Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County School Board Administration Committee Meeting, Wednesday, October 1, 2025

Date: Wednesday, October 1, 2025
Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia
Length: 1h 5m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ndjWA1vUd0
Official School Board page (FCPS): https://www.fcps.edu/about-fcps/leadership/school-board

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-29. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:15] Kyle here? - Yeah, I can hear you. - I assume the public can hear me chomping on popcorn too.

[00:00:33] Yeah, this October 1st, 2025 regular meeting of the Fairfax County School Board Administration Committee will come to order. This is the first meeting of the Administration Committee ever. Mr. McDaniel has submitted a written request to attend this afternoon's meeting virtually due to a personal conflict as he has transportation challenges and is attending tonight's meeting from the Springfield District in Virginia.

[00:00:56] All those in favor of approving Mr. McDaniel's request, that is unanimous for board members present. Mr. McDaniel, we heard your audio already and see you there, so we know that you're able to join us. All right, we're gonna get started. I'm gonna review the agenda and just kind of like table set for the year.

[00:01:18] So in theory, this committee is designed to have four productive meetings a year, hopefully productive. And we might add a fifth if we need to to like finish up work or whatever, but there's basically three charges for open session and one charge for closed session, which I'll have to talk to each of you about outside of this meeting.

[00:01:44] The first charge, which we have materials for today, as well as decision points, relate to the performance evaluations of specific school board office and school board member staff.

[00:01:59] When I say specific, I mean positions that do not exist elsewhere in the school division. So in the school board member office, that would include staff aides, staff assistants, and directors of district operations.

[00:02:15] In the school board office, that would include the clerk and deputy clerk. This also includes the auditor general, although the auditor general's evaluation will still be conducted by, at least in the first part, by audit committee before it comes to the full board.

[00:02:31] So that's kind of like the purview here. We're not touching employees who have comparable roles elsewhere in the division, like the technical positions in the school board office or the senior executive administrative assistant position because those have to be reviewed in the same way that other comparable positions are reviewed throughout the division.

[00:02:51] And so we have three decisions today if this is the path we want to go down. The first decision is around the evaluation calendar. Several board members have expressed an interest in ensuring that the evaluation cycle for employees that we manage follow the board's cycle of tenure on the board so that we're not picking up halfway through a year and completing a term without finishing an evaluation cycle for an employee.

[00:03:21] So this would move, you'll see in the agenda there's a proposed performance evaluation calendar set to the calendar year 26 versus the current 25-26 school year performance evaluation. The next decision point relates to the framework proposed changes of the evaluations if you've done an evaluation in the system for an operational employee i think everybody here has you'll note that they're generic and they are not specific

[00:03:56] to the employee or their duties well you can give an okay review that way several colleagues have mentioned that something that goes through the responsibilities based on job description of the employee would be more beneficial for professional growth of the employee and for assessing the work done by the employee so we'll make some decisions on that front and then the third decision point would be around and this took the longest time this is why we're meeting in october and not august or september i spent the last uh month and a half developing

[00:04:31] what could be the proposed framework for each of these what i described as these specific jobs in the school board member and school board office so that includes the standards and indicators for that position based off of their job description it also includes a sample personal assessment self-assessment rather and then the the scoring matrix for the board member to use when conducting

[00:05:04] that evaluation and what those uh matrices would would mean so all in if we finish all of that basically what we will have done is we will have indicated here's the new timeline for evaluating these specific employees and here's the way that we will evaluate them and then that can be rolled out to employees after the board approves it obviously the full board will have to approve anything that we do here so we would send this on to the board for a discussion maybe be at a work session or at a regular meeting, depending on what the chair and vice chair think.

[00:05:39] And then we would proceed from there. The goal for this is that we wrap this up. If we need time to vote at the beginning of the next admin committee meeting in December, that's okay. But if we don't get it wrapped up this year, then we're pushing into the evaluation cycle that we're discussing today, which begins next year.

[00:06:03] Any questions about that general framework before we just start the conversation? Mr. Moon. - As to the timeline, would you envision all of these, the work that our committee and the board, subsequently will do is gonna become effective for the following year, the evaluation?

[00:06:25] - For calendar year 26. - Calendar year 26 or school year 26? - Well, we are in school year 25, 26 right now. We're endeavoring to potentially not do the evaluations based on school years, because we don't serve by school year.

[00:06:41] - So you wanna do that from January to December? - Right, and you'll see more specifically what that means when we look at the calendar part. In terms of future meetings, there's some stuff that Dr. Anderson has already worked on that we will be talking about as well. I think we're doing that at the first meeting of the new year, which is an employee handbook.

[00:07:03] We have an employee handbook, but anybody who's worked in the school board office school board member office knows that there are a variety of things that are unique to the experience of those employees and so this would be like a supplement to that handbook that we have to create and then bring that to the board again for approval and then the third topic is a a topic for closed session dr anderson um thank you i i do want to say i'm glad that we're doing this and i did have a chance to go through all of the documents here's just a couple of big overall

[00:07:37] questions um what did you develop all of these on your own okay so you've been a busy i told you six weeks of getting it together before our first meeting okay um i do think because there's a lot here um and i would love to make sure that we have our colleagues um eyes on it that we should have a work session perhaps as soon as possible so we can put this for new business for december so this can get going um just kind of going through this and not a little bit i went through

[00:08:13] this a lot of it um i'm fairly satisfied with much of what's here it made me wonder are we going to need two hours here today um to push this forward but i do think we need to make sure that we get other people's input into this document but it's a great step it's what we've been talking about for a number of years particularly when you come in in january as a new member there's no way you're going to be able to evaluate anyone in the next six months and now because we have staff aides that whose tenure and with your tenure this makes much more sense so i i'm in high support of the

[00:08:51] timetable and for much of it too again my feedback is going to be fairly small but overall i'm very supportive of what's been generated here dr uh miss anderson i think that the biggest thing to say is that there is no time in the the work session schedule for the remainder of the calendar year so we are scheduling right now into the beginning of next year so if we want to we need we probably need to send this through email to get responses from individual colleagues or we can split up the the group and determine whether or not we can touch

[00:09:29] base with with our colleagues to get the feedback that we need in order to to make any changes that that are necessary in the next admin committee and then get it to the full board. So I just wanted to let you guys know for everything for the remainder of the calendar year.

[00:09:46] - All right, well I can come up with a framework of the types of things that we should add because the big ticket thing here, the thing that took the longest was taking the job descriptions and matching it against proposed standards. And so I think that's where the meat and potatoes is going to be for people's thinking.

[00:10:02] The rest of it is all very straightforward. So why don't we go ahead and look at the first decision point. - Mr. Moon, go ahead. - Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Are we, by the way, thanks for your work. I didn't get to spend six weeks on this one.

[00:10:20] I already got to this yesterday and began reading. It was, oh my God, this is a lot of work and you've done all of this, all by yourself. That is, I need to give you credit for that. - I learned from the governance committee, if you don't bring the work in, it can take four meetings to get something done.

[00:10:38] - Correct, correct, correct. So thank you, kudos to you, and going through this, I ask my staff members, two staff members that I have, to look through those and whether they could provide any feedback, any suggestion, any comments, et cetera.

[00:10:55] So in that regard, are we intending on maybe asking our staff members whether they see something missing or they think something for us to consider, et cetera? - I will say that in past conversations the superintendent's evaluation we've been wrist slapped by members who have thought that the superintendent should have no interest in their own evaluation so i think it's probably worth something for board members to consider whether they think it's appropriate to have their staff provide input on their own evaluation i mean i have already done whether whether we are missing anything uh whether they see something different that i don't see because i don't do their work

[00:11:33] every day i mean they do so i think it's up to the board member if they want to engage their staff on that front as well okay thank you miss anders chair anders all right so the first decision point we've got if you open the current timeline this is the timeline that is generally used for operational and instructional staff in the division it is set to a school year calendar and so in transposing

[00:12:07] this into a calendar calendar calendar year calendar rather we removed the instructional employees from the quote-unquote calendar year calendar because we don't have instructional employees and we took the same general approach to timeline but put it on a calendar year so the january to march period would be when school board when these specific school board office and and school board member employees have their summative evaluation cycle

[00:12:45] and the details are shared out. And in March, by March 30th, the school board office and school board member employees hired after that date would receive a truncated mid-year assessment from July to November instead of like a formal end-of-year assessment like everybody else.

[00:13:08] And then by April 10th, employee self-assessments would be due and any kind of goal-setting conversations that board members want to have with their direct reports would happen at that time as well. By July 10th, the mid-year assessments are due and should also be relayed to the employee.

[00:13:31] Areas of improvement, areas of praise, et cetera. and then between up to october 23rd would be when the summative evaluation and conferences are due for school board office employees in other words this is when you're doing your end of your evaluation for the employee and it's designed to be late october because november's a tricky month for everybody but our goal is that everything in november is wrapped up all of the evaluations are wrapped up by November 20th so that by November 30th any employees who are on it on an annually

[00:14:10] recurring contract in other words staff assistants staff aides and directors of district operations are notified by November 30th whether their contract is being extended for another year again some of these things are unique to these employees but that's the gist of it Dr. Anderson thank you um i just want to make sure i confirm what you've just shared the periods in between each kind of set of activity you're saying that mirrors what would be happening over the school year calendar for other for other employees so you'll have the same kind of stretch between your

[00:14:48] your goal setting and your mid-year and your end of the year again i think this timetable works really well i wonder has hr reviewed any of these yet they have they haven't provided feedback but they partnered on providing all the materials that we needed to pull all this together so that's good um and all of our employees are annual except for me i'm the only one in the school board office who doesn't have an annual employee well there's also outside of the school board member right school board member staff right the others the administrative assistant and the

[00:15:28] other technical positions in the school board office are also right and we don't have any changes for those because they're they do have other they have counterparts in the division as a board member who did share um some um hesitation about having the superintendent develop you know what her evaluation would look like i think these are very distinctly different um circumstances because we have indicators by which you know the code of virginia requires that we follow so those performance standards are not negotiable this is new we're starting from scratch i would love to have the opportunity and i do agree with you we all have the opportunity to put it in front

[00:16:06] of our staff um in order to get that feedback and that could come through us but i i don't think these are like activities these are really loud but i think this timeline is really good i i just want to mention because we've had this issue come up probably now three years now um the november 30th timetable of if you're not going to be we reinstated for the next year that you have a month

[00:16:44] to have that determination and there will be the need for some backfilling in between these dates like if we're saying it's november 30th then hr is going to know that the letter that goes out to all of those staff members has to go out by this date and so on there's things that have to happen in order for that november 30th date to work here's my wondering because i i think we have this now with some of the staff and maybe it's been corrected since the first term typically hr sends out um little reminders to to program managers primarily you know principals etc oh this is due

[00:17:21] this is due this is due we have not been part of that as a whole will that be a consideration for these little dings to be automatically sent through my pde which i imagine would be they're actually these documents are there might be a different platform that is used but there will be a platform that's similar okay according to william or mr solomon mr moon um perhaps this is for the close session discussion but uh uh in one of these days i want to hear from our division

[00:17:57] counselor about one year contract versus somebody being an edward employee it's the same thing just wanting to hear directly from what t yeah i can we can even get you the briefings that have provided that guidance i think those were also circulated when the new board began um all right i'm so sorry yes if that's the case then should we have some sort of asterisk in this because this seems as outline shows that you have to make your decision by november 3rd

[00:18:32] november 30th that you couldn't release someone at any other point throughout the year you could november 30th is just a best there's you don't have to do an evaluation of your employee you don't have to who's going to tell you that you have to you're a board member we are the top of the food chain but you should do an evaluation of your employee you could wait until november december 30th to renew your school your staffers contract you shouldn't because that's mean so

[00:19:04] we're just simply suggesting these things and i guess one of the ways that i also see evaluations it's a protection for the employee as well as in the system could we not make that commitment we're you're saying from your conversation we could but i mean we've had these conversations before around how do you police board members actions like the voters do that um so kind of like you know when we did the um when peck did the advisory committee handbook a lot of it is just

[00:19:42] like encouraging board members to do x y and z because these have been found to be beneficial best practices so you know i think uh we can have division council explain to staff why it's important uh to join everybody else in doing these evaluations every year um which i think would be beneficial all right any further comments about the timeline timeline looks fine to me can we make a motion to accept or to advance to the full board to advance well we would have to accept the the

[00:20:18] timeline and advance it to the full board yeah do you have one question so with the auditor general would she be on the same timeline she would and and as the timeline notes that process would be started with the audit committee okay and she already knows and we've we've already discussed it with her perfect um so make that motion then i'll second that perfect motion by miss by chair anderson second by mr moon all those in favor that's unanimous for important members present

[00:20:52] and on the internet all right um the second is the framework so if you look at the current All three of these documents are identical with different titles that are shared in this part of the board docs. The assessment for the mid-year, the self-assessment, and the summative assessment that we provide staff are identical and lacking detail.

[00:21:19] If you're on agenda item 1.03, the documents are called 2025, 26, current assessment form mid-year, current assessment form self, current assessment form summative. Those documents are all identical with just a few words changed here and there depending on what the assessment is for.

[00:21:39] And board members have complained that they are lacking in specificity for the jobs and therefore don't do a good job for professional development of the employee or for accountability. So the decision point here is to replace the generic evaluation framework for these specific SBO and SBM employees with a job-specific framework.

[00:22:02] And if we approve that, then we'll go on to a discussion of the job-specific frameworks, which are iterated out in 1.04 on board docs. So if nobody wants to argue in favor of keeping the generic evaluations, then we can take a vote on it and move on to the longer topic of 1.04.

[00:22:29] - Let me see, I don't know whether this should go under 1.04 or 1.03. - 1.03 is the current generic assessments. And if we choose to go with something more specific of the job, we would vote to replace it with something more specific. And then we would discuss what the most specific is for the third action today.

[00:22:49] - Okay, I'll wait until 1.04. - Okay, Dr. Terri Anderson. - I would make a motion to go ahead and support moving forward to look at the more job specific.

[00:23:06] - Okay, Dr. Anderson second. You wanna speak to the motion? Right, all those in favor, that's unanimous for board members present and virtual. All right, so in moving on to the proposed resolution, assessments, let's just take a look at, as an example, join me in clicking on the 2026 proposed assessment for the school board staff aid.

[00:23:39] It should be like the fourth document that you see. All right, my internet is moving a little slowly, but it's loading. All right, so this is divided, I think, into five parts. Part one is just like an introduction to what this is.

[00:23:56] And this is the same for all of the different jobs that we would be assessing. Part two provides the performance standards, indicators, and a scoring rubric. When a supervisor does an assessment, they're not scoring somebody based on an indicator, kind of like we do with the superintendent.

[00:24:20] Those specific things that the BOE puts in there for indicators are suggestions of things to think about when you're considering that standard. So we could add 50 things to a standard if we want to. It's just for the board members edification to know what does this mean?

[00:24:37] What are the types of things that are included in this standard that I should be thinking about? So you notice standard one is administrative and office support. And it says the standard is the staff aid provides administrative and clerical support to ensure efficient daily operations of their school board members office.

[00:24:58] And then the types of things that are included as a sample within that standard are iterated out as the performance indicators. And then after that, there's a performance rubric that tells you what somebody who's highly effective, what somebody who's effective, what somebody's approaching effective, and what somebody who's ineffective would be characteristic of.

[00:25:24] And so a supervisor would use each of these standards in their evaluation of that person. So for these individual board member employees, it'd just be the board member, But for the clerk, deputy clerk, auditor general, it would be every board member is doing this similar to how we do with the superintendent.

[00:25:46] And then those would be combined for a group assessment. And then finally, if you go to the end of these standards indicators rubric, there is a note about what documenting performance looks like, the types of things that should be gathered for an assessment.

[00:26:07] And then there is a self-assessment that would be turned into a form for the employee to fill out. And then finally, number five is the evaluation that would be completed by the board member in developing their assessment.

[00:26:23] Mr. Moon? - Thank you. In a performance evaluation, I guess you call it the performance rubric. It's something I wrestle with every year, even with superintendents.

[00:26:40] As people may have, individual board members have you know different expectations from their if about the level of performance from their staff members so my effective could be different from somebody else's or someone's highly effective could be my effective so you know for me you know I would have high expectations from my staff so you know trying to see someone exceeding my high expectations might be much harder to come by than some other board members whose expectations might be at a level different

[00:27:19] from mine. So that is where I struggle a lot of times, whether I am being, when I put someone as give a certain rating, if I call this a rating, whether I'm being really fair to that person where hopefully you understand what I'm saying.

[00:27:43] Because I'm looking at- The good news for all of us is that we're not evaluating each other's employees. - Right, but highly effective, I'm looking at. I'm looking at right there, I think, what does it say? One, two, three, third line. Members' priority at a level that exceeds expectations.

[00:28:01] Wow, okay, when I have high expectations, it would be very difficult to exceed, very difficult to exceed, so that's where I'm gonna wrestle with. I know, we're not competing, I'm not looking at Sandy's, I'm not looking at Riccardi's performance, at least that, at least then I hopefully, hopefully, staff members do not share their ratings with each other, I see it.

[00:28:27] - No, this is an employee document. - It's an employee document, that's what I'm saying, employee, but employees could talk to each other, and that's where, you know, personally, I'm gonna still struggle with that. - Ms. Anderson, then, Chair Anderson, then Dr. Anderson.

[00:28:45] - One of the things that I think that we need to be careful of is, to Mr. Moon's point, when we're talking about the performance rubric, I would want to make sure that that was used as a sample. Like this is how you could use this and give that qualifying language so that it's not that someone walks in and assumes that just because they're labeled as effective for a particular board member that that necessarily assumes that they're only effective.

[00:29:12] - Like a sentence before that rubric or the sentence before in that part of the standard that says something like how this stuff-- just changed it from being a performance rubric to being a sample performance rubric and just change the title that would probably be enough and then adding some qualifying language in the introduction may be enough to to explain that their sample you know language language throughout rather than having someone be able to one-to-one correspondence that if i got a highly effective this is exactly what they think um so that the other thing that that does is if you have someone one that is exceeding on almost everything,

[00:29:51] except for one portion, like one tiny portion of it. Is that enough to bump them down to effective? Or is that some, just an area for growth? The other thing that I wanna make sure is that although we're looking at this and I think it's great, we should remember that some of these positions are actually evaluated by the clerk, not necessarily by us.

[00:30:10] And so as we're looking towards those things, it doesn't necessarily mean that all of these are gonna be conducted by us. - No, in fact, I think for the deputy clerk ones, just references that the clerk should gather feedback from board members. So I think that's the only one that isn't managed by us.

[00:30:27] - And then the other thing that we would have to do is similar to the way we conducted the clerk's evaluation this year, we would want, in the same way we do with the superintendent's evaluation, is that we would want to probably codify somewhere our path towards collecting information from the colleagues and bring forward, and that could probably be done with an SOP related to this, just internally for the office as leadership takes over.

[00:30:51] - Can I make a suggestion that we could maybe adopt without opposition where in these documents where it says performance rubric, we could add the word sample like we have for the indicators and then underneath that in each place for each of these documents, it would say something, it would say evaluations and this would only be for the jobs that are school board member specific, right?

[00:31:19] Like staff aides, staff assistants and directors of district operations. Evaluations for school board member specific employees will vary greatly based on school board member priorities and judgment.

[00:31:42] - And I'm gonna preface this by saying I have done hundreds if not thousands of these evaluations during my career as a school principal. So I just wanna share that. Evaluations as much as we try to really standardize by having examples, we really try to ensure consistency by using data, they are subjective documents, period.

[00:32:03] There's no way around it. There's really no way to identify that my effective requires that you lift three blocks and your effective requires that you lift five blocks. We're not going to argue that. So to me, it's inherent that these are implied.

[00:32:20] I don't think having it or not having it, none of that impacts for many of the employees. And by the many of the employees, I primarily am referring to the staff aides because while we have this very broad job description, people are doing very, very different things because that's what their board member requires.

[00:32:38] And so they'll have to use whatever that criteria is to make the determinations as to how they feel their employee is meeting their needs. That's just going to happen because they're that single employee who is doing that single job.

[00:32:54] So there's really no real hard, fast comparison between the two. where I see a space for us to not, to remove something from this document. And I'm not against what you're saying, I'm just thinking that it's redundant in and of itself.

[00:33:11] I want to understand a little bit more about the utility of a summative rating. Again, this is someone who serves one individual and they're going to give feedback or not, because there's also nothing to compel them to even complete this.

[00:33:26] I'm trying to understand why we want to boil this down to a waiting and to have that one final number, similarly as we do for the superintendent and principals and teachers, I see the individual components as outlined in all of these parts as sufficient because you'll get feedback in each of these.

[00:33:47] I'm trying to understand why do we need a wrap up? Because not every- - For the individualized school board member employees where there's just one person- - Yes. - Doing the evaluation. - Right, I don't know if that's super helpful it is that's smart say more no it makes a lot of sense that that's redundant at the end oh okay if it's just one person providing the evaluation it is redundant right okay so you know the thinking that got us there is that I started with the ones that were done by multiple board members and then I went logic blind eventually sure so that would be one of my preferences I I don't know if this

[00:34:26] - I would support removing that from the individualized employees. - Yeah. - Okay. - Without objection, removing that section and including just, well, it doesn't need to be- - So it's part five. - Yeah, part five. - Okay, that's it for right now because we're still on staff aid.

[00:34:47] - Correct. And I do think that we should still include the staff aid, staff assistant, and director of district board operations. - Oh, okay. - I would also flag the deputy clerks if I'm the one doing just the only one doing the evaluation for them.

[00:35:03] - That is true as well. So the two that it would be applicable for that I'm hearing right now are the clerk and the auditor general where we would have multiple feedback points and we need to find some way to normalize it, what's the word that I'm looking for?

[00:35:20] To incorporate that. - Yeah. - Okay. - I would advocate for keeping the language that I mentioned to assuage Mr. Moon's point because I do think that it's valid just as a reminder to the employee filling out or learning about their evaluation to know that this is gonna look different from person to person who has a different board member as their boss.

[00:35:46] It might not be. Yeah, I will. - Be sure that the record reflects where it lands. - Yeah, the part with the boxes to fill in. Chair Anderson. - I think Mr. Moon is next. - Mr. Moon.

[00:36:02] - Question regarding, I think, document collection. I think it was, where was it? - I think it's part four. - Part four? - Part three, sorry.

[00:36:19] Documenting performance. - Yeah, documenting performance. So, I mean, that's imposing upon school board members to collect documents in providing-- - It's not imposing anything.

[00:36:36] This is all suggestions. - Or suggestions like that. - But I would say, as somebody who has managed scores of people, if you want a person who performs, doing an evaluation that is not based on documented evidence is not a way to manage somebody.

[00:36:53] - I understand, I appreciate that. I know what-- - But it's just a suggestion. - Yeah, what I may end up doing is, I may end up doing my staff first to provide all the documents that you have provided in the past, all that, 'cause I may not be able to. - There might even be something that you think about, like I worked on that forum topic and they were really helpful and I really liked how they laid it out.

[00:37:15] Or conversely, I asked them for a memo about this meeting that we were having and it just missed the mark. Those are examples of work products. It's not like you have to go and gather them. They can be part of your feedback because you've already reviewed them. - Thank you. - Chair Anderson, Dr. Anderson.

[00:37:33] - I do think that it's helpful if you had somebody that was having a little bit of trouble figuring out where their ratings fell. I do think that having a generic document that talked about how to configure ratings as part of some sort of board member toolkit kind of thing, even if you did it as an Excel spreadsheet or a Google sheet, so that people could plug in their numbers if they wanted to, not necessarily that it's a cohesive number, but just gave them a way to kind of figure out at the end where their range fell.

[00:38:01] I do think that that would be a helpful thing if you haven't necessarily managed a ton of people at the end, almost like a grading rubric. It is helpful for teachers and managers of all varieties. The other thing that I would say is to Mr. Moon's point and to your point about gathering information, the military has a very strong model with this related to having the service member actually complete a portion of the document themselves.

[00:38:27] And so I do think that this can be a collaborative document with your staff member. and so you can have it be a joint effort to get to guess. So what are areas that they think were strong? Where do they think?

[00:38:42] Usually people will dime themselves out far more than you ever can manage on your own. And so I think that having those as a way to check, has a checkpoint at the end of the year is a really strong way to kind of, and encouraging a staff member to keep track of this and have it be when they hear things back from different people and you know, sometimes writing those areas of strength are hard.

[00:39:06] And so having employees understand where they can gather some of that information is extremely helpful. - Thanks, Dr. Anderson? - I just wanted to add something. There's an opportunity for this to be done. Evaluations are collaborative processes.

[00:39:22] At the goal setting discussion, that's when you can start to unearth what are the things that are going to be utilized as the assessment because they'll do a thousand things, But you're not going to pay attention to all of those things. That's when whatever's important to you rises to the top. And that's when that conversation needs to be had.

[00:39:39] If you're a person who can't stand lateness and that would be a thing in your professionalism, that's one of the things I would add because I abhor that. But that conversation helps you to build understanding between the two of you in terms of what will be expected before it is due in November.

[00:39:58] And you'll have plenty of months in order to do that. and it's always can be revisited because I think there's also a mid-year that is here. So you have April and you have July in order to build understanding through the process with your person.

[00:40:14] - The other thing I would add is that I've also been evaluated by lots of people and there's nothing worse than being evaluated and finding yourself at the end of the year and having somebody be like, I didn't like what you did in the second month on the job. It's like, well, why didn't you say something?

[00:40:31] I could have made it better months ago, you know? So I agree with Dr. Anderson's comment about like it's an iterative conversation that happens throughout the year The other thing that I do is I just keep a folder of the things that I want to talk about like in the future I do that for the superintendent to like when we're doing the evaluate. I know Dr. Anderson keeps a binder I keep a a digital version of the same thing. Yeah So it's just helpful I'm never going to write too much happens at the end of the year or we look back on what happened in the year and it feels like some of that stuff happened 25 years ago.

[00:41:08] So are we good with moving this forward to the board with the discussed and approved changes?

[00:41:27] - Can we take a deeper dive on the deputy clerks and the auditor general's documents, just to make sure that we're super clear because those are the only two that will require multiple inputs. - The clerk and the auditor general.

[00:41:42] - I'm sorry, not the deputy clerk, exactly. the clerk and the auditor. Mr. Frisch, which one do you wanna look at first? - We can look at the clerk.

[00:41:58] We promise not to stare at you while we do it. All right, so looking at the clerk, again, we have the introduction that kind of explains everything, and then you've got the standards and indicators based off of the job description, and then performance rubrics for each, and then when you get to the end of the standards and indicators, you've got documenting performance.

[00:42:37] And so this is similar, board members would be doing similar to what they do with the superintendent in that regard. Perhaps the board will ask for certain documents to be collected as part of the evaluation. You know, the evaluation is helmed for the clerk by the chair and vice chair, so they would facilitate that.

[00:43:00] Then there's the self-evaluation part, which is, You'll notice that a lot of this is standard, right? So the self-evaluation is an opportunity for the employee to reflect on each standard and discuss their areas of strength and areas where they think they might need to improve.

[00:43:20] And then finally, you've got the summative evaluation part. Dr. Anderson. - Just to get a confirmation, the indicators that are identified under each of the components, these are directly lifted from the job description, correct?

[00:43:38] - Some of them are, yeah. - Okay, can you just walk me through? - But they're also samples, right? Because they're not the things that you're weighting. It's similar to the superintendent's evaluation. The standards are what we judge on. The indicators are things to start your mind thinking about that standard.

[00:43:57] That's why they're listed as samples. 'Cause if you thought about the things that are listed in the job description, you could literally come up with, if you just sat there, you could come up with 150 things for each standard that would make sense as part, it's a matter of what's important to you as a board member within that standard in judging somebody's performance.

[00:44:21] - I don't have a thought right now, but I want to give it some more reflection. I think this would be a space where as much as possible to provide some examples, not just the sample of this still very broad category, but some specific examples of what could land someone in these categories, because again, Now we have 12 people who are going to have 12 different perspectives.

[00:44:51] As much as we could tighten that up, it'll be a lot easier. - What do you mean by? - Let me give you an example from the superintendents. When you're taking a look at the goal reports, that's standard eight, that's the academic progress. It's completely black and white.

[00:45:06] It's either you're making progress or you're not making progress. Where it gets gray is we have 15, and I'm being really conservative here, We have 15 different categories in which progress could be made.

[00:45:22] Is sufficient progress for an effective half? Is it 80%? We've never had that conversation as a board at all, so everybody's made their own evaluation. Maybe it's just the thing that is important to me, if that's progressing, then that's good for me.

[00:45:39] I take a very different approach. I try to take a look at all of those data points and figure out where does it fall? do we have more than half of them moving and try to make some decisions there really also knowing not all of the data points are created equal i'd like to get a sense of how can we hone in on some of those things more specifically here that are black and white can i tell you why i didn't it's not going to be black and white but a little bit less gray but i'll tell you why i didn't the superintendent has an entire army of people that help her prepare for her evaluation

[00:46:13] writing reports gathering details etc i don't think anybody that else that we supervise has the resources to do that level of gathering of materials to provide the evidence for something that is less subjective i agree fully and that's kind of not where i was going where i was going is how do we ensure some fairness to the employee so that what i am expecting maybe it is so here that they would never meet that i i just i'm looking for some place to offer a little bit of

[00:46:47] consistency and clarity like these are the generic things that could make this person effective at their job in this under this standard because i i think i've seen it play out very differently in these last few years well i mean and i think i'm sorry i don't have a better way of wording it and that's the challenge because even the superintendent's evaluation all of those indicators are not required by the state the indicators that are listed by the state are samples for a reason chair anderson i i want to revisit something that we had just kind of said that we were going to

[00:47:25] change but i i just want to reiterate that we're selling this on the right track we can't just eliminate part five from each one because that is the summative portion of the evaluation so i understand what we're saying about eliminating some of the rating but what is the deliverable that's going to be given if we're if we're suggesting that we're going to eliminate the averaging portion, I understand.

[00:47:50] But at some point we still-- - It'll be the same ender that you have on the current evaluation. If you go to agenda item 1.03-- - I understand. I guess my question is are we, I thought that we were suggesting that we are, okay, so we're still suggesting that we're gonna utilize the same form?

[00:48:12] - No, I'm just saying that in place of that thing for the individualized employees that requires the grid and everything else, because I think it's right that that's not something that's necessary when only one person's doing the evaluation, you would end up with, if you look at one of the current assessments, the last thing is recommendation, recommended continued employment, recommend dismissal.

[00:48:36] - I agree. I guess my point is, in order to justify that information, we're going to need, I mean, and I assume that you're already, you are in agreement on this, but we're gonna need some sort of document that actually is a deliverable to the employee to be able, so we are still-- - It's everything north of that.

[00:48:54] You're still marking somebody as highly effective, effective, ineffective, et cetera, for each of those standards. - I know, but that is, I looked at that as kind of the directions, not what we're gonna hand to the employee. So what is the deliverable that we're going to hand to the employee to have the final conversation at the end of the year?

[00:49:13] - It would be how you've ranked them for each of the standards, and if you want to provide a comment of yays and nays. - So we are going to probably develop something in the effect of a form just like this, but it actually would be more nuanced. - And then for the individualized people, it would have the ender like we have on the other evaluation instead of the thing that I currently have in there.

[00:49:32] - Exactly. Well, I think that when we get to the point, I think that it would be, if we move this forward to the full board, I think that it's important for us to go to the actual doctor. - All the things that we've talked about will be fixed before then.

[00:49:48] Dr. Anderson? - No, I appreciate what Ms. Anderson has just shared, but at the end of the day, especially when we're talking about the at-will employees that are the board members' employees, they could go at any time, with or without an evaluation, right?

[00:50:06] - I agree. I think the point is that we can't assume that their only work within SCPS is gonna be with us. - Yeah. - So I think that it's not fair for them to not have a document that actually survives us as board members, particularly if someone is looking to hire one of our staff members after we are no longer on the board.

[00:50:27] - And that's why I said this will live in my PDE because that's where the form would be where you have a history because we're not doing, you know, paper things and files anymore. - Right. - 'Cause I always expected that they would be-- - Williams, Mr. Solomon has been talking about a system that would help us, an electronic system that would help us. - But it's different from what is utilized in the system at current.

[00:50:49] - Correct, anyone else? - The only thing, I do think that it's worthwhile at this point to not necessarily, I wouldn't actually vote to approve these today. I would want to have other-- - Move them, we're not approving them, we're just furthering them for more conversation.

[00:51:08] - I don't, yes, but I would want to get feedback from board members and maybe have us approve them at the next one to go to the full board. I don't necessarily-- - So two rounds of feedback from board members? - One round of feedback, but with the understanding that we'll be closer to a yes at the next one that it would be able to go for a vote faster.

[00:51:31] - I think what is being requested if I, and I think this is my understanding is go back and make the cleanup what we have talked about. And then we will perhaps since we don't have an opportunity for a work session in time this year, doesn't sound like then we'll take this, we'll split up the board and we'll take this and have conversation with folks, bring it back here at the next meeting.

[00:51:55] - To approve. - To approve the final after we've had a chance shop it around so you'd have to just get this back to us electronically December 10th so if we put it on new business on December 4th we vote ourselves on December 10th and then we would bring it back to the full board to actually vote on approval on December 18 that's fine and I'm typically against putting something on new business that is not going to be available for the

[00:52:35] community view this has nothing to do with the community so I'm fine with just posting it as an item because by this time we would have shared it not just the board but also with staff obviously you're getting all the feedback and I will call you Christina to ask you what are your thoughts about this in the next few weeks but I'm happy to get out now I will say as they just brought it is more helpful for me for it to be more to my job description that's actually something that I have found to be difficult as the clerk is that it is very nebulous and

[00:53:11] it doesn't necessarily align with a lot of what I do and so when even when I've gotten feedback from board members on my last evaluation there were times where it was like okay but it would have been really helpful if I could get more board specific related to the job and I think that would be helpful I can't speak on behalf of the deputies, but I can say evaluating the deputies, it would be more helpful.

[00:53:35] It's very nebulous as well too when I try to give them feedback based on the way the current eval is. And that's what I was trying to mention earlier because we can be anywhere about this because we're looking for that person to be everything to us and what she's looking for is different than what I'm looking for.

[00:53:52] So having something that centers us as specifically as possible, and I think I'll take that on as my little side project which is the crosswalk the job just because you've done a whole lot I'd like to contribute in some way and if you want to do it I will stay in your way but I'm happy to take at least the clerks and they have the word versions as well and crosswalk that against the current job description to see where can we have more specificity because if I'm going to rate her not effective because she doesn't get me coffee every morning well that's it's not an expectation that she even has.

[00:54:27] And that's a very facetious example, but I just wanted to speak to the very broad expectations that we can have if this is not tightly coupled to something that's going to anchor all of us. - My only concern is, I appreciate you being willing to take on that work.

[00:54:46] My only concern is in order to meet this timeline, then we would need to be able to take something to our colleagues quickly. So how would we make a decision as to, and I want us to have the conversation that's necessary. So is it possible-- - The difficulty I think is really that you'll find when you look at the job descriptions that you're not gonna find things that are black and white or even close to it.

[00:55:07] They're all subjective. There's not something that's like the deputy clerk or that we're recording, right? And this is where it gets back to what level of work is it to gather the materials for an evaluation, right?

[00:55:23] Superintendent has a team of people helping them, nobody else does. And so that are not subjective. - Again, let me just give you some examples that I can think of right now. - You've got the job descriptions in board docs as well, if you wanna look at the job description.

[00:55:42] - Just some things that I could think of. Providing training for the school board office staff, ensuring that the meetings are well run. What does that mean? - Those are all subjective. - Minutes are done within whatever the timeframe that's already been laid out.

[00:55:58] Those are the things that I could speak to. Again, it's not gonna be everything, but I'd like for us to anchor in something. - Yeah. - I would also argue quickly that we have not provided the direction to the clerk as to what the, right now, we have not provided the direction to the clerk as what we have approved as training for our staff.

[00:56:19] So I think that we're right now holding her to a standard that is unacceptable to hold her to related to how that is working as our office is growing. So I wanna make sure that we are looking at this as an opportunity for growth, but I also wanna look at it as an opportunity.

[00:56:35] So I think that what we would, I think the type of feedback that you're providing is important and I would want that. I think that as we're working together as a board to do this, I think that you bringing that is part of the suggestion that you would bring as one board member.

[00:56:54] So I think that going forward with the brief changes that we've discussed already and then moving it, sending it to the rest of our colleagues as a way and then assigning who's gonna-- - That's fine. and then Dr. Anderson, please bring your feedback as well as a member of the board.

[00:57:09] - And the other opportunity for the full board to weigh in on whatever we come up with for the final thing that goes on to the board for the actual vote in December, they'll have that opportunity to propose amendments and whatnot in December if they wanna change things or if they don't feel that their feedback was accurately or appropriately reflected.

[00:57:31] - So Mr. Frisch, I would ask that the clerk go ahead and put it on the annual work plan for new business for December 4th, and then vote on- - First, let's vote to have committee members, the chair of the committee will divide up the board among members of the committee to discuss these performance standard indicators, RUBERT documents for the employees to gather feedback for the next meeting.

[00:58:07] That is, in essence, how we're moving this along. is that and then secondarily at the next board meeting we will gather all the feedback make appropriate changes and move a final product along the board would somebody like to move that motion next committee next committee meeting i'll move that oh great is there a second uh motion by mr mcdaniel second by chair anderson i i'm not going to support that because i think we should do some

[00:58:45] and do diligence and take a look at the job description in order to know that we're moving forward something that is as comprehensive as possible to our colleagues. I mean, we just heard from the clerk right now that that would be a helpful thing.

[00:59:02] Moving it without a quick review, for me, doesn't work. - Well, we're not moving it without a quick review. We're-- - That I bring my review outside of the conversations with other colleagues. - Well, I mean, it's part of our conversations generally and then we'd vote on moving it forward with those changes.

[00:59:22] - Right, but whomever I'm assigned to, I can't say this is what this committee has decided. I could say this is what the committee has and this is what I'm proposing. I don't wanna do that. At least that's how I understand this. - But at this point, we're not actually moving forward with any of these because we've already said that we want our colleagues' input.

[00:59:40] So this is the opportunity to provide input and I am looking at my opportunity to provide input on the specifics the same way as I'm looking at the other colleagues being able to provide that input. So that was my recommendation. - And then based on whatever we bring back individually for edits and move on to the full board, the board can then judge whether they wanna move in that direction.

[01:00:06] So all those in favor of the motion on the table, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. Anderson, Mr. Moon, and myself opposed. Dr. Anderson, motion carries. All right, so just to recap, we've approved encouraging the board to consider changing the calendar the evaluation cycle for these specific employees we've approved generally moving to a more specific evaluation than the generics that are currently used and we've approved a request that members of this committee which the chair will divvy up will be in touch with other board members who are

[01:00:44] not on this committee to gather input and they will bring that input along with their own input on the specifics to the next admin committee meeting I would prefer it if people would give people at least a week in advance of that meeting so by December let's say by December 1st if people could have their feedback from colleagues and um December 10th December 10th at 4 30.

[01:01:12] so we we'd have no no that'd be December 17th I think 18th um so board member committee members would bring back their individualized and crowdsourced, for lack of a better word, feedback from colleagues for discussion by December 1st for the December 10th committee meeting.

[01:01:35] Because it is a lot to, I mean, I provided one set of documents and that's just from one person's thinking. So it's a lot, it could potentially be a lot of information to review in advance of that meeting. So the earlier we get it, the better. And then we will endeavor to put the agenda online with all those materials, like the day on December 2nd.

[01:01:55] so like the day after we get it back from people. - And I wanna confirm that we're going ahead and putting on the annual work plan for 12-4, new business for 12-18, a vote on this. - Yes. - Thank you.

[01:02:10] - And if we don't get there, we don't get there. - We only ever have two meetings in the next. - Yeah, all right, all right.

[01:02:25] Previewing the next conversation, which we may or may not get through in December, depending on how much time it takes us to kind of gather all the feedback and make sense of it. I added the current FCPS employee handbook to board docs.

[01:02:43] You can see it there. And what the hope is is that we can develop a supplemental handbook, it doesn't have to be long, that addresses the unique aspects of work in the school board office or for a school board member.

[01:03:00] So start thinking about those things. And I know Dr. Anderson and Robin worked on this a bit previously. So maybe you could send what you've got and we can put it on board docs to spark the conversation. We just need to be mindful about things that would be better served for closed conversation.

[01:03:19] Ms. Chair Anderson. - The only other thing that I wanted to mention is that the office is still working on finalizing the SOP for these staff members. So I think that that'll be, this would be an excellent addition to that SOP. The SOP is gonna be far more focused on actual things that are, you know, specific to our work.

[01:03:38] But I think that this would be, The SOP is really just codifying the things that we're already doing. But I think this would be an excellent addition to that, particularly as we look towards training. - Yeah, and there will likely be a closed session component of this conversation with council when we actually have the conversation, 'cause a big chunk of this is a topic for closed.

[01:04:07] Any questions? The goal here is at the end of this year of the admin committee, we will establish the calendar, the evaluation process and materials and the handbook.

[01:04:25] And then it's just about maintenance going forward unless the board sends other things to the committee so that it can continue to meet in a quarterly fashion and just ensure that, you know, did board members do the evaluations? Were we on time with the other general?

[01:04:41] Were we on time with the clerk? Was the clerk on time with the deputies? How did we do with the non or for the employees that are specific outside of the office, that kind of stuff. That's it, I think we're done.

[01:05:01] Give you back almost an hour. Well, you can imagine where we'd be if we didn't start somewhere, like it would take forever. Oh, we're adjourned, it's 5:40 p.m.

[01:05:17] Thanks, Mr. McDaniel.

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