BURKEonBOARD

(Sept. 26, 2008) – Don’t tell me you were surprised that the school board gave its superintendent a six star rating at Bradley Meeks annual job performance evaluation (Meeks meets job criteria -  Thisweek Farmington-Lakeville) last week. The board explained its findings at Monday’s board meeting. It was an embarrassing love fest.

“This is not just a rubber stamp,” Board Member Tim Weyandt said as Meeks handed Weyandt a rubber stamp.

I made up that last part about Meeks handing Weyandt a rubber stamp. But you might be forgiven if you thought it were true.

We don’t know what happened in the actual performance review last week as those things are allowed to be held in private. For all we know the board read Meeks the riot act. There’s no way to know. All we know is what the board reported on Monday and what they reported was that we are lucky to have Meeks as our superintendent, that he did everything that could have been asked of him and was found wanting in no way whatsoever. Mother Teresa should aspire to such perfection.

This is exactly the kind of thing that causes people in our school district to question the credibility of what the board and administration say and do.

Most of us who go through annual evaluations know we are usually asked to assess our own performance, listing what we did well, where we fell short and how we can improve in the coming year. Our evaluators usually offer similar observations. All that might have happened at Meeks’ closed-door evaluation, but all we know from the Monday board meeting is that the board had only good things to say about Meeks.

It is unrealistic and unbelievable given the district’s finances, the extraordinary cost overruns and never ending series of change orders at the new high school and the district’s dismal academic achievement.

Whether you like Meeks or not, an evaluation such as was presented to us on Monday in the face of what we know strains credibility beyond the breaking point.

If the board and administration wonder why they have such a credibility problem with the public, they need only go to the tape of Monday’s board meeting to see why.