The final performance reviews for departing School Superintendent Thomas Jefferson showed some surprising levels of agreement among School Committee members, given that the question of doing the review at all had led to lengthy debate. The reviews were based on goals that had been worked out in previous negotiations between the committee and the superintendent. The school superintendent’s performance reviews become public documents after approval by the School Committee.
—Kirsten Wright,
school committee member
Four members of the current School Committee, along with one former member, submitted individually written performance reviews for Jefferson. Current committee members Keith Cheveralls, Piali De, Patricia Wenger, and Kirsten Wright each submitted a review. In addition, the committee invited Virginia Justicz to take part in the evaluation, as she had served on the committee during the period covered by the review. (Justicz did not run for reelection this spring.) Recently-elected member SusanMary Redinger, who replaced Justicz on the board, did not take part in the process.
The reviews covered a wide range of topics, including student achievement, the teachers’ contract, budget planning, community outreach, and more. On each goal, committee members rated the superintendent on a four-level scale of excellent, good, fair, or poor.
Overall, Jefferson earned the highest ratings for managing the school budget and for leading the search for a new elementary school principal. All the reviewers ranked his performance as excellent on the goals of preparing a thorough, timely budget and operating within it. Likewise, his leadership of the principal search drew praise, with Wright describing it as “an impressively collaborative effort.”
Jefferson also received uniformly high marks for improving MCAS performance, developing an anti-bullying policy, and working with the School Committee to set up a new instructional leadership model this year. All the reviewers rated his work in these areas as either excellent or good. Most also felt that Jefferson had been an effective ambassador for the Harvard school system, with Cheveralls stating, “Tom is always quick and enthusiastic to highlight the breadth of accomplishments and achievements of the district.”
On the negative side, most committee members expressed dissatisfaction with the extent to which Jefferson kept them informed of “potential issues,” with Wenger calling the lack of communication “a consistent source of discord” between the superintendent and the committee. The development of policies on information technology was another area where Jefferson fell short, according to committee members.
Four of the five reviewers asserted that the Ethics Commission ruling against Jefferson led them to assign him low marks on the goal of acting with integrity and exhibiting good judgment.
Wenger wrote of the events, “Although the action was reasonable, the way Mr. Jefferson and the then-acting School Committee handled the situation was unfortunate and caused much unnecessary angst and mistrust to the community.”
Wright lamented, “This process has been dragged out as a result of a series of misjudgments that need not have been. Sadly, it disproportionately has defined Tom’s tenure in Harvard.”
Cheveralls said the ethics issue had “indelibly marred” the past year.
The performance review included a number of other goals, such as dealing with the teachers’ contract, proposing additional course offerings, and recommending capital improvements and programs for financial viability. Committee members showed little consensus in their evaluations on most of these other points.
When the School Committee voted to proceed with Jefferson’s review, at their May 20 meeting, they also committed to doing a self-evaluation, based on district goals and following the same format at the superintendent’s review. That self-evaluation was expected to be on the agenda for June 27.
