Melissa Brown has been a Newton Public Schools parent since 2011
On Tuesday, July 21 the Newton School Committee will be voting on whether to renew the contract of Superintendent David Fleischman. They should vote to not renew his contract because of his repeated leadership failures.
Recent negotiations with the teachers’ union are fiscally disastrous, with projected annual revenue shortfalls totaling $13.8 million by 2025, and the superintendent’s 2021 budget attempts to cover up this shortfall by repeatedly using the most optimistic revenue outcomes from state and federal sources. (See City Councilor Emily Norton’s webinar on school finances.) State guidelines explicitly liken superintendents to corporate CEOs who should provide expert information and recommendations to school committees, which make policy and collective bargaining decisions. Stakeholders—parents, teachers and staff, students, taxpayers, residents, and voters—have a right to expect fiscally sound guidance from an experienced school superintendent, but Fleischman didn’t provide fiscally responsible advice. Not now, and not in 2014 with the $12 million renovation of the Horace Mann elementary school. In November 2019, Fleischman admitted the 2014 renovation process was “flawed,” requiring further improvements.
Current concerns about CoVid-19 make particularly salient Fleischman’s September 11, 2019, letter about students’ risk of exposure to EEE. That letter told parents, “Outdoor field trips to locations in ‘high’ or ‘critical’ risk areas have been cancelled.” As the parent of a student-athlete, I called the superintendent’s office and after checking, the secretary assured me that “field trips” include sports events. But Newton teams went to outdoor sports events in high-risk and critical-risk towns before any hard frost that might have resolved the mosquito problem. The high-school athletic director said these events were centrally approved, so on October 3, I spoke with Toby Romer, assistant superintendent for the high schools. Romer first told me I just didn’t understand the letter. Then he accused the secretary of giving false information. But in talking, Romer revealed that the September 11 letter had been deliberately crafted to not mention athletic events! So Romer’s finally blaming the high school for not notifying parents about a different risk-exposure policy for student-athletes rang hollow. How are parents supposed to trust this superintendent’s administration with our children in a pandemic?
These are not the only cases where Fleischman has failed to place student well-being and learning as the highest priorities, failed to provide accurate information, and failed to promptly address stakeholder concerns. In May 2019, Fleischman made loose-cannon remarks to The Wall Street Journal that the district has “a history of over-identification” of students with disabilities. Karen Schmukler, the assistant superintendent for special education who had been in the position two years and was implementing fantastic reforms, resigned immediately afterward. Fleischman has been stalling on later school start times since at least 2016, despite solid evidence that later start times save lives, improve grades and test scores, reduce the achievement gap, and reduce sports injuries. Fleischman has not adequately responded to racist and anti-Semitic incidents occurring every year since 2016. And Fleischman lost the respect of students and many others for plagiarizing parts of a 2014 speech.
As we face the current crisis of how to safely educate students during a pandemic, effective leadership is crucial. There has been criticism on this blog of the teachers’ union for the substandard distance pedagogy allowed by the MOA, but let us not lose sight of the fact that the School Committee signed it, and Fleischman is responsible for providing sound educational guidance to the School Committee. As a result, in March when the governor’s order shut schools, Fleischman essentially okayed giving students three weeks of vacation—first using up snow days so that there were no school or teacher interactions with students and then offering only “supplemental” “enrichment” activities—even as other districts scrambled to maintain contacts with their students out of concern for their well-being. When distance learning finally began in April, the high school schedule included only 20 minutes of class time per week for each course and major subject classes all occurred on Thursdays! The result was marathon Zoom sessions late in the week that provided no instruction or support for completing assignments due Fridays. One psychologist I know called this schedule “irresponsible.” How could Fleischman allow a schedule with such little regard for students’ emotional and pedagogical well-being?
Fleischman’s leadership failures need to be faced. It doesn’t matter whether they are incompetence or negligence. Fleischman has had enough “second” chances. The Newton School Committee needs to cut Newton’s losses by voting to not renew Fleischman’s contract on July 21!
One simple fact is sufficient to end this debate: Mr. Fleischman committed plagiarism on the job. This is one of the worst sins an academic can commit. It should have absolutely disqualified him from further service as superintendent.
How crazy we must appear to the rest of the world. This man stole another person’s work and presented it as his own, yet we entrust him with children’s education? Allowing a proven plagiarist to serve as superintendent is a lot like allowing a convicted thief to serve as a bank president.
I am still shocked that our School Committee failed to fire him. I suspect that they were simply too lazy to find a replacement. They set a terrible example for our children.
Can we also talk about how he handled the lead in the water in 2016? He completely dropped the ball.
Everyone is way too generous. The worst two things are left out. First, I am impressed by how smart most students are. Most teachers seem good. Despite this our MCAS scores are horrible. In grades 3-8 English, we are 13/15. In Math we are 12/15. In Science we are 14/15. The only explanation is that the leadership does not prioritize education. Second, communication with parents is a one way street. Has the superintendent ever started a meeting with parents by asking, “tell me what are we doing well and tell me where we need improvement?”
I agree 100% with @Michael Singer re the plagiarism and have a unique perspective on that. The same year that the superintendent was caught plagiarizing, I was tutoring a junior at Newton South in math. She had a lot of emotional issues and was in a program called “Compass.” Among other things, she wasn’t too good at organization, got overwhelmed with multiple assignments and needed everything broken down for her. Apparently, she became completely stressed out with college applications and class assignments, and copied an English paper from the internet. She received a zero on the paper which of course brought down her GPA significantly and had some other punishments which I no longer remember. But she was completely devastated at the time and she, along with her family, were appalled at the perceived double standard.
My youngest graduated from Newton North in 2016. This ended FIFTY-SIX continuous years of myself and our family’s direct and daily involvement with the Newton public schools.
I found Mr. Fleishman’s reign to be feckless, more than most. It didn’t help that in the summer before he started his tenure, he appeared as a guest on a local news talk show. I had the misfortune to be in the studio for that half-hour as he gave boring non-answers to the host’s simple questions that asked what his goals were when he started the job in the fall, what initiatives he hoped to get underway.
Nothing. A total waste of time and convoluted gibberish. As the set was being knocked down and he took off his microphone, he said to the host, “Sorry for not answering your questions directly. I’m- I’m sorry, I couldn’t commit to anything yet. People around here kill you if you say the wrong thing.”
Nothing from that point forward indicated to me any further evidence of leadership.
Sigh. Another (cleverly disguised!) installment of this blog’s continued vilification of teachers via assignment of blame to “the teachers’ union,” using a strategy put forth in Paul F. Levy’s
How a Blog Held Off the Most Powerful Union in America, to wit:
So within a matter of months, this blog has been successfully leveraged by a group of privileged and often wildly overcompensated suburbanites who most certainly place a premium value on their own labor and allegedly superior intelligence while happily tolerating and in some cases even demanding reduced compensation for those who facilitate their life of privilege, e.g.:
– the Amazon workers who pack and deliver their orders of Bangladeshi sweatshop goods
– the immigrant chauffeurs who drive them around in Ubers
– the Latinxs who clean their houses and mow their lawns
– and now, the teachers who educate their children.
Or rather, the teachers’ union. You know, IT. Let’s stay on message here, people!
PS As I mentioned before, the real cause of Newton’s “fiscal problems” isn’t “the teacher’s union,” it’s the cheapskate taxpayers who want to have their cake and eat it too:
2020 Residential Property Tax Rates For 344 MA Communities
44. Newton — $10.44
62. Wellesley — $11.56
78. Needham — $12.49
85. Weston — $12.83
86. Dover — $12.84
128. Lexington — $14.05
135. Concord — $14.23
178. Lincoln — $15.36
284. Sudbury — $18.45
https://patch.com/massachusetts/boston/2020-residential-property-tax-rates-344-ma-communities
@Michael: Thanks for your support of teachers and unions. If you read further in the post, you’ll see that I point out the responsibility that the school committee and the superintendent must bear for the disastrous MOA:
“There has been criticism on this blog of the teachers’ union for the substandard distance pedagogy allowed by the MOA, but let us not lose sight of the fact that the School Committee signed it, and Fleischman is responsible for providing sound educational guidance to the School Committee.”
Unions of course have their members as their top priorities. Teachers’ unions often also include students’ welfare as a top priority, and I didn’t see that in the MOA, which does disappoint me.
But the MOA is the responsibility of the district–the school committee and the superintendent. They failed us and I think they should be held to account.
A superintendent has a special role in such negotiations because it is the superintendent who is supposed to understand how the contractual terms being discussed will affect students’ education and the annual budgets. It is the superintendent who should counsel the school committee on whether particular contract terms are problematic. It doesn’t appear that Fleischman did so.
As a parent of NPS for 13 years, I am shocked at the lackluster performance of Fleishman. SHOCKED that he is still here after the plagiarism episode. SHOCKED.
The Day Middle School principal was moved to an administration position after he did NOT report anti semitism.
AND, the new start time of the high school has stalled out under his watch.
During the start of the pandemic the response from him was terrible.
Oh, and when the rushed the move from Angier FROM Carr to the new school so that Zervas could move into Carr, was handled awfully to the working parents of Angier (not all of us have nannies). We were told our kids would not have full days prior to December vacation and then two extra days of vacation is September (to make up those days, our kids attended schools on different days that their siblings at Brown and South). It was a disaster for SPED parents. NO CARE. We were told to suck it up basically and enjoy the new school.
The superintendent offered NO support other than you get a new school.
This overpaid employee has not demonstrated why he should stay as the head of NPS.
BUT, I would love to know how some current teachers feel about him.
@Melissa Brown – thanks for making that important distinction. With this enhanced strategy, you’re not actually blaming the teachers…err teachers’ union for their “substandard distance pedagogy” or “fiscally disastrous” compensation, you’re blaming their enablers for acceding to thier demands and “signing the MOA.”
This is a next-generation strategy which deserves mention in my upcoming book How a cheap blog was used to turn an under-taxed city against its teachers in less than a year.
Current NPS employee, NTA member, and NNHS graduate here (I graduated the year Fleischman made his plagiarized speech). In the four years I was a student at North, I had multiple teachers say that plagiarizing was worse than getting an F and that the only reason they had ever refused to write a student a college recommendation was because that student had forged an essay. One time a teacher played my class a video clip of Bernie Madoff being taken to jail, then we had to talk about how we thought he felt during that moment, then we had to think about how we might feel if we were caught forging an assignment (yes, that is literally what happened).
Also, FWIW, the NTA is great and is the only reason me, a Teaching Aide, got paid at all during distance learning.
Not a Fleischman fan here but I don’t think it’s fair to saddle him with the terrible Spring MOA signed by Ruth Goldman alone and the Union. The person who gave away any and all educational expectations for distance learning was Madam Chair Ruth Goldman. Hopefully she won’t be acting unilaterally on the next one.
Also, Fleishman’s performance reviews by school committee members are online. I’ve only read about half and the ones I read gave him very good marks. Those reviews are likely to be a fair predictor of whether his contract will be extended or not. If you want to see what the writing on the wall says, read his reviews.
Lisap,
Do his reviews reflect feedback from parents? The feeback from parents on this blog are pretty unfavorable
As a NPS parent for 21+ years I am pleased with the calm, steady leadership of David Fleischman. Pleasing the diverse groups of Newton parents is an impossible job. Some parents want high powered academic schools to prepare their kids for the ivy league, some want sensitive nurturing schools without tests or grades, and some expect both. It’s a no-win situation. (Unless, we let schools differentiate like Charter Schools – which is a topic DOA).
I think he has been a steady hand through turbulent times. I greatly appreciate the lack of drama around budgets, compared to the situation when we first moved here. Back then I felt it was parent group pitted against parent group pitted against senior residents. And, as others have mentioned, he is not responsible for signing contracts, that is the mayor and school committee.
@Bugek,
No. And yes the feedback here is generally pretty bad, n.b. Lucia’s thoughtful post above, but I don’t know whether and to what extent this blog is a reflection of community opinion or an echo chamber. I just don’t know.
I think the SC should have acted on the plagiarism issue at the time and fired him then or not renewed his contract after that. He should have taken responsibility for plagiarizing and used it as a teaching moment addressing students at both high schools. All that said as Lucia mentioned it is a tough job. Newton is really different than other districts with the size of student population and expectation of high achievement. There is a significant amount of diversity in the student population from a learning perspective which means a diverse set of student needs have to be met. It is a complex job. Newton has 21 schools compared to a Brookline of 9 schools (7500 kids vs our 12,500 kids). I think at this point it makes sense to proceed with Fleischman at the helm. Now is not the time for us to loose ground on the school front. Finding a new Superintendent and bringing them up to speed would be incredibly disruptive at this time, That doesn’t mean that we cannot demand more from him and the school system.
Newton Highlands Mom
You just made an excellent case to renew but with a salary cut.
Not unreasonable at all.
Michael,
You know that all Unions fashion themselves on the prototype that Jimmy Hoffa put in place for the Teamsters and that all of these good-for-nothing organizations are pure filth, right? I agree with you that many members of the Village 14 community are NTA naysayers. It is cloaked, but there is a lot of disdain for the union. Once again, it is very easy to have staunch and firm beliefs about this issue. However, it is immensely different when one is in the trenches e.g. principals, assistant principals, deans, department heads, teachers, BTs, guidance counselors, specialists, ESPs, etc. Are people “honest” with themselves regarding why they prefer particular models for the 20-21 school year? This is where I struggle: everyone is an expert and has the solution. This is a pandemic—not a case of poison ivy.
I read the individual SC feedback a couple weeks ago. Here is my recollection. First, Mayor Fuller did not participate. This is unfortunate for parents who want to know where she stands. The two school committee members who were the most positive and had no criticism were Emily Prenner and Ruth Goldman. The criticism from the other members was disparate. My read on this is that without a consensus from the SC about how the administration will improve, we will continue with the status quo.
Two committee members impressed me with their feedback. Margaret Albright noted that the administration needs to do a better job delivering data to the school committee. My two cents, not hers, is that the administration presents data that is intended to make them look good and covers up poor performance. Kathy Shields expressed disappointment with what almost every parent thinks–The NPS spring plan was underwhelming and not focused enough on education.
I’m always amazed by the obscene amounts of money cash-starved municipalities pay their superintendents. Are there no qualified people in the world who can do the job for something like the mayor’s salary? Am I missing some magic Fleishman is bestowing on our kids to justify the $294,833 he made in 2019?
Being a superintendent, or a CEO, is difficult, and part of the challenges of the job are taking responsibility. Fleischman has repeatedly failed on standard superintendent responsibilities. So he needs to be removed.
Newton, with the salary range it offers, could easily attract an experienced, competent superintendent who wouldn’t need to be brought up to speed. Whatever brief period needed for learning about the specifics of Newton would be more than offset by not having the liability of Fleischman’s repeated failures.
I read the SC reviews and saw them as damning with faint praise. Newton voters need to let the SC know that we want Fleischman replaced.
Fleishman, not Fleischman.
@Melissa –
I appreciate your position but I’m not so confident that the pool of qualified applicants is as broad as one would think. It is my understanding that it is actually a fairly small pool, even with a national search, which will be especially difficult under the present circumstances. Last time we had an interim Superintendent for a year to accommodate the process (former retired superintendent filled in).
I believe the committee could certainly take an interim step and renew the contract for one final year which would give the City the breathing room to find a replacement, and Fleishman time to find a new position.
@Lisap His current contract goes through June 2021. If they don’t renew it, they have a year to fill the position.
Newton Highlands Mom,
What demands are the NPS not meeting? I ask this in earnest and I am not trolling Please be specific about where the NPS is failing its students, families, community, and beyond.
The point of the latest installment of this blog’s anti-teacher campaign, obviously, is that Newton needs to find an iron-fisted, unscrupulous, amoral CEO-type superintendent tout de suite – one who is willing to immediately take the reins and become our very own Scott Walker. Oh how that handsome little fella make me weak in the knees!
Would it really be that hard? I think not. Corporate-shill school superintendents are a dime a dozen in Indiana and Kentucky, and apparently down in Bristol County too. With a halfway-decent relocation package and/or a crash-pad at Avalon, we could easily have one up here by September.
I for one am truly hoping that this movement succeeds because I’ve already drafted a chapter about it for my aforementioned book which is now tentatively titled The Highlanders: How a Cheap Blog Was Used to Turn a Wealthy, Liberal, Under-Taxed City Against Its Teachers in Less Than a Year (and How the Same Strategy Can Work for You).
NPS is not focusing on ELA, math, and science. You will never see a SC meeting where the administration reports about where we are doing a good job in these subjects, where we are doing a poor job, what we can learn from what our peer districts are doing, and what our goals for improvement are. To my eyes, this is fundamental, yet we ignore it. When we ignore it, the results are predictable.
NPS has TALKED AND TALKED about a later high school start time for NINE years. IF the Superintendent BELIEVED in this, he would give his VERBAL support. I don’t remember him stating his opinion. After nine years of talk, he MUST have an opinion.
It only took 20+ years for Full Day Kindergarten. The rate of adoption of new things is painfully slow. My kid was in elementary school when the community started to discuss later high school start time, and that same kid caught the bus at 6:57 AM every day. EVERY day was painful to get the kid out of bed. EVERY DAY. If Fleishman wanted it, then say it. If he didn’t, then say it is not good for kids. Kid is in college now.
But we are STILL talking about it.
100% agree. Fleishman gives a national newspaper an interview saying too many students are receiving accommodations who dont need them, then he uses the excuse of the need to accommodate those students for not having on line learning for the entire student body, even while hundred of other school districts managed to figure it out. Thank goodness the Newton teachers went the extra mile for their students despite his failure of leadership. Compared to other districts, Newton’s response was a failure. Every email he said was more deflating than the previous one.
He inherited a great department and has done less than nothing with it. Why the school committee continues to give him a pass is mind boggling. Why Newton continue to accept a mediocre performance in the name of “not rocking the boat” is mind boggling.
He has driven good department heads directly to resign. He bullies parents who work for the city who also have children in the system who need extra supports.
He is a horrible example for the students.
Just seeing him stand around totally unengaged during the high school graduation parade tells you everything you need to know.
It’s time for him to go.
At a School Committee candidates night before the last election, this issue was raised, and the three people in the forum (all of whom were elected or re-elected) said that later starting times–although justified on the basis of educational evidence–are not going to happen because the cost of modifying transportation arrangements makes it prohibitive. So, I’m not surprised that the issue hasn’t been on the list of priorities for NPS.
The SC just voted unanimously to approve the Superintendent Contract. It is a 3 year contract starting one year from now.
The cost is NOT prohibitive. The constraint is leadership. The extra cost is about $2 million. The whole school budget is $250 million. The extra cost is 0.8% of the budget. The worst case scenario is that would fund transportation by increasing class size from an average of (say) 22.0 students per class to 22.18 students per class.
Increasing class size is not even necessary. For example, they just created a new administrative position. They also created a new administrative position for the Brown principal when he was removed. While I agree with FDK, the switch required no incremental costs, yet they padded things with extra jobs costing us between $1/2 million and $1m (watch the SC meeting where it was voted on and it will be clear).
Has there ever been a school committee meeting where the committee went through the budget trying to clear funds for a late high school start? NO. They never even tried. No effort.
The scientific evidence is that every year we send high school students to school early, classroom performance decreases, the achievement gap increases, mental health issues increase, and physical health (including sports injuries) decreases. How can the school committee do this to our kids?
The answer is that the school committee does not run the show. The administration does. In one sentence this is how it works–the administration sets the agenda and the SC votes 9-0. This problem has been happening for over 20 years. Don’t get me wrong. Voting the way the administration wants is the right decision 97% of the time . The problem is the 3%.
I think most people perceive that the spring online learning was mediocre at best. When I say expect more I mean that if moving forward there is an online component to school NPS needs to be prepared to deliver that education effectively. I realize there are many different educational needs to address so now given more time they should be well prepared to meet all needs.
As others expressed high school start time was a huge disappointment to me. I think a good part of the time it was addressed more as lip service by the Administration. Starting the most recent attempt with a weak survey which didn’t allow any consensus. I had you pick a top choice and least favorite choice when ranking choices would have been more effective especially since there were two relatively similar options might have provided more of insight on to what parents were willing to consider. A year of reviewing high school schedules saying that was a part of the process when no matter what the transportation costs would still be a huge factor was just bs.
I get it is a complex system but I think Fleishman at times thinks he is smarter than everyone else. Hence the poor handling of the plagiarism situation. I think he needs to work on listening to the parents, not necessarily bending to their will, but I think understanding what is going on at the detail level and what kids and parents are experiencing is important. I think there are too many preconceived outcomes and meetings, surveys are just playing lip service when a decision is already made.
@Jeffrey Pontiff,
I understand your frustration but I also think that start times are subject to collective bargaining. And on that front, it appeared to me from a distance that there was a lot of pressure on the school committee to get the contract signed. Further complicating the matter is the S.C. Chair is the representative for negotiations. If she is as weak as I perceive her to be, you won’t see earlier start times until there is a major change of the committee make-up.
If High School Start time is off the table, I would appreciate the SC and Fleishman to be honest and say we will revisit it in 5-10 years. But every year I think this is the year.
I would rather be told the truth of NO, then a maybe next year.
On Facebook a SC member just responded to the following question in the affirmative: “so you believe writing a performance review for the leader of the school system is useless paperwork and not an important part of your job?”
When our school committee members do not take their roles seriously and fail us as tax payers we need to take note.
I’m surprised and disappointed that the SC unanimously approve of renewing his contract. I had been to meet and greets with several of the current SC members and they had expressed displeasure with Fleishman. I supported them in hopes of change. I don’t understand their rationale and don’t know if there’s some sort of groupthink within the SC but the fact that it was unanimous is certainly making me wonder why.
@MMQC
Perhaps the experience of our Brookline neighbors informed some of their thinking? Brookline had a whopping total of 22 applicants. They narrowed the pool down but ultimately decided to suspend the search and are now hoping to hire someone for the 2021-22 academic year. In other words, a full two years without a permanent hire.
The process I suspect not only requires narrowing the pool down to finalists but also having finalists meet with teachers, administrators and visit the schools to see education in action. We don’t know what the next year even looks like for education- but it’s unlikely to be representative of what is the norm here.
@Mary – All SC members think independently. We come from different backgrounds and live in different school zones. We cannot deliberate out of open session so we did not know each other’s votes prior to going in to the meeting. We all came to the same conclusion based on the info we have. What is clear to me is that despite constantly trying new ways to communicate, we are not successfully getting the message out regarding the reality behind some of these decisions. The fact that you feel it is scary to have him at the helm motivates me to rethink how we can better display the landscape that our SI is working in.
Matthew, for the record, I have been a longtime supporter of you and appreciate your constant transparency. I’d just love to know the thought processes of this.
I thought this piece examines the issues involved in re-opening very thoughtfully: Some Students Should Go to School, Most Should Stay Home
Oops – meant to post the above on a different thread. Apologies.
@Mary:
We are thinking the same thing. The reaction to our evaluation process this year is new to me. No one seemed to notice in past years. Covid has everyone paying attention. And I think that’s a great and unexpected outcome.
I’ve already spoken with SC leadership about how we communicate our process. I don’t have a clear answer as of yet. However I believe stakeholders should be aware of the rubric we are using and the specific info we have to determine his success. The public reaction was a wake up call for me. The last thing I want is for trust to erode…and that is what is happening. There is nothing to hide so I would support and effort to increase transparency.
During my tenure there have been changes made with the intent of strengthening the evaluation process. Margaret Albright, who is a wiz at all things public school related, helped introduce a new and improved rubric that works seamlessly with the system wide goals. We had a DESE rep train us on using the new rubric.
Overall I feel there is a disconnect between what we see and what the community witnesses. We see the behind the scene interactions. We see the passion and frustration. Now…how do we bridge that gap? I’m working on it.
And thanks for your support!! I’ve pissed off a lot of people. But I’ll take that over being the type of politician that tells people what they want to hear or worse…not saying anything.
Thank you, Matthew. Appreciate you!
Thanks, Matthew. So who actually wrote the Supt’s performance review? Was it a compendium of each member’s comments? How is it decided how much emphasis to put on each item?
I understand you can’t discuss your vote until you are meeting together, but I thought that personnel matters like the contents of a review like this can be discussed in executive session to permit a chance for melding various viewpoints into the final document (which of course has to be presented publicly.) Is that wrong?
Thanks for your focus, too, on maintaining public support for the NPS. That’s key, as you know, especially when the time comes for increased funding–not too far in the future!
Hey Paul… great questions and ones that should be common knowledge for all residents. Clearly the SC has work to do.
The process starts with each of us writing our own review following a rubric. DF sends us regular monthly updates detailing his accomplishments as they pertain to goals..ie: visited x schools, held X workshop for teachers, sent X letter to families…etc..we each individually use that data to evaluate him according to specific goals and how well they were met. This is not discussed in executive session. This would not qualify for exec under OML.
We do not share our evaluations until after an open SC meeting where we each summarize our thoughts. We submit them after that open meeting and they are immediately posted online. The chair and vice chair create the compendium based on those individual reviews. We review a draft to ensure we agree with how our voice is represented. We then take a vote and, if approved, the final gets posted.
I would welcome thoughts on how to make this a process that builds trust and helps bridge the disconnect.
Fascinating, Matthew. That raises a series of questions and ideas. Let’s talk some day.
@Matthew Miller: Let me get this straight. You and the rest of the School Committee base your assessments of David Fleishman on monthly updates from [wait for it] … David Fleishman! And these updates are devoted to “detailing his accomplishments”. No wonder you all have such a favorable impression.
Matthew Miller wrote:
“DF sends us regular monthly updates detailing his accomplishments as they pertain to goals..ie: visited x schools, held X workshop for teachers, sent X letter to families…etc..we each individually use that data to evaluate him according to specific goals and how well they were met. “