fine right and again I mean if you've done a series of evaluations for you know a younger employee and the same issue keeps coming up and you keep saying you got to improve this you got to improve this you got to improve this and it's not improving I I mean that's a problem but well you also normally give feedback you need to improve this and this would
032be a suggestion on how to do that and there's a measurable of what you're looking for like where the and like routine followup so I think to the three or less then that requires more routine followup throughout the yeah I guess that's my point is like that would have to be part of this right the tool not just for Matt it's a tool for us to tell us I think what we need to be focusing on and it tells us what we think the district is doing well and it tells us what we think the district as a whole isn't doing well and those are the things we should be focused on. I mean it's as much for us I think as it is for Matt. Do your teachers and admins have metrics tied to
033their evaluations? So, because our data on the state's website has metrics, I feel like we need to back it up with metrics when everyone else is using metrics. Students, teachers, admins, and the only person you're saying that shouldn't have a metric is met is is Dr. Burls. That's that doesn't make sense to me. I hear what you're saying. For years, when I first got on the board, we were always invited in December to go and read the evaluations for all the top administrators, right? They'd be in notebooks down at Matt's office and, you know, board members didn't have to, but I did. I went and I would read the evaluations and my eyes would start to glaze over after the third or fourth one because quite frankly, I'm a little cynical anyway, but they all
034started to read the same. They all said the same thing. And I do not believe for a moment, my recollection is they were not based on absolute metrics. I mean, how do you give Eric Loftess metrics? He gets his reports to us on time every month, the checkbook balances every month. I mean, it's not something that you can you have to be careful what line we're walking to as we're talking about how you evaluate personnel. No, but I'm just giving an example that you can't you can't create like cut and dry. This is, you know, it's not like an SAT test. You know, you get a score at the after you take the SAT, right? I mean, that's not how an evaluation I think works because there's so much that you can't measure. Matt, do
035you feel comfortable answering are other employees in our district evaluated in that way with metrics? So the other employees in our district have standards like there's PEL standards for administrators and then under each standard there's like a rubric on you know this is this is where you are when you're on acceptable this is where you are when you need improvement this is where you are where you need are acceptable exceeds etc. So people know so then when you give a rating you have to say why and give the evidence to why you gave that rating. So like if you got a three and then you you sit down with the employee and you have that discussion like so if I gave someone a three and said this is why I gave you a three they
036have an opportunity to say well did you see this piece of evidence or are you seeing this and it's a discussion and then we did then we finalized the review at that point. Um, I I mean, I'm going express this to Richard as well, like I'd like to know what you think is rigorous instruction, what you think rigorous instruction is, what you think it is, what Richard thinks is, what Norm is, because then I'm a person who likes to do an excellent job. So, I want to hit that mark. And if I can't, I want to tell you why I can't hit that mark or why maybe that's not a reasonable expectation. Um, so I Yeah. So I mean that's how people are evaluated. Now that's on the administrative side. We brought up um somewhat
037operational side. Operational side's a little different. We do have um an like a goal form that we have our administrators fill out on the operational side where there's goals or things I want them to achieve during the year or their supervisor wants them to achieve and then how they're going to achieve those and then we have their final is based on that where we talk through those those pieces. I just need to know like I think one of the things that just the concern I've shared this with Richard is I want to know what what what's the target I'm trying to hit here like I feel like you're chasing a moving mark either like what it means like exactly what you said it could mean something totally different to everyone and a rating could be
038based on where I think you're meeting my expectation but someone else's expectation is higher or lower than mine and therefore you're not getting the same evaluation you know I think that they're all missing the evidence piece. So if we state in curriculum such and such is evidenced by you know 18 teachers that were reviewed and I don't know I'm just coming up with anything but I think that was the answer that we're missing in all of this. So we can have the the scale, we can have the new additions um that was provided, but we need something to evidence the increased student proficiency based on what based on the numbers on the on the website for the state based on our numbers like what numbers are we using? And I think if I could jump
039in real quick, I think some of the conversation around the first two maybe three items is rooted in the fact that like our student success is our end goal, right? So we have in here student proficiency and achievement, but some of the other things are almost building blocks to that, right? Like you need an effective curriculum in place in order for students to be successful. So I think that when it comes to coming up with the measurable pieces here, you can have a student proficiency measure right which it is difficult to measure if curriculum is appropriate but if the curriculum is appropriate and being used effectively our students are making progress right and they're being successful which is our end goal. So, I think that some of these things I see where you're going with
040the additions, but I think that that might be why we're having this conversation because there's things on here that are measurable that are like the end result of the building blocks of all of the other things, right? The learning environment is rigorous and relevant, which was standard one before. Uh, and standard two was teaching and learning, which was focused on student achievement. inside of that uh are all of these things right like curriculum being you know our we have a professional development in the old one as well so I think that I just want to throw that in that I think that's why it's difficult to measure appropriate curriculum and some of the things you have here because they're kind of the layers um that promote you know our student success which is a measurable
041metric well I mean I think like number four staff is trained in current curriculum as I mentioned and like we have a whole PD calendar and training and feedback. We receive feedback on the training and all that. Um I mean I'll be able to provide evidence to that, but I guess through the processes there going to be an opportunity to provide evidence to show okay here's all the trainings that we had. And I think another thing and this is outside of this we're going to have to determine who's doing this. Like so like I'm going to bring evidence of staff being trained. Am I going to bring a review cycle for curriculum to say okay and if you guys remember this from previous referendum like we were on like an 11-year review cycle we were
042able to fund I think an eight-year review cycle the industry standards a six-year review cycle. So am I able am I going to come and say okay because that is our random schedule. So but am I going to be able to come and say hey look this is the year we were scheduled in our 8year review cycle to review our math we did we had committee get together which is what happened with middle school math. We've had committees get together look at it and they've chosen this math curriculum to meet the standards and for what they need to teach. Like I can do that kind of stuff. I just need to know okay what's is that the expectation and is that the measurement that we're looking for um as we look at these and as
043we look at these some of these I think are dup like some of these statements um are duplicated and like I don't think you need to have as many under each one like for instance um organizational leadership one and two are almost to me identical. So I really think we can uh make some like decrease some of these um numbers and give it some evidence metrics. I think it's a lot for one eval for an an evaluation. Like looking at some of the other ones that I've seen, it's the most is like three, right? Um I think this is just a lot to evaluate him on. Yeah, I I would agree with that. I I think it goes back to your point in terms of some of this is like inferred based upon other things.
044So I think this needs a um I think some of this need we need to strike through some of this in terms of repetition and I like your wording of building blocks. So we have duplication and we have the building blocks because we can all infer that the curriculum supports obviously um positive outcomes on student achievement or proficiency. Right? So go ahead. Go ahead. A lot of our conversation revolves around going back to what we started with in January. It had a goal and it had evidence. Yeah. And I was just going to say I think to to your point the stream I like the streamline presentation of January 28. I feel like whatever today's date is April 29th um there's a lot a lot of metrics under each category. I think if we can
045decrease discussion in January was we had an evaluation and Richard suggested adding in an extra section to be measured up. Yes. Not creating a new evaluation in and of itself. Well, we started with him just changing the word diversity because of standard number the one about hiring um our teachers. Yeah, that's only that's standard three equal systems and so we were only supposed to change that and then to your point we came into a whole another scale of of of um statements and paragraphs and charts and papers. While I think that the the changes were good, I just think that we all need some time to kind of review it, cross through, strike through and come back if not tonight with the final tool. Well, so a couple things in response. First off, as I
046said, I'm not wed to language. I have no pride of authorship. And if people don't, you know, think words some of these can be changed to be clearer or better or some are duplicative, that's fine. and and but what the problem I had with January the the earlier presentation and I was pretty consistent even though I'd never took the bull by the horns and tried to show what I was I meant was that I don't think a lot of these standards are particularly helpful to us in terms of making the ultimate ter determination is Matt doing a good job or not for example standard one there were two goals one says offer courses to provide rigorous instruction and access for all learners. The evidence just said advanced standing courses opportunities for all students. I'm not
047sure how you apply that evidence. I mean, we have AP classes and we have a lot of them. Does that mean Matt's meeting the goal or not? Goal two was administrate administer Aquinamic school district annual stakeholder survey and use data to strategically improve and the evidence is pre present survey results to schoolboard along with development action plans. Okay. So if Matt does a survey every year and then gives us a PowerPoint presentation what we just check that box and done that. I mean to me well the answer is yes of course the way this is written but to me that's not telling me is he doing a good job or not was the survey a good survey did we get meaningful data from it anybody can administer a survey and make a presentation about it
048so I don't to me that just wasn't particularly helpful if I was determining whether my superintendent was doing you know an acceptable job a really really good job or a superlative job or a bad job. Well, again, they were aligned with goals in the strategic plan. So then you would reach further for the strategic and I know that why not just expand the evidence then like that. Well, I'm h so look yeah first I understand these things were aligned with the strategic plan but the strategic plan is not the beall and endall of an evaluation. That's why there's nothing about finances, nothing about all the nuts and bolts of running a school district need to be part of that evaluation. The strategic plan is where you want to go someday and here's how we're going
049to get there. If we want to list evidence for these things, that's fine. To my way of thinking where, you know, if we go back to the slide where I listed all 10 things, what I tried to do here was list 10 items that I thought we should be focused on. And then the items I listed underneath each of these like curriculum offers courses that provide rigorous instruction and access for all learners. I mean that comes from our previous thing. Um I added some things to me that's the evidence. Are we offering courses? Is the curriculum appropriate? And by appropriate I mean I don't mean like you know it's uh sexually inappropriate or or something like that. I mean it is appropriate for their learning level. Are we teaching third graders third grade math? Not
050we're not trying to teach them sixth grade math and we're not trying to teach them first grade math. I mean, is it appropriate for where they are uh developmentally? Is the curriculum regularly reviewed and updated as needed? Is the staff trained in the current curriculum? We can ask Matt to do a self-evaluation first and provide all that evidence to us so we're we're on board with it. But I I mean, if we're doing our jobs, we should know the answer to most of these questions without Matt having to give us a thing. And if we're unsure about something, we can ask him. And the same with student achievement. We can all go to the website. I've done it, and I'm sure you all have, too, and look at what the scores are for our schools
051and how they compare to the scores in Delaware, uh, rest of Delaware. Um, so we we can get answers, uh, to these, uh, questions. Um and again if you get which one student achieve. Okay. So plans programs for increased student proficiency and achievement. I might know that the district is currently doing that. I might know how we're doing that. But now I'm going to measure Matt against that based on what I might know if I'm doing my job as a board member. That seems kind of nebulous. If you're going to evaluate an employee, you have to know the work they're doing. You have to review the work there. Am I not speaking loud enough? No, no, no. I'm sorry. You're having trouble hearing. No, no. Um, I'm only pushing back to make sure that we
052do a good job. Right. Like that's well that's why I said earlier this evaluation form the way I've done it or the way I've added to what you had done let me put it that way is I view this as something not only for Matt but something for the for boards and for future board members. Well that's why it's really important because we all like Matt. What if we get somebody don't go anywhere? But if we don't like them and then there's not a standard in which we're comparing them to, then it's Well, look, at the end of the day, if there's a board in here and three out of five members decide they don't like Matt, which I don't can't imagine why they would come to that conclusion, but if that's their decision, they
053can fire him, right? I mean, at least or they don't have to renew his contract, let me put it that way. um it would be a huge mistake in my view, but you know, I mean, if my clients don't like me, they're not going to retain me to represent them. You know, if patients don't like their doctors, they're going to go to other doctors. Um so it that doesn't trouble me because we're never going to make this foolproof in the sense that at the end of the day when his contract is up, if the board says, "We want to go in a different direction, Matt. You've been great, but for X, Y, and Z, we're moving on." But it's not you that three of us are saying we don't like this and it's not providing
054what we would need to make a good evaluation. That of course that troubles me and that's why I'm and Matt's also saying that he's expressed to you and just out loud tonight that this isn't enough for him. Okay. So, how do you renew a contract for a teacher? Like if if you decide not to accept a teacher back, what is that based on? So uh well first of all teachers contracts automatically roll over. So it's just an automatic rolling contract in the first three years. It can be performance attendance other discipline issues. Um so like you're kind of on a like I won't say probationary period but like in the first three years you're somewhat on a probationary period. Um then after three years you have to either there's two ways that your contracts are
055not renewed. It's because of behavior or because of performance. If it is because of performance there's a whole cycle you have to go through. It's a two-year process in order to get to that point where the teacher where you don't renew their contract. I was trying to see if I could um make a comparison but that it didn't work. I mean I can make a comparison. We created also in this time frame a board self-evaluation tool where we went through and we said under this category we like these two things or these three things. I mean we're not even doing that here. Now we have seven things under some of these nine things. Well, but again and and so this is why we're having this discussion because I mean I understand you read it and
056you don't have the benefit of my thoughts that went into this or why I did it this particular way under under community communication relations there's four items one of them the first one comes from this uh the rest of the language I think I may have taken from other evaluations I found across the country or who knows maybe I made it up whole cloth. But, you know, is Matt I mean, I don't think to give him a five, we have to say he's doing all four of these things. To my way of thinking, we're grading him on his community commu, communications, and relations. And these are the four things that are evidence of that. Is he administering an annual survey? Is he otherwise growing and strengthening community relationships? And how do we know he's doing
057that? Because he goes to the Middletown Chamber of Commerce lunchons and speaks at those. because he we have a state of the district uh quarterly meeting now. Um it gets woeful attendance. For anybody who's watching this, please come to those uh state of the districts to this meeting. Yes. Um you know, does he regularly and clearly communicate with the different district constituencies whether it's by email or newsletter uh however we do it and is he communicating on a regular basis? I don't think we need evidence of each of these things because some of them you'll know or not know anyway. And it may be that you know some of these things are more important than others. I put these four items in because that's what I would use in my mind to figure out whether
058to give them a one two three four or five in the community communications relations block of the evaluation. And the other items are the same way. I mean I put down seven for staff. It can be shorter, but these are the things that I would worry about. For example, item seven is staff turnover is not excessive. If we started seeing our staff turn over at three times its current rate, that would be a red flag for me. How do you measure excessive? Yeah. How do you measure excessive? Right. They pardon you. There's a lot of ambiguity in this. I think the I think that we have to be a little bit more intentional with the words because if you were assessing me and you said not excessive, I was like, okay, how do you define
059excessive? And not to mention, there's going to be five of us trying to interpret excessive. So that's the first piece. And it sounds like just based off of your explanation, yes, we certainly don't have the benefit of having your thoughts with us and reviewing this. We're missing the word evidence. So are you saying now that these metrics are not truly metrics but only one is a metric and the other three or four or five are Yeah. is the evidence if you will that you would use. Is that what we're saying now? No. No. What I'm saying is there are 10 things that I think we should be evaluating our superintendent on. Right. There is uh curriculum, student achievement, student life and discipline down to 10 board relations. Right. And for each of these items, what
060I I listed the things that I would consider in giving him a score one through five. And it may be that um when we look at our staff turnover, it's not excessive. It's in line with other districts and it's fine. But that's why I say but if it spikes one year, we would ask about it and want to figure out why. And and that should would be a factor. Why do we have It may just be we have staff turnover that's in excess of the other four school districts uh in the county. that would think of the layout then Richard. I think some of your content after like listening to you um is relatively aligned with the January version of this, but I think the presentation of it as it's written does not track with
061what you're actually saying. And so I think that's why I'm having a difficult time reconciling this. to be to be candid. I can much more appreciate what you're saying versus what's written here. So, I think we need to catch this is the thing we're measuring and these are the things to consider when measuring. Yeah, I think Yeah, I think it's the layout what you're presenting is much more palatable. Yeah. What you have in your head Yeah. to um to Dr. Graham's point um isn't the same thing that we're reading. Yeah. So let's take under student life and discipline number four students feel safe based on what so what we sounds it sounds like what you would like and and I now agree but look I've never written an evaluation for none of us have right
062so we're all kind of learning here but we're in the education business so I learn something new every day um so under student goes back to there was a goal in the previous setup and then the evidence so you're saying the same things. There's a goal of each of your 10 things and these are the things you're looking No, I'm not I don't have goals under this evaluation form the way it's set up. In other words, I'm measuring. Okay. There's a Yeah, there's a an endgame. What do you want to call it? Not a goal. Like there is something you want to achieve. A goal is something you achieve or you don't achieve or it's something you're always trying to achieve. These are the factors that I want Matt to be focused on and I
063want the board to be focused on as he goes about running the That's not a goal. They're goals. They're goals in corporate America. They're goals. Like if I don't meet my goals, I'm based on a metric of not my SLA being whatever, not 30 50% 60%. Then it's going to be at a number two. That's a goal. The objective is the goal. Like think the objective of that section. You want to jump in with some words to kind of bridge all of our thoughts. It's kind of taking it all. Yeah. To bridge all of our thoughts. It almost seems like like you listed categories of evaluation, right? Are they all I kind of had this epiphany as I was reading it and you did categories and then the considerations to evaluate that category. So like
064we went into this kind of with the mindset of goals and metrics because that was the model following because how the board as we discussed we kind of unpacked that so that makes sense that that was your mindset with this um right and again I mean you know I've done a lot of evaluations over the years and this is generally the format we use although we don't have 10 because when you're you know an employee you're not as responsible as the CEO, but you know, we've got to, you know, your legal writing, your research ability, your ability, you know, how do you get along with clients? How do you get along with staff? I mean, there's different categories. Thank you. That we evaluate you on. And ideally, of course, you want to get a top
065score in all those categories. And we don't do an average, but uh be pardon. You want to reach your goal. You want to exceed. that just said he's looking for things to achieve. Yeah. So I think competency that's a competency statement or core statement something like that that what you're referring to they're not goals but they're well if we want to set a goal for Matt our goal would be every kid gets a 100 on the uh on the u standards right I mean right now I think we have higher averages than all you know in some at some of our schools you know we have the highest or we're in the top three for English and math scores statewide. But, you know, those numbers are what they are. I mean, they're not approaching 100.
066Even Wilmington Charter, the number is only 90%. Um, our goal would be 100% for all our students. Not achievable, but that would be our goal, right? I mean, and that's our overarching goal is to educate our kids. It's all about educating our kids. But I think again the thinking is if we're doing these things if if Matt is good at these categories then we'll have created the best framework for student success that we can. Right? If staff is not turning over if discipline issues are handled appropriately if the staffing levels are appropriate under the applicable circumstances. Is it raining? Sounds like someone's banging on something. Yeah. You know, again, to my way of thinking, and I shorthanded this, and I apologize. Um, these are the things that need to be in place in order for
067our students to achieve all of these things. If Matt's doing these things, I think we we will have created the best environment for student success. I don't disagree. Again, I think it's the layout. What you presented, like what you've said this evening, like I said, relatively aligns with January. I think it's just the way that it's presented here. And so I think if we can work on the formatting now that we have a better understanding of your thought process, I think we'll we may be in a better position to align on some of these um relatively soon. Well, so there's maybe so we we have one of two ways it seems to me to proceed. And I appreciate all of your thoughts and I appreciate the fact that you know it's always hard as a
068writer. what's in my head is in my head and why don't you guys all know what I'm thinking, right? Um, I'm happy to go back and add more clear statements as to each of these categories and what is meant by the category. I'm happy to take some of your other comments into play. If you want to go through, if each of you wants to go through these lists of items and say, "Richard, I really think number three under staff is duplicative of number two under student life or strike this or reword this. Could you phrase it this way?" I will incorporate those thoughts in and you know, I can get you something in a you know, I can get you something neat again in two weeks, right? Can we align on some of the the
069words here though? I think categories and what else did you say? I know we're not going to use considerations. I think you said categories and I'm sorry. You want examples, Matt? Evidence, examples, I guess. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Evidence, examples. Like I think we need to um have more consistent language. I think that would help. showcore competencies. Yeah. Uh whatever language we want to use, I think to drive the point home similar to January's like January reads that this is the standard, this is the goal, this is the evidence. So if you're going to say this is the category, this is the consideration, like we need that written out. So like in the January one you have your goal then it has the evidence and where it says aligns with goal one strategic plan. So in
070strategic plan there's like there's measurements that go along with that. Yeah. It makes the cross makes it Yeah. So should we bring those that information to this to um make it read better? Well there's a reason why I decoupled this from the strategic plan. Um because as I said whether you call it categories or competencies um I don't think the strategic plan is the beall and endall of how we should be evaluating our superintendent and you know I had proposed a list of extra things that kind of got tacked on to what we had been doing before but you know again I mean go back to this draft it says goal two administer annual stakeholders or survey evidence presents survey results along with action plans to in response to that. I mean, anybody can do
071that. How is that something that tells us whether Matt's doing a good? I mean, he may be doing it well. He may not be doing it well, but the evidence, oh, you did it. You you gave a survey and you gave us the results. That doesn't really help me determine the value. It's it's something but it's not the meaning. But I think where there is an when the category does directly relate to the strategic plan, I don't think there's any harm in denoting it accordingly. No, I I don't disagree. Yeah. So I think it's that so I I think the blend of the two thoughts is that when the consideration can be tied back directly to the strategic plan, we put an asterisk next to it and denote which part of the plan. So I
072really and anything that doesn't have it then isn't directly tied to the strategic plan. Go ahead with this comment it's gonna so I'm just gonna the strategic plan is in the process of it will be rewritten is the other thing to take into consideration. So if you are truly establishing a tool that will be used again and again to evaluate the superintendent aligning to the strategic plan is good in highlighting how you're measuring and maybe also in crafting the next strategic plan. But as someone who is part of the 2020 strategic plan writing, I'm pretty sure 2025 is when a new one starts to be written just to keep that in consideration. Yeah, but I think you could just make a footnote, you know, strategic plan as of whatever. Yeah, but that's a that's a
073good point. Figure I should make sure when it's applicable, it's denoted. When it's not, then it's not there. Yeah. What I'm hearing is there will be a melding of some of the things and the timeline to which to do that is Richard would like feedback within a week. So my thinking on the timeline is I'll work on this this weekend when I'm in the office and if folks can get me any specific comments or things they'd like to see, strike this, change this, can you add this, etc., etc. If you can get those to me, you know, by email by Sunday at noon, then I will incorporate those and then I will get a revised draft out to folks of this the beginning of next week. And then if people want to give me more
074feedback, that's great. Or we can talk about it at our board meeting. the factors being considered. We're calling those categories now, I suppose we're gonna use. Um, are these in any particular order? So the order, yeah, the answer is kind of so the first three all relate to students. Yes, I remember you saying that. And to me, students first, right? And then um the next item organiz kind of these are my personal preference or what I think important. The next item is organizational leadership. Is he a leader or not? Right? And again, you know, there was an old the Supreme Court justice uh Whitaker, I believe it was, there was a series of cases in the 50s and early 60s at the Supreme Court whether films were pornographic or not. And if they were pornographic,
075they weren't protected by the First Amendment, and you could regulate them and find people and all that sort of stuff. But if they weren't pornographic, they were subject to extensive First Amendment protection. you could show them, etc., etc. And Supreme Courts actually spent a lot of time looking at films because trying to figure out, you know, on appeal whether they were really pornographic or not. And Justice Whitaker said at one point, um, I can't define it, but I know it when I see it. And to a certain extent, you know, we want somebody who can lead, who can stand up in front of a room and give a good presentation and inspire the troops. It's really hard to try to car. You can list the things you look for in a leader, but it's really
076hard to say you're a 94 leader or you're an 85 leader. Anyway, I put that as the next item because after students, we need somebody who can really move an organization. We've got over 2,000 employees, right? Yeah. And we've got a $200 million budget now. You're just gonna give the speech and so, you know, you can quibble about some of it. I probably should have moved, as I look at this, I probably should have moved up staff. I could have moved up IEP special education. That comment is that IEP special education. I could really I could really go up with the student section. Agreed. Um that's the reason why I asked. So, okay. You know, there's nothing magical here other than I put and I put board relations last because if Matt's doing everything else
077well, then he's going to have good board relations anyway. And if he doesn't have board good board relations, he's probably not doing a good job. Um, facilities and transportation, I put that lower on the list. Finances, I put lower on the list. Um, but I can I can move up IEP. And what is the difference between four and six? Like they see they seem to kind of go together. Well, four is more about is Matt a leader? Six is about how is our staff doing? And um you know does he have good relations with the staff? Is he you know um good relations with teachers? Is he respected? Staffing levels are appropriate. Right? I mean that's um discipline issues are handled appropriately. Staff turnover is not excessive. You know those are the things that you
078know how is he what's his relationship with the staff? Those are your considerations. Yes. So I'm hearing the timeline come together for changes. My question is then at what point do you in involve what the next steps would be the ones that have metrics that are needed do you need the support of Dr. Moss are you looking for the input of Dr. burrows of this is some of these are achievable or no way Jose like from that point of view or is it just we review it again? No, I think we need the met I think the next review should be the language we're talking about tonight and the metrics associated with it like because then an executive session because it's executive session because it's immeasurable. I'm just trying to keep us on the Yeah.
079Yeah. You only have me, you know, for another month to keep doing this. Two months, by the way. Oh, yeah. A month and a half. So, are you also stating like for number one, we can cut that down or we just Okay. Yeah. is we're going to go back and edit our thoughts on all of this and that's submitted to him by Sunday and then we'll regroup at exec session on our thoughts and come out to the board meeting and say hey this is what well we can't talk about it in exec session we can just vote on it as a tool then if you feel like it's in its finality unless you feel like it needs a first reading second reading and finality I don't think we need readings this is our tool to
080determine whether We're going to renew the contract of our employee. It doesn't need I don't think it needs to be a blood policy or anything like that. So, at what point are we getting the feedback from Dr. Burrow and Moss? So, I would like the next sitdown of this to be comprehensive. So, right. So, we'll be in executive session on May 13th before the regular board meeting which is also the day of the schoolboard election. If anyone's watching us on YouTube, I would say vote early and often, but I get in trouble because people take me seriously when I say that. It's an old joke. Do we have a full executive session already? Okay. Um, so I will I will get your all comments. I will turn it around. I will provide copies to um
081to folks and then we'll go through it on the 13th. And it may be that we feel comfortable enough to actually adopt it. It may be that we decide we want to have another round of edits and then adopt it in June. But I I'd like to think we're getting close to the end here. Dr. Moss, do you feel comfortable with that timeline? Yep, that works for me. I'm sorry. I need to just clarify. So, when we come into executive session on the 13th, you will already have had your opportunity to weigh in, you and Dr. Burrows or you're going to weigh in during executive session? Yeah, I think that if we're provided the updated tool within with I don't know enough time to put the metrics together, I can start to put metrics together
082in a general way. Yeah. So that I'm prepared. But okay, as long as we have some time to put them together, I think we'll be okay. Okay. So that we come together on the 13th. Sorry interrupt you. Sorry. Um, I could come prepared with options. Yes. And then even try to think a little outside of the box so that project predicting where the conversation might go so that we could kind of try to finalize something on that day. Thank you. No problem. Yeah, I like that. If you can give like three different evaluation tools based on all of our feedback. Sure. Like how and we could decide to not attach something, right? as as has we've discussed tonight or we could decide that something does need to be attached. But either way, I could I'll
083be prepared for that. I would suggest that we have to gather for executive session early and on time and that we do some sort of advanced thinking about it. So since there are currently 10 considerations, how that we are have some sort of time limit that we spend on each consideration. So we're not spending an hour on consideration number one. Yeah. Do we want to start earlier regardless just because it's ambitious or do we want to stick to 5:30 on We can start earlier. No, but if y'all want to meet earlier and I can come later, it's fine. We have to meet right at 5. I I was I was at the last executive session before you. Um so Okay. So you all will send me comments by Sunday. I will take them, combine them,
084make some other edits maybe of my own. We talked about some of the terminology we're going to use. I think that's helpful. I'll add some explanatory language for each of these categories because again things were stuck in my head and I didn't explain myself. But I'll do that. I will turn it around. We'll get it out Monday night at the latest. Can I also ask that you reach out to Mr. Abrams since he wasn't able to join us and explain? Yes. And then so you all will get it Monday. Dr. Moss, Dr. Burroughs will get it Monday and then we will follow up in executive session 5:30 Tuesday May 13th, but you all will have had the benefit of a week to think about it and offer thoughts and comments and hopefully we can march
085through it. And by the way, there's let's think about this. I mean, if you get it from me on Monday and I'm still not clear or I'm ambiguous about something, feel free to call me and say, "Hey, Richard, I think you messed this up or could you change this?" And I can always then do an email to the rest of the group saying, "Hey, I've made this change on the master forum and Michelle's suggestion or Michelle's suggestion." Um, so that you know, if you if we can take advantage of thoughts before Tuesday, so much the better. That's a good point. Okay, sounds good. Can you hit the gavl? Do you have to hit the gavl for this? Well, so uh does anybody else have any thoughts they want to say or anything else? All right.
086Well, those of you in TV land, thank you for uh joining us. Uh I know this was one of our more riveting episodes. Um and it is to be continued, as they say. So, we're ending on a cliffhanger. Um, but with that and without further objection, I'm going to bang our workshop to a close. Thank you all very much for attending.