001ready hey this is a call to order of a special meeting of the bridgeport board of education today is thursday june 16th 2022 and the night the time is noted at 7 25 p.m mr secretary would you call the role uh christine baptist perez president joseph zukalwick president albert benahan president erica castillo president michael macaron president bobby brown president sybil allen john weldon president joe lombard president okay first item on the agenda is superintendent evaluation works workshop slash discussion with connecticut association of boards of education uh for this item we have patrice mccarthy who is the deputy director of cabe and soon will be the executive director of cave uh now that mr radar raider is retiring so the purpose of this was the last time we met about the superintendent's evaluation there were members
002who wanted to get a sense for what is typical uh and they wanted to engage cave to kind of get into a discussion about that the uh evaluation tool that was agreed to a year ago i have extra copies if anybody forgot to bring theirs but it was sent to ms mccarthy and she took a look at it and you know just let you kind of talk about that and what is typical if anything is typical um does anyone need another copy of the the one down please and on that note i'll turn it over to you patrice thanks so much and it's a pleasure to be with you even uh in a a virtual opportunity uh it is that time of year when boards of education around the state are engaging in the evaluation
003process let me begin by referring to the statute because this there is some statutory guidance section 10-157 of the general statutes it contains a number of provisions related to superintendents but the relevant one here is and i quote the board of education shall evaluate the performance of the superintendent annually in accordance with guidelines and criteria mutually determined and agreed to by such board and such superintendent so the two important components here are that it's an annual evaluation that is required by statute and that the guidelines and criteria be mutually agreed to by the board and the superintendent and that's very much in keeping with what we all always talk about that the board and the superintendent are a leadership team and that it needs to be a collaborative process um that they engage in on
004on this and and many issues so i took a look at the instrument um that john sent me and then i went back and reviewed the document that cave and caps the superintendents association put together about five years ago we had a committee with representatives of school board members superintendents as well as staff from cabin caps and we developed a document called success strategies for leadership team evaluation board of education and superintendent of schools and it talks about the roles and responsibilities that the timelines in this process uh that are suggested and it also lays out um areas for boards of education to consider in their superintendent evaluation it i'll also note that it contains an instrument for a board self-evaluation because we feel it's important for boards to also reflect on their own performance
005celebrate their successes and i really want to emphasize that we particularly in these very challenging few years that we've been through we need to make sure that we all take an opportunity to celebrate the success of your students of the board and of the leadership team so when i looked at what cabin caps had put together as a model of elements to consider and then i looked at your instrument they are very much compatible um it your instrument hits on all of the key areas relations with the board of education community relations personnel management and relationships educational leadership operations and finance and then it provides an opportunity for you as board members to reflect upon the strengths the accomplishments um and opportunities that you see for the superintendent to improve so it really is a
006comprehensive instrument that hits on all of the key areas that we expect superintendents to exhibit their leadership in now process-wise what is very commonly done is individual board members would complete an instrument like this and then the chair or the vice chair of the board would compile those into a comprehensive document because remember it's the board as a whole that is actually evaluating the superintendent the superintendent reports to the board as a body and this is an important responsibility because the superintendent is your one employee the one employee that you hire that you supervise and that you evaluate so having the chance to look at these areas and then reflect on them with the superintendent is part of what helps build that strong healthy collaborative team relationship i'm going to stop there and see what
007questions you have anyone i can't tell mr calvin yeah um part of our discussion was it's a mutual agreement now we have we have elections every two years this is a new board the new board members were a part of that agreement and we thought of what we were discussing is they should have some input on this evaluation process since they never had a chance to have input before to the prior evaluation that we put up so what i would say is that this instrument is looking at the performance in the past year so in fairness to the superintendent and i speak generally in fairness to any superintendent um it really would be most appropriate to use the instrument and reflect on the goals that were identified a year ago even though there has been
008turnover and again that that happens in every district um to reflect on those for this evaluation cycle and then if this new board over the course of the summer for example wants to work with the superintendent to mutually agree to different uh criteria or modify some of these or come together and ultimately say yeah we think this is a good instrument um that would be i would say the the most appropriate process i think it's an appropriate process sounds good anyone else hey have anything to complain i'm sorry i didn't i'm a low talker at times there doesn't seem to be any further questions at this point um did you want to continue is there anything else to talk about i really don't have anything else to add it's really more if you have questions
009about the process about about the areas um that that are included in this i i will tell you that cave and caps worked on their leadership document which is on the cape website um the [Music] it was a process that probably took a year and a half and we looked at national models uh there was a a lot of opportunity for discussion and input so so the fact that your instrument very much reflects that body of work says to me that this certainly is a very appropriate instrument not that it can't be changed not that it can't be tailored or tweaked but certainly you should feel comfortable using this as an evaluation tool so so okay one second so you don't think this is anything that's uh out of alignment with what you would typically
010see not at all now is baptised i have a question for larger school districts that are part of cave could you tell me whether they use a similar one or are you aware of any kind of modifications to it so like new haven maybe waterbury hartford possibly norwalk stanford um with a diverse population and also a large population just because the qualifications under the statute for our superintendent you know it has to be more than three schools over 10 000 children and so when you're dealing with a larger district the evaluation is going to be different versus towns where when i read the statue there's a possibility of sharing a superintendent so very small districts versus evaluating very large districts large and diverse districts i i have not surveyed the current instruments used by those
011districts i i would be happy to do that for you uh if you would find that helpful what i can say is that the issue of there are very few districts that actually share a superintendent in connecticut so this um this instrument definitely does reflect the most common practice among all districts in the state regardless of of their size i did regardless of size and demographic yes because the types of things that they may be exhibited differently in a very large district with the number of schools that you have but things like um community relationships personnel management i mean those kind of educational leadership those cut across a superintendent's responsibility regardless of the size of the district or the demographics of the district yes but uh i think you had made the offer and i
012think that's what i'm most interested in is how larger and similar diverse districts because i don't think this is a one size fit all to have a comparable yes we may have hit the major top areas like other dishes however i'm more concerned about comparing apples to apples and now all foods together so i'm going to say this i did reach out to hartford new haven stanford and waterbury each of their board chairs and asked them to share with me how they evaluate the superintendent and what tools they use hartford was the only one who responded and their chair said uh you know they use the the document that you're referring to patrice the lead superintendent matrix he did say that in their case they do not have numeric values for scoring they use descriptors
013like below standard developing uh proficient and exceeds expectations and he thought it was interesting that in our case we applied a numeric system and he is interested in now using the numeric system but he he said our our tool is comparable to what they use the only difference being they don't currently use a numeric system they use descriptors to quote unquote grade in the different areas nobody else responded maybe it might be helpful if it's take reaches out directly to those districts they may be more likely to be responsive uh just so it's connecticut helping out connecticut and maybe it'd be helpful um maybe what happened uh their documents are so we can do a comparison ourselves i i'm certainly happy to do that uh if that would be helpful to the board i know
014i can get waterbury's instrument because the current came president is a member of the waterbury board of education i have a question mr lumbar miss mccarthy i i was kind of a specific question about our instrument and you have it there with you yeah one of the one of the areas that we uh contractually stated we would evaluate um based our evaluation on was academic achievement and in looking at this instrument under under educational leadership which is a separate area we were also evaluating on there's definitely a couple of criteria that touch upon achievement but i'm wondering do you feel that there needs to be more specifically targeted wording to capture that like for example on um roman numeral four academic i'm sorry educational leadership the final element number six says promotes commitment to educational
015growth and academic i'm sorry an achievement for all students is is it is it spelled out enough the way it is now or does it does it need to be a little bit different capturing something different there certainly have been cases where a board and the superintendent i think about bloomfield for example uh at least a few years ago they were looking at um at increases overall in test scores not not setting a a um a bar but the amount of increase in student achievement and so they had a very specific measure now certainly that specif a specific measure like that could be reflected in one's assessment uh if looking at um number six okay so it's being more specific about it but this is pretty general this is promotes it um and then also
016uh also wanting to again specific to our agreement with our superintendent um we spell out about four or five different criteria that must be evaluated must be in the evaluation and so i scoured this and i was able to find them but they weren't necessarily the headings um so i don't know if that's something an experience you've had in the past where the instrument needed to really um you know be in step with the actual contract or if it can be for general it it doesn't have to as long as they are addressed um in the criteria then you've met the requirements of the contract i mean one thing you certainly could do going forward is reorganize them so that you know if there's the criteria that's reflected in the contract might be number one
017on on the list i said okay thank you very much that's it so that it stands out a little more yep thanks there anyone else yes i have a question hello how are you good um this question is because a lot of people ask me and i just want to know the reason and it be clear from you that knowing that mr tastani he say in his contract and he's saying the public and it's in the minute that he would move to bridgeport that means that the sunny had to leave in bridgeport to be a superintendent on the school or it's okay he'll leave in another town there's no requirement in connecticut law that a superintendent live in the community uh that they serve in okay thank you so much appreciate your point of point
018of information hey hang hang on all right i want to clara i want to clarify i want to clarify ms mccarthy is not here to analyze the superintendent's contract she's here to talk about the review and the process of the review so i want to make sure we stay focused on evaluating the superintendent would it be appropriate to look at if he's meeting his contractual obligations or not especially for a material portion of the contract if he's in violation of a material portion of that contract is that fair game for an evaluation i would identify those as two separate issues really the evaluation is about the performance of the individual and whether or not there is adherence to the contract it should be a separate discussion and as far as the evaluation should an evaluation
019be used in deciding whether to extend a contract or not it certainly is is one factor that districts do consider um but when when they are making that decision as well thank you anyone else those that are online mr macaron you have any questions frozen now but i just have an issue with with um myself being a brand new member of the board okay we're all of us the three of us are on here now i guess it's five months already um i'm not too sure how new members can do um valuation of the superintendent if we haven't really had that much uh close contact with the superintendent and or really understand what the objectives and goals were for the year now that might be my problem because maybe i did not i've missed it's
020something somewhere that identified these goals and objectives but i just have a problem being able to honestly fairly uh evaluate it's super i mean it's just reflected i'm sorry let the record reflect that ms allen has entered the meeting hello miss allen hi there okay go ahead okay so that's my that's my issue and that's just my feeling as a new board member and you guys can tell me i'm crazy we should be able to but this is my problem we we have had people before you who were brand new uh have the same feeling and they just withdrew from the process they watched okay but they didn't actively participate because they felt i've only been here five months i i just don't feel it's appropriate but okay and i can say from working with
021board members for many years very new members and very experienced members what you've articulated is a common concern for those new to a board um and it is very much a personal decision you you are there is nothing there's no uh trigger point of well you have to have served for more than half the year in order to participate in the evaluation but if you don't feel that you have enough information then that is your own decision thank you miss mccarthy mr politic oh yeah i just wanted to address something mr macarthur because i was in that same situation my first year on the board and um i forgot the lady's name from cape uh she just mentioned patrice i thought miss patricia's about to she just mentioned um a very important point information there's
022there's a lot of things in this evaluation that require information if you get you can maybe possibly see yourself to evaluate data something that says about test scores you can ask the data with test scores backed up and comparative to other districts and you can make a judgment on that if you're comfortable with that but if there's like something that is lacking information it's just i don't know more um i forget the terminology between things with that and without data then maybe i evaluate that part but there's probably some things you could evaluate if you're comfortable evaluating based on just data points instead of um okay and i believe i believe the last time we did this uh as mrs mccartney said it all gets compiled part of the reason why we do it with
023numerical values is it all gets put into a matrix where you can see some averages uh but if someone is uncomfortable with with evaluating a particular area they can just leave it blank and that doesn't count against the score just instead of there being nine scores to be averaged there's only going to be eight or seven to be averaged because a couple of people maybe didn't feel comfortable uh looking at a particular area so there's that option too as opposed to just completely withdrawing okay thank you ms brown do you have anything uh no questions uh thank you miss uh patrice for sharing the information you're welcome so um this is where we are um i will convey that mr tastani has said this was the document that he agreed to and he would not
024agree to any modification to this he feels that he has worked the entire year with the understanding that this was the tool that would be used and if if there's a change to it that's just not something that he is going to agree um he is putting together his um presentation and he's indicated that he will have it ready by june 21st so on that date or anytime afterwards he's ready to sit with us and go through that presentation i think we owe him that and we need to keep this process moving along uh notwithstanding having an understanding of what other districts do other urban districts that's fine but i think uh this is the tool that we're kind of locked into at this point and it would be unfair to delay this process while
025we um explore what other people do that we may use in the next evaluation process so i i would just put that out there is baptiste perez um i have a question regarding on that very same point you had mentioned sometime around the summer i believe you mentioned august board members to talk about changes to it to the evaluation pursuant to the statute i think that's where i'm aiming for now because it may have been the previous board didn't update this document that could have been updated and so my question is is that the typical time a board should get together to determine if any changes to the evaluation should be performed and what happens in situations where there cannot be an agreement does this become the default or what what happened the the statute
026simply says it has to be mutually agreed to so i would say that if the board and superintendent were unable to agree on changes then the existing document stays in place until they can reach agreement i i would strongly encourage um first of all my offer to look at other districts and and get that information to you was definitely in the context of looking forward to the next evaluation cycle um and and reaching mutual agreement on whatever instrument uh would be used it was not to suggest that this year's evaluation should be delayed because remember the statute does say shall evaluate annually nope completely understand that part so the information that's being requested for you would be for the beginning of the new school year so that way we can have a comparable of other
027similar size districts and the first districts to have our next yeah i would think the sooner the better i mean talk about august that ideally if we get it done by july end of july you know that just gives him that much more time to any readjustments he needs to so it also says in the contract under evaluation letter a the board shall adopt an evaluation format within 90 days of the commencement of each year of this agreement so the agreement is july first right you got technically so august october like july august september 30th so we'd have to do it like you said we did in august as long as it's done by september 30. so um having said all of this we want to set a date that we want to receive the
028superintendent's presentation are we all set with us mccarthy uh well we want to make sure that we're concluded with this does anyone have any other questions for miss mccartney anybody want to keep her around for anything potentially are we satisfied that that you know i'm satisfied thank you i'm all set we were very clear okay all right well thank you patrice all right i wish you well and i wish you some restful days in during the summer months okay thank you thank you same to you thank you have a good day i'll be in touch with you to follow up on that material ms baptiste perez requested terrific okay thank you bye-bye bye yeah as far as the day what date did you say the superintendent will be ready earlier said he would have his
029material completed on the 21st 21st of june no later than 21 of june and he said he's got some travel as well planning to take vacation in july 14. mid july we try not to get people's vacation plans publicly advertising no that's fine but yeah with it within within a few weeks okay okay all right and then i have a question so the day that we pick that he presents when do we do the evaluation i at that point we would decide like how much time you think you need to digest that right and then you could fill out your paperwork and then we'd reconvene could we map out both those dates ahead of time sure so we like moving along well you want to say you want to give yourself a week after receiving
030his presentation the time does the timeline have to be that tight uh i mean i mean he's asking right yeah but that's thrown out of the alternative because or like i said receive the report and then like i said do you want to wait see what he presents you yeah and then decide how much time you need right i have no idea what he's right and we can also do it i mean the pressure is probably to do the presentation before he goes whatever and then maybe we could do anything that when he comes back if need be but i'm just worried about it but i i it sounds like you wanted to be contingent on what it is that he presents and how many patient it is for you to digest yeah i just
031worried about a compressed timeline just to make sure we got enough time to properly absorb what he tells us and if it's fun to add up either or i mean you know it could go you could do that way or you could set a date so yeah you it's a self-imposed deadline either way is acceptable so what's what's the general consensus here you want you want to have a meeting where he presents on the 21st and see what we think after that for the next step that's generally acceptable may i ask a question sure after he presents um his his plan um do we want to get together like a workshop not a workshop but just a uh sure you can do that separate you could do that separate from him without him present and
032just talk maybe that's what we should do i mean i i don't know i mean if we if we're left to individually decide what we think the presentation was and did it make sense i think we ought to do it together don't you agree yeah and that's what i envisioned that second meeting to be okay people have taken time you've maybe you've taken some notes things like that and now we all collectively come together and you know joe lombard scores him a three somewhere and i score on a four or five what's the disconnect what's he seeing that i'm not seeing so we can have that kind of dialogue you can revise your scores yeah and that could be something that we can do um you know it might it might not be just a
033half an hour type of meeting it could be something we can do on a saturday morning sure you know till noon i'll bring pizzas oh the pizza if he presents say on the 21st we could agree to get together that following saturday everybody's looked at the material you started to get some thoughts and now we just start talking about it yeah i mean i don't know if everybody and then and then afterwards afterwards he gets caught in that same day okay oh maybe in another meeting i mean yeah he gets brought in and he gets presented with all of this and and he gets to say what what his thoughts are okay that sounds good to me so we'll see if he can give us the material on the 21st we'll meet again that following
034saturday just us and go over what we've digested and then take it from there sound reasonable to everyone yep i don't think meetings will be held on saturday yeah i think he's just saying it could take some time so it could take some time what would you suggest the same time frame reset for board meetings monday through friday we could be one of those want to do it on a weekday yes how about how about a week apart the 28th let's do it on the 28th 27th 28th and have to see what's in my seventh superintendent's dinner so 28th 28th okay i don't know if there's anything else that's why i'm saying maybe it's the 29th but we'll see i can't do this all right well i'll send out a follow-up email with these dates
035okay that everybody can respond to that sound fair enough yeah yes so just so i can understand what mr macaron suggested so on the one day he hit the 21st we're presented with you know he mr designer gives us a presentation which we use that to fill out the instrument the evaluation instrument and score it one through five and then we come together on a draft form yeah and we come together on a second day and we all share our evaluations our scores and then we talk whatever and then those final scores are then tabulated which we'll then present on a third day to the superintendent yes okay and what you can do i'll ask you to send me your numeric scores at least uh so i've got put it in like a matrix that
036everybody can see in the draft form so you can see how everybody scored and how you scored compared and then when it gets finalized we'll finalize the tip and present it to the superintendent sounds great that sounds very fair what do you think i like that of course i'm i'm a couple with everything that go ahead i mentioned it i mentioned it because because i remember last year in the newspaper in the connecticut post the superintendent's um evaluations were were discussed maybe in maybe a half a page of page three in the connecticut post about what everything all of you what all of you get okay and we've got to be you know we've got to be make sure i at least i feel we need to make sure that you know these evaluations we
037agree with what we are saying about about the superintendent and that we're all uh either we don't have to all be on target you know but we we need to at least be able to support our evaluations if they're different from others i mean that's my that's my i mean yeah i mean i remember reading you know you guys did some some serious you know the discussions about how bad he was or how good he was we need to be mindful that this is that mr tastani is a person he's a person and he deserves to be treated appropriately media talk about these things right okay so that's that's my feeling okay so that's what we'll do then are we all set with that yep okay uh next on the agenda is a chairman's report
038um i'm gonna talk about um emails that were sent over the weekend by mr sokolovic they were very progressive at the very least very unprofessional and very offensive as well and i've heard from other board members that they did not appreciate uh happened to be included in all of it a similar incident happened about nine months ago and i let it go but i have to say that in other places if this happened in private industry or non-profit sector there would be consequences if you were an employee you might be suspended you might be terminated uh you're an elected official though and none of those things are are options for that kind of thing but there are measures which can be taken and i'm going to take them tonight they are my unilateral authority to
039do so and so effective today i'm going to relieve you of your committee assignments the educational diversity equity and inclusion committee will be chaired by erica castillo with the membership of bobby brown and myself the finance committee i'm going to ask that miss baptiste perez shares that and mr macaron with his finance background will participate in that as a member and bobby brown will remain and teaching and learning committee uh will have christine baptiste perez as its chair with members of erica castillo and joseph lombard this is not an easy decision for me to make and it's not easy for me to say this public but we all need to be mindful of the way we treat each other whether it's in this room or through the email system um tomorrow's another day and today
040and perhaps any chance of responding because you are in violation of state law i am being charged i'm not charging you they're charging me with a violation and you're taking that action you're saying i was rude and disrespectful if you deserve a public hearing on this issue and i need to have some fine trial in front of them that's fine we can do that yes we can okay with that i will schedule a special meeting for that purpose but it doesn't change my unilateral decision here and i would like that meeting scheduled immediately yeah we will do that and i want it held in public not an executive session that's fine so the final thing in the chairman's room is as patrice alluded to or mentioned uh we do need to set our own goals
041and objectives and this period of time is the appropriate time to be doing that kind of at the same time we're doing the superintendent's evaluation and setting his goals so i will try to get a session together sometime in the next two to four weeks typically we have an outside facilitator come in uh we'll we'll try to engage someone who's familiar with doing this and we'll set some goals and objectives for ourselves uh we tried to do this last year but because we had so many people we had potentially five of nine of us who were not going to be here uh they just didn't think it was appropriate to set goals at that point so i will put that together and on that note i'll seek a motion to adjourn someone moved by ms
042allen is there a second second seconded by miss castillo all in favor aye aye on the opposed we are adjourned time is 7 58. goodnight everyone you