Published in the June 28, 2017 edition

By DAN TOMASELLO

LYNNFIELD — In the aftermath of a challenging and difficult school year, the School Committee gave Superintendent Jane Tremblay a mixed review of her job performance last week.

While the school board commended the educational initiatives Tremblay helped implement this year, the School Committee stressed the superintendent needs to do a better job communicating, especially with parents.

The review was the exact opposite of the evaluation Tremblay received last year, where the School Committee commended her job performance.

Despite the mixed review, the School Committee voted to give Tremblay a 2½ percent raise for next year following an executive session that lasted just under an hour. The raise, which is equivalent to the raise local teachers will be receiving, will give Tremblay a $188,608 salary next year.

As part of the evaluation, School Committee Chairman Tim Doyle recently distributed evaluation forms for committee members to use in order evaluate Tremblay’s job performance. After collecting each member’s evaluation, Doyle created an evaluation instrument outlining Tremblay’s successes and challenges.

“It includes a combination of everybody’s comments,” said Doyle.

Goals

Tremblay established four goals that the School Committee used to evaluate her job performance. The goals pertained to professional practice, student learning and district improvement.

According to the evaluation, a superintendent can exceed, meet, show significant progress, some progress or did not meet established goals.

“In regard to performance goals, the committee acknowledges Superintendent Tremblay either had significant progress or met expectations in each area,” reads the evaluation instrument.

Standards

In addition to evaluating Tremblay’s performance toward achieving all four goals, the School Committee evaluated the superintendent’s performance on four performance standards that are required by the state-mandated evaluation system. The standards pertain to the areas of instructional leadership, management and operations, family and community engagement and professional culture.

Doyle said Tremblay received a proficient rating on all four of the evaluation’s standards.

“Proficient practice is understood to be fully satisfactory,” said Doyle. “This is the rigorous expected level of performance.”

Summative evaluation

In the summative evaluation component of the job review, the evaluation instrument noted Tremblay and the school system “have experienced many successes, but also have had challenges” this year.

“As strictly measured by the goals as defined in this evaluation, Superintendent Tremblay has done well,” the evaluation instrument continued. “However, the challenges presented during the year highlighted certain aspects of her leadership that need to be improved, particularly in the area of parental communication.”

The evaluation instrument commended Tremblay for continuing the “significant progress of positive curriculum initiatives.”

“The implementation of Understanding by Design, improving professional development for all teachers and more so for specialists, focusing on district-wide language arts improvements, addressing social-emotional needs of students, has absolutely contributed to and helped create a strong professional culture,” reads the evaluation instrument. “While it is too early to assess the impact of the UbD work, it is impressive. It has put the district on the path to greater student achievement at all levels. Whereas UbD is a two-year goal, the overall goal has not been met. It is the expectation of the committee that during the next school year, we will see qualitative and quantitative evidence of attainment in this area.”

While the School Committee said Tremblay “satisfied” the communication component of the evaluation, the evaluation instrument noted, “communicating effectively is hard.”

“Superintendent Tremblay has encouraged attendance at district-sponsored events,” reads the evaluation instrument. “The speakers this year have been chosen to address issues important to parents supporting the education of their children which included Robert Brooks, Ruth Potee and ‘Screenagers.’ While the superintendent has supported and promoted district-wide events, efforts should be made to collaborate with the various stakeholders to promote school-based events and be a communication partner. Presentations represent a solid commitment towards providing valuable information to parents. It is the expectation of the committee Superintendent Tremblay will continue this type of programming in the future.

“The committee recognizes more work must be done on engaging parents in the work of the schools and to provide better two-way communication to prevent distractions from the district’s goals, and avoid negative community perception,” the evaluation instrument continued. “The committee believes Superintendent Tremblay, as well as itself, needs to assess how and when communication is delivered to ensure that all issues are handled promptly and decisively so as not to compromise community trust. Like many other aspects of the job, this may always be a work in progress, but an area we are committed to improving. To that end, we will be working with Superintendent Tremblay to analyze opportunities for progress in this area.”

In conclusion, the evaluation instrument stated Tremblay is an “effective and dedicated instructional leader who has a shared vision and commitment to provide 100 percent consistency in delivery of services” to all students.

“While the 2016-2017 academic year has presented extraordinary challenges to the district, it is evident that Superintendent Tremblay was able to keep the district on track to achieve our district goals,” reads the evaluation instrument. “Moving forward, the committee expects Superintendent Tremblay to demonstrate significant progress with student achievement across all grade levels, as well as the establishment of more effective parental communication.”

SC reaction

School Committee member Jamie Hayman said he found evaluating Tremblay’s job performance “really challenging.”

“I think it’s been a very, very mixed year,” said Hayman. “There has been a lot of really good stuff. I truly believe that whatever happened during the year, the level of education the kids were receiving did not dip at all. I saw challenges around communication, and I am concerned about the erosion of trust that occurred with some of the incidents that happened throughout the school year. The other thing I found challenging about this was what measurable progress looks like. As we move forward, we have to define what all of that looks like in the future.”

School Committee Vice Chairwoman Dorothy Presser agreed.

“As we are looking toward next year, we should take this year’s experiences and make sure they are reflected in the goals that are set,” said Presser. “I think we were better this year than last year in terms of measuring the outcomes. I think that continues to deserve discussion so the clearer we are now, the better off we will be next June.”

Doyle said “it was refreshing to see everybody on the same page.”

“As a group, we are seeing the same things, which I hope will drive the district forward,” said Doyle. “We have to acknowledge we are not perfect, and there are things that happen we just didn’t account for. Moving forward, we are going to have to build that into the evaluation and probably set parameters in how we are going to handle certain situations.”

Superintendent reaction

Tremblay thanked the School Committee for their feedback.

“Your comments will certainly help me grow as a superintendent so I can serve the students, teachers and families to the best of my abilities,” said Tremblay. “The successes highlighted in the evaluation can be contributed to the collective hard work of a lot of people across this district. This work cannot be done in isolation. I feel incredibly fortunate to be the superintendent of this district, and one of the reasons why I feel so fortunate is because this district and this committee always put students first.”

Tremblay said she is “already excited about next year.”

“The feedback will help inform the work we are about to do for next year,” said Tremblay.