Six months after taking over as Director of Schools, Patrick Cripps is expected to be evaluated on his performance by the Board of Education before the end of the month.
A date and time for the work session to conduct an evaluation has not yet been set.
According to Cripps’ contract with the Board, the evaluation of the Director shall occur no later than January 31 each calendar year during the term of the contract. The board shall review with the Director his performance, progress toward established goals, and the working relationships between the Director and Board, the staff, students, and community at large; and any other matters relative to the employment of the Director.
In accordance with state law, the school board is required to develop and implement an evaluation plan to be used annually for the director of schools. Last year, board members used a four page evaluation form to rate former Director Mark Willoughby (1-5) in each of 60 areas from eight categories including on his relationship with the Board, the Community, Staff and Personnel, Educational Leadership, Business and Finance, Personal Qualities, Strategic Planning Skills, and Tennessee Specific questions. It’s not known yet if the board will use the same form to evaluate Cripps.
Under last year’s evaluation plan a rating of “1” meant the Director’s performance was “Consistently Below Expectations”. A “5” rating signified that the director “Met All Expectations”. A rating with an asterisk (*) symbol meant he “Exceeded Expectations” (and a score of 6 was used on the overall report).
Other ratings were:
“2”-Meets Few Expectations
“3”-Meets Some Expectations
“4”-Meets Most Expectations
Last year each board member scored the Director in all areas from the categories on the form. The scores were then averaged to arrive at the grand total score.
School board members last year held one-on-one evaluation meetings with the Director.
Following the meetings, each board member scored the Director using the evaluation form. The forms were then sent to officials of the Tennessee School Boards Association where the scores were tabulated and averaged.
Board member Jerry Wayne Johnson said Thursday night during the monthly school board meeting that he intended to evaluate Director Cripps on “things we (school board) wanted him to do when he became director”.
By a unanimous vote of 7-0, the Board of Education met in special session Thursday night, July 16 and named Cripps the next Director of Schools. Cripps accepted the board’s offer of a two year employment contract and took over as Director immediately but the final agreement wasn’t ready to sign until August 17.
Under Board policy, the School Board is also to conduct a self evaluation each year. The Board did not do that last year. “We didn’t do a board self evaluation last year because five members of the board hadn’t been on here long enough to be evaluated or to evaluate themselves” said Board Chairman W.J. (Dub) Evins, III.
Those five members of the board referred to by Evins were elected in August 2014 and took office in September that year.
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