Teachers and parents from the Sedona-Oak Creek School District flocked a special board meeting on Nov. 15 hoping to voice their demand for a 360 Evaluation on district Superintendent Kim Randall, Ph.D.

Teachers and parents from the Sedona-Oak Creek School District flocked a special board meeting on Nov. 15 hoping to voice their demand for a 360 Evaluation on district Superintendent Kim Randall, Ph.D.

Although the meeting did not make a call to the public, the public will get a chance to speak at the board’s meeting Thursday, Dec. 6, at West Sedona School.

At their Nov. 15 special meeting, the board members were prepped on 360 Evaluations by Karen Beckvar, a training specialist from the Arizona School Board Association, in Phoenix.

Beckvar said the purpose of a 360 Evaluation on a superintendent is to give constructive feedback so the board can see where there are opportunities for improvement.

The school board is the only responsible party to hire, fire and evaluate a superintendent, Beckvar said, but a 360 Evaluation would only be one piece that the board would look at in an evaluation.

Since the board has access to additional information that the public may not have, boards typically use a 360 as a supplement to the evaluation.

Beckvar pointed out that sometimes the board issues orders to a superintendent. Even if the public complains about a board-directed action in an evaluation, the board can ignore the complaints because the superintendent was following the board’s orders.

“It’s not a be-all, end-all,” Beckvar said of the 360. “It’s one piece of the evaluation, not the entire evaluation.”

The time span and cost of a 360 depends on which one the board decides to go with. After hearing Beckvar’s presentation on Nov. 15, the board should decide on an evaluation soon.

Beckvar warned that 360 Evaluations are not a scientific survey, especially if conducted online, since people could submit more than one entry.

Beckvar said it is not common for school districts to have 360 Evaluations, that they are more common in the business environment.

One of the reasons Sedona’s teachers called for a superintendent evaluation was because they didn’t receive the “step” in their salaries this year.

Step is the salary schedule that places teachers in a certain bracket based on their education level and their years of experience.

Moving from one step to another means a fixed pay increase of $930.

Randall said Arizona granted $56 million statewide for education this year, which translated to $337 for each teacher in SOCSD, which is not enough to grant each teacher their step.

Of the money received from the state, 92 percent goes to salaries and benefits, especially health insurance and retirement.

Beyond the $337 granted by the state, Randall dug through past years’ savings and came up with an additional $1,494 to bump up teachers’ salaries a total of $1,831 this year. If teachers would have received step instead, annual pay increase would have been $930.

“We scurried around the budget to find more money. We all want them to have more money. That’s not the issue,” Randall said. “I just don’t want to bring the district into debt.”

Randall said the step that SOCSD bases their teacher salaries on was created more than 100 years ago.

According to the district’s step scale, years of experience counts more toward a raise than an increase of education, such as obtaining a master’s degree.

Randall finds fault with this method.

“Research tells us that at some point without additional training, additional experience is not as beneficial,” she said.

There will be a call to the public at the school board’s meeting on Thursday, Dec. 6, at 3:45 p.m. in the library at West Sedona School, 570 Posse Ground Road.

Alison Ecklund can be reached at 282-7795, Ext. 125, or e-mail to
aecklund@larsonnewspapers.com