The Board of Education has given Superintendent James A. Williams an unsatisfactory annual evaluation, with an overall score significantly lower than the 4 -- on a scale of 1 to 5 -- he received last year, according to several sources.
How -- or if -- that will affect Williams' future in Buffalo remains to be seen. Last year, the board extended his contract through June 2014.
Board officers privately presented the superintendent with the results of his evaluation on Friday afternoon. It would have happened sooner, but the superintendent had been out of town for a week, board members said.
Some sort of public announcement, including the release of the results of the board's evaluation, is expected this week.
Meanwhile, some key people in the community are promoting the idea that Erie 1 BOCES Superintendent Donald A. Ogilvie should succeed Williams as Buffalo school superintendent.
Practical Programming for Strength Training (Paperback)
By Mark Rippetoe
Buy new: $21.95
6 used and new from $21.14
Customer Rating:
First tagged "computer" by R. D. Cambridge
Customer tags: strength training(9), mark rippetoe(5), weight training(5), strength(4), exercise program(3), guide, application, deadlift, exercise, fitness, development, computer
Among them: Regent Robert M. Bennett.
The Board of Education would be wise to ask Ogilvie to step in as interim superintendent at whatever point Williams leaves, Bennett said.
"My hope is [the board] would ask BOCES to intervene for a short period of time," Bennett said. "If they don't do Ogilvie, I don't know what they'd do."
As a member of the state Board of Regents, Bennett has no say in who the superintendent of the Buffalo Public Schools is. That is entirely up to the Board of Education.
But Bennett has been working behind the scenes with certain members of the business community, including Oishei Foundation President Robert Gioia, to advance the idea of Ogilvie taking over as superintendent in a post-Williams era.
When Ogilvie was asked by a reporter whether he was interested in replacing Williams, he initially sidestepped the question several times before giving a more direct answer.
"The superintendent has three years on his contract, and it would be inappropriate for me to comment at all on his status," he said, "but I stand ready to assist the district and the Board of Education personally and as the district superintendent of the first supervisory district of Erie County."
Ogilvie acts as the state education commissioner's local representative to local school districts and, as the superintendent of the Erie 1 Board of Cooperative Educational Services, oversees a host of programs and services that BOCES sells to those districts. He generally has relatively limited interactions with the Buffalo Public Schools.
However, he became part of the district's landscape about a year ago, when Williams asked him to lead a review team to assess what were at the time the district's seven persistently lowest-achieving schools.
The Joint Intervention Team, under Ogilvie, issued a report on each school, providing observations as well as recommendations.
Ogilvie also wrote a six-page letter outlining systemic issues affecting the city schools. He harshly criticized what he called a culture of distrust and disrespect in the Buffalo Public Schools, calling for administrators, teachers, union leaders and others in the system to figure out how to work collaboratively together to improve the schools.
Devastating report "It was a very thorough, very devastating report -- and they didn't like it," Bennett said of district officials. "They haven't dialed his number since then."
Williams withheld the so-called "Ogilvie letter" from the board. When Bennett became aware that the superintendent had done so, the Regent directed the state Education Department to release a copy to the board president.
Ogilvie is wading into the waters with the Buffalo Public Schools again this week.
The Board of Education voted this month to adopt a turnaround model for seven of its failing schools that involves hiring an outside "educational partnership organization," or EPO, to run each school.
Whichever group is hired to run each school would essentially take the place of the superintendent in relation to that particular school. The group would have the authority to do such things as negotiate items in the teachers contract, specific to that school.
Proposals from outside groups are due on Tuesday.
However, several sources, including representatives from half a dozen local colleges and nonprofits, said the district's request for proposals was so shoddily written that it was nearly impossible for groups to craft a proposal in response to it. Several sources said they could not decipher exactly what responsibilities they would have as an EPO, versus what responsibilities the district would still maintain in each school.
When potential bidders asked for clarification on various aspects of a proposal, they were directed to the superintendent's office. Their phone calls to Williams' office were never returned, several sources said.
The inadequacy of the request for proposals, coupled with the lack of communication from the district, has driven some potential bidders away, according to sources who were among those who opted not to submit proposals.
"We decided not to pursue bids primarily because we found the [request for proposals] to be lacking critical information, while asking bidders to do pretty much what the Buffalo Public Schools is doing now," said one source at a local college. "It was absurd and, of course, disappointing."
Others who have decided to submit a proposal say they were unable to put together a solid proposal for turning a school around because of all the unanswered questions, and instead will submit what amounts to a document outlining their qualifications to turn a school around.
Ogilvie initially said he was contemplating submitting a proposal for Erie 1 BOCES to work with one or two of the schools.
Late last week, though, he said BOCES had decided to submit a proposal to act as a "lead EPO," meaning that BOCES, under Ogilvie's leadership, would oversee all seven of the failing schools as an educational partnership organization.
BOCES might then subcontract with other applicants for portions of the turnaround plans for particular schools, Ogilvie said.
"There are going to be issues and concerns in each of those seven buildings. But there's also going to be a pattern of concerns that they share," Ogilvie said. "By having a lead EPO, I believe you can effect change on a systemic level and also address the needs of the individual buildings."
He acknowledges that the concept of a "lead EPO" was not contained anywhere in the district's school turnaround plans or in its request for proposals.
If the board buys into Ogilvie's proposal to have him act as "lead EPO," it would effectively mean Ogilvie would be acting as superintendent of seven of Buffalo's worst schools, while Williams would remain superintendent of the other 50 or so schools in the district.
Relations between Williams and Ogilvie have been strained, at best, since Ogilvie issued his six-page letter last summer. Board members' opinions of Ogilvie run the gamut.
No board members are publicly discussing filling a vacancy that does not yet exist.
"Right now there's still a superintendent at the helm. It's a little premature to discuss candidates at this time," Board President Ralph R. Hernandez said.
But that hasn't stopped Bennett and others from privately pushing the idea of naming Ogilvie as the next superintendent, when the time comes.
Bennett, in fact, says that some people, when presented with the idea, have questioned whether "a guy from the suburbs" would be an appropriate choice. Ogilvie, who lives in Hamburg, has spent his entire career working with non-urban districts, including Hamburg.
"The kickback for a leader from the suburbs was: What does a guy from the suburbs know about urban education? That was one of the questions we got from the School Board and the community," Bennett said.
Ogilvie says experience in an urban district should not be the only factor in evaluating a person's ability to lead the Buffalo Public Schools.
"Is it the first and only quality you look for? You look first for successful leadership and the ability to build the capacity of an organization and win the hearts not only of a staff, but of a community," Ogilvie said. "It is first and foremost the ability to gain support that will engage and empower people to be part of the solution."
Loss of confidence Despite all the talk over who will be the next superintendent, Williams' contract does not expire until 2014.
The critical evaluation he has received from the School Board, however, indicates that if Williams stays on the length of that contract, the relationship could grow more contentious.
The review itself holds no particular immediate consequence, in terms of a score below a certain level triggering a specific outcome. But the board's evaluation is further indication that the board has lost confidence in their superintendent.
Williams' contract calls for the board to conduct an annual performance review of the superintendent.
Each board member fills out an evaluation, ranking the superintendent on a scale of 1 to 5 on 55 items, which are grouped under six main categories. In past years, the board has released only his average score for each category.
Last year, Williams' overall average score was a 4. His highest average score, 4.2, was in the category of instructional leadership; his lowest, 3.8, was for his relationship with staff.
Robert J. Freeman, executive director of the state's Committee on Open Government, said the public is entitled to a more specific breakdown of the superintendent's numeric evaluation. In other words, instead of just releasing his average score for each of the six categories, the board should release his average score for each of the 55 items, according to Freeman.
"Opinions expressed in numeric data are public," Freeman said.
A Buffalo News reporter recently informed Christopher L. Jacobs, the board's vice president for executive affairs, of Freeman's opinion. Jacobs, who oversees the superintendent's evaluation process, has said in two interviews this month that he would release the detailed information that Freeman indicated should be made public.
Computer Programming for Teens (Paperback)
By Mary Farrell
Buy new: $17.10
54 used and new from $10.93
Customer Rating:
First tagged "computer" by R. D. Cambridge
Customer tags: teen programming(2), for andrew, guide, application, programming, software, reference, development, computer
Another candidate While the board waits to release its evaluation of Williams, names from within his administration are circulating, in addition to Ogilvie's, as possible successors.
Immediately below Williams on the chain of command is Deputy Superintendent Folasade Oladele, who is widely seen as the administrator who has engineered and orchestrated the implementation of most of the district's instructional programs.
It is Oladele, for example, who is primarily responsible for the district's heavy emphasis on literacy, especially in the elementary grades.
However, her name surfaced recently as a candidate for the superintendency in Cleveland, leaving a bad impression with many board members in Buffalo, who saw that as an indication that Oladele lacks commitment to the Buffalo schools.
Beyond that, some board members privately express concern that Oladele doesn't represent a strong enough break with the Williams administration to bring about the wholesale change they believe is needed.
And she, as well as another top-ranking member of Williams' cabinet, Mark W. Frazier, were among the 14 administrators who were found earlier this year to be collecting grant-funded stipends on top of their district salaries -- unbeknownst to the board -- for helping to train principals and assistant principals in the district's Leadership Academy.
As some of that work was done on district time, many of the administrators ended up giving back vacation days to compensate for the double-dipping, once the board learned of the situation.
mpasciak@buffnews.com null
Get New Article Alerts In Your Inbox
Subscribe to Education Knowledge Article Alerts to get daily notifications of our newest articles in your email for free. You can unsubscribe at any time. share your opinion about Williams gets a bad score on evaluation - Buffalo News by comment on below post.
Thank you in advance.
Yours sincerely,
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar