The Española School Board has been working in closed sessions to evaluate Superintendent Bobbie Gutierrez since November.
The Board first went into executive session for limited personnel matters at its Nov. 4, 2015 meeting and has met six subsequent times to discuss Gutierrez’s progress since she took over as the District’s educational leader in April 2015.
The Board is scheduled to make an announcement regarding the status of Gutierrez’ contract at its Wednesday (1/13) meeting.
Board members selected Gutierrez as interim superintendent after they voted 3-2, to fire Danny Trujillo at an April 21, 2015 Board meeting. At the time of her hiring, Lujan said Gutierrez, 59, who served as Santa Fe’s superintendent from 2008-2012 when the Santa Fe School District decided not to renew her contract, was suited for the position due to her extensive educational experience.
Although Gutierrez had said she did not plan to stay in the position for more than one year, hoping to lay the foundation for a permanent superintendent, she has been the top District administrator since November 2015.
Board President Pablo Lujan said the superintendent evaluation process utilized by the Board this year is more streamlined.
Whereas in the past, it has taken close to 10 meetings to complete an evaluation, the current process of selecting an evaluation instrument was completed prior to their special meeting, last week, on Jan 4.
Gutierrez submitted a self-evaluation to the Board, as has been done in previous years.
“I think our process is a lot more beneficial now than what we’ve had in the past,” Board Secretary Anabelle Almager said. “It goes more into detail and it covers every aspect of the superintendent’s duties and their performance.”
Almager said the Board members were free to comment on various issues during their sessions with Gutierrez.
Part of the reason several meetings were needed to develop an evaluation process was due to the Board deliberating on the method of evaluation they would employ. Board member Ruben Archuleta said the Board originally discussed evaluating Gutierrez one-on-one, but have instead met with her, collectively. Archuleta said he wished they could have met with her individually, to address concerns and get further feedback from the superintendent.
“The Board reviewed several evaluation instruments and took the two they liked best and developed an evaluation template,” Gutierrez said. “I have provided them with information in each of these areas and a summary of the work, planning, etc., that has occurred under my tenure the past eight months or so.”
Gutierrez said the Board worked on individual ratings which she had not seen, and which Almager compiled into a final evaluation for her to review at the end of this month.
Archuleta said the Board wanted to evaluate her using different criteria than they had used in previous evaluations.
“What we did is, we wanted to simplify it,” he said.
Archuleta said the Board used an evaluation scale ranking one through five. A score of one means a marginal job, two means needs improvement, three translates to competent and four and five are commendable and distinguished, respectively.
According to the Board’s evaluation template provided by Gutierrez, they evaluated her on general expectations, including administering the District in accordance with Board policies and guidelines, acting as an adviser to the Board in areas needing policy development or revision, supervising the work of all District staff, community relations and budgetary expectations.
Archuleta said he disagreed with some of Gutierrez’s decisions including the renewal of a $50,000 per year marketing contract to Barney Trujillo, doing business as 2Smooth Advertising, to promote the District.
“She knows I am not happy with that contract,” Archuleta said. “We all know we don’t need something like that. We could use the money to hire a band teacher or a test coordinator.”
He said the superintendent’s decisions should not be political, they should be based on the best interest of the students.
“Right now, I think we have some unnecessary contracts,” Archuleta said. “If we continue this way, we’re never going to move forward. It’s nothing personal against Barney, but we could use that money to hire a test coordinator and do the marketing in-house.”
Gutierrez said the majority of Board members felt Trujillo’s contract was important to the District. She said Archuleta had not talked to her about other contracts he had concerns about, other than the marketing contract. Archuleta said the District desperately needs to improve test scores and school rankings.
The New Mexico Public Education Department released school grades on Dec. 18, 2015, with less than half of the Española schools receiving passing grades. The state released Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (P.A.R.C.C.) scores in the fall, and most of the schools in the District fared no better than schools throughout the state.
“I am not happy with our test scores,” Archuleta said. “That is the number one priority in our districts. I think we should have called all our principals together for these (evaluation) meetings. I was sick to my stomach when those P.A.R.C.C. scores came out. As a District, we need to have a sense of urgency and fix this.”
District financial records show Trujillo’s marketing firm was paid approximately $4,166 per month, so far, to market the schools.
“I believe we can market our own,” Archuleta said. “How can he market Cs, Ds and F schools?”
He said each principal could write and send out their own school newsletter on a monthly basis, similar to the gifted program’s and other specialized programs.
“This is certainly doable and a great suggestion,” Gutierrez said. “But the Board as a whole, determines and makes decisions regarding the budget.”
Other local school district superintendents are also undergoing the evaluation process.
The Mesa Vista Consolidated Schools called a special meeting on Monday, at El Rito Elementary, to discuss the evaluation of Superintendent Ernesto Valdez. Valdez did not return calls requesting comment on the evaluation.
The Jemez Mountain Public Schools Board placed the evaluation of Superintendent Manuel Medrano on their Dec. 14, 2015 meeting agenda. Medrano also failed to return a call requesting comment on the Board’s evaluation.