Following her first year on the job, the Boston School Committee gave Superintendent Mary Skipper generally tepidly positive feedback on her first steps in the position.
“The Committee recognizes that the timing of the Superintendent’s arrival, with hiring season and budget season having already been completed, limited her ability to make significant changes or new investments in year one,” the committee’s summative evaluation read. “With this in mind, the Committee expressed broad agreement that the Superintendent was proficient in her performance and is supportive of her work.”
The evaluations, completed by each committee member and compiled into a group evaluation by members Stephen Alkins and Michael O’Neill, follow Skipper’s self-evaluation presented to the committee in late July.
The evaluations rank the new superintendent on the categories Instructional Leadership, Management and Operations, Family and Community Engagement and Professional Culture on a scale of Highly Effective, Effective, Developing, Minimally Effective and Ineffective. Skipper previously ranked herself Effective in all categories.
The committee’s evaluation was more varied, individually grading categories from of High Effective to Minimally Effective.
Taking the total of the committee scores, Skipper was ranked lowest in Family and Community Engagement, with one member ranking her Minimally Effective.
The committee broadly praised Skipper’s work with the BPS helpline and communication to families but, Alkins cited, “missed opportunities throughout the year for authentic engagement around communication, our timelines, school mergers, decision making and really thinking about the power and authority that families really have within the process in engagement.”
The members’ cumulative scores were all tied for all three other categories, though one member also ranked the superintendent Minimally Effective in Management and Operations.
In summarized recommendations for her development, committee members cited her efforts to understand district challenges “in depth” and begin work towards ambitious improvements.
Summarized “areas for continued growth” included working with BPS staff on a shared mission and high standards and developing a coherent master plan that is fair, equitable, and understandable,” especially considering finances as federal aid ebbs back.
Public feedback given at Wednesday’s meeting unsurprisingly cut deeper than the committee’s measured critiques, citing a wide range of frustrations.
“As this committee considers the superintendent evaluation, please think about the testimony you have heard over the past year,” testified Boston Education Justice Alliance Director Ruby Reyes. “School communities continue to testify and organize around the many broken promises of communication, community engagement, rash building decisions, staff not getting paid, persistent transportation disasters and a budget process that was embarrassingly uninformed.”
“Given that a year ago there were conversations of takeover in this district, I think we’re at a different place of having provided a stability that we can actually build on and I think that’s amazing and wonderful,” Skipper said following the review. “And I am extremely result-oriented as my team knows, and so we will take to these recommendations to heart.”