A vote by the Cumberland County Board of Education failed to establish a special committee evaluate the director and the board of education.
Board Member Shannon Stout said TSBA has provided an evaluation draft to the school board. She said the current evaluation process is outdated. Stout said every board member should be included in reviewing the evaluation process rather than forming a special committee.
“I believe that these evaluations are just too important in order to kick it to a special committee and not have full board engagement on them,” Stout said. “And have full representation for our constituents.”
Board Member Nicholas Davis said a special committee would handle the nuts and bolts of the evaluation and that the full board still had the power to approve or reject the recommendations. Board Member Jon Matthews said he did not see the downside of forming a special committee.
“I don’t see the downside to having a committee and allowing those three people to at least get a head start on the majority you now what I mean,” Matthews said. “That’s my sole point. I don’t see the downside to it other than it taking those three peoples extra time.”
Board Member Scott Vanwinkle said he thought the purpose of forming a special committee was to have a group work on it but still take input from other board members. Board Member Anita Hale said during her tenure when special committees were formed they would still consider her input. Hale said she agrees that the evaluation process needs to be reworked.
“I think we have a lot of different options to look at,” Hale said. “Because I went through my paperwork from the past years and found several different evaluations that we have done on Mr. Stepp and they have all been different but all of them had some good points to them and I think we should bring those to a committee and talk about it.”
Davis questioned the board if they had done any work on their own to evaluate the draft TSBA presented. Nichols said she has not done any review as it has not been put on the agenda. Davis said as a full board the board has not done a good job acting on priorities.
“Whatever form of meetings we tried to have we still have not done those things as a board,” Davis said. “And if you are asking the board to continually wait for the chairperson of the executive committee to put this together for us, how long do we need to do that before we start actually moving the needle because we have yet to make traction on the things that community is frustrated about.”
After several board members began to talk over each other Chairman Chris King had to restore order.
“I think we have demonstrated why we can’t anything done,” King said.
The board had a 4-3 vote in favor of not forming a special committee. Davis originally decided to abstain from the voting but after all other members voted he was asked to reconsider and he ended up voting for forming the committee which brought the voting to a 4-4 tie. A tie still prevents the special committee from being formed.
