The Bigfork School Board looks into teacher evaluations

Concerns from Bigfork School parents have prompted the Bigfork School District Board of trustees to take a closer look at how the administration handles teacher evaluations.

Parents brought up their concerns about teachers not receiving evaluations after the school board elected to not renew the contract of kindergarten teacher Kelli Whalen.

No cause was cited for the decision to terminate Whalen’s contract. As a non-tenured teacher, the board and administration aren’t required to give cause. However, Whalen was shocked to learn she wouldn’t be renewed, citing that there had never been any issues with her performance.

Whalen and parents turned to her performance evaluations to argue her case and discovered that though Bigfork School District Board policy mandates non-tenured teachers receive two written performance evaluations per school year, Whalen had only received one per year.

Parent Monica Harris said they also talked to other teachers who hadn’t received the required number of evaluations. Harris said there was one tenured teacher, who claimed to not have received an evaluation in 10 years.

Tenured teachers are supposed to be evaluated once a year.

Harris and parents addressed the trustees about this at the school board meeting last week.

Though Whalen’s termination was the catalyst for parents’ concern, Harris said the issue of personnel evaluations went beyond Whalen’s situation.

“This is much bigger than Mrs. Whalen,” Harris said. She said there were non-tenured teachers whose contracts were renewed, that still didn’t receive the required number of evaluations.

Trustee Paul Sandry said the school board doesn’t typically do anything to ensure that evaluations are being done, and agreed that it sounded like they were not being done as required by school board policy.

“This district, the high school and elementary have been remiss,” he said.

Sandry said the board didn’t know it was happening, and that he is not one for making excuses. 

“I should have been a little more active,” he said. “Personally I don’t think I should have to go through personnel files to make sure these guys are doing their jobs.”

To address the issue the board appointed a committee of three board members to review personnel files, solely to see how many evaluations have been done.

“I just know when we look through those files we’re going to find non-compliance across the board,” Sandry said.

Harris suggested the committee be a standing committee to ensure future compliance, and added she feels so strongly about proper evaluations because it’s necessary for teachers to have feedback.

“If a teacher doesn’t get an evaluation on a regular basis, how do they know how they’re doing?” she said.

Sandry pointed out that there would be verbal communication between administrators and teachers that would provide that feedback.

Harris said that verbal communication isn’t always clear and can lead to employees being released for reasons that have nothing to do with job performance.

“It’s important to put stuff in writing so there are no misunderstandings,” she said. “If there’s no record, there’s a lot of room for indiscretions.”

Trustee Zack Anderson said while he takes her concerns about the evaluations seriously, he wondered why, if they were so important to teachers, they hadn’t approached the administration or board about the issue.

Though Bigfork School District Policy states that non-tenured teachers should be evaluated once per semester, Flathead County Superintendent of Schools Jack Eggensperger said state accreditation standards only require one evaluation per school year.

Eggensperger said for the most part school board policies are just guidelines for running the districts.

Some guidelines are mandated by law, some come from collective bargaining agreements and some are mandated by the Montana Office of Public instruction’s accreditation standards. From there, he said, a school board can adopt and adjust policies to suit their district.

Teacher evaluations are mandated by OPI, though the accreditation standards only require schools conduct the evaluations once a year.

“Districts can adopt a policy to do it more than that,” Eggensperger said. “But if they do it once they are meeting accreditation standards.”

Eggensperger also said that there is no real system that monitors, or forces schools to adhere to their adopted policies. If a school deviates from accreditation standards, they can be reprimanded by the Office of Public Instruction Eggensperger said, and possibly lose funding. 

Though Eggensperger said he wasn’t aware of any schools that had lost monies for accreditation deviations.

The main control of the school district really is in the hands of the Board of Trustees he said.

“Under the constitution of the state of Montana, the local trustees control the school district,” Eggensperger said.

While Bigfork School District Board Policy states that evaluations may be used as a basis for employment recommendations, they are not the exclusive tool for used for personnel decision making.