I inherited the Assistant Principal, Associate Principal, and Principal Pools last school year. Since the orginal implementation of these pools, the process had not been updated to reflect the changing administrative needs in our district. I solicited information from our current campus administrators, district assistant superintendents and coordinators as well as pool participants. In the beginning, I would discuss possible changes with campus and district administrators. They indicated that they wanted the process to change, but could not provide any insight on how they wanted it to change. Creating a survey that was geared toward discovering what the campus and district administrators were looking for in each of these positions provided a lot of valuable information. Through the research, discussions, data, and surveys, the recommendations have been finalized. The recommendation for the updated hiring guidelines is going forward next week for superintendent approval. In the future, I recommend that the process be revisited at a minimum of two years. Waiting so long to update, resulted in many campus administrators no longer supporting the idea of having pools for these positions.
One of our district initiatives this year was to transition from portfolio to PDAS evaluations. Providing the campus administrators with a PDAS refresher, documentation training, and a friendly way to store evaluation data through technology, has lessened the anxiety associated with such a massive change. Teachers were trained by their campus administrators as well. Annual updates for PDAS and documentation should be continued in order for the evaluation process across the district to remain consistent. I would also recommend that we provide everyone involved with PDAS evaluations the opportunity to make suggestions for improvement through an end-of-year survey. Since PDAS was utilized as an evaluation tool by such a small percentage in the past, it has been interesting to hear some of the same concerns from teachers that we heard when this evaluation tool was first introduced in the state.

During the budget crisis last spring, a few inequitable staffing issues across the district regarding fine arts and athletics became apparent. In order to address these issues, I held meetings with campus administration and the directors of these programs. Our goal was to balance the staffing guidelines without eliminating anyone’s position or compromising the success of the programs. We researched neighboring district’s staffing practices for fine arts and athletics and analyzed our district data which included campus master schedules, students in the program and courses offered.  We reached consensus and have made our recommendations for the 2012-2013 staffing guidelines. My recommendation is to continue to explore the guidelines annually in order to maintain balance and be competitive with our surrounding districts.

Participating in all of these initiatives reinforced my belief in the practice of setting goals and objectives with measurable outcomes. Collaborating with those directly involved with an initiative and allowing their voices to be heard allows for compromise and support.