Board to review schools’ personnel

By Harold Gwin

The superintendent’s evaluation has been hit-or-miss over the last few years.

YOUNGSTOWN — The city school board’s personnel committee wants to have the annual performance evaluations of the district’s superintendent and treasurer completed in October.

Committee members Anthony Catale, chairman, and Dominic Modarelli outlined the evaluation plan and time line at a meeting Tuesday, specifying that they would like to have a board retreat with the two top administrative officials to review their respective evaluations in October.

Past evaluations for Dr. Wendy Webb, who has served as the district superintendent since 2004, have been a bit inconsistent.

Her contract calls for an annual evaluation to be completed each November, but she didn’t have one in 2004 because she’d been on the job for only a few months, and none was done in 2006.

One was done in 2005 and another in 2007, with the board giving her a new three-year contract on the same day it gave her the results of that 2007 review. Her salary was frozen at $122,500 for the life of that agreement.

Catale is trying to make the process a bit more structured, both for the superintendent and the treasurer. William Johnson was appointed to the treasurer’s post effective Jan. 1 of this year at a salary of $80,000 annually.

The committee is finalizing the evaluation documents for both positions and plans to present them to the full board for approval at a board meeting later this month.

Catale said the forms will be given to the board members by Sept. 1 and must be returned by the Sept. 23 regular board meeting.

The seven evaluations will then be compiled into a single document for an overall performance review and presented to the superintendent and treasurer, hopefully at a board retreat in early October, he said. It’s at that point that the board will present its wishes on directions it would like to see the district take.

Both positions will be evaluated in six specific categories.

The list for the superintendent covers mission/vision, community/stakeholder relations, board relations, staff relations, educational leadership and business/financial leadership. The superintendent also will be evaluated in a separate category of pupil academic performance.

For the treasurer, the six focal points will be mission/vision, business leadership, financial leadership, staff relations, board relations and community relations.

Catale said the board will revisit the evaluation process in March for a midyear status review.

gwin@vindy.com