These Rules Are Made for Breakin'

This dictatorship by our board president and his minions has reached new levels. Let me ask you all a question. Do you have the authority to refuse an evaluation from your boss? Do you get to decide whether it is fair or not?
In February the board president handed the board an evaluation form and instructed us to evaluate the superintendent individually. We were to turn them in to the board attorney by the 14th of February, said attorney would tabulate the scores and present the board with a composite evaluation composing of the five scores averaged into one with comments from members included. The superintendent was to receive his evaluation from the board president by March 1st.
We followed all the set rules and received back a composite score evaluation. I was then told that certain board members didn’t think this was a true reflection of our CEO. It wasn’t fair they said. They proposed that we give our evaluations individually. They refused to sign the composite evaluation. This was at the March 7th meeting. Our board president had already let the deadline slip by! I shouldn’t have been surprised yet I was. At this point the CEO also declined to accept the evaluation. For the first time in my entire life I was speechless.
Now I didn’t necessarily like other members’ comments or scores myself but this wasn’t my evaluation, it was the boards. So I was willing to accept that. But I am not willing to change the rules after the game has begun. That’s what they want to do.
The board agreed on a procedure and I followed it. I can’t help it some members did not like the outcome. But since it was obvious the board was going to remain dead locked forever regarding this issue I offered a compromise. I moved to have the board president explain to the media why there was no evaluation given to the CEO this year and have the completed evaluations destroyed. The motion passed 4-0 with 1 member abstaining.
Then this Monday morning our board president released the evaluations to the Falls News with the following statement, my comments are in red:

Press Statement: April 9, 2007
At the April 4, 2007 meeting of the Cuyahoga Falls City School District’s Board of Education, the Board passed a resolution directing the Board president to provide the public, through the media, an explanation as to why there has been no written evaluation of Superintendent Dr. Edwin Holland for the 2006-2007 contract year, and to dispose of (actually it was “destroy”) all evaluation forms.In an effort to produce a written Board evaluation document, each Board member had submitted individual evaluation forms to the Board’s legal counsel in February. The individual evaluations were compiled by the Board’s legal counsel who issued two written drafts of a composite evaluation. (Actually he submitted one written draft as was expected. The second draft with the individual scores arrived days later after a board member requested it that way).Several of the board members stated that the draft composite evaluation was not an accurate representation of the majority opinion (? Board majority was not in the instructions!) and therefore a consensus on the draft composite evaluation could not be reached. No written evaluation was finalized or signed by the Board of Education or the superintendent. (It was finalized when it was returned as a composite from the attorney, I’ve found nothing that says a signature is needed.)Although a written evaluation for the superintendent was not approved for the 2006–2007 school year, Board members provided Dr. Holland with a verbal evaluation (I must have missed that portion of the meeting) regarding his job performance. Several Board members indicated that he is meeting or exceeding expectations, and this was reflected in the majority of individual evaluation forms. Pursuant to the Board resolution of April 4th, these forms will be submitted to the district records commission in accordance with law. (Why bother now?)The Board is working in conjunction with the superintendent to establish goals for the 2007-2008 school year. (Well, we voted to anyway) The evaluation process for the upcoming school year will in part be based on these goals.

Suddenly the phrase “board majority” has entered the picture. Never before in the history of our school district has a superintendent been evaluated by a majority vote. This evaluation wasn’t supposed to reflect the positions of the majority. In fact it was the board majorities idea to do this evaluation in the manner and format that it was. If it had been agreed upon from the beginning to evaluate based on the board majority, I wouldn’t have wasted my time filling out the form. I could have predicted this outcome. But our board president told me that we were to fill out the forms and get them to the attorney so he could average our collective scores and comments. I did that. Now that the majority of the board has voted to destroy the completed evaluations, then released them to the media, I’m not sure I can enter into an agreement with these people in the future. Twice now regarding this evaluation they have reneged on their own decisions. And I guess my attorney client privilege only applies to levy memos, not documents that are sent to the attorney sealed and meant for his eyes only, as these individual evaluations were.
This board member was betrayed, bullied and violated. I do not know how to work with people I cannot trust, even when a vote is taken.