3.4 Monitoring Superintendent Performance

Systematic and rigorous monitoring of Superintendent job performance will be against expected Superintendent job outputs: organizational accomplishment of Board policies on Ends and organizational operation within the boundaries established in Board policies on Operating Limitations. Additional measures of superintendent’s job performance may be agreed upon by the board of education and the superintendent and monitored by mutually agreed upon measures and procedures.

Accordingly:

1. Monitoring is simply to determine the degree to which Board policies are being met. Data that do not accomplish this will not be considered to be monitoring data.

2. The Board will acquire monitoring data by one or more of three methods: (a) by internal report, in which the Superintendent discloses compliance information to the Board, (b) by external report, in which an external, disinterested third party selected by the Board assesses compliance with Board policies, and (c) by direct Board inspection, in which a designated member or members of the Board assess compliance with the appropriate policy criteria.

3. In every case, the standard for compliance shall be any reasonable Superintendent interpretation of the Board policy being monitored, which shall only be a policy in the Ends or Operating Limitations categories, and which shall include the impact of all higher policy levels for that category. The Board is final arbiter of reasonableness, but will always judge with a “reasonable person” test rather than with interpretations favored by Board members or by the Board as a whole.

4. Reports, internal or external, shall be either monitoring reports, monitoring assurances, or other monitoring data. Full reports shall be provided according to the monitoring report schedule, shall pertain to the entire period since the end of the previous monitoring report submitted, and shall be in a consistent format. Assurances shall be used when a third-party requires Board approval of an action that has otherwise been delegated to the Superintendent, and shall be in a consistent format. Other monitoring data may be provided to the Board by the Superintendent, and shall be noted as such, in the event of a specific compliance or non-compliance, anticipated or actual, with Board policy. 

5. Any reasonable Superintendent interpretation of Board policy must: (a) address directly the policy being interpreted; (b) include appropriate justification; (c) avoid dictionary definitions, plans, intentions, or activities; (d) consider relevant provisions of all higher level policies in the same category; (e) result in at least one operational definition or goal; and (f) for each operational definition or goal, state and justify at least the minimum acceptable performance standard for the period being monitored.

6. Any monitoring report or other monitoring data must: (a) provide data that directly addresses each operational definition for each Superintendent interpretation of each Board policy statement being monitored, as appropriate; (b) be clearly comparable to historical data and to the performance standards described as an interpretation; and (c) be presented in the most clear format possible, using control charts and other graphs where appropriate.

7. All policies which instruct the Superintendent will be monitored at a frequency and by a method chosen by the Board. The Board can monitor any policy at any time by any method, but will ordinarily depend on the attached monitoring report schedule.