During their August 6th “Special Meeting,” the illegitimate Hartford Board of Education entered into executive session to discuss for the second time in as many months the evaluation of the superintendent.

And of course, as Superintendent Torres-Rodriguez would prefer things to be across the board, transparency and accountability are not part of the evaluation process as the people who pay her salary, the public, are left in the dark as to the proceedings.

This isn’t actually abnormal in Connecticut, but it’s not common either, nor is it a great look if you’re going for legitimacy and openness.  Cross those words off your curriculum vitae.

Connecticut Education Law requires boards of education to evaluate the superintendent, at least on an annual basis, “in accordance with guidelines and criteria mutually determined and agreed to by such board and such superintendent.”  Don’t you wish you could supply your evaluation criteria to your boss?

The board’s evaluation may be written or oral, creating a record or merely a memory.  A Hartford Courant survey in 2016 found that of the 133 school districts responding to their inquiry, 31% conducted oral evaluations in executive session, thereby creating no paper trail, for those who may be inquisitive enough to be thinking, Freedom of Information Request. 

Mitchell Pearlman, former Executive Director of the state Freedom of Information Commission, stated that school districts deliberately use private, oral evaluations to avoid creating written documents, thus making an “end run” around FOIA laws, “there’s no record and the public is left out of the loop…”

For those thinking accountability, Hartford’s Board of Education did, at one time, provide written documents of the superintendent’s evaluation.  Former Hartford Board Chairman Richard Wareing told former Superintendent Beth Schiavino-Narvaez at her hiring, that her evaluations would be “public documents.”  Wareing told the Courant, “If you’re doing your job, there’s nothing to hide.” 

East Hartford Superintendent Nathan Quesnel said that when districts talks about “accountability,”  that includes the superintendent.  Quesnel stated, “we have a written document in East Hartford that memorializes the conversation that took place.”

On the cloudy side of the coin, Farmington Board Chairman Christopher Fagan likes the closed door, none-of-your-business process of superintendent evaluations.  Fagan said, “the district’s success – and, by extension, [the superintendent’s] – speaks for itself.”  And by extension then, if the district is failing, does that speak to a superintendent’s failure?  

If Torres-Rodriguez’s rhetoric even came close to matching real results, this evaluation process would be carried over the airwaves of WFSB.  It’s private.  No record or report is created.

There ya go, that’s her evaluation in a nutshell.  It’s not rocket science.