School Calendar Completed—

Board Reviews Evaluation Process For Superintendent

By Eliza Hallabeck

The Board of Education discussed the evaluation process for Superintendent of Schools Janet Robinson prior to her scheduled yearly review in June. Chair Debbie Leidlein explained at the board’s March 20 meeting that Dr Robinson typically has a performance review in June for her annual evaluation and another review in January for a midyear evaluation.

“We have a policy in place, and we stated at the beginning that we would be evaluating the superintendent — I’d hoped to do it in March, but unfortunately we ran out of time — but I would like to do an evaluation for either the next meeting or the meeting after,” said Ms Leidlein.

Dr Robinson said she has no problem with having an evaluation, but explained the “tool” used to evaluate a superintendent that Ms Leidlein referred to is not what has been used since at least 2007 when a Connecticut Association of Board of Education (CABE) evaluation process was first used. By statute, Dr Robinson said both a superintendent and a school board must agree on the form of evaluation.

“We mutually agreed on that instrument,” said Dr Robinson, referring to the CABE evaluation process, “and that is what we have used for four years. I would not like to change.”

Ms Leidlein later said she has no problem with using the CABE recommended evaluation process.

A midyear evaluation, Ms Leidlein continued, is something that CABE recommends, and she said performing an earlier evaluation would give the school board something more to work from during the June evaluation.

The school board, the superintendent said, missed the time to hold a midyear evaluation, adding holding one in April then another evaluation in June does not leave a reasonable amount of time to make corrections.

Ms Leidlein responded that her board could take the two-month timeframe between evaluations into consideration in June.

School board member Richard Gaines said it is inappropriate to have a midyear evaluation during an election year in Newtown, when new members of the school board join in December, one month before the typical midyear evaluation discussions.

After voicing her frustration, board Vice Chair Laura Roche said due to having nothing written during evaluations leaves the newer school board members with nothing on which to base their decisions.

Ms Roche later recommended the school board look further into what the board’s rights are.

“We’ll do our homework and add this to the agenda for the next meeting,” said Ms Leidlein.

School Calendar

The Board of Education also finalized its 2012-13 school calendar at its March 20 meeting. As reported by The Bee on March 6, the school board voted to amend dates within the proposed 2012-13 school calendar and postponed a decision on rewording the paragraph that describes the process associated with making up emergency school closings. Changes to the proposed calendar included amending the 2012-13 spring break, which was moved to April 15–19, and moving a number of planned early release days.

At the March 6 meeting, the school board also decided to have the projected last day of school publicized with emergency closings in mind.

The paragraph explaining that move was passed this week.

“We had several drafts of the paragraph,” said board Chair Debbie Leidlein, “that will accompany the calendar that will explain how emergency closing days will be addressed.”

As passed, the calendar includes five emergency closing days, to accommodate the average number of emergency closings in the district each year, and the actual last day of school will be amended according to the actual number of emergency closing days. If the number of emergency closings exceed the allotted five days, the school calendar will be extended for each day up until June 21, and the following closing days will be taken from the planned April break.

Including the five emergency closing days, the projected last day of school in the 2012-13 school calendar is June 18.

During the meeting, Dr Robinson said the calendar will be released by the district shortly.

Also during Tuesday’s meeting, the school board heard school district Business Director Ron Bienkowski’s monthly financial report, a description of how the district’s Strategic Plan Character Tree is being distributed throughout the community, and a presentation about the Newtown International Center for Education (NICE.)

To read more about the NICE presentation see the related story in this week’s Newtown Bee.