Hall BOE developing new superintendent evaluation process

GAINESVILLE - The Hall County Board of Education has begun development of a performance-based process for evaluating the school superintendent.

The Board currently evaluates the Superintendent annually using an instrument provided by the Georgia School Boards Association. A performance-based evaluation process will base the Superintendent's evaluation on how well he achieves specific goals that are set out for him by the Board of Education. These goals will be linked directly to school system priorities and to goals of the Hall County School System's Balanced Score
Card.

The Board began developing the evaluation process by discussing goals that the Superintendent should be evaluated on. The Board plans to decide on top priorities and specific goals for the Superintendent over the next two months and to adopt the 2008 evaluation instrument in early spring of 2007. The Superintendent's performance for the current year will be evaluated by the existing process with the new instrument being first used to evaluate his performance for the 2007-08 school year. Goals specified in the new evaluation instrument.

It will be supported by specific objective measures by which the Superintendent's performance will be judged. The Board intends to revise specifics of the Superintendent's evaluation instrument annually by dropping or modifying goals that are achieved and by adding new goals.

The Board agreed that development of a customized superintendent evaluation process is most likely to reflect the specific needs and goals of Hall County. The Board also agreed that the Superintendent should be involved in discussion of goals by which he will be evaluated and that goals should address the system's three performance areas of basic academic competency, academic rigor, and improvement of internal system processes.

"I welcome and encourage development of a performance-based evaluation," states Will Schofield. "A transparent process that our community is aware of is foundational to encouraging a performance-based culture. As superintendent, my evaluation should be directly linked to the goals articulated by our Balanced Scorecard of Teaching and Learning."

Through the new evaluation process, the Board will clearly communicate expectations to the Superintendent and he will be specifically accountable to the Board for how well he meets these expectations. The Board plans to receive regular updates from the Superintendent on progress toward achieving evaluation goals.

When the superintendent evaluation instrument is finalized, the Board will publish goals and specific measures on the school system web site. When the first evaluation of the Superintendent under the new process is completed in 2008, the results will be published and electronically available to the public. The Hall County Board of Education believes that the new performance-based and more transparent superintendent evaluation
process is a step toward a higher level of accountability to the citizens of Hall County.

The Board's development of the new superintendent evaluation process is being facilitated by Dr. Sandy Addis, Director of Pioneer Regional Educational Service Agency (RESA). Dr. Addis noted that the move to a locally-specific, performance-based, and transparent process for superintendent evaluation is a cutting edge step toward local accountability and further improvement of the Hall County School System.